CUSTOMER CASE STUDY SAP

Barrette Combines Power of GL Wand and Reports Wand to Build Advanced Reports from Range of SAP Modules

“Our monthly consolidation process took half a day using Access and Excel, but with GL Wand it takes about three minutes to retrieve all the information, meaning we’re saving a half day’s effort with just this one report.” - Yann Pourchasse,

Financial Analyst, Barrette

GL Wand for SAP shown

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY

As SAP users since 2003, Les Entreprises Barrette (Barrette) had used a variety of time-consuming methods to get ERP financial and other data into Microsoft Excel for formatting and creating reports. After an exhaustive search for reporting alternatives, Barrette installed two Excel-based tools from Excel4apps that provide drillable access to live SAP data: GL Wand for reporting from SAP Financials and Reports Wand for reporting from a range of SAP modules.

After just a few months of using GL Wand, the process to feed the consolidated financial statements takes just three minutes instead of a half day. Reports Wand is used to create comprehensive reports that combine SAP Financials & Controlling, Materials & Manufacturing, and Production Planning data, and the company is working on advanced reports that link GL Wand and Reports Wand for an even more nuanced look at SAP information.

Les Entreprises Barrette (Barrette) is a producer of wood, vinyl, and aluminum fencing and exterior

products for retail outlets like Home Depot and Lowe’s. Headquartered in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, the company employs 3,000 and is privately owned and operated by the third generation of the Barrette family.

After installing SAP in 2003, Barrette used various methods to extract data from the ERP system and create financial reports. These methods were time consuming and the data inevitably ended up in Excel for formatting and presentation, leading the company to consider alternative reporting tools that could expedite reporting processes. After a comprehensive search and product evaluation, Barrette chose GL Wand and Reports Wand from Excel4apps, both of which provide access to live SAP data via Excel. By combining the strengths of these two systems, users can now easily create sophisticated financial reports.

Looking for Alternatives to Lengthy ProcessesPrior to exploring reporting alternatives, Barrette obtained and transferred SAP data to Excel in several ways. For some reports, data was extracted from the SAP ECC 600 system and a retrieve function was used to populate reports in Excel. For more comprehensive reports, SAP BusinessObjects was used to get data, after which it was exported to Excel. To build financial statements for shareholders, data was extracted from SAP, sent to Microsoft Access, and then retrieved from Access via an SQL link into Excel. Not only were these methods inefficient, they left the finance team dependent on expert skill sets.

“To create reports, you had to understand exactly how Access functions, and our team’s Access expert was sometimes occupied with other tasks,” said

Yann Pourchasse, Financial Analyst at Barrette. “Also, if our expert wasn’t in the office, we could not complete our consolidation process.”

Barrette began assessing reporting alternatives. In 2015, the company narrowed its selection to Excel spreadsheet-based products from two contending vendors, one of which was Excel4apps. During the comprehensive assessment, Yann Pourchasse and finance

www.excel4apps.com/sap

Exploring the Potential of Reports WandAs with GL Wand, Reports Wand was installed in May 2015. One of its initial uses has been to create management reports that combine FICO data with data from other SAP modules. For example, Reports Wand can obtain information like quantities from Materials & Manufacturing (MM) and production hours from the Production Planning (PP) modules and combine it with FICO data for a comprehensive report. For now, this is accomplished by having IT create queries using SAP’s SQL Quickviewer (SQVI) for insertion in the appropriate Reports Wand cell.

Barrette is also using Reports Wand to place SAP transaction codes directly into Excel. If, for example, Yann Pourchasse wishes to review accruals at month’s end without drilling into the postings, Reports Wand can directly retrieve the transaction. This was formerly a cut-and-paste process.

With the success of these early applications of Reports Wand, Pourchasse anticipates “many more applications” for the new tool.

Barrette produces wood, vinyl, and aluminum fencing and exterior products.

The company implemented SAP in 2003.

GL Wand is used by Barrette for reporting from SAP Financials, while Reports Wand is used for reports from a range of SAP modules.

The company estimates that Reports Wand may save up to 20 hours of work per month.

Barrette is developing Reports Wand queries that are inserted into GL Wand to create comprehensive reports in one spreadsheet.

team members exhaustively scored the attributes of products from both vendors in a decision matrix. The team ultimately selected two Excel4apps products: GL Wand for reporting from SAP Financials, and Reports Wand for reporting from a range of SAP modules. Both tools are Excel-based and feature drillable access to live SAP data.

“The vendors we assessed were close in terms of obtaining the information we needed, but the Excel4apps tools required less work to retrieve the SAP data,” described Yann Pourchasse. “The Excel4apps tools were also more user friendly and easier to implement than the other vendor’s, which required more work in the query design area. And, the Excel4apps tools are so intuitive that even those who aren’t Excel super users would have a smooth learning curve.”

Accelerating Consolidation with GL WandBarrette installed GL Wand in May 2015 and quickly began converting all month end queries from previous reporting applications to the new software. The company purchased 19 licenses, and the benefits of using GL Wand to access SAP Finance and Controlling (FICO) modules quickly became apparent.

“Our monthly consolidation process took half a day using Access and Excel, but with GL Wand it takes about three minutes to retrieve all the information, meaning we’re saving a half day’s effort with just this one report,” said Yann Pourchasse. “Also, the process is much more transparent with GL Wand and we don’t rely on our Access expert. We expect even more benefits as more reports are converted.”

In addition, training and user acceptance for GL Wand have gone smoothly as expected. An initial round of training with Excel4apps was completed, with good results.

“GL Wand has proven easy for users – even for those who aren’t Excel experts – because its functions mimic those of Excel,” Yann Pourchasse said. “We’ve given users business-case exercises to practice with until they hit their limit and need to ask specific questions. They’re responding well to the tool.”

“ With all applications, we think we could save 20 hours or more of work monthly with Reports Wand.”

- Yann Pourchasse, Financial Analyst, Barrette

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“ Excel4apps has a good understanding of our needs, and they are both very proactive and very responsive.”

- Yann Pourchasse, Financial Analyst, Barrette

“GL Wand is very straightforward, but we are just touching the tip of the iceberg with Reports Wand’s capabilities,” described Yann Pourchasse. “We are looking into building Day Sales Outstanding and cash flow analysis with the tool, and we’re working on whether the best route is via transaction code or query. With all applications, we think we could save 20 hours or more of work monthly with Reports Wand.”

Tapping into Customer Support to Push ResultsStarting with the trial phase for GL Wand and Reports Wand, customer service and technical support has been “very impressive,” said Yann Pourchasse. Barrette has been assisted in fully exploring product capabilities by Mark Pockl, SAP Solutions Specialist at Excel4apps, as well as additional Excel4apps team members, including Steven Greenwood, Reports Wand Developer; Grant Peterson, SAP Product Manager; and Nathalie Rierson, Senior Territory Manager.

“Excel4apps has a good understanding of our needs, and they are both very proactive and very responsive,” Yann Pourchasse said. “Starting with the trial phase, Excel4apps has made things go very smoothly.”

Input from the Excel4apps team will be extremely important going forward as Barrette explores advanced applications and functionality that combine GL Wand with Reports Wand.

“We always push hard in order to get results, and

the Excel4apps team is working closely with us as we delve deeper into Reports Wand in particular,” said Yann Pourchasse.

Combining the Power of GL Wand and Reports WandIn the future, Barrette plans to exploit the combined capabilities of GL Wand and Reports Wand. Users can insert a Reports Wand formula into a GL Wand drilldown layout, allowing them to add fields outside of the FICO modules of SAP so that all information is available in one spreadsheet. Also, from a Reports Wand report, users can use the GL Wand Get Object Description function to pull in descriptive text for certain fields, which enhances a Reports Wand report where text fields aren’t available in the SAP query or SAP transaction code report.

Another advanced combination of GL Wand and Reports Wand was actually discovered by Yann Pourchasse. In a GL Wand report, users can imbed a Reports Wand Insert Query function statement, giving them drilldown capability into an existing SAP query from a GL Wand report.

“We are trialing the development of queries by IT for Reports Wand that can also be inserted in GL Wand with a type of Get Balance function, which lets us retrieve information directly to the GL Wand report,” said Yann Pourchasse. “This lets us get all of the required information into one spreadsheet.”