07/08/2010 by Simon Tomey.

We’re not committed to your success… We’re passionate about it.

Years ago I challenged a board member of one of the world’s largest companies to give me one word to describe what his team should be. I suggested “passionate”.  He countered with “committed”.

He recently left his wife and children for another woman.
I’d suggest that he found passion stronger than commitment.

We’re not committed to giving you great solutions, we’re passionate about it. In a climate of gloom, fear, uncertainty and cost cutting, we’re passionate giving you power to do more for less by transforming your Oracle reporting.

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30/07/2010 by Simon Tomey.

Since reading this I’ve started shaving my legs, eating poached eggs and powering up hills.The message of this book is that we could all have hope and determination.

The message of this book is that we could all have hope and determination.

• Lance Armstrong had less than a 3% chance of surviving cancer but did and within sixteen months of being discharged from hospital won the Tour de France.
• He attributes his significance not to being a seven times winner of the Tour de France, but of being a cancer survivor.
• A fellow cancer patient had written “You don’t know it yet, but we’re the lucky ones”. I understand this to mean that we are designed to overcome apparently defeating setbacks and that great suffering can produce great character, but most of us never have this “opportunity”.

Certainly Lance attributes much of his maturity as a rider to the endurance he learnt as a cancer patient.

• Lance overcame great suffering and didn’t give into despair and fought like it was him against the world.
• It must have felt very black indeed as day after day under Chemotherapy he was overcome by nausea and had strength only to lie still. He had a clear vision and the determination to make it happen.

A quote I like is:

“I can deliver motivation, inspiration, hope courage and counsel, but I can’t answer the unknowable…In a way we are like the guy on the rooftop [who is in danger of drowning]…Things take place, there is a confluence of events and circumstances , and we can’t always know their purpose…but we can take responsibility for ourselves and be brave.

And remember…Pain is just a signal.

See this book on Amazon »

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30/06/2010 by Matt Stocker.

The Oracle Government User Group was held last month (13 May 2010) and we were privileged to be invited to share both the exciting potential of BI Publisher and the ways in which it can transform an organisation’s reporting capabilities. With good overall attendance, it was great see some familiar faces as well as meet some of those who were attending for the first time.

In case you haven’t attended an Oracle User Group before, these groups are run by Oracle users for the benefit of other users and cover topics ranging from the upgrade path to R12 to the specifics of certain functionality such as reporting – which is where BeLife comes in.

For this particular presentation, Simon Tomey (Consulting Director) and Adam Penchoen (Consultant) focused on the specifics of creating a BI Publisher report. Whilst there are some technical elements, it is entirely feasible for a non-technical user to get to grips with the process as it involves use of standard Microsoft Office functionality.  Due to this, use of BI Publisher enables organisations to be much less reliant on technical experts, which in turn leads to internal empowerment, improved reporting capabilities and reduced investment costs.

As you can probably tell, BI Publisher and its capabilities excite us and it was great to see that others were excited too. Those who attended our presentation were, in the main, interested in the free capabilities that BI Publisher offers and were either looking at or were already using it to replace Discoverer, FSG or other third party reporting applications.

Whilst BI Publisher can tend to be a lesser-known capability within EBS, it certainly seems that awareness of it is growing. With BI Publisher’s key role within the Oracle EBS R12 release and, beyond that, the Oracle Fusion upgrade, it would seem that its importance is only set to grow.

Many of those attending our presentation also reported that there are many advantages to BI Publisher when compared to other options. In fact, our presentation followed a presentation by George Gallagher (Jephson Housing Association Group and one of our clients), who shared his experience of converting to BI Publisher. He explained that BI Publisher had reduced reports users’ reliance on himself, as users were able to run reports themselves once they had been created or, in some cases, reports could be run automatically through bursting.

If you’re interested in finding out more about implementing BI Publisher yourself, feel free to get in touch and we’d be more than happy to talk you through what’s involved.

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