What Makes Me Proud

In my day job I run the BI Team within Fujitsu Services. Prior to the Oracle acquisitions there were about 8 people who implemented and supported Discoverer and to a lesser extent Business Objects for all our EBS customers. A few customers also had OFA and DBI.

The acquisitions of Siebel and Hyperion changed all that and I put forward a business case to grow the team to include these skills which I could see were going to be very popular. We brought in some graduates and experienced support people to take on the Discoverer work and a few people with existing Hyperion or Siebel skills, and went through a private boot camp with Oracle University to get OBIEE skills. The partner program has also helped with additional training and we are now busy delivering. In the case of Hyperion we have a commercial relationship with an existing Hyperion partner to combine relevant skills.

The team has doubled in size and will aim to grow by the same number again this year. We have achieved Certified Advantage Partner status in BI technology and are working on BI applications although the program is still in development and not quite relevant currently.

I am proud that we are implementing OBIA and Hyperion with EBS where we have many years experience as a systems implementer. But what makes me more proud? - Job satisfaction from my team. One of them who has been working with OFA, FSG and Discoverer on EBS for many years sent me this email last week:

Just to say I am finding OBIA excellent at the core basic EBS functions that every enterprise uses – EG – AR Aging – AP payments performance – Trial Balances etc! To get this functionality up and running in OBIA takes very little time – less than Disco – however to customize is what takes the time.

I therefore am coming out strongly on the side of OBIA with the realistic view that you need to invest time and effort and money in customization while having an excellent foundation of OBIA to build on – the resulting solution is best in market! I think that’s how we should sell!

And if you want to know more about OBIA check out a series of articles from Mark Rittman