Consulting

AppVine implements and supports end-to-end solutions to the Office of Finance. Our professional services team offers assistance in every phase of the application lifecycle: implementation, maintenance, enhancements and upgrades. AppVine follows a structured implementation methodology, combined with subject matter expertise and technical competency.


Our Approach

Discovery

For an implementation of any system to be successful, the goals of your organization need to be understood. AppVine works with you and your users to understand the challenges with your current processes, and what you want to achieve. This approach ensures the solution will be designed to meet the needs of your organization - from the perspective of immediate needs, as well as anticipation of future growth.

Planning

After the Discovery session, the detailed planning and design of the solution can take place. This involves translating business requirements and expected outcomes into technical requirements - in the form of project plans, requirements documents, milestones and appropriate use cases for testing purposes. These critical documents are used during the project to manage resources, as well as mitigate risks to timeline and cost.

Execution

When the Planning phase is completed, the Execution phase of the project can begin. The project plan and other documents created previously allow for tasks to be divided among team members, as well as provide a mechanism to track the progress of the project. During the Execution phase, there are defined milestones in order to update users and other project stakeholders with the appropriate level of information.

Validation

To ensure a successful rollout, a solution must be validated. The Validation phase ensures that any issues are identified prior to go-live, so users will get the best possible experience using the system. Validation also serves as confirmation from the project stakeholders that the system is complete based on the requirements identified in the Discovery and Planning phases.

Deployment

AppVine treats the Deployment of a solution to production as a key milestone during the implementation process - it is critical to ensure the system users will be interacting with is properly deployed. A system is validated when it meets the established milestones and criteria identified in the Discovery and Planning phases, and passes the organization's quality assurance testing.

Post-Implementation Support

All systems have some degree of maintenance and support to keep them functioning at an optimal level. Service packs, patches, upgrades and additional functionality are some of the items that need to be incorporated into the system's management plan. AppVine offers a comprehensive set of post-implementation support options for customers who have critical systems that must be running at peak efficiency.


Product Expertise

Cognos FSR

Cognos FSR is the leading external reporting & XBRL solution in the marketplace. AppVine is one of the only IBM Partners with experience in deploying Cognos FSR. AppVine's Cognos FSR Consultants have successfully implemented this product to both mid-market and large enterprises for:

  • External Reporting
  • Management Reporting & Board Books
  • Investor Relations
  • XBRL

Our depth of experience and extensive proven practices help customers maximize their software investment and mitigate risks. Our Cognos FSR consultants team up with customers to help assure success throughout the project lifecycle, from project planning to post implementation support.

Cognos TM1

AppVine's Cognos TM1 consulting team has designed, developed, and implemented Cognos TM1 systems and applications in the critical areas of financial planning, budgeting, forecasting, modeling & reporting.

Cognos TM1 services offered by AppVine include:

  • Dimensional design
  • Data Loading
  • Business Rule definition
  • Optimization / tuning
  • Workflow
  • TM1 Front-end design (TM1 Perspectives, TM1 Web, TM1 Contributor)
  • Automation

Whether you're looking for the design and implementation of a new TM1 system to increase your analytical and reporting capabilities, improve your planning and forecasting strategy, or have an existing application that is in need of skilled maintenance and/or enhancement, AppVine's expertise and demonstrated ability to produce solutions makes us extremely well-qualified to handle any and all of your Cognos TM1 needs.

Cognos Express

AppVine offers implementation services for Cognos Express - IBM's CPM & BI solution aimed primarily at midsized organizations. Cognos Express combines business intelligence, reporting, budgeting, planning, forecasting and analytics into a single integrated solution. Cognos Express is a great fit for companies requiring a turnkey, small footprint deployment.

Cognos Express services offered by AppVine include:

  • Requirements analysis and recommendations
  • Application design
  • Installation and configuration
  • Testing and deployment
  • Training

Clarity 6x/7x

Many organizations have made significant investments in Clarity over the past 10 years - for budgeting, planning, forecasting and consolidation solutions. AppVine provides implementation services to customers using Clarity 6x/7x, including:

  • Template / Report development & enhancement
  • Deployment reviews
  • Upgrades/migrations
  • Automation

AppVine also provides services to support the Hyperion Essbase and Microsoft Analysis Services OLAP platforms deployed with Clarity, including:

  • Dimensional design
  • Data loading
  • Calculation Scripting / MDX
  • Optimization / tuning
  • Automation
  • Upgrades

AppVine CrossOver®

From our experience and exposure in implementing the Cognos FSR platform to the Office of Finance, we discovered that many organizations are relying on disconnected spreadsheets as primary sources of data.

AppVine CrossOver is an integration solution developed by AppVine to enable organizations using Cognos FSR to more easily integrate external systems with FSR's Account Hierarchy functionality. Using Account Hierarchy to manage FSR source data has many advantages:

  • Access to advanced FSR functionality such as automated rounding and auditable top-side journal entries
  • Centralization of data sources in one area
  • Reduction in error-prone manual entry into Excel and Word objects
  • Automated update of data values in reports, controllable by FSR workflow