Analytics and BI for Sage ERP X3_140501

Good morning everyone. Happy Thursday. This is John A. Giorardi with CEO and founder of Data Self. Thanks for joining us. Today we're going to have a hopefully formative and exciting about 25 minute session about analytics and BI for Sage X3. Before I jump into the session, a quick overview of why I founded this company back in 2005. So I'm an electrical engineer as my background and in my early career I was a programmer for many years. Eventually I fell in love with the business area. I became a business person and for me reporting and analysis was never really an issue. You know, I was comfortable with complicated reporting tools and databases, but most of my business peers, they were not. They would ask for it, they would ask for me for help when they try to build and change reports. So I decided to join the business intelligence industry about 14 years ago to help because of my technical and business background. And in 2005 I decided to found Data Self. And the main vision was and still is, there are great technology out there to help decision makers with easy reporting, but most of them come from the upper market, the Fortune 2000 market. They're usually too expensive, too complicated for mid sized companies. So the vision is that I want to find in the upper market technology that would fit mid sized companies from a budget standpoint as well as functionality. I want to make them simpler, I want to make them better. So simplify and amplify best of B technology. And what you're going to see today is the latest and greatest for x3. So let's go for it. So first of all, all lines are muted and if you have questions Please use the GoToMeeting chat in box and we'll be addressing them at the end of the presentation. So we're going to be covering pretty much three topics today, a quick overview about analytics. We'll spend some time viewing the product and then covering Q and A. So first of all, we are about to launch our solution for X3. We're going to cover the sales module initially in this quarter. Then we're going to be releasing the supply chain modules in the next quarter and financials in the last quarter of 2014. Right now we're looking for early adopters, so if you're interested please let us know and we'll talk in more details. For the sales module, the most popular thing that we cover is just having a great understanding of your sales and profitability initiatives, to whom you're selling, what you're selling, is it growing or declining, is it profitable, things of that nature, we Provide a lot of functionality in that regard. If you have elaborate sales commission that may take a while to process at the end of the period, usually analytics can automate most of the time 100% of the process. So anytime, anywhere, you can access information about commissions, goals and so forth. If you're looking for sales forecasting, maybe look at your past sales information coming from salespeople or your own clients. Analytics can help you have a better grasp of forecasting. If you get into large contracts with maybe big boxes like Walmart and Target. And defining the right pricing strategy can be critical. So analytics can also help you with that and data integration. Sometimes when you're doing sales analysis, you need to bring data from other places besides x3. Maybe you have information in Excel spreadsheets. Maybe salespeople want to enter some information forecasting or information could be from their own customers. So the ability to combine data from other sources into x3 and do that use the data for sales analysis can be a big need. And analytics may provide great value in that regard. Let me talk a little bit about the Gartner Magic Quadrant. Gartner is one of the most reputable companies doing assessment of technology in the Fortune 2000 market. And this is the latest assessment from the BI and Analytics platform. Reporting other sense and making a long story short, these are vendors in the upper market and the more to the right, the better you are for Fortune 2000. So for mid sized companies, usually it's not so critical. But the higher you are on the Y axis, the better the product and the offerings are. So being hired is good for everyone. And right here we have highlighted two companies, Tableau and Microsoft. Tableau right now is considered the king of the hill when it comes to reporting, dashboarding and analytics. And Microsoft is considered the best from a BI infrastructure standpoint. What about them? What about us? What about you? Well, it goes back to my vision. When I opened the company a few years ago. We found that combining Tableau and Microsoft would be a great platform for mid sized companies. So what we get from Data self Analytics, which is our product, is Tableau and Microsoft the top two leaders in their own categories. We add our own technology that eliminates programming from that kind of framework, which is the ETL. And we add more than 2000 reports and KPIs that augment the solution. So we simplify these top leaders and we amplify them. Overall, our solution is very easy to use for business people anytime, anywhere. They can access dashboards on their mobile devices, web or desktop devices. It's Very easy for it because we're using and we're simplifying this top notch technology. It usually takes hours or days to deploy, so it's very fast. The core team of Data Self has been working with high end business intelligence tools and mid size ERP packages such as SX3 for over 14 years. So you also get expertise from us knowing BI, knowing ERP package for mid sized companies and knowing how mid sized companies go about reporting and analysis. So we got all of this expertise and finally our solution has a very low cost. If you try to implement the solution by yourself, you're going to be investing into the six figures. With Data Self you maybe get started with you know, with a four figure investment, typically five low five, but you know it's really inexpensive comparing to the alternative. So because we use the best of breed technology, we say our solution is like a Ferrari among mid market analytics solutions. And right now we're going to jump into the product presentation and I'm going to break it into three different segments. I'm going to talk about secure Access, some simple KPIs out of the 2000 we have available and then some ad hoc examples. So let's buckle up, put our helmets on and let's take a spin of our Ferrari. So now I'm going to be jumping into the most popular way that users have access to Data Self analytics. And it's usually through a web portal. They can use again a desktop, a web or a mobile device to access it. When they log in they see their own dashboards. So if I'm, let's say the CEO, I would have maybe just the CEO level dashboards. If I'm the salesperson I would see the sales team dashboards. Now when they open one of these dashboards like the CEO's dashboard, some CEOs they are not very computer savvy. So they need something simple, something effective that can tell them where they should focus their attention. So sea level dashboards like this one can deliver that. Maybe the CEO wakes up in the morning, checks the cell phone, see green, yellow and red colors and see which ones he has to focus on. Or if it's all green he can go and play golf. So anyway, dashboards can be very simple like that and people can easily click on them to get more details, to see more information if that's required. Let me show the example. Like if I'm a salesperson I go through my sales dashboards and I click let's say top customer by sales dashboard. Now the system can be secured In a way that when I open this dashboard, I would only be able to see my own territory customers. So these would be the top customers in my territory, let's say in California, while let's say the rep for Florida or opens the same report and only views top customers in Florida, while the VP of sales opens the same dashboard and views top customers across all territories. Now these dashboards were designed to be insightful. The idea is to give you insights into critical trends so you can go about your business. So don't spend too much time figuring out what's going on. The point is get the insight quickly, make decisions and go about improving your business. So this is a very simple dashboard, but can be very insightful. So here I have my top customers and I have bars, bigger bars for bigger sales. The color of each bar is represented by the gross profit color theme here. So I can easily tell some of my top customers are fairly unprofitable or low profitability that can be can be an issue. I also have these black dots which are also showing profitability using this other axis. So once you learn how to read this dashboard, next time is going to be very quick for you to open this dashboard. And let's say if you want to try to improve profitability by your top customers, you're going to be able to quickly see which ones are not so profitable and make decisions and go about your, you know, your business. And we have lots of reports showing top performers like this. The next report is usually even more intriguing for certain businesses. It's a way to look at the tip of the growth curve of your major key performance indicators. This is an example. I'm looking at the tip of the growth curve from a sales standpoint on a year to date basis. So these customers are growing the most in sales since last year to date. This is the bigger up means bigger sales increase. And these customers are declining the most in sales since last year to date. So maybe these ones are not so problematic because they're probably happy salespeople are working with them. It's not a big issue, but maybe some of these customers will recurring customers. We're having issues and we just don't know. And maybe when we get to know the issues, it's too late, they're gone for good. So looking at the tip of the growth curve of major key performance indicators is critical. And we have lots of those reports just like this one. Again, to help you focus on trends that are very critical. Let me show some other trends here that can also be critical on the Sales side, this is called exception reporting. Exceptional reporting is looking at transactions that are no longer happening and that sometimes can be very critical. This is an example. If you have recurring customers, why some of them are no longer buying. Maybe it's okay, maybe seasonal, maybe it's not okay. But knowing who they are, knowing who is no longer buying can help you focus again your resources or on initiatives that matter the most. This example shows customers buying the last 60 days, but not in the last 30 days. In changing these time buckets, it's fairly straightforward. So the point again is help you focus on important initiatives. Let me show an example now that is my last example. And then I'm going to go into an ad hoc analysis to show how easy it is to change things on the fly. This dashboard here shows me sales by geography. So I have bubbles, bigger bubbles, bigger sales. Each bubble is sliced by different colors to represent the aggregation of sales by the deal size. And I can easily use things like this slider here to change time, let's say. So right now I'm looking sales by year. Want to see if the bubbles are growing over the years and if the slices are changing in size and see if that makes sense for my business. So very easy to change. I also have on this dashboard sales by rep, bigger bars, bigger sales and the color of the bar also represented by profitability. And then here I have my top five products by quantity shipped in this dashboard. Now building a dashboard like this from scratch, it takes minutes, literally. It's easy, it's fast, and you do not need to be a highly trained person. We have several business people like salespeople, VP of sales, company owners that actually build dashboards from scratch like this one without calling for it. It's really impressive. And if you want to learn how that can be done, we can schedule a one on one session to show that. The details I'll show a little bit later. But just to give you the idea that it's really straightforward. Now if I'm a user that has this dashboard, let's say I'm the VP of sales and I'm meeting the west coast team and I want to see only the west coast information. And let's say I'm using my iPad, I could choose only those three states. And then when I do that, the dashboard changes to only show salespeople selling those three states and what products have been shipped those three states. Very easy, very straightforward. If I click one of the salespeople now, I further filter the dashboard. So this is how much Sam is selling Those three states, and these are the products being shipped to those three states by Sam. So very easily. Most business users will be able to make changes like this with very little training, using again desktop, web and mobile devices. Now, if I'm a power user and I want to extensively change this dashboard and even build new ones from scratch, then I would have this edit button enabled. If I'm not a power user, I cannot, but if I'm a power user, I could click this edit button and then I go into the edit mode. Now, this tool here was the engine behind. This tool was designed by Stanford University professors who studied how business people look at business data and have insights from it. It's a journey, it's a process. They usually have an idea of what they want to look at, but until they see some data, they just don't know the final destination. And that's why when you're using, let's say when a business person has to talk with a consultant an IT person and ask for a report, that's why usually it takes so many interactions, so many trips, so many spins of the report. It just takes. It's just a journey, it's a process. Now, this tool here was designed to help decision makers walk through this journey by themselves without calling for a consultant an IT to help them. So let's talk about this. Let's talk about it. So when I go to the edit mode, I have tabs for different segments of my initial dashboard. And suppose I go back to this panel here and I want to see the sales and gross profit by the penny. I want to see numbers, not charts. Well, I can click the show me button and the show me button shows me what kind of charts and representations make sense for this data set. In this case, I just want to see numbers. I'm going to click the grid option and right there I see sales by the penny by salesperson, gross profit. Very easy, very simple. Now, what if I want to break this down and change this report dramatically? What if I want to break this down by product line, for instance? Well, I go to the data panel and I just go to the list of options and I find product. And I have here, let's say product line, and I just drag and drop into my rows, for instance. So right there I have now sales by salesperson by product line. Sales and gross profit right there, very easy, just drag and drop. What if I want to break this down by year, by quarter, by month, by period, you name it, it's the same idea. You find the reporting parameter like in this case, a document date I can drag into my rows, for instance, and right there I have year sales and gross profit. Maybe I want to actually put the measures after my years. I just switched the position right there. I have by year sales and gross profit very quickly, very easily. Maybe I want to break down by customer, you name it. Everything is kind of drag and drop. So if I want to add customer, I just come here, I can put before my salesperson. After, I just drag and drop what I want. So I'm putting between the salesperson product line and there you go, sales by customer by product line in those years. The point is, this tool was designed for business people. On average, more than 70% of the reporting needs of users. They can do the job by themselves. They don't have to call it, they don't have to call consultants. That's the beauty of this. They can be anytime, anywhere, can be in a meeting, in a coffee shop, even on a bar. They can pop up their mobile device, for instance, and slice and dice reports as needed. It's really impressive. So that was my Ferrari spin. I hope you have enjoyed the ride. Now we're going to go back to my PowerPoint to wrap it up. By the way, we have a Ferrari promotion. So because you have attended this webinar, you're automatically you got a drawing ticket for racing a Ferrari hopefully in Vegas in July. So if you want to have bigger chances of racing Ferrari on us, you just have to get more tickets, drawing tickets. And there are many ways how you can do that. Just follow us on Twitter or follow us on LinkedIn and for each one of those actions you get an extra ticket. If you mention about Data self on LinkedIn or Twitter, you also going to get tickets. The more mentions, the more tickets you get. If you feel that dataself is a good solution for a business and evaluate it, you're going to get tickets for that as well. And finally, if you buy or subscribe for Dataself, you're going to get lots of tickets. So feel free to increase your chances. We'd love to get you on a racetrack in Vegas to drive a Ferrari. So having said that, I'm going to open for questions and answers. So if you have questions, please use the GoToMeeting chat box. Let's see if we have questions. So we have a question here from Ken asking about Data cell for X3. What is the price of the solution? Ken, thank you for the question. So our solution, the pricing changes significantly. You can literally start the solution subscribing on a monthly basis is going to cost you hundreds of dollars per month plus services. So usually with a few thousand dollars you can get the feet wet. If you have lots of users, lots of needs, it may easily go into the five figures. So overall you can get your feet wet. You can get the solution for a few users for very low cost. But we probably should talk in a one on one to address your specific needs so I can give you that more information, more detail. Ken, thanks for your question. Next question here is how do you compare your solution with X3 analytics solution? Mary, I think you're talking about the Nectary which is the kind of the OEM that sage has for x3. So let me actually go back here and let me go to our website. We go to our website and we go. There is a blog here about the garden Magic quadrant. So Nexter from Tangerine. It's a very good product we call like a Bimmer, a Mercedes, a Porsche. It's a great solution, great pricing. It's like an entry level analytics solution for many, many clients. We are more like a Ferrari in a way still inexpensive. We don't cost a Ferrari at all. As I mentioned, four to five figures you can get at data self analytics. However, the components we use in our solution are best of the breed from the Fortune 2000 world. I mean there's nothing better out there pretty much for analytics. In ultralight data warehousing Nectary is considered like a mid market player. They're not even assessed by Gartner. So you know if we try to compare them I think they're in different levels. So we believe that our solution is more targeted towards the higher end, the more sophisticated the companies who are looking for easier, faster solutions. So that's how we position ourselves. Well we are wrapping up our solution for our presentation for now for X3 so there are a few more questions but we'll address them on a one on one basis. I would like to thank you for participating in our X3 webinar. Here's my contact information. If you want to contact me by cell phone, email or Twitter, please feel free to just be more educated about analytics and data warehousing or if you want to see if our solution is a good fit for your business. Thank you very much. Have a good day and I hope to hear from you. Thank you.