Consultancy

A valuable part of our service is the advice and help given on the exact method of implementing our application software to fit both your immediate and longer-term requirements.

This is achieved through the Business Analysis Process where one of our consultants will spend time reviewing your existing systems, and discussing your requirements in detail prior to commencing the implementation of your system. This technique ensures that both the client and Roundhouse understand the objectives of the project resulting in a controlled implementation.

For large scale projects, which often involve multiple software and services vendors, a Project Manager is nominated to ensure regular meetings are held to monitor performance.

 
 
Business Intelligence

We have enabled many businesses to view the key performance indicators, identify trends in product sales, reduce stock levels, improve cash/fund forecasting and determine the performance of their sales force.

This has been achieved by using a cost effective approach to deliver information system reporting using Microsoft Analysis Services ™ to build OLAP cubes from the transactions stored in the back office system. We use MS Excel (Pivot table reports and charts) to present the information in a familiar and flexible format. When information needs to be available for the sales force – Microsoft Sharepoint Services (part of Windows 2003 server) can be used to create a ‘Portal’ to provide the sales force with remote access to customer buying history, sales rep target performance and product sales history.

What is OLAP?

OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) is a popular technology that improves business analysis, permitting users to ‘slice and dice’ data in many different forms. OLAP is a built-in capability used by Microsoft SQL Server to analyse large volumes of data to give fast performance when reporting or undertaking queries on transactional data.

What does it provide?

  • FAST – information at a constant level of performance because aggregated answers have already been calculated and stored ‘off-line’
  • ANALYSIS – Performs ad hoc or defined statistical analysis of data
  • SHARED – allows shared data to be viewed by a large number of users
  • INFORMATION – Accesses data/information from most applications wherever it resides and not limited by volume

OLAP technology is increasing used to overcome the limited amount of information available from standard account systems. Our level of knowledge for accounting packages, database technology, OLAP presentation tools allows us to deliver powerful information system solutions.