Tnemec Transitions Company Processes to Oracle with Business Intelligence Support from Reports Wand

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY 2014-2015

“Their documentation is good, and if we encountered a hiccup I just contacted support and they got back to me within an hour. It didn’t matter if we were working in a test instance or production instance; Excel4apps’ replies were timely and helpful.

- Michael Alkire, Applications Operations Manager, Tnemec

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY2014-2015

Reports Wand for Oracle shown

Tnemec faced a steep learning curve as it transitioned to Oracle, particularly when creating reports using standard Oracle tools. Complicating this situation was Oracle’s decision to phase out its Discoverer reporting product and roll that functionality into its more complex and expensive BI Suite.

Tnemec turned to Reports Wand from Excel4apps, an intuitive, cost effective Excel-based reporting alternative that accesses live data throughout the Oracle E-Business Suite. Reports Wand now functions as the company’s primary BI tool.Tnemec, a Missouri-based manufacturer of architectural and industrial coatings, has been transitioning from a legacy IBM AS400 system to Oracle over the last eight years. Users and developers alike encountered a steep learning curve when the early modules for Financials were first installed. Challenges were especially obvious for reporting tasks, driving accounting and information services (IS) to explore tools to bridge the gap between Oracle and more familiar applications like Excel.

Enter GL Wand from Excel4apps, an Excel-based reporting tool that links directly with live Oracle Financials data. GL Wand was a resounding success with accounting

and finance users, but Tnemec was expanding its Oracle footprint outside of Financials and into Order Management. The company realized it needed to make reporting easier from other Oracle modules. Reports Wand, also from Excel4apps, has bridged another Oracle gap for Tnemec by meeting reporting needs from a range of modules, while allowing the company to capitalize on existing user and IS expertise with Excel.

Addressing Challenges From Migrating To OracleTnemec’s ERP experience began in 2006 with installation of Oracle’s Financials, Credit Management and a portion of Purchasing. For financial reporting and queries, the company started using Oracle Financial Statement Generator (FSG) and Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer, but encountered challenges, leading them to install GL Wand in 2008.

“I built our financial reporting package in GL Wand, which is comprised of 20-25 financial statements in a single workbook that I refresh each month with only a few mouse clicks,” said Ken Lloyd, Operations Controller at Tnemec and a GL Wand super user. “Each statement is in a separate tab and contains formulas that point to a single parameters tab.”

GL Wand provided real-time, drillable access to financial data in the Oracle General Ledger module, but Tnemec needed a similar way to access other data as it prepared for a January 2013 “go live” with Oracle’s Order Management and Inventory modules. Specifically, the company sought a replacement for the query functionality provided by its outgoing IBM Infinium system through Showcase, iSeries-based software that allows users to embed queries in Excel spreadsheets. And, based on past experience, using Discoverer for the newly-required queries didn’t appear to be a practical option.

“IS had to spend a lot of time putting together Discoverer queries, because it requires our skill set,” said Michael

Alkire, Applications Operations Manager at Tnemec. “We had to create, test and validate reports before we gave them back to the requesting users.”

With the success of GL Wand for financials, Tnemec decided to trial another Excel4apps product in summer 2012. The Reports Wand tool could provide access to live data in a variety of Oracle modules via an Excel interface and supported easy creation of customized queries.

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“Reports Wand provides real-time Oracle data that shipping clerks can refresh whenever needed. I have to say our users are pretty happy with this direction.”

“Migrating from the AS400 to Oracle was a big change for accounting and other users, who were accustomed to having data in Excel, and also for our developers, who were not yet used to Java, XML and forms reports,” said Alkire. “Both Reports Wand and GL Wand provided a way to get back to that Excel workbook functionality our people had used for years.”

From an IS standpoint, installation of the Excel4apps software was simple.

“Their documentation is good, and if we encountered a hiccup I just contacted support and they got back to me within an hour,” Alkire described. “It didn’t matter if we were working in a test instance or production instance; Excel4apps’ replies were timely and helpful.”

Shifting Smoothly To Reports WandIn preparation for the shift to Oracle order-to-cash modules, Tnemec worked in a Reports Wand test environment in late 2012 to create the necessary queries in advance of the January 2013 go live date. Lloyd would work with a department to establish how their particular reports should appear and then determine the Oracle tables to access. Next, either Alkire would create the SQL statement for the Reports Wand workbook to use in pulling in the data or Lloyd would use Toad for Data Analysts to create the SQL and send it to IS.

“I spent several months learning the Oracle tables before and after implementation of the order-to-cash modules,” explained Lloyd. “Toad for Data Analysts generates the SQL for users like me who understand database structure and can drag and drop tables, but aren’t trained in writing SQL. Once I have a query completed using Toad, I send the SQL in an email to our IS group, and they then quickly convert it to a Reports Wand report.”

Alkire says the process for creating these highly tailored reports in Reports Wand was simple, with perhaps the biggest challenge coming from the end users, who often changed their requirements when seeing what Reports Wand could put at their fingertips.

“When the end users saw what the tool could do, especially compared with the old AS400 system, they’d want us to pull additional data,” explained Alkire. “As far as actually developing the report they use daily, it took me about five

or six hours. For a power user like Ken, it probably took two to three hours a day of working with end users over about a month to determine what they wanted and would accept as the final. Then, they were off and running.”User acceptance of both Reports Wand and GL Wand has been excellent, mainly due to the Excel familiarity. “We have some very knowledgeable Excel power users, so they went through the documentation and trained the end users in-house without the need for more formal training,” Alkire described.

Supporting Oracle Expansion With Reports WandWith the addition of the Oracle modules for order-to-cash processes in 2013, about 70% of Tnemec now runs on the ERP system. Only manufacturing and part of purchasing remain on the legacy AS400.

Outside of the corporate office, Tnemec primarily uses Reports Wand to manage shipping and inventory operations through an Excel workbook. This workbook contains live ERP system data regarding what the workers are picking for the day, what has to ship and what is on hold. These Reports Wand reports are utilized by all of Tnemec’s domestic distribution centers.

For nearly a century, Tnemec has produced architectural and industrial coatings for

exterior and interior environments. As it moved from a legacy IBM AS400 system to Oracle, the company ran into

reporting challenges.

Bridging the gap between Oracle and familiar applications like Excel was an important reason for exploring

Excel4apps products. Tnemec uses both Reports Wand and GL Wand to create a variety of reports now that the company is phasing out internal support

for Oracle Discoverer. Instead of pursuing a large, costly Oracle BI implementation, Tnemec chose Reports Wand as its primary BI tool.

- Ken Lloyd, Operations Controller, Tnemec

www.excel4apps.com

“The workbook allows shipping clerks to enter a Shipping Status,” Lloyd described. “Excel’s concatenate and vlookup functions then change the value in the criteria box based on that status. An execute button refreshes a Reports Wand report for Order Holds that is actually hidden in the workbook but updates a column in the main Delivery Details tab so that the shipping clerks can see what delivery lines are on an order header hold or order line hold. This same workbook also contains Reports Wand reports for Delivery Exceptions, Soft ‘Suggested’ Allocations, and Orphaned Deliveries.”

The Reports Wand shipping workbook has been a big hit with users. “Our shipping clerks use Reports Wand spreadsheets as a dynamic delivery lines workbench in conjunction with Oracle Forms to manage shipping operations on a daily basis,” said Lloyd. “Reports Wand provides real-time Oracle data that shipping clerks can refresh whenever needed. I have to say our users are pretty happy with this direction.”

In addition to Reports Wand’s shipping and inventory application, Tnemec’s Sales and Marketing departments use the tool for sales reporting. Other queries that have been converted to Reports Wand are reports for Accounts Payable Distributions, Perpetual Inventory, Expired Inventory, Cycle Count, Material Transactions, Physical Inventory Tags, Variance Reports, General Ledger Account Balances, General Ledger Journal Lines, and General Ledger Chart of Accounts.

“It’s an intelligence tool because it is helping us do what we want to do the way our company wants to do it. We are leveraging the existing knowledge and skills of our staff.”

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Excel4apps is a best-in-class provider of Excel-based reporting, inquiry, and budget-loading software for Oracle and SAP. Designed for finance professionals, its award-winning GL Wand, Reports Wand and Budget Wand products easily and securely deliver real-time ERP data using Microsoft Excel® to save reporting time and effort. Excel4apps serves over 19,000 Oracle and SAP users in 62 countries, with offices in Australia, the United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, and South Africa.

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Gaining Better Business IntelligenceAfter upgrading to Oracle EBS Version 12.1.3 in 2013, Tnemec recognized that Oracle support of Discoverer was questionable, as Discoverer’s functionality was being rolled into the Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Suite as of June 2015. Given the steep learning curve both users and IS experienced with Oracle Discoverer when Financials were first installed, the company chose to utilize Reports Wand as its primary BI tool rather than pursue a large, costly Oracle BI implementation.

In addition to cost and the learning curve, Oracle BI tools would still require exports of static data to Excel as did Discoverer. The real-time data from Reports Wand is always up-to-date immediately after adjustments are posted. This convenience leaves more time for analysis―instead of unnecessary busy work like cutting and pasting―leading up to the reporting deadline.

“It’s an intelligence tool because it is helping us do what we want to do the way our company wants to do it,” said Alkire. “We are leveraging the existing knowledge and skills of our staff.”

Reports Wand and GL Wand are used for a variety of reports now that the Tnemec is phasing out internal support for Discoverer and has instructed users that all Discoverer queries be converted to the appropriate Excel4apps product. In the future, Reports Wand will be used for reporting when manufacturing implements the Inventory module, meaning all Tnemec business processes are running via Oracle.

- Michael Alkire, Applications Operations Manager, Tnemec