Centralized Data Management for Sage Accpac ERP

Managing data has become a major concern for most businesses
for several reasons. As computerized business management and accounting
systems have become more comprehensive and large computer hard drives
have become less expensive, it has become easier to record and store vast
amounts of detailed data about our businesses. As more processes in a
company have been automated, the accounting systems of old have evolved
into full scale business management systems that integrate all operational
facets of a business. The result is that businesses are increasingly demanding
more and better information out of these systems to assess their performance
and measure results against pre-established criteria such as budgets,
forecasts and other key performance indicators.

As companies grow and their need for comprehensive reporting and analysis
increases, it becomes easy for people to look for a quick fix by creating
one spreadsheet after another to solve the information needs of managers
and other top level executives. One day we realize that we have created
a reporting and data management nightmare because none of the reporting
systems are integrated to the accounting system, there is little or no
security for the data and there is no centralized control over updates
to the data. Therefore the integrity of the data we depend on for decision
making purposes comes into question.

Not only does it get more difficult to manage all this data but it gets
more difficult to create reports with relevant information delivered with
the right amount of detail. Reporting systems need to be flexible enough
to link different financial data elements together to identify key trends
in a business. Since these elements can change over time these systems
need to dynamically change with the requirements in the business.

With the rise in popularity of benchmarking and the use of key performance
indicators (KPI’s) not only is there a requirement to link financial
data elements, but analysts are also recognizing the need to link financial
data to non-financial data that influences financial performance in a
business. Furthermore, as graphical user interfaces and scanning equipment
have become more popular, linking documents and pictures to data has also
become more important.

In order to provide structure and security to the collection and management
of all types of information requires a centralized repository of data
(sometimes referred to as a data warehouse) which is stored in the same
database as the rest of the information in the accounting and business
management system rather than an external database. The question is, how
do companies develop a cost effective method of collecting and managing
the data they need to support the reporting and decision making systems
required to run their businesses?

To address this growing trend in the Sage Accpac ERP (Accpac) market,
Orchid Systems created a tool set called Budget and Information Management
that allows users to add any type of data to their Accpac company databases.
The immediate benefit of this approach is that all data is protected by
the same security, back up and maintenance functions included in Accpac’s
System Manager. Multi-User access is provided through standard Accpac
Lanpaks so there is no additional cost for multi-user access. Documents
and pictures can be linked to Accpac data and stored in the same database.

Budget and Information Management makes reporting on financial and non-financial
data in Sage Accpac ERP much easier. Each Budget code can link up to 10
fields and combine that with 10 additional user-defined fields for tracking
information not normally kept in an accounting system. You can capture
an unlimited number of budgets and forecasts for any combination of Accpac
master file data not just GL budget sets. Because all the data is held
in one table, it is easy to create and run Crystal Reports against this
data without the need for sub reports in Crystal.

A link to Microsoft Excel is included with the solution to allow you
to read data from Sage Accpac, manipulate it in a spreadsheet and then
write back automatically. You can also use Budget and Information Management
as a data source for other reporting and analysis tools such as Sage Accpac
Insight and Crystal Analysis.

If you’ve been wondering how to enhance the budget, forecast and
analysis capabilities of Sage Accpac ERP without creating redundant or
duplicate systems, consider the benefits of Budget and Information Management
from Orchid Systems. For more
information, please contact us at info@axisglobalpartners.com.