RE: Where would you start?

Rick,

It may be you are looking at job security, perceived data security, and
CYA issues.  I'd start by doing a work flow diagram of your existing
process.  You'd be surprised at what jumps out at you.  Then I'd start
asking questions and looking for ways to streamline the process.  One
thing that stands out in the process you describe is the paper trail
generated by both sides.  Says to me some form of change control
mechanism to satisfy both sides needs to be part of the solution.

I'd also look at the ROI of my proposed solutions.  If I'm going to a
more computerized solution SSL or VPN will probably play into the mix.
Will you need more equipment, personnel, etc. to implement the solution?
And so on.

-----Original Message-----
From: rick.baird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rick.baird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 5:08 AM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Where would you start?


Hey all,

We've got a nightmare of a manual process that we'd like to maybe
improve -
automate - web enable - streamline, and I thought I'd throw it out to
the
brain trust for ideas.   I'm not looking for a design, but if you were
going to build such a beast, what tools or combination of tools would
you
start with?

This is what we're doing now (please, no laughing ;)

Fiscal period budget and actual GL figures for every restaurant (more
than
300) are manually down loaded from iseries packaged DB2 accounting
database
into excel spreadsheets, massaged to look nice and then sent to the
store's
district managers (around 40).  The DstMs fax the spreadsheets to the
stores, and store GMs write budget figures on the paper and fax back to
the
DstMs.
The DstMs changes, approves or disaproves the figures, faxes them back
to
the GMs for FYI, then key the numbers into the spread sheet.
They are then emailed to the Div Managers (around 15 DivMs ) for
approval/rejection, and ultimately emailed back to corporate accounting,
where they are loaded one by one into an MS Access db, reformatted to
look
like the accounting package's 'external feed' file, uploaded to the 400
and
fed back into the G/L system.

This happens twice a year.  Ugly huh?

We use Notes/Domino corporate wide for email - the restaurants use only
the
iNotes web client.  The store PCs are bare bones - just the software
needed
to run the POS software and satellite links to our network - with
browser
access to a few small html, Java, perl, RPG-CGI and Domino apps.   They
don't have MSOffice.  All involved parties have Notes identities.

I guess my biggest questions come in how to deploy the data for intense
data entry and number crunching, without distributing spreadsheets?
Domino
is great for the collaborative (promote, demote, approval, rejection)
aspects of the problem, but not IMO very good at data entry or number
crunching.   My thoughts go to some kind of domino/java/websphere
hybrid?
or maybe even some visual RPG?

Pretty much anything is on the table, as long as it's (my hope) iseries
based.  It's tough for me to get my arms and brain around this one, so
any
good ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Rick


_______________________________________________
This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing
list
To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.