Customer Success

US Department of Commerce uncovers financial insights

SAS® consolidates diverse financial systems, reports executive-level data online

With a broad mission to promote job creation and improve living standards nationwide, the US Department of Commerce (DOC) is a diverse organization with widespread responsibilities overseeing economic growth, technological competitiveness and sustainable development.

Customer Success Video

Check out this video to learn more about the US Department of Commerce and its success with SAS.

View Video

(Runtime: 0 mins, 0 secs)

Customer Viewpoint
You have questions; our customers have answers. Check out this video Q&A.

Jim Taylor
Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Director for Financial Management, DOC

View Video

(Runtime: 0 mins, 0 secs)

Bob Bair
Deputy Director for Financial Management, DOC

View Video

(Runtime: 0 mins, 0 secs)

(Requires Windows Media Player 6.4.7 or higher or RealPlayer 6 or higher)

The Commerce Department uses SAS for their Enterprise Reporting System (EARS). Encompassing more than a dozen bureaus, the department's broad charge includes gathering economic and demographic data, issuing patents and trademarks, conducting ocean and coastal zone research, managing marine fisheries and sanctuaries, overseeing international trade laws, developing policies for telecommunications and technology, and even forecasting the weather.

"It's a very diverse organization, with a staff of 40,000 people around the world," explains Jim Taylor, Deputy Chief Financial Officer and Director for Financial Management. Taylor works for the Office of the Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary for Administration – the managerial arm responsible for overseeing the financial resources, human resources and facilities for the entire Commerce Department.

"It's a constant struggle to make one unified department from all these different centers with their diverse administrative functions," explains Taylor. He says efficiency and transparency at the executive level have always been issues for the DOC, especially when it comes to budgeting and finance. "We're persistently trying to accommodate the reporting and budgetary needs of each individual bureau, while at the same time trying to make financial management at the executive level as smooth and efficient as possible."

Today, financial reporting at the Commerce Department has become more efficient than ever imagined. The new EARS provides managers and executives with a single, integrated information source for financial and performance data. It integrates budgeting, procurement, administrative and personnel data, while providing complete and accurate financial performance results for the entire department.

Instant financial insights online
Before implementing the EARS, each bureau within the department housed its own financial data on numerous, disparate systems, making it difficult for managers to gain an accurate view of agency operations. "We literally had 13 separate financial systems," says Taylor, "and there was no capability to provide information in a concise manner to senior managers."

Without an integrated financial system, executives – such as the secretary of the department and the chief financial officer – received monthly paper-based reports that showed static financial results. If more information was needed, ad hoc requests were submitted to analysts who often had to access data from all 13 systems to find the answers.

As Bob Bair, Deputy Director of Financial Management for the DOC, explains, it was difficult to make executive-level decisions with paper-based reports. "The data is time sensitive, and you're looking at a report that might be a couple of months old. It doesn't tell you the current position of the organization or what progress it's making toward achieving its goals."

With the new Web-based dashboard, however, data from every system is integrated; executive managers can easily assess and report on the status of their organizations, explore and query near real-time data, and view financial and performance data from many different angles.

Identifying opportunities, improving performance
"We've designed the system to bring together data that executives need in a timely and detailed manner," says Bair. The first EARS screen shows each bureau's appropriated funds for the year alongside its current spending levels, with a clear indication of whether spending is above or below budgeted levels for the year. From there, executives can drill down to explore spending and financial data for each individual bureau.

Online analytical processing (OLAP) capabilities from SAS make data exploration easy for even non-technical users. "We've built data cubes for analysis capabilities," says Bair, "so executives can drill down to individual funding sources or individual spending categories."

For example, the financial officer for the International Trade Administration can quickly see how much has been spent within his bureau for travel, or an HR executive in the Bureau of Industry and Security can compare her personnel spending levels with other bureaus.

"With the EARS, we're managing our funds far more efficiently," says Taylor. "We're combining financial data with other information throughout the department in a fashion that gives everybody a good comfort level that they're making sound business decisions."

In additional to financial data, executives can also view performance data for each bureau, including status reports for major projects and staffing reports for various personnel categories. More than 100 managers and executives currently use the system to help measure and improve performance within the department.

Breakthrough decision making
"Before now, within the DOC, we've never developed a system with this kind of productivity, from start to finish," says Bair. "The fact that this system brings together data from all over the department and makes it available to executives within days after the close of the month is a real breakthrough."

In the long run, Bair says the greatest benefit of all is that everyone is managing against the same set of data and making decisions with more confidence. Taylor agrees. "The most obvious benefit is the efficiency of management. Executives need information presented in a way that they can use it to make sound management decisions. With SAS, we're taking a great leap in providing that information for them."

The results illustrated in this article are specific to the particular situations, business models, data input, and computing environments described herein. Each SAS customer’s experience is unique based on business and technical variables and all statements must be considered non-typical. Actual savings, results, and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. SAS does not guarantee or represent that every customer will achieve similar results. The only warranties for SAS products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements in the written agreement for such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Customers have shared their successes with SAS as part of an agreed-upon contractual exchange or project success summarization following a successful implementation of SAS software. Brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.