Cetova Provides Reporting Advice for JD Edwards Shops on the Move

Published: February 9, 2010

by Alex Woodie

JD Edwards shop thinking about migrating from World to EnterpriseOne should take a look at the latest white paper from Cetova, a developer of business intelligence and reporting tools for JD Edwards ERP. In the white paper, titled Closing the Gap between JDE World and E1 Reporting, Cetova analyzes some of the common pitfalls companies run into when trying to get started on EnterpriseOne reporting tools following a migration from World.

One would think that JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, as a much newer client-server ERP system with healthier sales and support from current owner Oracle, would have superior reporting and business intelligence capabilities out-of-the-box than World. After all, the monolithic, RPG-based World application is decades old, and that green-screen 5250 interface isn't looking any younger.

But one would be wrong, according to the white paper's author, Cetova's vice president of marketing and product development John Lambrianakos. According to Lambrianakos, the native reporting tools found in EnterpriseOne can't hold a candle to those found in World when it comes to ease-of-use by actual users, not SQL experts.

"The reporting and analysis landscape in JDE E1 is a bit starker than in JDE World," he writes. "For all of E1's configurability, it has taken a step back in regard to providing the non-technical end-user's visibility into JDE enterprise data."

JDE World tools such as Data Record Extraction And Management Writer (DREAMWRITER), World Writer, Financial Analysis Spreadsheet Tool for Reporting (FASTR), and Spreadsheet Tool for Asset Reporting (STAR) were easy to use, even for non-technical personnel, Lambrianakos says.

By comparison, JDE EnterpriseOne offers a lot of canned reports, the Universal Table Browser, the Data Browser, and Enterprise Report Writer (ERW). However, when it comes to easy-to-use ad hoc reporting tools for EnterpriseOne … well, there isn't one. "There is no equivalent of World Writer, which is truly a robust and user-friendly front-end to SQL," Lambrianakos writes in the white paper.

Lambrianakos offers some good advice in the five-page white paper. If your JDE World users are heavy users of World Writer and FASTR, they are probably not going to feel comfortable using the EnterpriseOne (non)equivalents. Of course, there is a pitch for Cetova's suite of business intelligence and reporting tools at the end of the white paper. But that's what you would expect.

Interested parties can download a copy of the white paper from Cetova's Web site at www.cetova.com.

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Cetova Debuts Analytical Solution for Non-Technical Users

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