Financial Systems and Business Intelligence
An Accountants views on Financial Systems and the Microsoft BI that goes along with them.
Tuesday 2 October 2012
IOS Printing
A bit of searching around and testing and the solution is an application from Netputing called HandyPrint. You download it and use it for 14 days before it requires an activation key which can be obtained by donating via PayPal.
Once installed it appears in System Preferences under "Other" and automatically picks up the printer attached to the iMac. Now I can print from any IOS device in the house directly to the printer.
- Paul Steynberg
Sunday 4 September 2011
Correlate
One has to have a Google login in order to access the following site: http://www.google.com/trends/correlate but once in it is quite easy to navigate. One is able to trend web search data the Google has been collecting for many years. You can draw a line graph and the software will then match that profile to the closest profile it can find. One can also type in a web search string and it then finds the closest trend to that. For example, being in the Insurance industry, I typed in "Motor Vehicle Accidents" and the top 4 returned search trends are "vehicle accidents" (duh), "city planning", "questionnaires" and "battered women". The correlation between MVA's and battered women is strong (0.8744). I guess the big question is why? One is also able to upload a data file of time stamped data in order to find the closest correlation.
I guess one just needs to be mindful of the fact that these trends are not actual events but trends of search patterns. I would be interested in hearing from anybody who has used this technology in order to bring real life business use cases to life.
- Paul Steynberg
Tuesday 23 August 2011
Controlled Use of Excel for BI
In most Financial Institutions the use of Excel is so embedded that any project to curb this is almost doomed to failure from the start.
This blog is an attempt to elicit discussions and to explore the appetite to address some of the inherent risks with Excel spreadsheets and to see how one can deliver supportable MI using Excel. It should be stressed that this proposal should not be seen as a replacement for strategic tools or processes.
The use of Excel comes with a multitude of pros and cons. In days past the downsides were considered to be worth the trade-off against the benefits but his is starting to change with the introduction of more stringent governance via legislation such as Solvency II, Basel II and SOX.
2.1. Benefits
• The skills base for Excel is large and practically every person within a company will be familiar with it.
• Excel is relatively cheap and most users in an organization will have it.
2.2. Risks
• Any VBA code or macros are specific to the workbook and are not held in a central repository to be reused. This raises concerns about version and change control over the code.
3. Risk Mitigation
In order to mitigate the risks outlined above one could put the following processes in place. Refer to Annexure A for the risk mitigation matrix.
In addition to the new or changed processes, technology can be used to mitigate some of the risks. Based on the risk matrix in Annexure B, a combination of Excel Services 2010 with PowerPivot and Prodiance, in theory could mitigate all the identified risks.
4. Excel Services
Excel Services is the Excel engine delivered through Sharepoint and has the following key advantages:
Excel services does have some disadvantages listed below:
5. PowerPivot
PowerPivot is an Excel add-in which has been developed by the Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services Team and uses in-memory column compression technology branded as Vertipaq. This technology is very similar to that used by such market leaders as Qlikview. PowerPivot allows you to bring in large data sets into Excel and even join these sets to each other and then use the resulting data to report off. It is very efficient at consuming large amounts of data and when used in x64 bit mode with large amounts of memory is quite astonishing in its response.
PowerPivot also extends to Sharepoint and when combined with Excel Services in Sharepoint the uses and power suddenly start to become apparent.
6. Prodiance
In one of my blogs a while back I mentioned 4 companies that provide Excel Spreadsheet Control Software. We ultimately decided to back Prodiance as our choice, a decision that has now been ratified by Microsoft.
Up until 7th June 2011, Prodiance was an independent company specializing in risk and control software for Excel. It has now been purchased by Microsoft and is a wholly owned subsidiary. With Microsoft now purchasing the company more integration with the Office suite and Sharepoint is anticipated.
7. Conclusion
In order to achieve the controlled use of Excel within an organization you will need to go through a change in technology, process and culture. I hope this blog has provided some readers with a spark for debate.
Appendix B
Wednesday 27 July 2011
New Features in SQL Server Code-name Denali - CTP3
- Columnstore Indexes
- Vector-based query execution
- Paul Steynberg
Monday 25 July 2011
SQL Server Project "Crescent" Demo
It sounds like exciting stuff and certainly plugs some gaps in the Microsoft stack.
- Paul Steynberg
Saturday 18 June 2011
Paperless Home
The solution I am using is for the Mac so if you are PC based you may need to do some more research. My requirements were quite simple. The process of scanning should be effortless and the software should be easy to use. I started looking at Evernote but did not like the idea of all my documents being stored in the cloud, especially bank statements, copies of passports, certificates, mortgage statements etc. Evernote is free as a download but in order to get the most out of it you are required to sign up with them on a monthly or annual basis. It is not expensive, $5 per month or $45 per annum and is very handy for ensuring your documents are held in offsite storage for backups. The application is great but the security issue tipped the scales for me.
After a lot of research and testing out various products I finally decided on DevonThink. Similar concepts to Evernote but a once off fee ($49.99) for the product and you store the documents locally in a database. This would mean that I would have to make sure that I am backed up but the Mac does this automatically through Time Machine.
DevonThink is easy to use comes with some great features such as side bar tray to which you can just drag documents from anywhere and an add-in to Safari that allows you to capture the open web page directly.
I then turned by attention to document scanners and opted for the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300. This great little scanner (280mm long and 100mm wide) allows you to scan up to 10 pages at a time and can do either 1 side or both sides of the document. The other great feature I found is the ability to set up profiles for scanning which then call DevonThink and drop the document into the inbox for categorisation. It also does its own OCR and orientates the pages based on character recognition. Once the document is in DevonThink you can then search within the scanned documents for key words.
Now when the post arrives or we get back from shopping we just put the invoices/documents through the scanner with one touch of the button and then categorise them later in DevonThink when we have some quiet time. In the mean time all those documents can be destroyed and no more filing.
- Paul Steynberg
Thursday 25 February 2010
iXBRL - LinkedIn Group
I recently attended a product sponsored session on iXBRL and HMRC/Companies House submissions for the UK. I will put together an updated paper on new developments this week but would like to just highlight that I have created a group on LinkedIn called "iXBRL in the UK". This group is specifically designed to address issues that companies are having with the submission of accounts in the format and to discuss not only the process being followed to comply but also a forum to discuss any software solutions that start to make themselves available. Just search for it on LinkedIn and I look forward to any contributions.
- Paul Steynberg
Tuesday 16 February 2010
PowerPivot Storage
In order to illustrate the concept take an Excel (or Word) 2007/2010 file and just to be safe make a copy of it. Then change the file extension from XLSX to ZIP and then open in Winzip. Shock and horror we find a whole bunch of files (mostly XML) in various directory structures. This was done in order to comply with Office Open XML Format. Read all about it here.
Back to the original question about how the PowerPivot Data is stored. It is stored in a directory called xl\customData with the extension DATA within the Excel (zip) file. Here is a bit more on how the data interacts with your memory.
- Paul Steynberg
Monday 1 February 2010
PowerPivot
Monday 12 October 2009
iXBRL - Don't Panic
Introduction
Companies in the UK will have to submit financials to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) via an online process within the next 2 years. I had a session with Ernst & Young about the language to be used called XBRL. I have also attended a workshop at HMRC titled “Company Tax Returns and Online Filing”. This is a summary of my findings and my personal views on the impact.
Overview of XBRL
XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language. It is one of a family of "XML" languages which is becoming a standard means of communicating information between businesses and on the internet.
Impact
- CT600 – Currently can be submitted via XML and will not change.
- Accounts – Must be submitted online in iXBRL format.
- Tax Computations – Must be submitted online in iXBRL format.
4 Taxonomies will be supported by HMRC but for the first 2 years of implementation only a limited subset of each taxonomy will be required.
Taxonomy | Full Tag Set | Limited Tag Set |
UK GAAP | 4375 | 1182 |
UK IFRS | 3400 | <1600 |
UK Common Data | 900 | 900 |
CT Computational | 4548 | 1350 |
One is not restricted to the limited tag set but you are only required to at least submit these for the first 2 years. Thereafter the full tag set will be required.
The current versions of the taxonomies can be downloaded from this website.( http://www.xbrl.org/uk/Taxonomies/)
The Companies House and HMRC issued a joint statement on 1st September 2009 stating that they are working together and that both their filing services are being aligned so that a single point of filing can be used.
As with any technology solution we will find many ways of solving this challenge ranging from ERP Supplier based solutions right through to stand-alone file converters. Unfortunately iXBRL is not yet widely used so I have not yet managed to find anything worth taking a look at yet. HMRC is busy reviewing a number of products and certifying them but when pushed they did not want to yield any names or costs just in case they were seen to favour one supplier over another. They did assure us that a number of suppliers would be ready for market in Q1 of 2010.
Here is a list of companies who I believe are working on a solution. Do not take this as gospel, just through my googling.
Awareness of XBRL and its impact is at an acceptable level within the UK market. Based on the Q&A session with HMRC the first 2 years are really going to be a phased/teething process and companies will not be penalised or prosecuted if they don’t get it quite right. We also do not have any products to work with as they are still being developed.
I would suggest a measured approach to the online filing which starts with Finance obtaining the taxonomies that they intend to use for filing and to start manually mapping the figures across from the financials. This in my opinion is going to be the largest portion of the work required. A deadline of the mapping tables by end Q2 2010 should be achievable.
Get your IT Department to keep tabs on the development of the various alternatives in the software space and then organize demonstrations and evaluations as and when possible. I estimate that we should be able to find something by Q2 2010. Based on all the input I would at this point suggest that we look to purchasing an Office Add-In that will allow you to continue with our current method of producing the financials and thus reduce impact on the business.
Works Cited
1. XBRL International. What is XBRL. [Online] [Cited: October 9, 2009.] http://www.xbrl.org/WhatIsXBRL/.
- Paul Steynberg