Conference heron::euro_swas_ai

229.0. "Expert Financial Closing application - customer potential??" by CHEVIE::FITZGIBBON (Joe Fitzgibbon EIC-AI Engineering) Thu Sep 13 1990 12:37

	If DIGITAL have a need, and other FORTUNE 500 companies use the same
GL system (see the attached description), maybe some of your customers would 
be interested - any takers???

Joe.

*** Forwarding addresses removed *** Joe.

From:	NAME: BILL HADNEY @AKO              
	FUNC: Corp. Financial Strategies      
	TEL: 244-6093                         <HADNEY.BILL AT AKOV13A1 at AKOMTS at AKO>
To:	See Below
CC:	See Below


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*                                                                       *
*                       XFC GOES LIVE!                                  *
*                                                                       *
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XFC, a new "fault-tolerant" knowledge-based closing-process control 
system recently became operational in two Financial Management 
Centers:  EMASS FMC, Maynard, MA, and SEA FMC, Marlboro, MA.

XFC, for e(X)pert (F)inancial (C)losing, was developed by the Applied 
Intelligent Systems Group under Finance sponsership.  Briefly, XFC 
automates and controls formerly-manual tasks and business processes that 
surround a general ledger when the books are being "closed".  By 
capturing the expertise of people directly involved in the process, XFC 
improves reliability and contingency response, while simultaneously 
raising productivity and quality through automation.

Klaus Nitschke, AISG, lead the effort as primary program manager.  Bob 
Hazel, EMASS FMC IS, and Kevin Horgan, SEA FMC IS, were the lead FMC 
developers, and Mandy Ng and Tony Pellegrini were the technical experts 
from AISG.

Installation of XFC in the remaining three FMCs is planned for FY91.

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			Overview of XFC

	XFC is an Intelligent Batch Production Job Control System for
	time and resource critical business applications.

	It is currently being delivered to Digital's Corporate Financial
	Strategy group to manage, control and streamline the U.S.-wide 
	Financial Closing process (Europe and GIA are considered to follow
	later on). 

	XFC integrates with the "Software International General Ledger System" 
	(SIGL) that is in use by many Fortune-500 companies.

	The goal in that particular application (Financial Closing) is to
	speed up the closing process to providing early forecast and 
	planning information on a corporate-wide basis. Thereby, financial
	results can be analyzed earlier and it will allow more time for 
	potential changes before results are to be submitted to Wall Street.

	XFC accomplishes that goal by adding a layer of control around the
	batch applications (in this case SIGL). It captures standard and/or
	user-specified control information (rules) in its own database. 

	By monitoring the run-time conditions, such as data availability or
	system responses, it can automatically initiate actions when the 
	pre-defined operational or business requirements are met.

	The term "user-specified rules" refers to the closing expert's
	knowledge of the closing process, including the procedure for
	preventing or rectifying typical problems that may arise. 

	This hard-earned knowledge will now be captured in the XFC Database 
	(Knowledge Base) which becomes available to all users of the
	system and can continually be expanded as more knowledge is
	acquired, or modified as operations change.

	Direct benefit in the case of the closing process is that the 
	necessary user intervention can be reduced to exception items only.

	Also, the datacenter operator intervention has been completely 
	automated, thereby, the potential for operations errors have almost
	been eliminated and full control and responsibility is being returned 
	to the business.

	Finally, XFC automatically monitors when actions (e.g. post trans-
	actions	to the General Ledger, flag exceptions) can be taken, this
	allows for an almost real-time transaction processing like environment
	that in turn speeds up the process and availability of financial 
	information.

    An interesting note is that this system is sitting on top of
    DECscheduler. From my limited knowledge of the system, the knowledge
    lies jointly in DECscheduler and an OPS5 rulebase.
    
    I'm going to the States soon and I will investigate how difficult it
    would be to transplant the system into a customers environment.

REF : -.1

Pat,

	I have already been in touch with Mike Gee, and he has spoken with
Mitch; the "transplantation" challenge restricts itself to those of "customer
interest" and "organisational". i.e. If we have the customer interest then we
can overcome the organisational challenge - the rest is just a technical 
problem easily resolved given the correct "problem/solution-tool" match. 

	When are you going to US?

Joe. 

I will be working in the US all of next week. I have arranged a meeting with
Klause Nitchse, the developer/manager of the system. He works for Mitch. He
will give me a demo and discuss "transporting" the application over here.

I am also investigating how widespead is the use of SIGLS (Software Internatioal
General Ledger System) in Europe since XFC sits on top of it.