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When selecting a Business Intelligence (BI) or Business Process Management (BPM) solution, there are four different types of solutions you can choose from:
1. Status Quo
That’s right – do nothing. Unfortunately this means a lot of time and effort wasted every month retyping data, cutting and pasting numbers and formulas, manually producing custom spreadsheets, and manually emailing unsecured, potentially error-prone reports and analysis to a wide variety of stakeholders who all ask the same question, “What took you so long?”
2. Proprietary Database System
Everyone’s heard of the big boys – Hyperion, Cognos, SAP, and all the other multi-billion global enterprises that would gladly quote you millions of dollars and several years of installation time (not to mention months of training time) to manage your monthly financial reports and profitability. And in the end you still windup using Crystal Reporting (ugh) and having your I.T. department, rather than financial analysts, write your reports. I’m sure this works great for giant organizations like GM or Pfizer, but until then you really should consider other options.
3. Spreadsheet Consolidation (or Macro driven) “Systems”
There are a variety of small and mid-level consulting groups that are looking for an easy way to link all your spreadsheets in your organization into a unified system. We have a message for these companies: “There is no easy way.”
But this has not deterred these companies from claiming they have an enterprise level solution.
Instead, with a little knowledge of VBA and Access, these companies began to sell these spreadsheet consolidation programs.
The problem with all of these applications is they are written in VBA which, even according to Microsoft, is a low level code that is
“embedded code in every customized document, making it hard to fix bugs.
The VBA model, programming against COM objects, too, had significant security weaknesses.”
Furthermore, Microsoft sunsetted VBA code years ago, only to resurrect the program because, in their words,
“the team recognizes that VBA-language support is important to a select group of customers who rely on sharing macros.”
For example, the now defunct SRC Software out of Portland, Oregon was a perfect example of a spreadsheet consolidation system.
Thousands of unprotected spreadsheets loosely held together by VBA macros.
Sure, this was cutting edge in the 1990’s, but it’s not something you would even consider purchasing today.
Yet surprisingly, there are companies out there still peddling this type of application.
In short, macros are great for individual users who want to automate a print function or catalog their collection of
Grateful Dead bootleg concert recordings – not build a network-savvy, interdependent, multi-tiered, server-based, mission-critical,
scalable solution. Add to that fact these applications hold your important data (i.e. payroll records, patient accounting records,
billing information) in individual spreadsheets out on the network for anyone to delete, hack, or copy offline cause no end for concern.
4. HCG Prevision Software
At HCG Software we recognize that users want to use Excel as their main tool of choice when working with their data, yet they need the ability to access potentially
millions of records across multiple systems including general ledger, payroll, materials management, and sales. Yet using Excel alone with VBA macros opens the door
to a wide variety of security and data management headaches trying to management hundreds, if not thousands of spreadsheets. U
sing the HCG Prevision application you will enjoy the benefits of:
• A true enterprise level application written in 100% .NET managed code that uses a true relational database housed in Microsoft SQL Server for its data store rather than 1000’s of Excel spreadsheets.
This powerful marriage between spreadsheets and databases allows companies to store multiple years of history for all of their data types!
• Never having to call your IT department to change a report, import history, and update formulas ever again! All the modules, templates, reports, assumptions, and formulations and available at your fingertips.
• A powerful, intuitive drag-and-drop user friendly menu that allows the user to pull from multiple data sources into a single report – no more writing sequel commands or database queries to pull your data into a report.
• One touch distribution! Whether you want to run ad-hoc reports at a moments notice, or distribute thousands of daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly production reports, as an HCG Prevision user you will never type, reformat, print, or otherwise manually manipulate another report ever again!
• And because SQL Server is your data store rather than spreadsheets, your data is in one place with the highest level of security. HCG Prevision Software is 100% compliant with all state, federal, and HIPPA regulations.
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably either a techno-geek, or someone that is looking for a powerful Excel-based enterprise solution.
Either way, click here to find out more.
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