Analytics and BI for Sage 500 (MAS 500)

Sa. Good morning everyone. This is Johnny Giuardi, Data Cell Founder and CEO. Thank you for joining us. This Thursday we're going to have a pretty informative half an hour session before we get started. Just to let you know the lines are muted and if you have questions throughout the presentation or at the end you can use the GoToMeeting chatting box to make a question and then we're going to be addressing at the end of it. So thanks for joining us for the analytics NBI for Sage 500 before I jump into the presentation, I just want to give a quick overview of what Data Self's vision is and why. I founded the company back in 2005. So I'm an electric engineer in my background and in my early career I spent several years doing heavy duty programming. So I'm very good at programming. Maybe it's been so long. And then eventually I fell in love with the business area. I had my mba, became a business person and then I joined the business intelligence industry back in the year 2000. In 2005 I decided to found dataself and the main point was as a programmer. For me, building reports, dashboards licensed as queries was easy. I was a programmer, I was familiar with complicated IT tools, databases, you name it. But my peers, my business people peers, they were struggling. They would have to ask me or someone else, a consultant, IT to get the reports done. Not efficient, not productive. It would take a long time, even myself, it would take a lot of time to come up with a report or slice, that's a report. So my vision was hey, there are great technologies out there to build and facilitate the job. However, usually they are Fortune 2000 solutions, they're very expensive and usually they're fairly complicated to Deploy for Fortune 2000 companies. So my vision was, hey, I think I can improve this industry. I can look in the upper market best of the bridge technologies and find ones that I can simplify, bring to the mid market to mid size companies and make it better. So the vision was very simple. Inside the business. I want to find top notch technologies for the Fortune 2000 companies. I want to make it simpler, I want to make it better for mid sized companies. So I started this journey back in 2005 and then we came a long way. What I'm going to be covering today is the latest and greatest and I hope you find this session informative. So let's go for it. So I'm going to spend a few minutes talking about why analytics. I'm going to do a product presentation and Then jump into a Q and A session. So most people, when they come to us, they're looking for better analytics out of Sage 500 in one of these three areas. Sales, supply chain or financials. Some people come from other areas. Payroll, project, accounting, you name it. But these are the most popular. So let's take a look at what usually people are looking for out of those areas. On the sales side, one of the most critical is just having a better understanding of your sales and profitability across the board. You want to see who you're selling to, how profitable they are, maybe what products you're selling, how well the salespeople are doing. Just being able to have a good understanding of growth decline year over year is critical. And our technology provides awesome ways to do that on the fly, anytime, anywhere. Some companies, they have more elaborate ordering invoice system. It may take a long time to invoice things and sometimes there are delays. People understand why they want to fix those issues. So analytics can also help people analyze those trends and quickly tackle potential issues in a timely fashion. Sales commission. You know, many companies are spending hours and sometimes days compiling commissions at the end of the month or whatever the period that you're looking at. Very labor intensive, error prone process. Our technology usually can automate 100% of the process. It becomes something anytime, anywhere. You can find how sales commission are adding up throughout the month. Forecasting. You want to see how you can forecast your sales. Sometimes that information is not only on Sage 500. Maybe looking past history to forecast your future demand. Or maybe you're combining the data with Excel sheets coming from salespeople or maybe from your clients. You name it. Forecasting big topic. And this tool can add significant value if you get into big contracts, big and long contracts, let's say with big retail boxes like Walmart and Target. You better have the right price strategy to be a win win situation for you and for your client. So understanding the components that go into the pricing strategy can be critical. And analytics can help you with that as well. And finally, when you're analyzing all of these sales things, sometimes some of them require information coming from something else. Maybe a point of sale system. Again, Excel files information coming from your client, so this solution can easily consolidate all that information to help with your sales analysis. Another area, supply chain. One of the most popular is plain inventory management. Where are your products? How long they have been sitting on inventory? Where? What is the turnover? Is it changing over a year, over time? Big questions that analytics can help you address. You may have sophisticated inbound and outbound routing logistics products may be coming from overseas. It may take weeks or months. Maybe your shipping to your clients can also be There are some inefficiencies and analytics can help you analyze that. You may be collaborating with your suppliers, with your customers and your shipping companies. So supply chain collaboration exchange information and get that into your analysis can be very helpful. If your purchasing processes are elaborate, we can also pinpoint places that can be improved. Forecasting the same way with sales if you're trying to forecast if you're going to be able to ship your products or deliver your services on time, this tool can help you analyze that. And again, data Integration if you have data coming from other data sources, Excel SQL access databases, we can easily consolidate to have a single version of the Truth. On the financial side, Sage 500 has a very comprehensive financial package for reporting purposes. But if you're spending too much time putting it together on an ongoing basis, talk with us. We can usually automate that process significantly, sometimes 100% of the process. If you have multi company framework and you have a hard time consolidating them, talk to us. We can probably help a lot on that front as well. And finally, if simply your decision makers are trying to be able to slice and dice your financials anytime, anywhere, we provide this functionality that can give you access through mobile devices, web interface, anytime anywhere. So as I mentioned, we also cover project accounting, payables, purchasing receivables and so forth. But these areas are the most popular ones. So let's talk a little bit about business intelligence and analytics. Nothing better than talking about Garner, which is one of the most reputable companies making technology assessment in the Fortune 2000 world. So they look at the big boys. This is the latest magic quadrant for BI and analytics. It just came out last month. They do this once a year. Make a long story short, the more a vendor is to the right on this bottom axis, the more it is important for Fortune 2000 companies. So not so critical for mid sized companies. But the higher on the Y axis the better. That means the vendor is doing better whatever their vision is. Now here these are the top two vendors highlighted. Tableau is right now considered the king of the hill when it comes to analytics dashboarding, ease of use for business people. They're doing an awesome job. Last year they went ipo. Very successful ipo. Microsoft is considered the leader in the BI infrastructure framework for data warehousing databases. They have an outstanding platform. So what about them? What about data self? Well it goes back to my vision when I started the business, I said that I want to go to the upper market, find outstanding technology, top notch technology that will work well for the mid market. I want to make it simpler, I want to make it better. What Data self does is we take the top two, the leaders in their own specialties. Tableau being visualization, we take tableau. Microsoft BI with the SQL Server framework is the leader. So we take the top two leaders, we combine with our own technology to simplify them and remove programming from the equation. And we amplified that framework by adding more than 2,000 reports, dashboards and KPIs out of the box. So that's data self analytics, top two technology in the market, simplified and amplified. Let me just reinforce this idea because it's pretty important. Top notch technology, the ETL eliminates the programming from this top notch vendors so it's simpler. And then we add the core team of the data itself has been working with this BI and mid market ERP systems like Sage 500 for over 14 years. So there's a very comprehensive out of the box solution kind of plug and play. So at the end of the day what we sell is easy of use. This is super easy for business people anytime, anywhere to access their devices through desktop and web and mobile devices. They can be on a bar, in a call, in a meeting. So easy for business people. Also easy for IT to maintain the framework on the back end. It's fast to deploy, usually it takes hours or days to deploy. And if you try to build the same technology, the same framework from scratch, it's going to take you months or years to come up with something probably a fraction of what we have out of the box. So speed, fast deploy is another value we provide. It's low cost, it's going to cost you a fraction of the same solution if you build it from scratch or buy from competitors. And finally as I mentioned, expertise. We've been building top notch BI solutions for mid sized companies using Sage 500 for about 14 years. We know Sage 500, we know BI, we know how to put them together, we know how companies like yours are are needed for reporting data analysis. So we got also expertise. That's our core value. And that circles back to the vision of the company simplifying and amplifying top notch technology already. And because we use top notch components, best of breed technology, super fast, we compare this up analytics like driving Ferrari. It's fast, it's sophisticated, it's flashy. Now by far it does not cost a Ferrari. It's more like a Toyota Sometimes even less than that. But you know, it's the Ferrari of the analytics in the mid market. So let's take this baby first pin, let's buckle up, put our helmets because it's going to be a fast ride. So in my presentation I'm going to cover three main topics. I'm going to show you secured access to data, self analytics. I'm going to show some sample KPIs out of the out of the box solution and then I'm going to show some ad hoc examples. Buckle up and let's go for spin. All righty. So most of the time people will access data, self analytics reports and dashboards through a web portal like this one. They can use actually a desktop, web or mobile devices such as an iPad or smartphone. Now when you log into this portal which is highly secured, you only can view or access your own dashboards. So if you are a salesperson, you see the sales team dashboard. If you are a person from the finance team, you see the finance team dashboard. Okay, very cool. Kind of user driven, secured. Now when they log into this portal or this portal, I can access, let's say one of these dashboards. I'm going to open top customers by sales dashboard. When I do that, then a third level of security may kick in, which is if I'm the rep for California, I would only see my top customers in California while the rep for Florida opens the same dashboard and views Florida, you know, top customers in Florida while the big boss opens the same dashboard and views the top customers across all territories. So security can also be granular. A single dashboard, it can serve many different people and each person will see only their own information or related information. So that's how security works. Now let me show some of these out of the box dashboards out of the 2000 and see how informative they are. You may be a person who loves charts or maybe not. So I'm going to show a little bit of both. And when we build these dashboards, we try to make them informative, simple and insightful. And this is one example. This is an example of a top performer dashboard. In this case, I'm looking at sales and I'm looking at my top customers. This year to date we have lots of top performer reports and dashboards, you know, for sales, for purchasing, payables, receivables, gl, you name it. Let's take a look at this one in more detail. So this one has bars, one bar for each customer. Bigger bars mean bigger sales. On this axis here, each bar has A color theme that relates to how profitable the customer is. So right now I can easily tell, you know, red is not very profitable, that one of my top customers is fairly unprofitable. Is that okay? Maybe not. Maybe I need to work closely with this customer to improve profitability. So very insightful. We also have these black dots that show profitability on this x axis. So it doesn't take me long to look at this dashboard and have an insight of my top customers and how profitable they are. That can be critical for your business. So very insightful. We have other top performer dashboards that can be even more intriguing. For some businesses, usually analyzing the tip of the growth curve of your key performance indicators is critical. And we have lots of those top performers. This is an example. Look from sales, from customers. So looking at the top growth and decline, you know, top customers by sales growth and decline since, let's say last year to date or last quarter to date. For instance, these are the customers growing the most in sales since last year. Most likely happy customers, salespeople working closely with them. So maybe no problem. But how about the top customer by sales decline? If you have recurring customers, some of them may not be so happy. Do you know why? Are you trying to fix it? Well, knowing who they are is the first step towards that. And you know, again, looking at the top of the tip of the growth curve of your major KPIs is critical. Maybe you're looking at your quantity on hand, maybe your cost on hand, maybe your expenses. We have lots of reports looking at this kind of perspective. Let's look at another example that is also usually pretty intriguing is what we call also exceptional reporting. Exceptional reporting helps you look at trends that are no longer happening. And that also can be critical. Looking at your major KPIs again, this is from a sales standpoint. In my sample database, I have recurring customers and this one is showing me which of my recurring customers are no longer buying. In this case, it shows sales the last 60 days, but not in the last 30 days. Maybe you want to look in the last half year sales, but not in the last 90 days. You name it. It's very easy to change the buckets. The point is, exceptional reporting shows you things that are no longer happening. Maybe why you're no longer selling some products. Or show me products that have been sitting on the inventory for more than 60 days. Those metrics are usually critical and you should be paying attention to them. And again, we have lots of reports looking at exception reporting. Let's look at the final Example, and then let's make some ad hoc exercise here. So this dashboard here shows sales by geography. I have sales by state, bigger bubbles, bigger sales. Each bubble is sliced by the aggregation of the invoice size. So larger deals in blue, medium and small. I can change this query using this slicer and see if things are growing or declining over years. So very easy for a business person to make this kind of change. Now, if I'm the VP of sales for the VP of Sales I'm meeting with the West Coast, I can easily choose with my fingers on my iPad those three states. And when I do that, the whole dashboard changes. So now this, I have a list of salespeople with the gross profit selling to my west coast states. And these are the products being shipped. Maybe if I only want to see sales for one of them, I can click let's say on sam. And right now I change my dashboard again to show just sales of SAM and what products have been shipped. Very easy. Business people can do this anytime, anywhere with web, mobile and mobile devices. But what if I'm a power user, a more sophisticated user, and I can actually want to slice and dice this further? Well, then I have the edit button only available for power users. But as a VP of sales, I am a power user and actually we have many VP of Sales, CEOs, CFOs that do this, which is extensive ad hoc analysis. Before I show how the edit mode works, let me tell the story. The engine behind this tool was designed by Stanford University professors who studied how business people go through analyzing business data and having sites out of it. It's a journey. It's a process. They look at the data and they need to interact with it. That's why when they ask someone else to do the report, like a consultant on it, and that's why it takes so many interactions. They ask for a report, the it goes on by hours, sometimes or days. Comes back, the business partner, oh cool, but can you change this? Can you summarize that way? Then here it goes again. Wait a little bit of time, the it comes back, oh cool. But what if you had a chart, you summarize differently, you put another filter. It's a journey. It takes interactions until the business person gets to the final destination. It is what it is. So these Stanford University professors studied the process and came up with an engine that helps decision makers walk through the journey with no assistance. And they can do it by themselves. In our experience, more than 70% of the customer reporting needs of business people, they can do it. Themselves, anytime, anywhere. No, it required more than 70%. Alrighty. Having said that, let's see how it goes. In the edit mode. I have all of the of the queries in my initial dashboard. Assume I'm a business person, that I want to see numbers by the penny. So instead of seeing a chart, I'm going to click show me and I'm going to select just a grid approach very quickly and easily. I can change that. Okay, cool. So now I see sales by the penny. Well actually I want to slice this and see sales by salesperson, by product line. Well, I can go to the sales to the data panel and find my product and find product line. There it is. I just drag and drop into my report, let's say to my rows and there it is by salesperson, by product line. Maybe when I break down by customer, by whatever, I just come to the list, find the reporting parameter, pick it, drag and drop. Maybe before my salesperson between or at the end you just drag and drop. Very easy, very intuitive. And there you go by salesperson, by customer, by product line. Maybe you want to see by year, by quarter, by month, fiscal period, week, rolling months. Usually it's just a matter of dragging and dropping. And then you see the information right there. Everything is drag and drop. Fairly intuitive. Maybe you know you are on a desktop and you want to download information to Excel. Easy. You can right click choose View data and you can see the underlying data, all the records, all the details. If you look at sales, invoice, number, invoice, date, ship to name, you name it, everything goes to Excel and now you can do more further manipulation. That's it. I hope you have enjoyed the Ferrari spin. Let's go back here to the PowerPoint and do the Q and A session. So as I mentioned, Please use the GoToMeeting box to ask questions and let's see if we have any questions so far. So yes, we have questions here. The first question is from Tom. The question is how long does it take to deploy the solution? Tom, thanks for the question. As I mentioned before, it usually takes hours or days to deploy the solution. But in real life, until we have access to your server, we install, we ask you for, for the testing we go through training usually takes weeks until you're ready to use it. So it's hours or days worth of effort spread out in a couple, maybe a few weeks. Tom, thank you for your question. Let's see more questions here. So one question is can your program integrate data from CRM systems? Question from Kathy. Kathy, thank you for your question. So actually yes, let me switch here to my system architecture so we can import data from any data source. CRM, Excel access and other databases actually out of the box. We already have mapped Sage CRM sales logics and we're also building connectors to other mid market CRM systems. We bring the Data from the Sage 500 and other data sources into a separate ultralight data warehouse framework. Easy and fast to deploy maintain. We plug our on premises or in the cloud. We have both approaches analytics component and then at the end of the day we when your business people are analyzing your sage 500 and let's say CRM information they can go to a single place and all information is there for their analysis. Pretty fast and pretty easy. Thank you for the question. Let's see if we have more questions. We have one more question here. We're going to cover what sage 500 ERP versions do we cover? Peter, thanks for the question. So actually if you go to our website, let me show you that so you know how to retrieve this information later on if you need to, you can go to the analytics by product choose Sage 500 and then here it says what versions we cover. So we go back many years ago actually on this page here later probably tomorrow we're going to have on this link a recording to this webinar so you can watch it or forward to other people. We also have here test drive requests. You can see a presentation, sign up for our news. There's brochures and many different materials. So I encourage you to visit our website. We also have blogs, we have knowledge base videos, bunch of stuff. So hopefully you'll find the website informative. Already we have more questions but unfortunately we're running out of time. So we respect your busy lives. Here's my contact information, my email, my cell phone, my Twitter account. I encourage you to follow us in our Twitter and LinkedIn if you have more questions. If you want to discuss more topics, feel free to do it anytime. I hope you have a great Thursday. Thank you very much for your time in business and I hope you reconnect soon again. Thank you. Have a happy.