In order to better answer these questions, we solicited the help of three of our team members that work in our Data Analytics and Visualization Practice Group to help build a dashboard. The dashboard would allow us to filter publicly available data from FI$Cal. The dashboard would allow us to filter data by department, description of the procurement, supplier name, and even purchase amounts. 

Our team utilized the awesome capabilities of Power BI to aggregate data from FI$Cal to drill down to get more specific information about departments across the state and their procurement history. Our development team incorporated “sliders” and filtering functionality to enable us to view data for a specific date range or focus in on specific acquisition types. 

Put simply, our team created a dashboard we could use at any time and be able to answer the questions we presented earlier, in real-time. The example shown below demonstrates what is displayed on the dashboard when you apply a date range of 1/1/2017 to present and focus on one department, Office of Systems Integration. 

While FI$Cal data is readily available, this solution for analyzing the data is extremely valuable. We can adapt the views to gather insights and extract information that allows us to make informed business decisions.