In early 2000 we had a privilege to help one of our customers with some of the technical needs in QAD ERP. The company was relatively small and did not have much business to start with. So their requests were quite simple and standard QAD functionality could serve them quite well.
Then their business started to grow rapidly and so ERP data volume. The increased workload to office personnel reached the point when they could hardly keep up. Their management decision was to hire slow, but to reasonably invest into process automation, increasing system scalability this way. Their team would want to do more with less.
The company started to come up with all kinds of automation requests and most of the time they were very demanding. Particularly, they wanted to minimize manual user input for their QAD users. They wanted also to limit decision making, and simplify processes as much as possible. This strategy leaves slim to none chance for costly user errors and overtime would compound into great returns.
However it was not obvious to us in the beginning how to address their requests. Generally, the ultimate goal was clear, but what about technology? It was challenging back then. In addition to simplicity and security demands, the new tool(s) should be also be portable and easily upgradable to next versions of QAD.
We had experimenting with all kinds of technologies, until the ultimate answer came from financial group. The big majority of financial business folks use MS Excel in daily work. Particularly QAD financial users would prepare journal entries in Excel first and then they use the Excel form, a.k.a. GL transaction voucher, as a data source for making journal entry to QAD menu. Double-entry, isn’t it? And similar approach is taking place doing receivables, payable vouchers, etc…
That fact helped us with pointing to the right direction. What-if they could use MS Excel as an entry form and then submit the data massively to QAD system right from Excel? Excel has lots of nice features along with great visibility and ability to copy-paste large blocks of data. The later saves great deal of effort eliminating re-typing and so errors that might be caused by it.
And so we designed first Excel loader for Journal entries and added instant validation capabilities to it. So user would prepare a transaction templates in advance and copy-paste the entire entry to excel loader form. Then press Upload and program would validate hundreds of lines at once and point to errors if any. That was a big hit in QAD financials. Financial QAD users, who saw it in action would purchase the tool on the spot, because the tool would eliminate a lot of waste from their life.
Then we added download capabilities to the loaders. Combining data downloading with uploading made it possible to massively update QAD records in convenient Excel form. So you could manage 100’s or 1000’s of data within seconds. So from the user prospective, it’s no longer sequential traditional record update/ creation, but parallel or in bulk. Because you can copy-paste large blocks of data to Excel Loader and submit to QAD.
Then we made it possible to download QAD data, make changes and upload back as a new set of data. For example, you would download old price list (or GL budget, etc..), rename it and upload to QAD with the new name. Then set expiry date to the old one.
Then we added drill down capabilities to Excel loaders making them really handful for analysis purposes. For example, you would download GL account activities for a period and drill down into sub-ledger details. This way we are eliminating time consuming QAD menu navigation and reference typing. You would simply point the cursor to the required Excel range and drill-down function would present all the details you need to see. Saves financial controllers great deal of efforts.
Over the years we helped many companies with their needs utilizing this technology. We are grateful to all our customers, who helped and directed the development of new powerful tools, who came up to wonderful, very creative ideas and contributed to our success.
This posting lists the loaders we offer at the moment, many of which you can get as a free trial.
We want you to know that if you needs can not be addressed by these solutions, we still would be delighted to hear from you. Specifically, we want to hear your innovative ideas of solving your most pressing problems, which you can’t implement by yourself, due to various reasons. Do not hesitate to contact us. Maybe this will lead to another win-win success story…
Learn more about Data Loaders.
Questions, concerns, suggestions or want a free trial? Contact us.
