Customized AXIOM Reporting Tool

AutoSoft Systems

2 Round Hill Court

East Greenwich, RI 02818

401.885.3631

401.884.5653 Fax

401.996.3631 Cell

AMDG

Decision Ready Information!

autosoft@aol.com

Commercial & custom multi-user computer software for a variety of applications including performance metrics, statistical analysis, data extraction and merger from multiple large databases, computer simulation and management information systems. Founded in 1982.

We know Excel! Whenever possible, Excel is the user interface, VBA is the programming language, ODBC connects to the database of your choice.

Pharmaceutical & Biotech

Construction Management

AMDG

CART (Customized AXIOM Reporting Tool)

(AXIOM is a Trademark of Consona - AutoSoft Systems is not affiliated with Consona)

AXIOM's definition of reports are unformatted tab-delimited text files which contain many columns of information which have limited value to end users. For example, consider the standard AXIOM Backlog report:

Although this report has many columns of good information, the lack of formatting makes it nearly impossible to read. Additionally, when users ask AXIOM to generate a report, AXIOM may present the user with the report in a few seconds, or one may have to wait several minutes for the report to be rendered.

Imagine instead of waiting 2-3 minutes for the above report, you could get in less than 10 seconds the same data but looking like this:

Note that this is an Excel workbook with many worksheets. This is the worksheet with columns, rows and sort orders designed for the Sales Account Managers. The data in the cryptic text file is transformed into useful information containing only the columns required by the Sales Account Managers. The Spec Techs require a totally different format:

And the Sales Regional Managers need the same information sorted in a different order and presented with summary bands:

Additionally, the AXIOM Backlog export file does not include whether or not a customer will accept partial shipments. This information is only available in the AXIOM Customer export file. CART has the ability to automatically "marry" the two reports so that data from one export file can be added to a second export file.

This all happens in a few seconds without the need of monopolizing an AXIOM license!!!

To view a sample CART backlog report, click here (the data has been scrambled).

How much can CART save me? - Up to 15% of your AXIOM/Progress Licensing Fee!!!! - Here's how:

As of 1/1/2009, an AXIOM license cost $5,000, and the associated Progress license cost $935. Annual maintenance fees on both are 18% of the purchase price or $1,068. So over a 10 year period, a single AXIOM license will cost $5,000 + $935 + 9 x $1,068 = $15,547.

Let us look at a typical AXIOM installation where it is determined that 100 AXIOM licenses are required. As with any installation, there are 3 types of users:

Those users who are in AXIOM all day, and are recording transactions in AXIOM. For the sake of this example, say that represents 60% of the suggested license count, or 60 licenses. You must buy those licenses to get your work done.

Those users who are in AXIOM some of the day, and are recording transactions in AXIOM. For the sake of this example, say that represents 25% of the suggested license count, or 25 licenses. With StopAX, you can seamlessly share licenses over these 25 users. Say 15 licenses will suffice. There is an immediate savings of 10 licenses, or 10% of your total AXIOM licensing fee which equates to $155,470 over a 10 year period in this example.

15 remaining licenses are for those users that only need to run reports out of AXIOM, they do not need to enter data in AXIOM. With a standard AXIOM installation, 15 licenses will be required for these people to run reports. However, if StopAX's companion software CART is installed, all reports are accessible to any user with the need of an AXIOM license. 15 additional licenses are saved, making an additional savings of $233,205.

Therefore a 100 license installation using the above assumptions can operate seamlessly with only 75 licenses if both StopAX and CART are working, for a 10 year savings of $388,675.

But wait, there is more! Some AXIOM reports take minutes to run. Say that a company would lose a total of 1 hour of productivity a day waiting for AXIOM to generate a report. At $75 per hour fully loaded labor cost and 240 working days a year, that translates to another $18,000 annual savings!

The CART.xtlm provides a simple menu to access all of the CART reports. The new Version 3.0 now allows access to all types of files, folders, applications and web sites in addition to all CART xls and xlsx reports:

At C&M, the CART menu is quite extensive. The Sales Order Management tab looks like:

For the 2010 AX2 Users' Conference, I configured my own AX2 Conference module in a few minutes:

Note how one can change the font, color, border and cell shading. This is easily done using the CART Builder.xltm:

CART logs all CART report transactions. Here is a sample of the report log:

dtime

user

workbook

worksheet

1/2/2008 8:54

5060

BCKCONFA1.XLS

OPEN

1/2/2008 9:22

2953

WIPFORPI2.XLS

OPEN

1/2/2008 9:26

2953

CCMEXICO.XLS

OPEN

1/2/2008 9:26

2953

CCMEXICO.XLS

CYCLECOUNT

1/2/2008 9:26

2953

CCMEXICO.XLS

INVENTORY2

1/2/2008 9:26

2953

CCMEXICO.XLS

INVENTORY1

1/2/2008 9:26

2953

CCMEXICO.XLS

INVENTORY2

1/2/2008 9:27

2953

CCMEXICO.XLS

CYCLECOUNT

1/2/2008 9:27

2953

CCMEXICO.XLS

FORAUDITORS

1/2/2008 9:37

2953

WIPFORPI2.XLS

REPORT

1/2/2008 9:37

2953

WIPFORPI2.XLS

PIWIP

1/2/2008 9:49

6862

WIPFORPI2.XLS

OPEN

1/2/2008 9:50

6862

WIPFORPI2.XLS

REPORT

1/2/2008 9:50

6862

WIPFORPI2.XLS

PIWIP

The CART log tracks who opened what CART report when, and also what worksheet in each CART report was viewed and when.

The AutoCART.xls application which automatically refreshes the CART reports when new AXIOM output files are detected runs as a Scheduled Task in the Windows operating system. CART has a log file that tracks the duration and iterations of each CART process. This log file looks like:

Start

Stop

Duration

Iterations

5/28/2009 9:14

5/28/2009 8:33

5/28/2009 9:07