Posted on Fri, Mar 08, 2013 @ 03:05 PM
By Sreenivas “Dinu” Davuluri, Chief Business Intelligence Architect
Interoperability is the key to successful business operations. Seamless sharing of functionality and information from different applications helps business leaders make the best decisions for an organization and enables business processes to flow between systems. Full interoperability is undetectable to the end user – it appears that they are working within one system to get real-time data from different areas of the business.
When implementing a new software application, it is important to consider how it will integrate with other existing applications. If your organization has already invested a significant amount of money in implementing business systems, you might be hesitant to add another management tool to the mix. All of the systems must play well together to create a complete picture of your operations.
6 out of 7 enterprise installations leverage Oracle and SAP to track organizational data – so we designed Provade VMS with interoperability in mind. Provade VMS is built using open architecture so it can easily integrate with your other business systems and allow you to view all of your data in one place. We have leveraged Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) data to build the backbone of our data warehouse. Provade VMS can serve up a pagelet that can integrate with any compliant dashboard.
Provade VMS’ robust reporting tools can pull in data from other business systems, allowing you to use the Business Intelligence (BI) tools to analyze the big picture. By taking a hybrid approach to BI, you can easily modify these standard reports to gain insight into the data elements that meet your specific needs. Even a simple spreadsheet or other data file can be imported into the data warehouse to create a comprehensive report.
Provade VMS can provide additional insight into your contingent workforce spending without disrupting the systems you already have in place. Click here to learn more about our business intelligence portfolio.
Posted on Tue, Mar 27, 2012 @ 10:08 AM
By Sreenivas "Dinu" Davuluri, Chief Business Intelligence Architect
Pareto’s principle of 80/20 applies well when it comes to reporting and Business Intelligence implementations. It would be cool, and extremely effective, if 80% of the relevant reports and dashboards that help customers get a head start on using reports to drive business were available out-of-the-box.
On the other hand, the BI applications should provide the ability to modify those reports and also provide a business with user-friendly tools to create the rest of the 20% of reports that are very specific to their business. A rich VMS application is one that provides very detailed Data Elements that customers can leverage to build the Key Performance Metrics (KPI’s) that drive business intelligence.
When reviewing the Business Intelligence and Reporting capabilities of a VMS, look for this hybrid approach. A hybrid approach can typically deliver several report packs out of the box. These report packs should be configurable and at the same time provide several very detailed incremental data elements in the application to help the business user build reports that are very specific to their business needs or modify the delivered reports according to their business requirements.
Learn more about Provade’s Business Intelligence and analytics tools on our website.
Posted on Fri, Mar 09, 2012 @ 01:41 PM
By Sreenivas "Dinu" Davuluri, Chief Business Intelligence Architect
In a typical data warehouse implementation, the multi-currency conversion is limited because the fact data needs to be determined and loaded up front. End users need to make conscious decisions as to what their reporting currencies are going to be at the start of the implementation. At that point, they are pretty much stuck with those decisions.
For example, an end user may choose to keep the local currency on the transaction and report that transaction in multiple currencies. The local currency could be in Canadian Dollars (which the transaction is stamped with) and they may choose US Dollar as the reporting currency. Once the warehouse is loaded with data, the transaction is converted using the exchange rates based on the “Transaction Date” and stored in the database into US Dollars.
If, for example, an executive in China would prefer to report these same transactions in Chinese Yen, they cannot as it is not available in the database.
If we shifted the currency conversion process to run time when the report is getting executed vs. up-front, that gives the end users the ability to see the transactions both in the local currency and any other currency as long as the conversion rate is available in the database.
This shift in control from pre-loading the warehouse with fixed currency conversions to run time creates more accurate reports. A flexibility that is extremely beneficial for Global companies.
Contact Provade to learn more about our out-of-the-box currency conversion flexibility.