Solutions used: APOS PUBLISHER
Product Components Used: AddressBook Gateway, APOS Professional Services, Bursting Manager, Instance Manager
Background:
Christian Children’s Fund works in 34 countries, assisting more than 7.6 million children and families regardless of race, creed or gender. CCF addresses children’s health, nutritional and educational needs, including water and sanitation development and emergency relief.
Challenge:
Christian Children’s Fund was looking for a partner with strong technical depth to assist them with the migration from a Seagate Info environment to the updated Business Objects platform. After investigation of several organizations, CCF visited the APOS Systems web site. "It was clear that APOS was offering the type of services that we were looking for to help us accomplish our Business Intelligence goals," said Linda Abrams, Sr. Programmer
Various technical challenges existed for this major platform migration. Through several follow up conversations with Linda Abrams and the APOS technical team, CCF was able to assess if they were heading in the right direction, and what limitations they may face in their migration. With this background and interaction, CCF was confident that APOS Systems was the organization that they wanted to partner with.
"CCF was looking for a partner not another vendor…We were looking for an organization that was not going to disappear after they provided their initial assistance. We insist on dealing with people that we can turn to and are willing to share their expertise. We were very impressed with the initial discussions with the APOS consultant who discussed his experience and how it applied to our situation. APOS was quickly able to determine CCF’s requirements and bring the right people to the table," stated John Watts, Director of MIS.
Solution:
CCF proceeded with APOS to begin the migration process. It was decided to move the environment to the Enterprise 10 platform from Business Objects. APOS Professional Services were utilized for CCF’s migration. "The APOS consultant was extremely competent and easy to work with. He gave us confidence that the implementation plan would be a success. He really simplified the product and the process for us to work through," said Linda.
The migration process was successful for CCF, and the migration has provided them with a solution that is easy to use and has enhanced many CCF processes. They have significantly reduced the amount of report printing required which has reduced paper use. There is no longer a need for report distribution and the process of managing and maintaining report distribution lists. Authorized personnel have easy access to view the reports they need to see when they want to see them. It has also dramatically reduced the number of report designer workstations required.
APOS Support has provided CCF with very impressive service. CCF was dealing with a Global Password change issue; they contacted APOS Support for a modification to the APOS tool. The support team very quickly worked on it and put out a new release with amazing turn around time. "APOS really meet the needs of their customers and know how to get things done," stated John.
CCF uses the APOS Instance Manager tool to monitor system performance. It enables quick and easy identification of the number of reports currently running, completed successfully, failed or pending. It identifies the name of the report and its location, how long the report took to run, and reason for failure. Groups of reports can be held, released, deleted or rescheduled in bulk.
CCF utilizes the APOS Object Manager tool which allows them to simply and easily migrate reports through their staging environments through an easy to use wizard driven approach.
The APOS AddressBook Gateway tool provides users the ability to select email addresses from a drop down list saving them time when scheduling while reducing the number of reports scheduled with inaccurate email addresses.
The APOS Bursting Manager tool enables CCF to burst, distribute and print reports. It allows CCF to burst one large report instance into many small ones, or generate many small instances from one report.
Why APOS?
CCF chose APOS Systems as their Business Intelligence Partner because it was clear that they were offering exactly what CCF required for a successful project. APOS systems encompassed the technical depth and experience to guarantee a successful migration. As John expressed, "Our relationship with APOS is one we value due to their strong depth of expertise. They represent exceptional value for the money."
APOS Systems Inc. is an SAP BusinessObjects software solution provider in the SAP PartnerEdge program. Named SAP BusinessObjects Technology Partner of the Year for the past three years, APOS has been a Crystal partner since 1996. APOS has acknowledged a key SAP BusinessObjects XI and Crystal Enterprise strength - its open architecture - and has designed and developed a variety of add-on solutions that offer customers additional capabilities within the SAP BusinessObjects XI infrastructure.
For more information:
Allan Pym, VP Sales and Chief Operating Officer
519.666.2020 or apym@apos.com