PivotStream Cloud Hosted PowerPivot for Excel 2010/2013 tool

Transcription

1 PivotStream Cloud Hosted PowerPivot for Excel 2010/2013 tool (5 February 2014) RWF Consulting LLC embarked in 2001 on a project to address major financial issues impacting manufacturing industries. The issue is improper use of multiple allocations/statistics in determining product costs for inventory and end product estimating and pricing. RWF Consulting LLC decided to use an out-of-the-box approach to address the above issue. The principal of RWF Consulting LLC has 33 year experience in Fortune 500 companies first as an engineer and then as principal estimator/financial systems manager within its finance organizations. It became obvious that there were two major inventory and product pricing issues: 1) Allocations during costing process and cost collection process. 2) Disconnect between the costing process and the financial records. Page 1 of 5

2 The RWF Consulting LLC principal recently spent five years in Mainland China introducing and training the large scale government owned Chinese industries there on an alternative product costing methodology (parametric estimating a statistical approach to product estimating). The Chinese customers immediately requested that their estimates reflect their own unique cost collection approach, meaning that they wanted their estimated costs to be in the same understandable and measurable categories as collected costs. I developed an automated activity categorizing tool for them that I have incorporated into my integrated tool described below. This requested approach is similar to activity based costing but activity based costing is too labor intensive and subject to latency in the factors not being kept current. RWF Consulting LLC then researched the current methodology in the USA for small and medium sized manufacturing businesses for inventory and product pricing and found that industries simply used overhead factors (often outdated) in their methodology based upon direct labor (with direct labor rapidly disappearing due to automation and out-sourcing) and there was a disconnect between the estimates and financial cost systems. RWF Consulting LLC then decided to develop a new approach utilizing the then appearing cloud based tools but found that approach too difficult to independently develop. It was not until 2010/2011 that two new tools became available that offered an easily implemented solution: 1) Cloud PivotStream is a cloud based tool containing a team site for collaboration between the tool developers and tool users. 2) Microsoft Power Pivot for Excel 2010/2013 as a sophisticated tool for connecting financial information with a detailed estimating approach. Page 2 of 5

3 The approach is diagramed as follows: 1) 2) 3) 4) IE Standards and Routing from EASE system imported as worksheet in Excel 2010/2013 Workbook Data Warehouse comprised of Databases connected to Excel 2010/2013 Workbook via Power Pivot Window (SQL Server, Access, Analysis Services, other PowerPivot data, from Reports or Azure DataMarket). Cloud Integration System = Power Pivot for Excel 2010/2013 within Cloud PivotStream collaboration environment. Costed Product is developed within Power Pivot for Excel 2010/2013. Power Pivot for Excel 2010/2013 result is then uploaded to Cloud PivotStream as an Operational Data Store within a Power Pivot Window for analysis of the combined data. a) IE Standards a) Routing b) Costed Product d) Data Warehouse c) Operational Data Store a) b) c) d) From EASE system In Excel Power BI with input from MISys manufacturing system. Operational Data Store using Excel 2010/2013 Power Pivot either in local desktop or cloud Data Warehouse= data available from SQL Server, Access, Analysis Services, other PowerPivot data, from Reports or Azure DataMarket Page 3 of 5 4

4 RWF Consulting LLC currently has completely populated sample Proof of Concept tools that potential users can review via Cloud PivotStream. The functioning tool can be accessed in Cloud Pivot Stream environment and manipulated after additional levels of security are obtained from RWF Consulting LLC. RWF Consulting LLC is a Microsoft partner: Application is used online in Cloud using Cloud PivotSteam & PowerPivot for Excel 2010/2013 Page 4 of 5

5 Contact Information: Ralph W. Farrington (RWF) Consulting LLC P.O. Box 2924, Newport Beach, CA Irvine Office/cell telephone: w w.rwfconsultingllc.com ralphwf@rwfconsultingllc.com Page 5 of 5