I am nearing the final stages of an evaluation for budgeting, consolidation,
and reporting products. I have been able to see the underlying capabilities
and functionality of various products, but before proceeding further, would
like to verify findings and observations with others who may have 'been
there' before.

In particular, I am interested in knowing more about what is involved in the
actual implementation and maintenance of Longview Khalix. From what I've
seen, it appears to meet our functional needs, but still don't know how easy
or difficult it is to build reports, data entry screens, import data from
various sources, modify structures, etc. Is this a job for a business
analyst or a DBA? Can it easily handle budgeting at different levels - ie
budget travel expense by employee by day, but forecast by department and
week? I have heard from others that there is a lot of programming involved,
but, as expected, saw none of this in detailed demos. Does anyone know how
easy an upgrade is? What training is 'typically' required for an
administrator? User?

Also, the plan is to roll out to several thousand users, across the globe,
with many divisions, lots of data and I'm wondering about performance and
scalability - can Khalix deliver? We want to be able to manage our own
applications with minimal consulting after initial phase- is this possible,
or will we need to bring in consultants to help on an ongoing basis? In
general, I'm looking for some insight from others who may have worked with
this product, and can shed light on their experience implementing it.


Thanks, Sal

--

Hi,

You should visit also:

http://www.jedox.com and see the alea product. Maybe this is a great
product for u aswell!

Regards,
Marco

"sal" <salfields (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote

Sal,

I can answer all your questions. A typical Khalix implementation can
range in time from 2 months to 1 year. The amount of time will depend
on how many resources are dedicated to the project and how much
customization is involved. The amount of customizing also has to deal
with the structure of your business processes. As for reports, data
entry screens, data imports these are fairly simply builds. The
structure modification will depend on what you're changing. The change
of structure itself will be a click and drag on the hierarchy, but
then every process that references that could be impacted. This
happens if your delete an account, not just moving it. With training,
a BA could handle these task. Khalix can handle the budgeting at the
various levels you mentioned. There is a considerable amount of
programming involved in the implementation. Very little is given out
of the box. The nature of Khalix is that the system will be unique for
each client. Therefore almost every process is custom built based on
each client. In general, Longview will offer user training. A user
will typically go through a week of training and the SA can go through
2 - 3 week of courses. An effective SA will nOT learn enough in the
courses to perform all the jobs. Initally, there should be a
consultant on staff, but after your System administrator has about 1
year - 18 months of expereince, the need for consultants can be
lessened. Khalix is designed to handle the global users and
scalablity. Albeit, one of the downsides to Khalix is the roll-up of
data. If your users enter data the data resides in leaf cells and does
not rollup to the parents until after a restatement is performed.
Depending on your needs, you may want to conduct a restatement daily,
or weekly. In a global operation, this will mean downtime for some
users, as the system is locked during a restatement. Also, upgrades
are a bit tricky. It depends on how much chaanges in the releases. A
small .01 release is easily handled. A 1.0 will essentailly be a new
implementation.

Hope this helps. If you have an question, do not hesitate to ask.
Email is Matt_OBX (AT) yahoo (DOT) com

Sal,

I sent a reply to your email, but not sure you received it. I wanted
to advise you of a few more areas of Khalix, such as the cons, user's
concerns and alternative implementation options.

matt_OBX (AT) yahoo (DOT) com wrote in message news:<8a51574d.0312090721.1d471648 (AT) posting (DOT) google.com>...