Jim Dorsey - Profile of an APOS Professional *APOS People Add Real Value

Having a rock-solid reporting system infrastructure is only worthwhile if you have compelling content to deploy on that infrastructure. APOS Systems is well known for helping organizations deploy and extend the functionality of their implementation infrastructure. But we have also been helping our clients create compelling content/reports for many years. Case in point, APOS consultant Jim Dorsey.

Jim Dorsey is a Senior Consultant and Trainer with many years of experience in the area of reporting systems analysis and design, training and implementation. He has strong knowledge of how to extract useful information from various relational databases and turn this information into useful business intelligence output. As well, Jim possesses strong personal skills based on many years in the classroom and mentoring with various customers throughout North America.

Jim graduated with a Master of Business Administration degree and a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Alberta. With both degrees, he focused on the accounting area. He began his career with three years of public accounting experience with Arthur Andersen & Co. in Vancouver. He then taught Accounting for three years at the University of Alberta and in 1976 set up a consulting practice specializing in the selection and implementation of computerized accounting systems for small to medium sized businesses.

He also served as project manager on a number of long-term conversion projects and frequently functioned as Chief Financial Office for a number of his clients on an interim basis while locating/training permanent employees.

Since 1994 Jim has specialized in the business intelligence field, with a particular focus in Crystal Reports, Crystal Enterprise and now, BusinessObjects XI. Today Jim is a Business Objects Enterprise Certified Professional and a Crystal Reports Certified Professional. He has developed a reputation as one of the top reporting specialists in North America.

Common projects:

• financial report development
• complex custom report development / troubleshooting
• report development mentoring
• formal report development training
• data semantic layer creation
• data analysis

Our customers consistently comment on the key value Jim has made to their implementation, such as: "Everything about the engagement went great. Jim was the perfect resource! His accounting skills were invaluable to helping us get the reports we needed in a burstable state"

"Just wanted to drop you a quick note to say thanks for putting Jim on the reports for us - he did an excellent job with the reports. Thanks again, and I hope to retain those types of services again."

Jim is an ideal role player for those business intelligence projects that could utilize his vast experience and qualifications.

This APOS consultant feature is to better acquaint you with the APOS resources available to assist with your Business Objects and data warehousing projects.

For more information about how an APOS resource can help with your business intelligence implementation, please visit here or contact Allan Pym at apym@apos.on.ca or 519-666-2020.

Please join us for this special webcast about Dashboard Manager from Business Objects

Wednesday, September 14

Time: 9am PDT, 12noon EST

Duration: 45 minutes

Top pilots use advanced instruments to excel under constantly changing conditions. Top organizations use management dashboards to do the same.

BusinessObjects Dashboard Manager™ is a web-based development environment that allows you to easily build, deploy, and evolve powerful management dashboards—without programming.

Now your whole organization—from executives to individual contributors—can use this virtual cockpit to receive alerts, view trends, and clearly see key performance indicators. At a moment’s notice.

Join us for a Dashboard Manager web seminar and we’ll show you what Dashboard Manager can do for you and your business users. BusinessObjects Dashboard Manager is:

• Easy to build. No programming or coding required. You can quickly drag and drop any analytic or report you want onto a dashboard.

• Easy to deploy. Dashboard Manager fits into your existing data model—so no need for you to create a specific datamart or data warehouse. And because it sits on top of your existing BI platform, you can leverage your current implementations and reduce deployment time.

• Easy to evolve. BusinessObjects Dashboard Manager is a flexible tool designed to evolve as your organization changes. With it you can quickly and easily modify existing dashboards as well as customize your metrics and analytics.

Join us for a Dashboard Manager web seminar

Please join us for this special webcast about compliance strategies for mid-market organizations

Date: Tuesday, September 27

Time: 11am PDT, 2pm EST

Duration: 60 minutes

Sarbanes Oxley Compliance can be daunting, time-consuming and costly - especially for small and mid-size organizations.

Organizations need real-time visibility across all their systems to ensure they are getting financial information they trust in a timely manner. Then they need the insight into this information to have absolute confidence in the results they are reporting; and to report these results under tighter deadlines. And they need to do this in a cost-effective manner.

To make matters more confusing, vendors everywhere are talking about how they are a one-stop shop for SOX compliance, and encouraging you to throw technology at the problem and change your business processes to handle new systems. But this is the opposite of how best to proceed. Many companies can leverage the investments they have already made, and put their systems to work to support their key processes.

Want to find out more about how to leverage investments you may have already made to assist you with key areas of SOX compliance? And further, to leverage a SOX investment you may need to make changes to help improve your business performance in other areas?

Join Business Objects for this complimentary, informative webcast on Sarbanes Oxley Compliance, and how Business Intelligence from Business Objects can help you:

• Gain real-time visibility across all your pertinent systems

• Provide real-time monitoring and alerting of variances

• Provide rapid disclosure to shareholders of material events

• Provide transparency throughout your organization

• Certify financial results under tight deadlines

• Improve your ROI on your compliance system by being able to leverage it for Business Performance Management in other areas of your company

Register for this event

Please join us for this special webcast for mid-market organizations

Date: Thursday, September 15

Time: 11am PDT, 2pm EST

Duration: 45 minutes

Is your organization struggling with data integration, and creating one single version of the truth?

Concerned that your organization may not be using the right or same information to base their business decisions on? Feel you're grappling with many of the same technology issues and complexities as larger organizations, but without the budget to match?

The featured speaker is Mika Krammer, research vice president and leading mid-market analyst at Gartner. He will join executives from Business Objects to address the business challenges and key technology drivers of mid-size companies, and how business intelligence technology can help organizations meet their key business priorities.

Attendees of the Webinar will learn about:

• key business priorities and technology investment drivers for mid-size organizations
• what peer organizations are considering, and what they are investing in
• which technologies are popular, and which are not quite there yet
• how mid-size organizations are integrating their data and using business intelligence to help achieve their goals, without breaking the bank

Register for this event

Migrating to BusinessObjects XI? *Migration Assistance for 'Classic' Customers

The Business Objects user community understands that the BusinessObjects XI platform is a powerful advancement and most are now planning to move to this platform. At the same time, many are finding it a challenge to establish a solid plan to actually make it happen. Business Objects "Classic" users are particularly concerned.

The APOS professional services team has worked with this environment for many years; we're in an excellent position to ensure that your migration to BusinessObjects XI is successful. The combination of our Business Objects "Classic" expertise, our Crystal "Classic" expertise and our thorough BusinessObjects XI Migration Methodology will help your new environment implementation function on a whole new level.

We can partner with you to:

• assess your unique environment and requirements

• uncover the hidden challenges for your migration

• plan an effective migration strategy

• work with you to execute that strategy

Whether your current implementation is Business Objects version 5.x, 6.x or Crystal "Classic", we can get you to BusinessObjects XI successfully.

For information about how APOS professional services can help with your migration to BusinessObjects XI, please visit here or contact Allan Pym at apym@apos.on.ca or 519-666-2020.