Space Dynamics Laboratory Launches Oracle Planning That’s Out of this World!

Overview

Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) is a non-profit, University Affiliated Research Center (UARC). In it’s capacity as a trusted agent of the government, SDL works to solve technical challenges for the military, science community, and industry through data gathering and analysis tools for all branches of the military and powerful remote and in situ sensing solutions. SDL supports NASA’s vision to “reveal the unknown for the benefit of humankind.” As a growing organization, SDL needed a scalable solution that would allow them to manage data and resources associated with hundreds of proposals and delivered projects. These projects needed to contain detailed resources, plans and expenses while still allowing flexible timelines. The solution also needed to integrate with SDL’s Banner General Ledger and their data warehouse for all their operational drivers.

Business Challenge

SDL was faced with the same problems that plague many organizations when they have spreadsheet driven processes for completing a plan. Data was manually copied from one file to another. Each user had their own processes for how to complete the plan. Reporting completed by manually aggregating spreadsheets. All these issues led to high administration time, challenges with auditability and scalability.

Solutions

SDL and StratAlyze Solutions implemented Oracle’s Planning to automate, standardize and streamline their project planning process. Planning for projects for SDL means tracking different proposals at different stages and monitoring these projects through completion. Each firm project SDL plans for contains detailed resource projections and utilizations that drive the largest portion of their projects. To ensure each project’s success, actuals transactions are loaded from their general ledger allowing them to monitor progress and modify projections. With all the data now in one spot SDL can view strategic manpower reports, division revenue reports, and ad hoc data on any project as needed.

Result

With Oracle Planning and the ongoing support of StratAlyze Solutions, SDL now has a scalable, secure, and standardized solution for the Project Planning. Through automation, SDL has daily updates of proposal information and can modify project dates with the click of a button. This agile solution has helped align the Project Planning process across the enterprise.

Testimonial

The implementation of Oracle’s Planning tool has moved us from a set of disaggregated, homegrown databases and spreadsheets, to a single, integrated solution that marries revenue and manpower data together and allows us to better understand the current and future state of our projects and those on the horizon with much greater insight. The flexibility Planning provides puts the complete data set at the fingertips of a variety of organizational users.

Working with StratAlyze Solutions as an integration partner was an incredible experience. They were able to take into consideration a variety of stakeholder needs to help us design and implement the right solution. They weren’t just contractors, they were team members, who not only helped deliver a fantastic end result, but improved our processes through their interactions with our organization. We couldn’t have asked for better partners.

- Audrey