eCapris integration | Meet with Brian L. to learn about eCAPRIS

[mateoclarke]

notes I took:

• $4bn in 5 years, bc of Covid, changed it so it was never shown to the public. Reprogramming eCapris. Show changes to airlines and council that accounted for covid.

  • reducing the outflow of money

• 9 gate expansion, parking garage $300m of work

  • real time day by day expenses

• What DTS is building: project mgmt tracking solution for any mobility project in Austin

  • extension of eCapris
  • don't want to duplicate, don't want double entry
  • need to understand eCapris touchpoints

• Brian asks: What are we using to pull data?

  • straight SQL queries?
  • read-only access?
  • Bruce & Phil (technical POCs for eCapris)
  • "where you are going, there is no easy button"
    • If Rob says why isn't this done tomorrow
    • COA is like GE, Jet engines and toaster ovens
    • the way each of those divisions work is very different

• Our accounting system is built to take care of everything

  • Gotta understand where the dollars come from, dollars and financing
  • what's been spent?
  • what I am planning to spend going forward
    • this is hard for orgs bc plans are always changing
  • when showing eCapris to other orgs - ppl wanted to buy it
  • Oracle db, integrated automatically in AIMES every year
  • eCapris as source of record for planning and budget.
  • Finance wise, its actually business intelligence
  • 30% BI from financial system / 70% data origin (schedule, budgeting, planning, contracts)
    • contracts are separate but totally related to projects
    • many to many relationships
    • then take in what you have to take to Council
    • That's where eCapris is wonderful
    • in order to get reports you had to call Bruce to get anything
    • that's when they came out with MicroStrategy
    • the hard part is understanding what to ask from MicroStrategy, not putting together queries
    • just looking at tables that are available
    • terminology is challenging. for ex: term budget, "budget estimate", "spend plan budget", 'budget in AIMES' = apropriation in eCapris
    • mess of terminology, need at CoA PHD to understand
    • data is all there, and you can do amazing things with it and its not easy.
  • Project Systems Intelligence Office
    • built a lot of things but didn't have a lot of users
    • found that their systems didn't influence decision making
    • "what type of thing do you want to make better decisions?"
    • Ex: from Director of Airport - "I want to know how much over budget we are?"
    • from original plan? from when we first bid it? from when construction started? from where we are now?
    • easy request for her to make, but hard to get back
    • contracts, task orders, interdepartmental charges
    • FDU cycle
    • once you start to blend operating, getting into eCombs

• Everyone wants transparency and data, but the amount of data we're talking about can tell stories and we're all biased in how we show the data.

  • Be ready for some black eyes, you'll have sponsors that don't like how you are showing things.
  • ex: 2016 Bond, getting behind, there's going to have to be a story about why
  • was having the challenge to get everyone on board doing things from the bottom up.

• Brian has MicroStrategy set up to look like eCapris

  • offered to give us a tour, combined metrics to make them time dependent
  • spend plan
    • doesn't get compared to expenses until the end of year
  • appropriation plan
  • reusing MicroStratgey SQL queries into Tableau

• eCapris and AIMES don't have good training

• Once we get good at tracking spend, then you can plan better

  • spending plan is cash flow you think
  • a successful spend flow is cash flowed the way it was supposed to be
  • no one does this well.
  • Earn value analysis
  • looks at schedule, risk, expenses on a chart
  • Tracking way more, are you ahead of schedule or over budget?

• quick eCapris tour

  • start with spending plan
  • real world is Object Code
  • Report Codes
  • FDUs
    • subproject is a group of FDUs

• Going forward:

  • schedule appoints with Brian
  • specific agenda of what to talk about:
    • helping getting things setup in Microstrategy, and then we can make that a connection, work on connections, get the power that everyone else has done.
    • advice on feature sets, demo of what we're building

[amenity]

Brian L.

• Went to CPO, then at Airport since March

• Reprogrammed their use of eCapris so that they could manage giant capital projects in it while accommodating drastic schedule/funding changes (e.g. COVID)

• Needed real-time day-by-day expenses

• "Everyone wants transparency and data...But it's always going to be biased." Be ready for black eyes if you push for transparency

Data To get access, talk to Bruce N. - Financial Services @ Controller

• What's been spent to date, last year, etc.

• What's going to be spent going forward

eCapris

• Source of record for
  • Budgeting
  • Spending
  • Funding - FDUs, contracts (many-to-many)
  • Appropriation
• 30% BI that pulls data from AIMS
• Planning - for some projects
• Off-label use as Airport's tenant-managment system

Data analysis

• Use Microstrategy, the hard part is pulling the eCapris data itself in addition to the

  • Microstrategy Office clicks to update and Excel
  • Tableau users at Airport take Microstrategy SQL code

• Appropriations load automatically into AIMS every year

• Looking at ThoughtSpot for automated BI

Follow-up meetings

• eCapris Data #4812

  • How is eCapris data being accessed and used in other applications?
  • BI in Microstrategy
  • Microstrategy Office + Excel — Allows (who?) to work
  • Tableau (u)sers at Airport take Microstrategy SQL code
  • Identify Moped + eCapris data connections

• Moped demo and roadmap review #4811

[amenity]

Today's meeting

• eCAPRIS basics
• Austin Finance Online
• Constructing eCAPRIS queries in Microstrategy

cc/ @mateoclarke @zappfyllc @sergiogcx