TechnologyOne Ci Anywhere Reporting & Data Analytics Capabilities

Imagine if you were playing a game of chess and you couldn’t keep track of how well you were doing throughout the game; it would be almost impossible to know which pieces to move next. Just like you’d keep tabs on strategy throughout a game of chess, business reporting helps businesses to understand how well they’re doing and if there are areas that need improvement.

In a nutshell, business reporting examines data and information to help gain meaningful insights that can be used to better understand business performance. This helps management to make informed decisions, drive organisational performance and to plan for the future. TechnologyOne Ci Anywhere (CiA) has various tools that can help organisations streamline reporting requirements. 

However, before reporting or analytics configuration can start, it’s important to undergo a gathering and design phase. This helps key stakeholders confirm requirements, understand data sources and ensure everyone works collaboratively to achieve an effective outcome. 

Below are some of the various tools within TechnologyOne CiA that organisations can utilise like a scorecard – to know how their operations are performing and how to make the best moves for success!

Design Studio

Design Studio is a set of folders where Corporate Performance Management (CPM) reporting entities such as Dashboards, DataModels, ETL’s and XLOne Reports can be stored. These folders and entities can be shared with various users across an organisation while specifying the type of access a user has, such as edit and read-only. This not only makes sharing information easy, it also helps to mitigate risk and maintain data quality.

Data Models

Data Models are an essential requirement for delivering dashboards in TechnologyOne. A data model is based on queries which in turn are based on data sources. There are many different types of queries which include analysers, warehouses, and business views. Queries can be joined using relevant fields to enhance a data model. Columns can then be added from the various joined tables as required. It’s important to determine what type of data models are required for an organisation’s reporting requirements before diving right in.

Dashboards

A Dashboard is a blank reporting container where various visualisations can be added that are required by management. For example, a financial performance dashboard can be developed for each line of business owner. These visualisations come in many categories, with the most common being a table complemented with various charts, maps, and slicers. Slicers are available to dissect the data and only return certain components.

Dashboards can provide drill-down capability which includes launching another dashboard, launching a function, running an XLOne report and running an ETL within TechnologyOne.

Integration

Sometimes required data sources may not be available through TechnologyOne CiA. ETLs can be used to import and transform the required data using the various steps available. Once the ETL process has been completed this data can be loaded and stored in a warehouse table making the data available in data models. An example of this is external systems payroll data.

Setting up reporting processes in your TechnologyOne enterprise system may appear complex and daunting. However, with the right structure and appropriate configuration, it can deliver real impact across the whole organisation. It reduces the time and resource that needs to be allocated to populate regular reporting documentation and improves reliability (provided data sources are accurate).

Written by Daniel Moynihan, Principal Consultant

Daniel is a Principal Consultant at Lánluas with over 16 years’ experience with ERP systems and more than 9 years’ experience with TechnologyOne, its products and solutions. He has worked for numerous leading organisations and software companies (including three years as a Business Consultant at Technology One Ltd) across multiple industries, including local government, education, financial services, community services and not-for-profit to name a few. Daniel has consulted at Lánluas for more than 6 years and has provided multiple organisations help with their TechnologyOne application and platform, as well as training in Ci and Ci Anywhere.