May, 2005

Extending Dashboards in BusinessObjects XI Pro and CR Server

Case Study - Robbie Manufacturing, Lenexa, Kansas

Our APOS development team has developed a terrific new extension to the 'My InfoView' feature of BusinessObjects XI Professional and Crystal Server. Now you can create a library of InfoView dashboards and make them accessible through the standard user interface of both BusinessObjects XI Pro and Crystal Server. Here are some of the cool features now available: Corporate Dashboards Library - as the administrator, you can now create and maintain a library of InfoView dashboards for use by your organization. Corporate Dashboards Folder - as the administrator, you can now publish as many InfoView dashboards as you wish, to any folder you like.			click here for larger view
Bulk Assign of Default InfoView - as the administrator, you can now specify which dashboard should load as the default at login time, for one or many users. Bulk Assign of 'My InfoView' - as the administrator, you can now promote any corporate InfoView dashboard to one or many users default 'My InfoView'. Click Through to Full Report - InfoView dashboards are great, but we can help you add a click through to full report detail. How did we do this? We enhanced one of our APOS BI Tools, Object Manager, to support these new capabilities. More benefits than ever for new customers and a real value-add for our existing Object Manager customers. To check out how APOS can help you to extend BusinessObjects XI Pro and Crystal Server dashboards, please consider one of: • participate in a webinar demo/overview about this new BusinessObjects extension. • to request Object Manager demo download instructions and our current price list visit here. • to request more information or arrange a personal discussion, contact us.
Webinar Extending Dashboards in BusinessObjects XI and Crystal Server Join us for a live demonstration of these exciting new dashboard enhancement features!		Tues, May 24/05 Length: 30 min. Time: 1pm EST (10am PST) Cost: Complimentary
Learn more about how APOS solutions and expertise can provide a powerful dashboard enhancement solution to help maximize your investment in business intelligence!
Crystal Server XI Introductory Webinar *Award Winning Business Intelligence Solution Crystal Reports XI: What's New Overview Learn more about this latest release, Crystal Reports XI. This powerful integrated offering from BusinessObjects provides a collection of reporting services from data access and report design to web-based report management and delivery. Crystal Reports Server XI: Technical Tutorial This web seminar takes a more in-depth look at how to install, administer, and use Crystal Reports Server XI, the award winning business intelligence solution for the mid-market. All sessions are one hour long and start at 9am PST/12:00pm EST. Pick a date in May or June!
Exclusive Dashboard Manager Webcast *Take Off to High Performance Please register and join us this informative webcast exclusively for small and mid-market companies. Discover how your business can reap the same benefits as large-scale enterprises with BusinessObjects Dashboard Manager. Triad Financial Corporation, a leader in financial services, will share their experiences with quickly implementing Dashboard Manager as well as highlighting the business value it brings to them each and every day. This presentation is being offered only once - a hour session on June 1, 2005, at 11 am PST/2pm EST, join us!
Case Study - Robbie Manufacturing *Cool Customer
"We were at an impasse with Crystal Enterprise 10.0 and the APOS engagement eliminated all of these concerns. So our investment in APOS represented a pittance in the sense that we are able to continue seamlessly with effective business operations. Our users are able to continue working they way they wanted"  said Shawn Black, Director of Information Technology, Robbie Manufacturing, Lenexa, Kansas, USA

Robbie Manufacturing relies on APOS to protect its IT investment

Background:
A leader in printed shrink films, bags and pouches, Robbie Manufacturing brings its innovative and industry leading products to the supermarket, food processing and shrink packaging industries in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, as well as the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe.

Business Issue:

Crystal Reports represent a centre-piece of Robbie Manufacturing’s business effectiveness. As veteran users, Robbie Manufacturing views these reports as being crucial to their operational success. Nearly all personnel in the organization-management, sales, accounting, manufacturing-uses them. So do their suppliers and customers. Because of this long history, all personnel knows exactly what they need from the reports and how to get what they need. With over 100 Crystal Reports used every day, Robbie Manufacturing’s information processing efficiency hinges on scheduling reports during the night and then allowing its many users to view and modify instances-rather than live reports-the next day according to prescribed permissions and other business rules. This saves an enormous amount of time for staff. Indeed, they are accustomed to working with instances on a frequent basis. “Team members view an instance with Select Expert, filter down to the data they really need, make a business decision, modify the instance, hand the report off to management, and not even bother saving the report. They really did not want to schedule a whole report, build it, and send it to a processor during the day,” said Mr. Black.

Imagine, then, the impact if the user interface suddenly changed or you could no longer manipulate instances as easily as you once did, as Robbie Manufacturing quickly did when they found it necessary to migrate from Seagate Info to Crystal Enterprise v10. They realized that a sudden loss of functionality and practiced usability would (a) quickly lead to a rapid decline in productivity; (b) hamper the ability to make business decisions quickly, and (c) lead to unacceptable training costs.

“We had a lot of unhappy users when I had to release Crystal Enterprise and tell them that they would not have the Select Expert functionality that allowed them filter or modify a report instance, rather than the much longer time needed to modify a live report. It was vital that our users could modify an instance, hand the report off to management and not even bother saving the report,” said Mr. Black. “In fact, discussions even touched upon looking for immediate non-Crystal solutions,” he added.

Solution:
Robbie Manufacturing chose APOS Systems Inc. as their technology partner to help them solve these prickly problems. The key was doing it quickly and economically. APOS understood that Robbie Manufacturing really liked the functionality available in the Seagate Info products, and the need to finding solutions quickly and economically.

• First, APOS customized the user interface in the Crystal Enterprise web-based application so that it had a more familiar “look and feel” to their well established Seagate Info desktop application. Because APOS had previously developed a product that could readily be merged with some of the ePortfolio pages and concepts (in Crystal Enterprise 10), they created the new interface quickly and efficiently.

• Second, APOS was able to provide Robbie Manufacturing with the capability to filter instances in the Crystal Enterprise Active X Viewer-referred to as Advanced Viewer by Robbie Manufacturing-a feature that was extremely important to the customer. Again, APOS was able to establish the solution without resorting to expensive customization.

By making the web-based actions in Crystal Enterprise 10 operate in much the same way as the ones available in Seagate Info, APOS was able to provide the customer with the key solutions that wanted. “We certainly got what we wanted. As a bonus, the reports actually look cleaner in the Advanced Viewer. As an additional bonus, we can now export while we are drilled down into a report at any level, something we could not do in the Seagate solution,” said Shawn Black.

Results:
Although it is difficult to put quantitative measures on the APOS derived solution, Robbie Manufacturing was able to articulate the many intangible benefits that they could readily accrue. The APOS solution essentially:

• Eliminated the costs of rewriting 100 different reports for another solution, a prohibitively expensive and timely exercise.

• Eliminated the costs and resource investments required to re-train many internal and external user.

• Eliminated costly interruptions to daily operations that could easily result when new implementations are put in place, potentially jeopardizing business successes.

From a technology standpoint, Crystal remains an extremely important part of Robbie Manufacturing’s business success. APOS, in essence, helped protect this investment.

Why APOS?
Robbie Manufacturing first searched the web for vendors who supported Crystal products. But it was Business Objects who recommended that APOS could help. “Our relationship with APOS is about as smooth as one can imagine. In fact, I would say that APOS meets Robbie Manufacturing’s needs better than any vendor that I have on the payroll today”, said Mr. Black. “Better yet, they go beyond our expectations in delivering what we want. For example, when we declined their proposal to develop a completely customized solution for us because of budgetary constraints, their Senior Consultant obviously thought about the problem without our prodding and came back with a totally acceptable solution four weeks later. That is what outstanding vendor relationships are all about”, recalled Shawn Black.

To read the full Robbie Manufacturing case study or view others, visit here.

Suggestions, Requests, Unique Requirements

If you have a unique business intelligence system requirement, please let us know. We love to work on special projects and regularly save our customers time and money by using our extensive software library to fast-track development of a specific customized solution.