Disparate systems create poor visibility into business transactions limiting a critical understanding of how transactions drive business. Financial reporting can be cumbersome and audits can be lengthy and expensive due to limited data insight. An extensive integration platform transforms and moves elemental data into coherent financial information direct to ERP.
Today’s Data
Today’s big data can mean big problems, and the challenge for finance teams is to accurately understand and report on these large data sets. Too often members of the accounting department are required to log in to several systems and extract data and then manually collate sprawling spreadsheets to generate meaningful information. This results in a lengthy, cumbersome and costly activity that is inherently fraught with inaccuracy.
As technology platforms become easier to use, the focus on tech specialties decreases. Everyone can play with data without needing to have the deep technical skills once required.
Richards, Jenny. United States. The The Human Impact of Liberal Artsin the
AnalyticsIndustry. Seattle WA: 2018. Print.
System of Source appears to be more wishful thinking than reality. The roadmap to getting there is typically the last piece of the puzzle on the project list. Software systems expand, become more complex and data follows with exponential growth. A single System of Source and a process such as inventory management becomes an exercise in manual synchronization between systems.
Companies have unique and typically strong software systems for gathering customer data. However, these systems generally are not structured to reveal authentic and usable financial information. Proper revenue recognition requires transactions to cross financial periods with precision. This is often an omitted practice in custom solutions resulting in misrepresented revenue.
A Day in the Life
Power meetings are only as powerful as the data. The marketing team wants to know what is selling and who is buying it. Are discounts effective or are products selling without the discount? The operations team wants sufficient lead time for ordering new inventory. Accounting wants to put together a proforma for the CEO that can be quickly refreshed with live transactions.
Avoiding unending audits frees up time, saves money, and alleviates undue stress on the finance team. One culprit that can result in long audits is financial reports with unsupported transaction detail. Finance teams can be required to spend significant time hunting down details within the company’s custom systems.
To bridge the gap left by stand alone legacy applications, solution providers rely on sources of error-prone spreadsheets that require constant manual updating and cumbersome email approvals and data re–entry. The knowledge workers who need accurate and timely client, project, and account–based information don’t have it–or if they do, they must wade through static reports to get it.
NetSuite. United States. The Key to Performance and Profitability for Solution
Providers. San Mateo, CA: 2015. Print.
Capturing transactions in external systems is only one-half of a great business process. Data transform at the ion – the act of bringing data in and converting it into a format that aggregates numbers allows for comparison to other system’s numbers. Conversion of data can highlight flaws, such as malformed data, and alert to issues, such as potentially fraudulent activity. Distinctive data views can expose business process issues and stimulate ideas for better business flows. External systems lack the ability to move transactions to a terminating state which prompts questions: Are discounts being properly applied?
Was the customer order fulfilled? What was the time lapse between order placement and shipment?
Overcoming Disparate Systems
Creating an authentic System of Source is the optimal destination of any company’s operational team. A System of Source allows for all the unique software applications of the company to be fully realized while providing a controlled location to originate data and a place for data to be aggregated and analyzed. System of Source should:
- Manage large numbers of transactions in a short period of time.
- Handle the company’s growing transaction volume – transform data to meet current needs and future needs, easily.
- Adapt to a company’s changing business landscape.
NetSuite combines the best of CRM, PSA, and ERP applications, making it a strategic planning tool for executives to gain an understanding of current and future business operations.
NetSuite. United States. The Key to Performance and Profitability for Solution Providers. San Mateo, CA: 2015. Print.
About Esonus AIP
It’s hard to resist jumping into integration with the idea of quickly mapping data. We decided that the integration platform would require matching the capacity and capability of the data systems for which it is integrating. Our next decision was to create not only an integration solution but a powerful software platform with all the characteristics present in a rigorous and disciplined engineering design, such as true SaaS, legitimate Multi-tenancy, absolute Elasticity, a complete Extension Framework, and tunable Parallel Processing. We didn’t forget that we were creating an integration platform. We focused on transforming your data…not just importing your data.
Esonus AIP–Autonomous Integration Platform is designed to manage data integrations so users can say simply, “Our data is integrated.”
Esonus AIP Drives Results
Do one thing and do it well. Evaluating business from sales order to revenue recognition requires real–time information:
Inventory
- Supply chain management
- Transaction status
WMS
- Inventory controls
- High traffic promotions
Esonus AIP–Autonomous Integration Platform is responsive to business ebb and flows for a clear understanding of financial data.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Disparate systems that utilize an integration platform with deep level data mapping create excellent visibility into business transactions allowing for a critical understanding of how transactions drive business. Financial reports can drive continued insight into business processes. AIP as an extensive integration platform transforms and moves elemental data into coherent financial information directly to ERP systems.
Esonus AIP Technical
AIP on NetSuite e is all Suit eScript 2.0, means:
- Ability to write expressive code and avoid an over–reliance on documentation.
- ECMA compliant
- Supports the newest feature sets in NetSuite
- Asynchronous in form events for a better user experience
- Parallel processing for faster multi–transaction operations provides the structure for the powerful AIP Extension
Framework
AIP as Cloud Middleware, means:
- Middleware based on Microsoft dotNet is an evolved and proven technology for enterprise business applications
- Broad corporate and community support
- Uses RESTful API which allows for scalability and simple client consumption; data serialization for swift and open data mapping between business definitions
- Performs operations not available in NetSuite
- Offloads large, long-running, and heavy process operations from NetSuite
- Works around much of the process governance on SuiteScript
- REST API to provide an accessible endpoint for all external systems
AIP Extension Framework, means:
- Design pattern for keeping all operations data store agnostic
- Repeatable and testable
- True SaaS-all AIP clients are on the same CORE version
- CORE remains unchanged and independent
- Handles all varied requirements client–to–client
AIP uses NetSuite Rest Let technology, which means:
- Uses same scripts or shared script libraries for external API as for internal process
- Industry-standard access for all clients and the most versatile architecture to meet varied data structures
- Optimal balance between speed and an open structure
AIP is 100% Cloud–Based, means:
- Highly available
- Enterprise-level throughout for any size business
- Highly scalable
- Redundant
- Replicated
- Separation of concerns–data from business logic
- Managed–focus on the product, not the hardware
- Accessible via user interfaces and API
- Industry-standard security (DOSdefeats)
