Insightful » Business Intelligence

OpenWorld 2011 – It’s all getting quicker.

Kathy Wells — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 18:14:37 +0000

Tracy Bishop, product manager & former Oracle consultant

by Tracy Bishop, product manager and former Oracle consultant

My favourite new song over the Summer months was called Quicker by I Blame Coco. “Quicker” seems to be the theme of the moment. Apple are releasing iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S which promise faster performance. And the main message at Oracle OpenWorld 2011 was that everything can now be much, MUCH faster.

Exa-everything
This is the first time I’ve attended Openworld as a non-Oracle employee. It gave me a considerably different perspective. There was a great deal of focus on hardware and database aspects. “Exa-everything” was the darling of the show and managed to get a mention in most of the sessions I attended, even those which were Applications specific rather than technical.

Oracle Financials
As an accountant I was mainly interested in the applications side of things, especially Oracle financials. Most of what I heard here I had heard at previous conferences. There was a good high level session on “What’s next for financial management solutions at Oracle?”. This was an overview of the new things for each of the four financial product sets and included a presentation from Deloitte on their CFO survey. That implied there is lots to worry about in the global economy and most CFO’s feel they have squeezed and squeezed efficiencies and cost savings out of their organisations already. So…. would CFO’s be interested in the “do it quicker messages ?

Extreme BI
If they were, an interesting session was “Extreme BI: Real-Time Analytics with Oracle Exadata and Oracle Business Intelligence Apps”. I was intrigued by the title as Oracle have chopped and changed their message about real time versus datawarehouse reporting over the past few years. Could it be that we were to see a return to real time business intelligence? No – this was just a case of “quicker” in action. It showed how Exadata and its Exa cousins can really come into their own as a platform to create a very fast performing e-Business suite. It turns out that OBIEE has not moved to become a real time tool but if Exadata is used along with plenty of tuning, parallelism, etc., the improvement in performance can gives users the feel of real time. Of course there is a price tag and an organisation needs a big budget or needs to be big enough to generate a business case to show a return on investment over time. Maybe something for the CFOs of really big companies then, but it looks like more of the same for the rest.

Quick Hits Are What We Need Right Now
I am convinced though that there are still ways to squeeze the last drops of efficiency out of an organisation by using the information Oracle e-Business suite provides. This belief was reinforced at a session on the GRC products run jointly between Oracle and KPMG. Tactical reporting, rather than BI, on Oracle financials can reveal interesting trends and details to help find savings, e.g. by identifying where overpayments are occurring, finding fraud, early identification and correction of errors, etc. This may sound like small fry but based on KPMGs example, a company with a 5% profit margin losing $1million through overpayments and fraud would need to generate an additional $20million in sales to compensate. So, for me, quick and easy ways to get to that information and put it right will be the things to help CFOs and their accountants.

And, just to bring everything round in a circle…. the singer of the “Quicker” song i love so much is Coco Sumner, daughter of Sting, one of the headlining performers at OpenWorld this year.

If you attended, what are your impressions of OpenWorld this year? If you didn’t attend, what have you heard about the event that you found of interest? Please comment – I’m curious about your thoughts.

Author: Kathy Wells

High tech marketer with over 20 years experience and proven results. Always keeping it fresh as a social media geek and frequent early adopter. Strong customer relationship builder, driving tangible ROI our customers. Education includes: MBA in International Business, Masters of Arts in Psychology and Interpersonal Communication (in progress).

The Oracle EBS Complexities

ryan.alford — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 21:39:05 +0000

By Tracy Bishop

“What reporting tool should I use?”

I worked for Oracle as a sales consultant for many years before leaving to join a dedicated software “reporting tool” company. In that time, one of the hardest questions to answer for customers and prospective customers was: “What reporting tool should I use?”

Most customers would love to have an answer, which pointed them to one tool (meaning they only had to support one method and tool). All users could have the same training and there would be a nice consistent source of truth and interface for reporting across the organization.

Unfortunately, life and the ERP environment are just not like that.

Oracle E-Business Suite is an extremely complex suite of software, designed to support a wide variety of professional and operational disciplines in large, complex organizations. Users will range from the highest level executives and board members (who just want a “state of the nation” snapshot), to large numbers of data input and operational staff (who need to instantly see the results of their actions in the system).

Even in a sales demo, which focused purely on financial management, I would typically need to show users a range of tools to suit the different requirements they presented. This included, for example, Discoverer for ad-hoc transactional reports (or more recently Business Intelligence applications) for dashboards of key financial reports and ad-hoc reports. Adding to that mix, Financial Statement Generator (FSG) for statutory reports, online inquiries for quick analysis of transactional activity, and even Excel export utilities to plug the gaps.

Once it comes to implementation the landscape becomes more complex as each organization may have its own strategic reporting tools and the implementers may have their own preferred tools and skill sets for reporting purposes.

“Now what?”

The diagram below shows the typical deployment of different types of tools to different types of users. At the highest level, executives just want the sweet spots of information and need it presented succinctly in an easy-to-read, often graphical form. The less information they have to trawl the better.

Reporting Tools Evolution

The business data that is important to the executive level is summary information: For example, staff turnover, overall sickness levels, profitability, sales, cost of sales, project performance, etc. Often this can be a snapshot based on a data warehouse of modeled and aggregated data and does not need to be in real-time. Hyperion and Oracle OBIEE and BI Applications are often deployed to fill this need, as are third-party BI tools such as Cognos and Business Objects.

As you move down the organization structure the picture becomes increasingly fuzzy. The more diverse users and modules have a very wide variety of needs. While it would be impossible to list all the types of information these users would need, it is possible to describe their needs and, indeed, expectations.

Having seen the capabilities of Oracle (and designing the data they will input based on these capabilities,) users have the expectation that they will be able to easily access all of this information whether in summary or detailed form. Take for example, Oracle Financials: Users want to see information at the highest summary level. This includes how money is spent across an entire company or multiple companies, but with the capability to also access all of the supporting detail (and in real-time).

That can be extremely difficult in Oracle using the standard tools. That is why there are a plethora of tools used in the marketplace to meet different parts of those requirements. All too often, too much effort is spent exporting information to spreadsheets and then manipulating the raw data and reconciling it back. That time should really be spent analyzing the completed reports. Users are really looking for tools that can do this without having to spend vast amounts on implementation efforts and IT support.

I finally came across a tool, which would complement the high-level BI tools and support the operational users of the finance modules: Insight Software Suite for Oracle EBS. Check it out: http://www.insightsoftware.com/products/ebs.

Author: ryan.alford

Ryan is the Internet Marketing Manager for InsightSoftware.com.

InsightSoftware.com at OpenWorld 2010

ryan.alford — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 21:22:03 +0000

InsightSoftware.com and its team had a great OpenWorld 2010 in San Francisco. Here are the highlights:

The Moscone Center aerial view -

Jon Louvar demonstrates Insight Reconciler for an attendee -

Phil Walton discusses the benefits of Insight Reconciler with attendees -

The Insight Reconciler kiosk in the JD Edwards Pavilion -

Lynda Huebsch and Donna Greer at the InsightSoftware.com booth -

The InsightSofware.com booth -

Jon Louvar provides a software demonstration for an attendee -

Matt Topfer prepares a software demonstration at the InsightSoftware.com booth -

Here are the OpenWorld highlights:

Oracle Enhances Oracle(R) Business Intelligence Applications – http://bit.ly/cruiu7

Oracle’s OpenWorld Show Boosted by Sun Users, Rebound in Corporate Travel – http://bit.ly/bP8Hv1

InsightSoftware.com Helps Ease the Pain Associated With the Year-End Close Process – http://bit.ly/cWswQk

Oracle Unveils Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Fulfillment Management – http://bit.ly/977CbU

Group VP and GM Lyle Ekdahl at the JD Edwards Session and Keynote. Full house, standing room only – http://plixi.com/p/46218725

Lyle Ekdahl: “You are going to see a lot in tools and applications…a lot of things in the pipeline. Leveraging tech from Oracle.”

Lyle Ekdahl: “Central to our strategy…continue to invest and support our products…it makes sense to our customers and our biz.”

ZDnet: Oracle OpenWorld keynote sets a dull tone – http://zd.net/bQRQG9

Accenture Wins Oracle Titan Awards for Business Intelligence and Public Sector Solutions – http://bit.ly/doEZkm

Author: ryan.alford

Ryan is the Internet Marketing Manager for InsightSoftware.com.

Reconciliations: It Doesn’t Have to be This Way!

ryan.alford — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 18:30:33 +0000

Check out InsightSoftware.com’s cartoon about JD Edwards reconciliations:

http://www.youtube.com/insightsoftware#p/a/u/0/RspO90mFy8w

Stay tuned for more in the series. Let us know what you think!

Author: ryan.alford

Ryan is the Internet Marketing Manager for InsightSoftware.com.

Reconciling the Accounts in JD Edwards Doesn’t Have to Be Painful!

ryan.alford — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 17:27:37 +0000

A company’s financial prowess and compliance go hand-in-hand. Without proper insight and strategic oversight of the business, many of today’s top global companies are missing a large piece of the financial puzzle.

CFOs should maintain the perfect balance between strategy, planning, forecasting, budgeting, reporting, and analysis. This is more simplified (and cost-effective) by having an automated process for account reconciliation. Without a monitoring system in place, performance improvements will be limited.

In a research report called “How to improve reconciliation activities,” published by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, many “account reconciliation problems are preventable. Timing, is also frequently an issue: account reconciliations that are in arrears more than one month risk misstatement of the financial results. Depending on the level of risk, perform reconciliations daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly.”

Curious to know what to do about reconciliation problems in JD Edwards? Implement automation that recognizes reconciling items and streamlines the review process.

Author: ryan.alford

Ryan is the Internet Marketing Manager for InsightSoftware.com.

Do all signs point to an unorganized implementation of Order-to-Ship?

ryan.alford — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 17:00:37 +0000

It’s not an easy job. An optimized Order-to-Ship business process offers continual progress towards improved cost control and delivery performance.

However, there might be a few challenges in the systems, including:

Rework to correct data accuracy issues
Late shipments and setbacks in delivery performance
Increased customer complaints
Time spent on complaint resolution
Poor management of backorders
Inefficient order processing and fulfillment
Untimely invoicing
Diminished cash flow and sales margins

In an Aberdeen Research study called “Working Capital Optimization: Increase Cash Flow in the New Economy,” author Nari Viswanathan said that “Best-in-Class companies are 30% as likely as all others to use cash conversion metrics as part of their supply chain organization metrics. Companies that embed cash conversion metrics into the set of supply chain metrics are twice as likely to have reduced their cash conversion cycle over the past year (45% versus 21%). Some of the key metrics that have been adopted as part of the process are: Sales forecast accuracy, on-time shipping, on-time delivery, inventory turns, logistics costs as a percentage of sales, and gross profit margin.”

Achieving an on-time shipping and delivery system is an industry standard met by few. Using JD Edwards can get you on your way, but will only take you so far.

To read more, click here.

Author: ryan.alford

Ryan is the Internet Marketing Manager for InsightSoftware.com.

The West is the Best!

ryan.alford — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 21:35:46 +0000

By Phil Walton

Quincy Ko will join InsightSoftware.com on Monday, June 28 as the company’s new sales executive for the northwest region (all the places in the West where it snows).

Quincy is based in Vancouver, Canada and comes with deep and varied experience in the Business Intelligence and ERP industries.

With experience in growing territories, short/long sales cycles, closing small/large deals, and his eye for the end-user experience, Quincy is the ideal addition to InsightSoftware. He understands our value proposition and the Insight opportunity.

Welcome to the team, Quincy!

Author: ryan.alford

Ryan is the Internet Marketing Manager for InsightSoftware.com.

InsightSoftware.com is Hiring a Southeast Presales Consultant in Atlanta

ryan.alford — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:31:34 +0000

Are you looking for employment? Do you live in the Atlanta area? Join the InsightSoftware.com team as its new Southeast Presales Consultant!

More details:

Business Analyst is the preferred background, someone who has experience across the technical and functional functions
Manufacturing/Supply Chain background (preferably with Oracle EBS or JD Edwards) although other vendors ERP’s would not preclude consideration. Financial background would be considered as well.
A Business Intelligence implementation under your belt would go a long way towards understanding our value proposition versus the competition
Agile and adaptable to changing priorities and multiple sales cycles
Coachable in presales, with a personality that supports interacting and presenting

Apply via LinkedIn.com: http://bit.ly/doJAe2.

Author: ryan.alford

Ryan is the Internet Marketing Manager for InsightSoftware.com.

JD Edwards Executive Luncheon in Greensboro, NC

ryan.alford — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 20:34:36 +0000

Bring your appetite and join InsightSoftware.com and brij for a sumptuous meal and great networking on June 23, 11:30-1:30. You will see why InsightSoftware.com is quickly becoming the reporting tool of choice within the JD Edwards community.

With Insight you truly revolutionize operational reporting throughout your organization. Insight supplies solutions for functional areas such as: Finance, Human Capital, Supply Chain, Manufacturing and Project and Asset Management. Insight goes beyond mere reporting to drive productivity and profitability gains throughout your organization.

Leave with knowledge of the solutions that can help you optimize your business processes, all over lunch. We will treat you to lunch at the UNDERCURRENT restaurant . Click here to RSVP.

User Group meetings on the horizon:

Rocky Mountain User Group on June 10: http://bit.ly/diOd8T

JD Edwards Southeast Regional User Group in Atlanta, GA on June 17: http://bit.ly/9ewZJR

Eastern Canada Regional User Group on June 21 in Mississauga: http://bit.ly/9zCbOF

Author: ryan.alford

Ryan is the Internet Marketing Manager for InsightSoftware.com.

Forecast-to-Make: A Structurally Sound Process?

ryan.alford — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 16:47:24 +0000

Do you experience materials shortages and capacity constraints? It’s vital to increase productivity and information accuracy by proactively ensuring that key managers and users can access accurate and timely information to make sound, in-the-moment decisions.

Running a world-class operation starts with the necessity for at least 99 percent accuracy of Item Master data. For many, this is easier said than done. However, with the correct tools the accuracy of Item Master records, Bills of Material, and Routings can be assured.

Once this initial foundation is secured, then focus turns to proactively optimizing scheduling to maximize available capacity and ensure availability of raw materials. Again, although JD Edwards stores meaningful information in these areas, many struggle to access real-time actionable information that enables optimized processing. Finally, having a full grasp of manufacturing cost variances and their drivers can make the difference in driving increasingly lower costs and fewer surprises.

With the correct tools you can unlock the rich data stored in JD Edwards to ensure the following: manufacturing tactics are aligned with the corporate strategy; forecasted demand matches market requirements; manufacturing processes are tuned to meet forecasted demand; and that ongoing reduction of cost and variances is possible.

To read more, click here.

Author: ryan.alford

Ryan is the Internet Marketing Manager for InsightSoftware.com.