Reply To: ARCU Implementation

While we implemented ARCU a decade+ ago, we are re-implementing it today. We went through a process that led us to re-choosing ARCU as our BI solution with the added value of CFS Consulting Group.

That said, I might advise some preliminary steps prior to launching your ARCU initiative:

1) Have a clear, written vision of your data culture, current and future states, and exactly what you want out of your data warehouse (Episys reporting? Financial reporting? Marketing data? True data analytics/business intelligence?)
2) Have a clear, written data governance policy/plan that includes data storage, security, ownership, systems, and appoints an ARCU admin that will check in on daily check & balance tasks (these roles needn’t necessarily be the same people; for example, IT may own the server/infrastructure, but the admin (maybe, but maybe not IT) will do daily checks, with an analytics manager or analyst (also maybe not IT) owning the application), with users hopefully representing various departments
3) Have solid top-down buy-in for Nos. 1, 2 above to cultivate a culture of data governance, data consumption, and the use of analytics in decision making going forward
4) Standard project management with a project owner/manager, champion/sponsor, stakeholders, tasks, dates/milestones, assignees, etc.
5) Install/build, choose data sources (if other than Episys-only), and tools (data visualization layer if other than ARCU- or SQL-only) to execute data models and queries
6) Revisit Nos. 1-3 to cultivate this new culture

::rk