If FSGs (Financial Systems Generators) report and OBIEE are an important part of your reporting strategy, then you should choose an efficient eLearning platform to train members of your organisation on how to efficiently use them. In the meantime I will give you a few of my tips, as an Oracle trainer.

Once again, another client was delighted to find that they can still use their beloved Financial Systems Generator reports in R12, even though Desktop ADI is no more. Their accounts management team soon picked up the principles of Row Sets ,Column Sets and Report Manager. And through a focused e-learning platform they were able to impart knowledge how to utilise these reports to their business managers.

When correctly configured, Report Manager allows the publication of all FSG reports in PDF, Word and most importantly Excel formats, still with that all important drilldown functionality. Creating Content Sets and Row Orders to present the information in a way that was relevant to the Organization was no longer an issue. Delegates also learned why it was so important to have the Chart of Accounts organised into logical ranges, with a set of Child, Parent, Grandparent relationships that made sense.

Furthermore, by using the FSG functionality around totals, plus the expansions of Grandparents and Parents, the true power of rollups could finally be realised . Trial Balances, Management Reports, Forecast Budgets are all still possible and still benefit from those crucial security rules, which control “who” sees “what.” With the Report Repository we can also manage “when” and “where” we see them.

With Report Manager supporting the development of Templates, getting the report to actually look and feel usable in Excel is no longer a tedious process. Colours, formats, images are all easily added into the reports. Web ADI is now there for uploading Journals and Budgets into GL, and although the process is very similar to Client ADI , the step by step screens are easy to follow. Also it works entirely through your web Browser.

OBIEE is great! But it may not solve all your reporting requirements, so when formulating your reporting strategies do not forget your very powerful and friendly FSGs.

If you're wondering how else you can cost effectively share knowledge within your organisation, then I recommend following Stratus on Twitter and joining Stratus eLearning, Hr and Tech Forum

Dominic Galano

Project Manager and Functional Lead at iTrain Consulting

Fluent in Repost Manager, AR, AP, GL, PO, CE, FSG

First published on Stratus Blog