USPS Case Study – Facilities Management Enterprise Analytics

The US Postal Service (USPS) operates from 30,825 post offices and locations in the US to deliver 149.5 billion pieces of mail annually. American citizens and businesses are dependent on the safe, functional, and available operations of these post offices and locations. To manage this portfolio, the USPS Facilities Management group makes use of two enterprise workplace management systems. One is called electronic Facility Management System (eFMS) and the other is the electronic Energy Management System (EEMS).

These systems are based on legacy technologies that do not well support current enterprise-level analytical requirements. Developing this capability was recognized as critical to generating the strategies and initiatives needed to improve efficiency, effective operations at USPS locations. To address this issue, USPS hired Definitive Logic to evaluate these systems and implement improvements to USPS enterprise facility management analytics capabilities.

This resulted in Definitive Logic leveraging USPS’s existing business intelligence platform (MicroStrategy) to define, design, and develop a dashboard proof of concept. Additionally, an extensible analytics data model was developed (as a fact constellation schema in Oracle) to efficiently support the dashboard along with several other reporting and data analysis needs. The dashboard included a sampling of over 8,000 assets (facilities) that could be filtered by Area, District, Asset (Facility), and Ownership. Upon making one or more filter selections, all the metrics and map update immediately to reflect those selections. Example facility metrics now made easily available to decision-makers include:

• Portfolio Snapshots providing an overview of all assets (facilities) such as Asset Value, Value of Properties Sold, Interior Square Footage, number of Expiring Leases, etc.
• Annual Operating Metrics displaying annual costs such as Outlease Revenue, Leased Payments, Maintenance Costs, Utility Costs, etc. over the last three fiscal years.
• Annual Project Financial Metrics comparing annual budgeted (Committed) vs. actual (Paid) amounts for capital and expense projects over the last three fiscal years.
• Annual Space Survey Metrics displaying annual Operating Costs per Square Foot over the last three fiscal years.
• Monthly Operating Metrics displaying monthly costs in relation to the Annual Operating Metrics for the last fiscal year.
• Map displaying asset (facility) locations with popups showing Facility ID, Name, Status, Address, Interior Square Footage, etc.

This dashboard proof-of-concept tested and evaluated data analysis and presentation concepts. This supported organizational learning and establishing an efficient, effective configuration of the follow-through enterprise solution. This solution is now delivering baseline information to inform resource decision making across the USPS facility portfolio. Building on this success, Definitive Logic is now supporting the development of more advance decision-making capabilities. This work includes integrating data from multiple sources in a way that streamlines decision making across USPS facility operations.