Offline Functionality Simplifies Data Entry for 500 Users Worldwide

PROPHIX Software is a leader in delivering performance management solutions including budgeting, planning, forecasting, reporting, consolidation, personnel planning and other advanced financial functions. PROPHIX streamlines business processes, and Kemira Chemicals, a global chemical manufacturing company headquartered in Finland, proves the application’s capabilities. With approximately 10,000 employees in 1700 cost centers, Kemira operates in the following businesses: Water Treatment Chemicals, Pulp & Paper Chemicals, and Oil & Mining Chemicals. The company’s technical infrastructure consisted of Hyperion Financial Manager for corporate reporting and Excel spreadsheets for budget data entry. A sudden decision to halt a current SAP project left Kemira seeking a budgeting system to implement quickly. Being a global company operating in 40 countries and 8 currencies, Kemira needed an easy-to-use system that handled multiple currencies, complex allocations, and data consolidation.

PROPHIX Performance Management fulfilled Kemira’s requirements and also offered a capability that would simplify their processes. PROPHIX’s offline data entry functions allowed the ability to send templates via e-mail, track the status, and automatically load template data when completed. “Because we needed to collect budget data in a standard format from over 500 users located throughout the world, the offline functionality was a major tool for us,” says Jeff Fasy, former CFO at Kemira. “Because of its offline capabilities, PROPHIX was implemented to collect, analyze, and report Cost Center, Intercompany, Profit & Loss, and Balance Sheet data.”

With PROPHIX, Kemira gained the ability to automate currency conversion, perform ad hoc reporting, and simplify report distribution. Kemira’s currency conversion process consists of converting to EUROs and USDs from various cost centers. By using templates, entering budget data is straightforward regardless of currency because exchange rates are kept separately, which can be changed easily during the budget cycle. “Additionally, we were able to quickly develop ad hoc reports to view expenses by legal entity. This helped us determine our course of action when budgeted expenses were higher than expected,” says Jeff. Consolidated data was then easily distributed. The report binder functionality was used to effectively distribute groups of reports to each country controller. Sending set groups of reports via e-mail ensured that stakeholders received information on time.

Kemira has gained more time for analysis because PROPHIX eliminated the need to manually load data, perform consolidations, and export final numbers to Hyperion Financial Manager. Ultimately, creating budgets in PROPHIX has integrated data across their Line of Business Systems, easing the collaboration across the global organization.

For more information on how PROPHIX can help your organization move beyond spreadsheets with real time access to information within weeks, please reach out to Kimberly Owens at 704-987-9989 or kowens@broadpoint.net. PROPHIX offers a significant return on investment and a low total cost of ownership.

What is PCI and Why is PCI Compliance important for you?

For more information contact Kim Owens, (704) 987-9989

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of requirements designed to ensure that ALL companies that process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. Essentially any merchant that has a Merchant ID (MID).

Payment Card Industries (PCI) Security Standards Council members including Visa, MasterCard, AMEX, Discover, etc. continually monitor and fight payment card data theft. These compromises affect the full spectrum of merchants, from very small to very large organizations. A security breach of any sensitive data can lead to serious consequences, including:

• Potential heavy financial penalties (ie, regulation violation fees & fines)
• Loss of reputation
• Loss of customers
• Litigation
• Merchant Account Revoke

Being PCI Compliance ensures that a merchant has met rigid PCI security standards. In addition, Visa mandates that any custom requires integrated credit card processing applications, it must be PA-DSS certified credit card processing applications by Oct 1, 2009. (See attached Visa Mandate). This so-called phase IV is intended to eliminate the continued use of vulnerable payment applications by acquirers, merchants and agents within the payment system.

Understanding this mandates, companies should make sure that their credit card processing software provider for their Dynamics ERP has been validated to be in compliant with PA-DSS. Using a certified credit card processing software will definitely help merchants to meet all security standards requirements and can achieve PCI compliance easier.

(Optional) Learn more about the importance of PCI compliance. Join us for a specialized webinar session where we will walk you through PCI’s payment application mandates and show how BroadPoint and their partner Nodus can help you to meet PCI security standards requirements.

The Evolution of Paper

Kim Owens, Account Manager, BroadPoint Technologies

Humans first started documenting information on stone. Egyptians then created paper made from the reed of the Nile River. Thousands of years later, we are evolving away from our dependency on paper because of the time and the costs involved.

We have seen this evolution before with the introduction of computers to the workplace. They allowed offices to operation efficiently by eliminating mistakes caused by human error and reducing overhead costs because of time intensive tasks. We can now print out reports on demand which once took hours to produce. So why are we still spending hours performing manual tasks when it comes to managing our paper? Wouldn’t it be easier to manage the documents essential to our business electronically?

According to the October 9^th, 2009 issue of The Economist, the paperless office is finally a reality. In order to understand the reason for the push to paperless, let’s look at some staggering statistics:

• We spend 20-30% of our time each day is spent filing, search and retrieving information
• It costs $20 to file a document, $120 to find a misfiled document and $220 to replace a lost document
• The average document is copied 19 times in its live
• It costs $25,000 to fill a four drawer cabinet
• 1 out of 10 documents is lost or misfiled

How much money is pushing paper costing your company and how much is the technology to correct it? Just like the introduction of computers, new affordable technology is also driving the paperless revolution. Storage space on servers is inexpensive compared to 30 years ago and the costs of scanners have dropped significantly in the past decade. For example, you can store 400,000 documents on $80 of disk space compare to $75,000 in 1973.

Document Management and Electronic Workflow software doesn’t have to be expensive either. PaperSave delivers a seamlessly integrated solution with Dynamics built on SharePoint starting at only $5,000 for the first 3 users. So manage the information that drives your business, not the paper. To learn more on PaperSave and how affordable document imaging and electronic workflow is for your company, register for a webcast on July 16^th or July 30^th.

Take advantage of Microsoft Dynamics GP SmartList Template Library

Microsoft has just released over 100 SmartList templates for Dynamics GP 10.0! You can save the hours of time required to create your own SmartLists by using one of these templates. From here they can be imported and modified with Dynamics GP SmartList Builder. The most overlooked out-of-the box functionality of Microsoft Dynamics GP – SmartList, can be an effective tool for extracting and reporting, and analyzing data about accounts, customers, employees, vendors, and more. Visit the template library today to take advantage of this great resource. Highlights from the library:

• Account Summary
• Account Transactions
• Bank Transactions
• Multidimensional Analysis
• Exchange Rates
• Cash Receipts
• Commissions
• Customer Addresses
• Customer Items
• Customer Period Summary
• Customer/Vendor
• Receivables Transactions
• Sales Line Items
• Sales Transactions
• Invoicing Lines
• Payables Distributions
• Payables Transactions
• Vendor Addresses

You will need access to CustomerSource to access the SmartList template library. If you are not familiar with CustomerSource it is a major benefit of the Enhancement Program, it’s a secure website that provides an incredible amount of valuable information, tools and resources that will help you be more productive. Please contact your Account Manger to arrange a personalized tour, if you don't know how to access CustomerSource contact: Nadia in DC Metro area, Tunesia in Virginia, or Kim in North Carolina.