EPM arena but where is Microsoft

Happy Monkey Year!!!

I haven't been as active as I've been learning and implementing different systems. If you check my previous posts, my last project was moving Dynamics to SAP suite and we finally wrapped that at end of 2014. One reason my client move out of Dynamics is lack of applications in planning and HR.

In 2015, I started another chapter and this time managing programs. One program was finance transformation where there were several tracks including SAP upgrade, Financial Planning, Tax Transformation and others. I'm also managing other parts of retail like OmniChannel, Retail Accounting, Visual Mechandising programs which was very interesting as you see other parts of a retail business.

The SAP landscape was moving to a new platform, can't really say it but it's in the retail space. 

Financial Planning was another exciting program where I'm moving an Infor system to Oracle Planning Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS). 

I want to call out Microsoft Dynamics as I moved to implementing Tier 1 applications,  I realized that Microsoft Dynamics is missing a lot of business applications. One application which organizations have now realized benefits is Enterprise or Corporate Performance Management (EPM/CPM). Leaders include SAP BPC, Oracle Hyperion/PBCS, IBM TM1 (Cognos). In my years attending Convergence and others, I never heard Microsoft going into this arena and you ask why. 

Every organization today do performance planning in one way or the other. Retail, CPG, Telecom, Healthcare, Prof Services and others need to do this to stay competitive and the functionality is already mature. I think to survive the next wave of ERP investments or Postmodern ERP, CIOs will look for vendors who can provide a consolidated package of solutions including the following - ERP, CPM, BI, CRM, HRIS and others.

If you look at the market today, you can count the vendors with one hand. Unfortunately, Microsoft Dynamics is not one of them as they missed investing in CPM and HRIS. SAP even have solutions for HRIS - SAP HR and SuccessFactor.

I hope this will open conversations inside Microsoft where the next investment should be. I'd be interested to be part of that conversation.

Actuals vs Budget using Tableau

One product I liked using to do data visualization and analytics is Tableau. It's easy to use and can work with most of the datasources that I have in my environment. I could've utilized another tool like MicroStrategy, SAP Lumira or BusinessObjects but because I need a quick turnaround for the client, I decided to used Tableau.

In this video, I used Tableau Desktop so show a simple side-by-side of Budget vs Actual Sales. I could've added other steps but since it's my introductory video I wanted to make it simple.

Find the video here http://youtu.be/kSl8h0ny6LE or watch it below:

Microsoft Dynamics to SAP ECC - Part 2

As promised, I'm posting Part 2 of the Dynamics GP to SAP migration.

Since my last post we've done a lot of cleansing to the GP data. Some of the ETL processes we ran include:

- Master data including GL accounts, Profit Center, Cost Center, Employees, Vendors and others
- Vendor and Customer addresses including multiple addresses for Vendor Partner functions
- Any Tax-related fields including 1099, GST, etc.
- Hierarchy if any (can be messy)
- Open Balances for General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable and Fixed Assets

Lastly, I consider my SQL scripting decent but get a really good one as you'll need to create lines of code and SP for your ETL.

Goodluck!

Note: I'll see if there's a need for another Part in FI, otherwise Part 3 will be more on SAP SD.

Microsoft Dynamics to SAP ECC - Part 1

Actively participating in the data modeling & cleansing, reporting (including BPC, BW and BI) and testing of a Dynamics GP client to SAP AFS.

Exciting, as the last time I was part of a SAP implementation was almost 10 years ago.

Piece of advice if you know you're going to migrate to SAP:
1 - When creating your Chart of Accounts start integrating Cost Center and Profit Center
2 - Create a logic in your Item, Vendor, Customer and Asset masters
3 - Addresses can create a lot of work if not properly maintained
4 - Use logic when using the classes

Dynamics GP 2013

This month Microsoft announced the availability of Dynamics GP 2013 demo which you can download here.

Most of the improvements were geared to improving security, integration with other Microsoft products and the Web client.

I was reading the installation guide of the web client and the requirements were pretty basic including the Web server OS which can either be Windows Server 2008 R2 or 2012. You can secure the web client by implementing SSL which you can purchase from a vendor or use one provided by IIS.

If you've installed Microsoft Sharepoint Server, most of the required steps were very similar including the required authentication.

Goodluck!

ETL tools

Following are top ETL tools used for extracting, cleaning, transforming and loading data to a data warehouse:

1. Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB)
2. SAP Business Objects Data Integrator (BODI)
3. IBM Data Stage
4. Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
5. SAS Data Integration Studio
6. Talend Open Studio
7. Clover ETL
8. Adeptia Integration Suite

Former Citi VP of Treasury Sentenced

In this age of compliance and tight security, how can one still manage to embezzlement more than $22 million?

Well Mr. Gary Foster did, the former vice president at Citigroup Inc.’s treasury finance department was sentenced to 97 months in prison for fraud related to his embezzlement. Foster embezzled funds from various Citigroup accounts by transferring money to Citigroup's cash account and then wiring it to his personal bank account.

Foster concealed his thefts with various false accounting entries, making the Citi cash account appear in balance and placing a fraudulent contract or deal number in the reference line of the wire transfer instructions.

Made me wonder, which accounting system were they using that nobody can even catch this kind of false transactions especially during month-end reconciliation. I guess if you work for a large multinational bank, it'll take a few cycle before you can confirm that there's fraud or breakage in the process. But mostly this can be remediated by constant communication between people who audit and reconciles cash.