Online payment service PayPal is planning to extend
itsTeradata data warehouseto enable
users in its finance department to improve the accuracy and speed
of financial reporting.
This is the latest stage in a project that began in 2002 to
centralise PayPal's business data and provide staff with a
business intelligence portal to analyse data.
Its IT department has been able to pass on 60% of the costs of
running business intelligence to PayPal's risk management,
marketing and finance departments, funding further development of
the Teradata system.
Clay Stanley, senior director at PayPal responsible for
information management and delivery, said IT staff embedded within
the finance department had started investigating how Teradata could
be optimised for Hyperion financial reporting software used by the
finance department.
He said, "We changed our IT organisation to align with risk
management, marketing and the finance department."
Embedded IT staff had specialist skills required by each
department, he said. "In risk management, the team needed SQL,
business intelligence, business analysis, SAS and reporting
skills. Marketing needed SAS, reporting and [market] segmentation
knowledge, and finance needed reporting experts."
A central team of 20 internal staff plus external consultants
looks after the back-end Teradata system. Staff with skills in data
modelling and data integration work alongside IT staff who support
workload management and the day-to-day operations of the
data warehouse.
The business intelligence portal provides tools to enable
end-users to access the data warehouse. Power users, who make up
about 15% of business users, have been given access to the
Microstrategy reporting tool and 40% of users have direct access to
business transactions stored the data warehouse. By reorganising
PayPal's IT, Stanley hopes 80% of business users will eventually be
able to access pre-built reports from the company's business
intelligence portal.
PayPal's business intelligence strategy
- Make governance a key requirement
- Understand the business
- Invest in self-service business intelligence
- Use IT to support business units
- Get a senior executive to sponsor the project