I love it when we learn more about how our customers are using our products. If you track operational stats and metrics (or want to), you may want to take a look at the recent case study we published featuring our customer, Mighty Leaf Tea.
Once we got their budgeting and financial reporting issues solved with Budget Maestro and Analytics Maestro, their CFO got to thinking about another ongoing dilemma they’ve had for some time. They use Sage 500 as their ERP system and knew that they had a ton of sales, inventory, and distribution data in there that they would love to mine. I think we’ve all shared that frustration of KNOWING that there is information we’re housing that we just can’t figure out how or don’t have the time to work out a system to get to it.
Mighty Leaf Tea had sketched out a process to build an Excel SQL-embedded workbook to pull out their sales and inventory data and help them create reports that could be used to increase their business. It’s a great idea… that would take weeks, if not months to build and test. Mighty Leaf had just installed our Centage suite of products and had quickly gotten familiar with maneuvering the information fields to create their financial month-end reports with Analytics Maestro. They love the time it is saving them and the confidence they have in the results.
Their CFO thought about their other dilemma and saw how the OLAP technology (online analytical processing) that we use in Analytics Maestro might be able to be applied to getting data from their sales and inventory modules. The cube structure they were now using to build their Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and Cash Flow reports and forecasts might be the key to getting to their operations data that had been elusive.
I’m sure you can see the end of this story already. How it got there depended on a simple step that people don’t often do enough of. He asked. Taking that step of talking with our Financial Analyst and then our Analytics Maestro team led the CFO and Mighty Leaf Tea to accessing a goldmine of data that they now use daily to produce instant sales reports, weekly product analysis and trends, and inventory management projections. Of course, reports are just reports if you don’t use them. But they use them and it’s been remarkable how quickly drilling down on the dimensions of a cube becomes second nature.
How often do you wonder about whether an app, product or process might work for something else? Do you ask about it or do you file it away to check into…someday? We’re all guilty of that at times. Hopefully not too often though. In our financial leadership roles, we’re accustomed to taking initiative and problem solving with whatever it takes. I’m sure you make it a point to train your staff (and children!) that they’ll go much farther when they speak up and look at creative and innovative ways to find solutions.
We’re fortunate to have a great team here at Centage and we love both asking those types of questions and receiving them. We’re able to connect CRM systems, HR systems, and as you can see, sales and product modules along with the financial data in ERP systems that we routinely integrate with. It’s a great feeling to help people solve irritating problems and produce results that help them to better manage their businesses.
Pick an issue that has had you stumped for a while. Do some brainstorming and connect the dots to a familiar tool or process that might hold the answers to move that issue closer toward having a solution.
Businesses of every description rely on the Budget Maestro™ family of software solutions by Centage Corporation to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their business budgeting and planning, financial forecasting, financial consolidation and reporting processes. For more information, take a tour of Budget Maestro, contact Centage, or call 800-366-5111 now.
