A Single Mistake Can Cost You $$$$$

While working with a client on developing EDI-856 transactions with one of their trading partners, an error occurred that cost my client thousands of dollars in charge back fines.

In their SAP environment they produce a single DESADV IDoc per order/purchase order.  This could amount to several hundred DESADV IDocs being generated.  The initial development was a 1 to 1 translation in that each DESADV IDoc that was produced would be translated into a single EDI-856 document.

SAP EDI Idoc List Screen

Because of a single data error, due to department procedures not being followed in the warehouse in the closing of orders, the bad data element resulted and was repeated throughout all of the DESADV IDocs that were generated.  Translation of the IDocs was successful because this error was not conceived at the point of map development.  The hundreds of translated documents were sent to the trading partner and subsequently resulted in failed documents.

Because the trading partner generated a charge back for each document sent, my client was billed thousands of dollars in charge back fines.  This simple example shows how a single error repeated in each document can turn out to be a very costly problem.

I hope to show you in the next few postings how to bundle the IDocs together to:

  • Bundle and reduce the number of IDocs being translated
  • Reduce the number of EDI documents being sent to the trading partner
  • Minimize the charge back cost, should and error occur

Cforia Webinar June 24, 2009 – SAP Receivables Collection Prioritization and Automation to Maximize Cash Flow

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Learn how prioritization of your company’s receivables will increase cash flow.

Most SAP Implementations do not provide prioritization and automation of the receivables collection process.

Join Cforia Software on June 24, 2009, as they share a business improvement process that will help your company improve its receivables management to drive down DSO and delinquency rates without increasing staff.

Attend this webinar to learn the benefits of, and guidelines for prioritizing and automating every action taken throughout your Receivables and Deductions departments.

  • Learn why report driven workflows cause loss of productivity through decreased automation
  • Serve up data to your Receivables Department that allows them to immediately identify the highest priority items
  • Avoid that productivity hit associated with working on muliple systems, and how to avoid the time burner
  • The cost of not converting legacy data into SAP, and what to do if it is too late
  • Raise Collector productivity and Cash Flow by calculating and prioritizing the correct amount to ask for

A practical demonstration will show how Automation Tools can help your receivables department reach increased levels of efficiency.

SAP Receivables Management Prioritization Webinar Registration Page

Cforia Webinar June 18, 2009 – Lockbox Auto Cash Mangement and Application

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Learn how effective cash mangement automation can free up finance resources from manual keying of lockbox data.

Many SAP, Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, Baan and Lawson implementations do not provide robust auto cash management and application funtionality.

Join Cforia Software on June 18, 2009 as they and Cashbook Limited share a business improvement process that will help your company achieve auto cash application rates in excess of 90% to increase productivity and accuracy.

Attend this webinar to lean the benefits of, and guidelines for significantly improving your company’s cash management.

  • How to achieve straight through processing from Lockbox files into your ERP system
  • Automatically handle customer provided remittance files including EDI, XML, Excel, Scanned and Hard Copy
  • Automatically reconcile bank statements to your ERP system’s General Ledger
  • Work transparently with multiple currencies
  • Use elctronic payments to reduce cost and increase transactional accuracy

A practical demonstration will show how Automation Tools can improve cash management.

Welcome to the DataXstream XI/PI Blog

Hello.  Welcome to the DataXstream XI/PI Blog.  SAP XI/PI means SAP Exchange Infrastructure/Process Integration. SAP XI (the old name) and SAP PI (the new name) are SAP’s applications for integrating software solutions. Our team of consultants will post to this blog with tips, tricks, and experiences regarding SAP PI.

This blog was originally created on another blogging site. Recently, DataXstream migrated its web server to a platform that makes it easy to blog.  The first couple of posts to this blog will be reposts of entries from the old site.

Some topics in this blog will be very technical and may need some clarification. Please don’t hesitate to post questions, comments, or concerns.

Sapphire/ASUG 2009 Presentation – Leveraging SAP to Improve AR to Cash Flow Conversion Efficiency, Lessons Learned

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Leveraging SAP to Improve A/R to Cash Flow Conversion Efficiency, Lessons Learned

In this economic climate, staffing levels are decreasing and at the same time customers are paying later than ever.  Historically, increasing cash flow used to mean adding collections personnel. This option is simply not available in today’s recession. Learn how enhancing SAP accounts receivables workflows will immediately improve your AR performance.

Key Learning Points:

1. How to increase customer touches without increasing headcount.

2. Increase cash flow by ensuring that collection events are optimized to maximize cash flow.

3. Measurements and reports to highlight at-risk customers, late payment trends, and other A/R metrics including enhanced cash flow forecasting.

Speakers: Tim Cooper – Senior Project Manager – DataXstream, LLC.

Tim has over 20 years of SAP FICO experience with an emphasis on accounts receivable, deductions & collections processes.  As a senior project manager at DataXstream he has deployed & supported A/R solutions at Textron Greenlee, Ferrero & Intradeco Apparel.  Tim brings project management experience and a hands-on perspective to engagements.  His experience also includes large complex SAP projects at companies as diverse as Lucent Technologies, Armstrong World Industries, and Bayer Corp.

Speaker: Chris Caparon – President – Cforia Software

Chris graduated from the University of Michigan in 1987 with dual degrees in Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering.  After graduating, he worked for seven years with several large distribution companies in a variety of management roles.  His areas of experience include:  Accounting; engineering; manufacturing; materials planning; quality; and sales.  Chris began business consulting in 1994 to leverage his broad range of business process  knowledge and technical background.  Over the next six years, Chris ran a 20 person consulting, sales and programming practice that focused on implementing ERP applications and business process reengineering.  He successfully ran over fifty projects across multiple business models.  As a result of his extensive experience in ERP software systems, Chris decided to concentrate his efforts on the weakest element in these packages, AR management.  Chris co-founded Cforia Software in 2000 with the goal of providing a best of breed application that streamlined the credit, collections and deductions processes to generate cash flow and earnings.   He has successfully implemented over 75 customers that include Napa Auto Parts, Citizen Watch, Teledyne, Stryker Medical, Seiko Watch, Sunrise Medical, and Ashley Furniture.

FortiusOne & DataXstream Partner To Deliver Visual Intelligence To SAP Customers

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FORTIUSONE & DATAXSTREAM PARTNER TO DELIVER VISUAL INTELLIGENCE TO SAP CUSTOMERS
SAP DATA TO BE ANALYZED AND VISUALIZED THROUGH FORTIUSONE’S GEOIQ

Arlington, VA – May 4, 2009 – FortiusOne, the leading provider of rich, dynamic Visual Intelligence, today announced their partnership with DataXstream, an SAP integration leader.

geoiq-enterprise-colorDataXstream will be integrating SAP enterprise data into FortiusOne’s GeoIQ for Enterprise. Through FortiusOne’s GeoIQ, enterprise customers can easily analyze and visualize their SAP enterprise data.


DataXstream’s
integration solutions are built with standard integration design approaches and techniques while delivering robust designs to effectively manage high volumes, accurately deliver data when it is needed and recover from error events when they occur.

“Our partnership with DataXstream greatly extends our current reach into the enterprise market,” said Tony Bansal, President and CFO of FortiusOne. “By leveraging DataXstream’s extensive experience fusing cutting edge technologies with existing enterprise solutions, we can deliver Visual Intelligence solutions to all SAP business users. Enterprise decision makers can easily monitor critical business indicators for making tactical and strategic decisions like never before.”

DataXstream’s innovative implementation with FortiusOne’s GeoIQ will provide decision makers across the enterprise with a ‘geographic dashboard’ of dynamic data feeds of both SAP enterprise data and external data, such as demographic, GDP or foreclosure data. While FortiusOne’s GeoIQ currently supports the most commonly used data formats, such as spreadsheet data, shapefiles or Google Earth KML, DataXstream extends GeoIQ’s support to include SAP ERP data.

“We see huge potential in this collaborative partnership,” said Timothy Yates, CEO, DataXstream. “In extending the capability of FortiusOne’s GeoIQ, we can now offer our SAP customers access to GeoIQ’s cutting edge visualization and analysis capabilities.”

FortiusOne and DataXstream will be exhibiting their joint capabilities at the ASUG Annual Conference, May 11-14, booth number 858. Stop by or contact us to set up a meeting.

About FortiusOne
FortiusOne develops rich, dynamic Visual Intelligence that enables business executives to readily identify trends, opportunities and threats and make the best decisions to succeed. By using the most advanced technology and an extensive range of economic, political, environmental and geographic data sources to deliver real-time dynamic geospatial representations, FortiusOne is the world’s leader in developing Visual Intelligence for commercial enterprises and government agencies. Users can easily correlate and visualize their proprietary data, existing GIS, BI, LI, and CRM data, and GeoCommons’ repository of almost 9,000 data layers to create insightful maps and reports to empower decision making.

About DataXstream
DataXstream is an SAP Integration Leader in Systems Integration Architecture Consulting. Since 1997 DataXstream has consistently delivered robust, business-oriented, scalable solutions for a wide variety of SAP integration implementations. DataXstream brings an unsurpassed level of technical and functional expertise to engagements and frequently provides top level talent to large and complex projects run by SAP America. A partial list of clients and industries served by DataXstream is found by clicking here.

FortiusOne contact: Ruth Stiver, ruth...@ruth, 703.647.2142
DataXstream contact: Doug Foss, dfo...@dfo, 757.941.4883

Cforia Webinar May 20, 2009 – Learn the Benefits of tracking SAP Clean and Dirty Receivables Separately

Cforia Software Logo

Most SAP Implementations do not track clean (uncontested, high collection probability) and dirty (invoice line items subject to deductions and disputes) separately.

Cforia Software shares a business improvement process that will help your company better understand the meakeup of your Account Receivable Portfolio and improve the financial performance at the same time.

Attend Cforia’s webinar on May 20, 2009 as Chris Caparon, Vice President Professional Services, discusses the benefits of, and guidelines for seperately tracking clean and dirty receivables.

  • Improve Cash Forecast Accuracy
  • Avoid over statement of New Receivables Value
  • Address auditor concerns about valid long term receivables by a means other than automatic write off’s
  • Handling of Litigation Accounts
  • Raise collector productivity and Cash Flow by calculating and prioritizing the correct amount to ask for
  • Seed up routing to the Deductions Department and increase recover rate

A practical demonstation will show how Automation Tools can track Clean and Dirty Receivables separately.

Click Here to View Replay

Cforia Webinar – SAP Deductions Avoidance & Recovery

Cforia Software Logo

Learn how $1 million in deductions recovery can have the same positive impact as $20 million in revenue growth.

Are your company’s big box retail customers attempting to deal with the current difficult economic environment by aggressively applying deductions to enhance their bottom lines?  Learn how to prevent your customers from hurting your bottom line as they enhance theirs.

Join us on Thursday, April 23 as Cforia Software shares a business improvement process that was developed in conjunction with one of its leading customers to avoid and recover deductions.

The resultant process improvement increased the company’s deductions recovery by 8% and adds $1.8 Million to their bottom line every year.  Attend this webinar to learn how enhanced SAP deductions and disputes workflows will immediately improve your A/R performance:

  • Differentiate between 3 classes of deductions
  • Use root cause analysis to avoid deductions
  • Get management and credit analyst buy-in to a deductions recovery process
  • What do you do when a single payment is accompanied with 20,000 lines of obscurely formatted remittance advice?

Speaker: Chris Caparon (Consulting VP, Cforia Software) – Chris began business consulting in 1994 to leverage his broad range of business process knowledge and technical background.  Over the next six years, Chris ran a 20 person consulting, sales and programming practice focused on implementing ERP applications and business process re-engineering.  He successfully ran over fifty projects across multiple business models.  As a result of his extensive experience in ERP software systems, he decided to focus his efforts on the weakest element in these packages: A/R management.  He has successfully implemented over 75 customers including NAPA Auto Parts, Citizen Watch, Teledyne, Stryker Medical and Ashley Furniture.

Register Here

ASUG Sapphire 2009 Presentation

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DataXstream – 2009 ASUG Presentation (May 14th at noon)

Presenters: Timothy Cooper of DataXstream and Chris Caparon of Cforia Software

Leveraging SAP to Improve A/R to Cash Flow Conversion Efficiency, Lessons Learned

In this economic climate, staffing levels are decreasing and at the same time customers are paying later than ever.
Historically, increasing cash flow used to mean adding collections personnel. This option is simply not available in today’s recession. Learn how enhancing SAP accounts receivables workflows will immediately improve your AR performance.

Key Learning Points:

1. How to increase customer touches without increasing headcount.

2. Increase cash flow by ensuring that collection events are optimized to maximize cash flow.

3. Measurements and reports to highlight at-risk customers, late payment trends, and other A/R metrics including enhanced cash flow forecasting.

Speakers: Tim Cooper – Senior Project Manager – DataXstream, LLC.

Tim has over 20 years of SAP FICO experience with an emphasis on accounts receivable, deductions & collections processes.  As a senior project manager at DataXstream he has deployed & supported A/R solutions at Textron Greenlee, Ferrero & Intradeco Apparel.  Tim brings project management experience and a hands-on perspective to engagements.  His experience also includes large complex SAP projects at companies as diverse as Lucent Technologies, Armstrong World Industries, and Bayer Corp.

Speaker: Chris Caparon – President – Cforia Software

Chris graduated from the University of Michigan in 1987 with dual degrees in Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering.  After graduating, he worked for seven years with several large distribution companies in a variety of management roles.  His areas of experience include:  Accounting; engineering; manufacturing; materials planning; quality; and sales.  Chris began business consulting in 1994 to leverage his broad range of business process  knowledge and technical background.  Over the next six years, Chris ran a 20 person consulting, sales and programming practice that focused on implementing ERP applications and business process reengineering.  He successfully ran over fifty projects across multiple business models.  As a result of his extensive experience in ERP software systems, Chris decided to concentrate his efforts on the weakest element in these packages, AR management.  Chris co-founded Cforia Software in 2000 with the goal of providing a best of breed application that streamlined the credit, collections and deductions processes to generate cash flow and earnings.   He has successfully implemented over 75 customers that include Napa Auto Parts, Citizen Watch, Teledyne, Stryker Medical, Seiko Watch, Sunrise Medical, and Ashley Furniture.

Please visit the ASUG Annual Conference website for more details as well as the

Featured Educational Content
section for additional information and schedule of events.

Welcome to the DataXstream Consulting Blog

We are in the process of rolling out blog accounts to our consulting team at DataXstream.  It is our intent to document useful SAP consulting information and to share our experiences.  Please check back soon.