JOIN INFORTE AT SAPPHIRE & ASUG 2007

Join Inforte’s SAP BI experts at SAPPHIRE ’07 and the 2007 ASUG Annual Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, April 22-25. SAPPHIRE is the premier SAP-hosted business and technology event, designed to introduce new initiatives, solutions, products and services to attendees. The ASUG Annual Conference features more than 600 educational sessions, and is dedicated to delivering expert insight in an open, collaborative forum.

As part of this unique event, SAPPHIRE and the 2007 ASUG Annual Conference will not only share a venue and schedule, but an opportunity for attendees to view presentations from key members of Inforte’s SAP BI practice. Sessions include:

How Miller Achieved Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) Compliance and Automation Using BW-BPS

Speaker: Hari Srinivasan
Date: April 25, 2007
Time: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EST

Description: Utilizing BW-BPS, Miller was able to create a secure, auditable, production application for market area personnel to maintain and track expense budgets (checkbooks) and post monthly accrual information that fully complies with the SOX requirements. A front-end Web interface solution was built to support the maintenance of the checkbooks, using the planning application and reporting technology which are deployed from the portal. Manual consolidation from Excel spreadsheets and manual posting of accrual entries were substituted with an approval process in the planning application and an automated process for posting accrual journal entries. As a result, the data is now secure, consolidated and available on demand for planning and reporting.

Additional benefits from the deployment of this application include: improved corporate governance and the quality of information; enhanced tracking of internal order budgets and accurate reporting of accruals for all market area spending; eliminated the maintenance of spreadsheets related to this application; increased efficiency by reducing time to manage the checkbooks; improved control on accrual posting process by the segregation of roles that fulfill the SOX requirements; and used a single integrated solution with SAP-ECC for using internal orders and cost elements and the posting of accrual journal entries.

Developing A Financial Consolidation Capability Using ECC, BCS, NW045 and the DW

Description: This approach is designed to incorporate both SAP ECC and the BCS functionality in SAP SEM to develop the consolidated official book and records for the enterprise. A special issue instigated a requirement to keep certain legal entity transactions out of SAP ECC. Therefore, a BPS system was developed to generate a series of special legal entity transactions that were traceable, auditable, and SOX compliant. The system was part of a full scale implementation of SAP ECC using SAP NetWeaver 2004.The newest features of BCS and SAP NetWeaver BI were also employed. This led to some interesting issues and opportunities for the finance and data warehouse teams; both had to learn each other's worlds and learn to compromise and work together.

Three things attendees will learn:

1. The "gotchas" and lessons learned in implementing the newest features of BCS, like load from data stream and virtual characteristics; these features can have an interesting impact on the DW environment.
2. Integration strategies for BCS and BPS when BPS is used as a processing engine for financials.
3. How to use the new general ledger in ECC for profit center accounting capabilities and parallel valuations.

SEMS BPS, ECC and BW to Improve Corporate Governance and Quality for Sarbanes Oxley (SOX)

Description: Edmund and David will discuss various ways to achieve Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and improve on corporate governance, quality, availability, reliability and control of financial and shareholder value information through SAP BI-based planning applications. Two case-study examples will illustrate how standardized planning processes are growing to be of paramount importance to financial control and SOX compliance:

• A "checkbook" Excel-based application to track budgets and capture accruals for all market area spending. The new application will provide secure auditable data for market area personnel to maintain monthly accrual information in order to support SOX compliance.
• An innovation portfolio valuation tool. This composite analytic application is a web-based scenario-planning tool that employs preference studies and predictive analytics to forecast the valuation impact innovation projects will have on an enterprise.

Three things attendees will learn:

1. Improving on corporate governance, financial control and quality of shareholder value information using SAP BI-based planning as a tool for addressing Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.
2. Eliminating and reducing spreadsheet maintenance in order to increase efficiency, quality, accuracy and timeliness with a central and standardized tool.
3. Why traditional financial control systems will not be sufficient to meet the growing legislative demands embodied by SOX and how next-generation planning solutions can plug the gap.