Reporting & Analytics: Personas

At the March Fiscal Administrators Meeting, Mark Anderson's update on the FST Project's Reporting & Analytics Team was all about personas. Mark Anderson informed Fiscal Administrators that UVA's Associate Vice President for Financial Strategy, Bill Ashby, tasked the R&A Team with figuring out what experience they wanted to provide for enterprise reporting & analytics end-users.

The first step toward completing this task was to form a Persona Working Group composed of representatives from HCM People Analytics, ITS, schools and units across the University, and UVAFinance. The group organized reporting & analytics end-users into four different personas:

• Fiscal Administrator - Bob
• Business Officer/Chief Administrator - Jane
• Department or Unit Director - Tim
• Grants/Research Administrator - Susan

The group gave each persona a name to avoid focusing on job titles. There are many responsibilities end-users have based on the individual needs of their school or unit that don't necessarily fit the general responsibilities of a specific job title.

For each persona, the team thought about the following questions:

• Who are they?
• With whom do they interact?
• What are their knowledge and skills?
• What are their regular tasks?
• What are their data and information needs?
• What are their modes of operation (e.g. a manager responsible for a team)?

Asking these questions allowed the group to have a better understanding of end-user needs, as well as future actions that will help meet those needs. One of the ways the R&A Team is working to meet those needs is via a reporting & analytics dashboard. This dashboard will be a landing page for Fiscal Administrators and employees in Operational Support Roles to access tasks, reports, and other resources needed to perform daily work.

You can view a demo of a prototype version of the dashboard here.