Martin Watson 23 rd October 2002 User Group

Key reporting issues Analyst Solution - “Analyst for Sage” - “Budgeting for Sage” - “Consolidation for Sage” Demonstration Home Agenda

A Selection of Users >>back

Reporting - Have we lost the plot? “the industry has applied querying tools to mainframes, report generators to departmental processing in the finance department, and functionally rich spreadsheets… As a result, it is no wonder that reporting in many organisations is fractured, slow and unreliable. Somewhere in this transition from primitive end user reporting through to sophisticated ‘slicing and dicing’ we have lost the plot! For example, we can produce any number of complicated colour graphics from our spreadsheet with the click of a couple of buttons but we cannot produce that vital profit and loss account for a week without an army of spreadsheet jockeys.” Gary Simon Deloitte & Touche Financial Systems News

Is Analyst applicable? Need to produce reports across multiple cost centers or business segments? Need to produce separate reports for holding company? Reports currently run in Excel or another product where data is either re-keyed or downloaded? On-going maintenance burden? Reports take too long to produce? Too difficult to produce? Distributed reports are paper based? There is a demand for on- line access with drill-down? Production of reports relies upon dedicated effort or expertise? Regular demand for changes to existing reports or requests for new ones?

What the market wants Prompt Automated Reporting Integrated Reporting - Actual, Budget etc Precise Variance Analysis Flexible Formatting Automated Maintenance Transaction Detail Enterprise-wide distribution, security etc Reporting from multiple systems and companies Intuitive reporting Corporate information - financial & non-financial “…. One Solution” Management Reporting – The Issues

What the market gets Manual cycle, re-keying, re-formatting etc Late reporting Non-integrated reporting - actual, budget etc Dual maintenance Balance only reporting Poorly formatted standard report sets Reliance on IT/key individuals – proprietary systems Difficulty handling changes: “… last month’s cost centre groupings have changed and so must all our reports” A spreadsheet Management Reporting – The Issues

Microsoft Excel is the ‘best’ and most widely used reporting and budgeting solution… “98% of all companies use MS Excel for reporting and budgeting” Deloitte & Touche

Superb familiar reporting interface Ownership and control Integrating environment Portable environment Graphics and powerful formatting Spreadsheet Culture Positives:

Manual re-keying Re-formatting Linked spreadsheets, macros & maintenance Manipulating large directories Excel used as a database Performance and instability Reliance on key individuals Meeting expectations Spreadsheet Culture Negatives:

The Analyst Solutions uniquely address the key reporting, budgeting and consolidation requirements of most companies. Analyst transforms the process into a “true production environment that makes meaningful information available to the whole enterprise”. Analyst Solution – Day Zero Reporting

Analyst Components Viewer Manager Author UDA

ReportingDatabase Author Viewer Sage GL OtherSystems UDA Analyst Reporting Overview Roll ups

Delivery Mechanisms…

Datamart Generator AnalystDatabase Datamart can be MS SQL Server or Access Data appended to existing datamart Excel Worksheet Workbook WWW

Workbook Generator Dept 4 Worksheet Workbook Dept 3 Worksheet Workbook Dept 2 Worksheet Workbook Dept 1 Worksheet Workbook Workbook Generator: Control Sheet Workbook Template AnalystDatabase

Analyst for Sage “ We were looking for a simple way to extract transaction data from our core financial system into Excel that all users could easily access for reporting purposes. Analyst for Sage does this. Our reporting database is fully refreshed with data from the general ledger automatically on a daily basis and we have five finance users producing and running reports…. The initial implementation focused on producing a database of actuals and budgets from the general ledger and took three days. An additional two days enabled us to increase the database to include actual data from the project ledger and fixed assets ledger plus forecast data on the general ledger…. One day of training was sufficient to produce simple reports and one super user went on to develop more complex reports without further training. ” Karen Dyson, Head of Finance, Hobsons plc, “Sage Reseller News”

Analyst for Sage Demonstration Viewer Author Manager – roll ups Workbook Generator Budgeting for Sage

19 Iterate Budgeting/Forecasting Process BuildSystem InitiateBudget DistributeBudget Enter/model Budget Budget SubmitReturns Report&Analyse ReviseSystem

Analyst Budgeting Solution Distributed Budget Workbooks GL AnalystDatabase Write Back Author builds Budget Template WorkbookGenerator Datamart Generator Data marts