As a key French player in Research and Development, the CEA has been looking for several years to revise its strategy around Business Intelligence. In this context, Damien POULAIN, recognized expert in BI for more than 25 years, initiated a real gait. It consists of democratizing the DashBoarding tools for all the employees of the 10 CEA sites.
What are your missions within the CEA’s IT department?
“Nowadays, I am application architect of the CEA. I ensure the consistency of the Application Information System, and make sure that it evolves in the most rational way possible. As such, I keep myself up to date on the latest BI tools. ”
“Business Intelligence, I fell in when I was young! I joined the CEA in 1991 as a BI project manager. For 25 years, I have integrated the majority of BI solutions within the CEA. I have always been an active member of the Business Objects Users Club and have led numerous working groups. ”
What are the issues of the CEA regarding Business Intelligence?
“All CEA data can be processed using reporting tools. And this according to the jobs of the 20,000 permanent employees or service providers present on all 10 CEA sites. This concerns traditional management data (finance, HR, purchasing, etc.) as well as business data. In particular, data relating to nuclear energy, military applications, basic research and technological research. ”
“Also, like institutional tools such as messaging, Office suites, collaborative websites, telephony, … a company must bring a standardized offer. And thus publish indicators to its employees, thus advantageously replacing spreadsheets. ”
How did you to unearth the rare pearl so much sought after?
“In 2006, I deployed at the CEA the” DashBoard “tool from BusinessObjects. But following the acquisition of Xcelsius, its development was stopped in 2008 and commercialized in 2011. Since then, no tool on the market has proposed a centralized architecture allowing autonomy to business users. ”
“For nearly 10 years, I have been searching for THE DashBoarding solution. It would allow us to meet the generic needs of the business. ”
“A comparison between 2″ flagship “solutions was conducted internally by a panel of 23 representative users. The match between the two was very close. Finally, DigDash won the game. They have met our expectations from a functional, technical but also in terms of cost. ”
How is the deployment going?
“The IT administration is reduced to a minimum: supervision and maintenance of the shared elements (graphics charts, functions, …), whose propagation is done in a few seconds. Referring users design screens and publish them. Thus, data from the data warehouse is refreshed automatically. Business data is updated by referring users via downloads on the central platform. ”
“We are today comforted in our choice. Indeed, we are serene about the ability of this solution to collect large volumes of data. But also a large number of users. “