Time Management - Rob Graham, Datawatch

Having problems with your time management? Datawatch Europe's Rob Graham has a few suggestions.

Do you feel the need to be more organised and/or more productive? Do you spend your day in a frenzy of activity and then wonder why you haven't accomplished much? Time management skills are especially important for business people, who often find themselves performing many different jobs during the course of a single day. First among these, is the task of locating the information required to manage and make decisions. Here then, is a strategy that offers cost-effective information management and a prompt return on investment.

INTELLIGENCE AND REPORTING TOOL

Monarch Pro is a Windows-based business intelligence and reporting tool designed for easy use by everyone, not just a select group of power users with advanced technology skills. Unlike other Business Information (BI) or reporting tools, Monarch Pro easily 'mines' report and other data from existing text-based or PDF reports - an information source often overlooked by other BI tools. Monarch Pro also enables users to access and analyse data from database files, spreadsheets, ODBC sources, delimited text and HTML files.

Monarch Pro's unique modelling technology allows even non-technical users to effortlessly build a collection of filters, calculations, summaries and charts, and apply them to different data sets, as well as export data at anytime into Excel or Access, or into PDF format - all without programming and without help from the IT department.

ACCESS IS KEY

The data you need to manage already exists within your system - if you do not believe this, it may be time to consider your next career step. It is how you access this information that is vital. There are three available options - and as with the famous three-card trick, the person 'dealing the cards' will try to get you to select their preference. You can simply see it as an IT problem and trust that your IT director will fully understand what you need. Alternatively, you can consider a whole new system. This 'dealer' suggests you look at a third option: a business-as-usual approach to the problem.

By adopting cost-effective report mining and data transformation software - such as Monarch's industry benchmark standard software, which has around 500,000 users world wide - you can extend the life of your investment in your existing system, avoid disruption to staff and third parties and allow yourself and your managers to ask the questions required to provide accurate information.

MINE AND STREAMLINE

Managers, analysts, auditors, accountants and staff workers might struggle with other highly complex BI tools or wait for help from the IT department to get the data they need, causing frustrating delays, missed deadlines and lost business opportunities. To avoid such delays, they often resort to printing and flipping through thick paper reports run from their ERP, HR / payroll, banking, healthcare or government information, or mainframe systems. They then re-key the data into a spreadsheet, to perform the needed analysis and reporting.

Monarch Pro ends such time-wasting, error-prone work. Monarch Pro transforms existing text-based or PDF reports into live, actionable data and can easily access other sources of data. This data can be sorted, filtered and combined with additional complimentary data from other sources, supplemented with new calculations, summarised and exported to Excel or Access, all without programming and without help from the IT department.

JOIN THE SMART SET

Managers and workers need a wide variety of information - reports, data, documents and other content - to effectively manage and operate the business. What information does your business need to keep its competitive edge? What business problems could you solve and what new opportunities could you pursue if your business information suddenly became very easy to access, analyse and share?