Case Studies *Success Stories As you may know, APOS Systems is focused on working with customers to fulfill their information requirements through implementation of Enterprise Reporting and Business Intelligence solutions. Below is a condensed version of the case study of one such customer scenario. Please contact us to discuss the impact such a solution could have on the effectiveness and profitability of your organization.

J&L Fiber Services, Wisconsin, USA “Deciding which code to use to get their reports started to become a problem with many of our users. They had to search to get these codes. And when we lost a long term employee who maintained the codes for the parameter values, it made it extremely difficult and time-consuming for the IT department to provide our users with the crucial reports that they needed.” . . . Jeff Kortsch, Programmer/Analyst.

"Without doubt, Dynamic Parameters has helped us save time, improve productivity and reduce system administration effort.”

. . . Jeff Kortsch, Programmer/Analyst

Tools Used:

Dynamic Parameters (with Crystal Enterprise 9.0)

Background: J&L Fiber Services Inc. is a world leader in developing advanced alloys and innovative products for the pulp and paper industry. Its refiner plate products, for example, are used to separate wood fiber from other components in the paper pulp-making process. With approximately 300 people, J&L Fiber also has a manufacturing plant in Massachusetts and delivers a number of services for the paper and pulp industries worldwide.

Business Issue:

• Make it easier for different users to get critical, up-to-date product and customer information

Reports are crucial to J&L Fiber Services, because they provided detailed information about region, territory, product family, surface finish, financial details, trend analysis, and so on - information crucial to the business. When planning employees needed information on the sales potential for refiner plate replacements, they would select customer codes from a pick list and retrieve reports detailing information that allowed them to project potential sales for a component. “Deciding which code to use to get their reports started to become a problem with many of our users. They had to search to get these codes. And when we lost a long term employee who maintained the codes for the parameter values, it made it extremely difficult and time-consuming for the IT department to provide our users with the crucial reports that they needed,” said Mr. Kortsch.

Solution:

• Use the APOS Dynamic Parameters Add-In Software tool

The APOS Dynamic Parameter’s tool solved two problems. First, users do not have to search for the codes. Second, the values for parameters (pick lists) can now be dynamic, retrieved from a data source. This drops the need to modify static pick lists in a report and save it back in Crystal Enterprise.

Results:

• Improved user productivity

• Reduced IT administration effort and time

Reports are used in all areas of J&L Fiber’s business: finance, sales, production control, manufacturing, customer service, and IT. Users now spend less time searching for codes and more time analyzing the reports they get. In addition, the need to constantly update parameter pick lists in Crystal Enterprise can be a daunting task. “The APOS tool is easy to administer and to integrate. It has helped us focus on report publishing by knowing that we can populate parameter pick lists as needed using Dynamic Parameters”, emphasized Mr. Kortsch.

To read the full J&L Fiber Services Case Study or view others, visit here.

Crystal Enterprise Live Office *New

Add live data to Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel, Word, and Outlook documents with Live Office. Share them across your business with Crystal Enterprise and your corporate portal. Instant refreshing puts the most accurate, up-to-date data at your fingertips for more confident decisions.

Work with data inside Microsoft Office. Flexible wizards and business-optimized views make data selection easy. Have confidence in your data. Embed the latest, most valid data from Crystal Enterprise or existing Crystal Reports and control security access. Maintain and share live documents. Instantly update data without disturbing formatting or calculations. Plus, publish to Crystal Enterprise and deploy within corporate portals including Microsoft SharePoint. For a pdf overview of this exciting new capability, download here.

Business Objects Annual User Conference *User Event of the Year

Business Objects Data Integrator Presentation *ETL Tool

Find out more about Data Integrator 6.5, a comprehensive, high-performance ETL tool from Business Objects that meets the complex data integration requirements of your most demanding data warehousing projects.

Attend the online presentation time shown below, or contact us to arrange a presentation specifically for you and your company associates . . .

1:00 PM EST

To register for this public session, please visit here

Toronto Crystal/Business Objects Users Group *Meet and Share with Other Users

APOS proudly supports the Toronto Crystal/Business Objects Users Group. Including users from Ontario, Canada, this users group allows you to learn from other users and share experiences. We'd love to see you at the next meeting . . .

On-Line Solutions Presentations *Web Demos

Find out more about the Enterprise Reporting and Business Intelligence solutions from Business Objects by attending one of the online presentation times shown below, or contact us to arrange a presentation specifically for you and your company associates . . .

3:00 PM EST

August 10, 2004

12:00 noon EST

August 17, 2004

1:00 PM EST