1. Really Real Time® Inquiry Suite
NorCal OAUG
January 17th 2007
Streamline your financial processes with
Phil Walton
The GL Company
Really Real Time® Inquiry Suite

2. Accounting Intelligence A new paradigm
The GL Company®
Accounting Intelligence A new paradigm
Accounting Intelligence: A New Paradigm
In this presentation, we will introduce a new paradigm for ad-hoc inquiry, consolidation and reporting called “Accounting Intelligence” and how the Really Real Time Inquiry Suite from The GL Company can help organizations speed up their month end close.

3. Accounting Intelligence is New
BI, Excel & Access
Reports
Online Inquiries Directly from the JDE/eBS Database
Accounting Intelligence is New
Accounting Intelligence is designed to provide online access to financial information directly from your JD Edwards or Oracle eBusiness system. By doing so, it reduces the number of reports an organization has to produce at month end. It also stops the proliferation of spreadsheets, data cubes and data extractions that often have to be done from the JD Edwards/eBusiness system to produce management reports.
The Inquiry Suite software is the first product that uses Accounting Intelligence. By making ad-hoc inquiries, consolidations and reports run directly against the data in JD Edwards/eBusiness, many of these traditional approaches can either be eliminated or reduced to an absolute minimum.

4. Traditional Solutions
Paper Reporting
Dead data, no drill down, not real time, limited columns and not an end user tool
Business Intelligence
Data Cubes designed for summary information, but they are separate databases from your ERP systems
Excel Interface
Flexible, but lacks structure and control causing spreadsheet proliferation and SOX compliance issues
Traditional Solutions:
Let’s take a look at some of the traditional approaches to reporting and why the need for “Accounting Intelligence” has arisen.
The first is paper based reporting. Whilst this form of reporting gives the user what need on a sheet of paper, it’s fundamentally dead data, that’s not real time and quickly goes out of date. There is no “drill down” for the user, so if they see a number that does not make sense, other reports have to be written. Report writing tools are often not designed for end users and have to rely on the IT department to provide them with the reports they need.
These limitations and the frustrations with the existing reporting tools within ERP systems, gave rise to Business Intelligence (BI) tools. BI tools are great at handling summary information, but they often use an alternative database from which to report. This means that data has to be moved from one system to another, causing the it to become out of sync, particularly at the month end close when lots of journals are being posted. The ability to drill back down to the data in JD Edwards/eBusiness is also lost.
Finally, Excel. Excel is clearly a flexible tool, with an easy interface, which accountants are already familiar with. However, it lacks structure and control with many different versions of spreadsheets given to different users at different times. This lack of control also raises SOX compliance issues and we a seeing a trend in organizations moving away from Excel as a reporting interface.

5. Accounting Intelligence
Defined by the 5 “FAVOR” Factors F
lash Reporting Cycle
ccounting tool, not IT
irtual OLAP
nline Publishing & Inquiries
eally Real Time® A V O
Accounting Intelligence: The FAVOR Factors
So, how is Accounting Intelligence different?
Well, it’s defined and distinguished by the FAVOR factors:
The ‘F’ is for the Flash Reporting Cycle
‘A’ means it’s for Accounts, not IT
‘V’ means it uses the principle of Virtual OLAP
‘O’ means all the information is online and
‘R’ stands for the data access being truly real time.
Let’s look at each of these factors individually. R

6. Flash Reporting Cycle Accounting Intelligence
“The 5 days before and the 5 days after the month end close”
BU Managers
Flash Reports
Control Accounts
Commitments
Prepayments
Accruals
Ready!
Ready!
Ready!
Ready!
Using Really Real Time:
BU Managers are always connected to the financial data to speed up the month end close and provide greater financial visibility
Flash Reporting Cycle
The Flash Reporting Cycle is the period 5 days before and 5 days after the month end close. It’s a time when many journals are being posted and control accounts are out of balance. It’s at this point the need to get high quality information is paramount.
By connecting business users with the finance function using an online, real time tool, managers have greater visibility of their data before the month end rather than having to wait until after the cut off to see their financials. This allows for adjustments to be made and data to be checked before it’s too late. Each BU manager confirms that they are ready and post-month end reporting can be begin, sure in the knowledge that all the information is accurate. The fact that these end users also have access to this data after the month end, ensures they have 24x7x365 visibility of their business.
Accounting Function

7. Accounting Intelligence
Accounting Tool, Not IT
Accounting Intelligence
Inquiry Suite:
Power Users (Accountants) can build online Inquiries / reports in minutes
Configurator:
Super users (Again an Accountant) can change and bring in new data elements for the Power Users
Accounting Tool, Not IT
The purpose of Accounting Intelligence is to empower the end user with a tool which is easy to use and extremely fast without having to rely on the IT department for reporting. The GL Company achieves this in 3 ways:
First of all, the Inquiry Suite provides power users, the accountants, with great tool to build online inquiries and reports in minutes.
These reports can then be published real time to business unit managers using the Executive Console. These information users have access to all their reports using real time data, with full drill down and selection capability controlled by the power user.
Finally, The Configurator module allows accountants (this time in a “Super User” capacity) to change any aspect of the power user interface with access to thousands of data elements called “dimensions”.
Executive Console:
Accountants can publish these inquires to Business Unit managers. Inquiry only users
Managers and budget holders can see all their data real-time with full drill down / through

8. Virtual OLAP The GL Company is the first company to
Accounting Intelligence
Relational: Designed for Transactions
OLAP: Designed for Summary Balances
Virtual OLAP
Accounting Intelligence uses the concept of “Virtual OLAP” to achieve this.
ERP systems are designed to integrate business processes and fundamentally records information at a transactional level in a “Relational” database. These are excellent transaction tools, but poor at handling summary information – the type needed for making management decisions.
Then along came OLAP databases provided by the Business Intelligence vendors. These are great at handling summary data, but poor at working at a detailed level. That’s because the data is moved out of the ERP system and put into a different database.
Virtual OLAP provides the best of both worlds; the concepts of OLAP applied to relational databases to provide both summary and transactional information in a fast and flexible way. The GL Company is the first company to achieve this in a single real time application.
The GL Company is the first company to
combine both summary and transactional data into a single real time application

9. Accounting Intelligence
Online
Accounting Intelligence
Drill Thru: to integrate reports
Drill Down: to transactions
Summary Balance Sheet to GL Transactions
Summary Balance Sheet
to AR Aged Debt Report
Online
Accounting Intelligence is designed to provide information online, not in batch. Batch reports are slow to run and immediately out of date. Online is always accurate and accessible, allowing the user to work directly with the data to build reports. Reports should be immediately publishable to other users, who can drill down to transactions or drill thru from one report to another in a completely integrated manner.
Users work directly with the data to build inquiries and reports
Reports can be published instantly to other users

10. Really Real Time® Accounting Intelligence Accounting Intelligence
Traditional Solutions
Indirect. The data is often out of sync.
Lots of processes to extract, transform, load, aggregate, report, validate, adjust
The data is often more than 24 hours out of date
Lots of points of integrity failure
Breaks security link with the ERP system
Direct. As soon as a journal is entered the information changes
Eliminates the need for journals / adjustments outside of the GL
Speeds up and ensures that the figures are correct at month / year end
Inquiries run very fast
Really Real Time
The key strength of Accounting Intelligence is that, by nature, it’s truly real time. Journals are seen in Inquiry Suite immediately after they are entered in JD Edwards/eBusiness. Many of our customers use the product along side JD Edwards/eBusiness because of this. Since the data is not moved, it eliminates the need for journals and adjustments to be made outside of the GL. This is a constant problem of the traditional solutions as the data is often out of date.
Working directly against the ERP system means the data is always secure, integral and auditable. This not only speeds up the month end close, but it ensures that the figures are always correct. This, coupled with the Inquiry Suite’s unrivalled speed of performance, means that both the business and the accounting function have and effective tool for providing financial information at the time it’s needed.

11. Demo…