Hello! I am very excited to share with all of you the thought processes and preparation that go into building a new cube.
Over my career, I’ve built 48 different cubes across three (3) different manufacturing companies. While each were similar in that they were in the manufacturing space, they each had their own set of unique circumstances that made them challenging and different.
Most recently I’ve ventured into company number four. The big difference here is that I’m a part owner in this manufacturing organization and being a brand new start up, I’m very excited to share my vision for how Prophix will play an integral role in helping our new company have one source of the truth that everyone is working from.
To access the recorded version of our session, visit this URL and enter the same credentials you used on the day of the Virtual Summit. Enter the Theater section. Then go to Breakouts, find the session name, and click 'Watch On Demand.'
Also, here are my answers to the questions that you asked during the session.
| Question | Response |
|---|---|
| Did you use DPM often to create your cubes? | Only where DPM was warranted. Most of the cubes didn’t warrant a DPM model so they were built directly in the new cube wizard. |
| Are you able to display an example in Prophix of your cubes? Was hoping to see more visuals. | Sorry - I know we’ve talked before so if you want to do a Webex and see some of what we put together I’d be happy to do that. |
| What was in your Std Cost cube? | [Answered in the web session.] |
| What do you do when you have too many records for a dimension? We would like to report sales by customer, but have over 10,000 customers company-wide. | There are a few options: identify a summary level to report at, break out the data into different cubes if it makes sense, use MDX functions TOPCOUNT to identify the top customers (80/20 rule). |
| How was the daily sales cube different from the Sales Cube? | The time dimension is different. Daily sales cube reports daily sales data and forecasts the balance of the days remaining in the month to project the current month. Sales cube reports monthly sales data. |
| Hi, I joined late, so if you already covered this, please ignore and I’ll take a look at the recording. My question is, have you ever designed cubes to do foreign currency transactions? | Yes, foreign currency is an issue in multiple of the cubes we have used. The concept is to pull the data into the cube in native currency format, and then convert it to the appropriate currency using a currency conversion process. This may require multiple exchange rate cubes depending on how the cube dimensions are established. |
| What were the 4 areas for cube ideas? I picked up on three (financial stmts, KPI’s, and time constraints). What am I missing? | [Answered in the web session - there were 3.] |
| How do you organize the reporting/dashboards? How do you make your data most easily accessible to your team members? | You can put data from multiple cubes on one dashboard. The key is to find the most important pieces of data that need to be displayed on the dashboard and then provide links back to a template or ad-hoc for futher detail for the end users who want to drill in. |
| What was in your AR cube? | [Answered in the web session.] |
| Is a new cube something that should be considered to replace any spreadsheet over 10 mb? | Either a new cube, or if the data is overlapping, use an existing cube and add new accounts to capture any data that might be missing. Remember to look for overlapping data because oftentimes you’re already capturing 90% of the data needed to produce another report. |
| We have 7 ERP systems. Is there a better way than using a master code for each customer (since they may be in multiple systems) and then utilize multiple customer attributes as a means of gathering the various data points? With the multiple ERP systems and non-standard data, we use summary data by customer and plant so that we can streamline it and make it user friendly. | I have grouped the customers together from different systems under a “parent” code. This requires some knowledge to know which customers should go together. Alternatively, you could use a mapping table to convert all customer codes to a common code… but depending on the number of customers this could be time consuming. I’ve liked the “parent” grouping the best when I’ve used it in the past. |
| How do you manage so many models? Are they each inter-connected or independent? | Each model is fairly independent. I use workflow to manage the required updates/maintenance on the cubes. I also get others involved and assign responsibility to cubes based on their area of expertise. |
| Can you briefly describe how your E&O cube was setup? | [Spoke to the person asking this question directly.] |
| What resources could you recommend to start learning how to develop cubes? | Prophix web training sessions, attend user conference sessions on the topic, work with a consultant to learn. The hardest part is understanding the dimensions you need to put in the cube….do your homework in this area because once you build the cube, you can’t add dimension members. You have to rebuild a cube to add a dimension member. |
| How did you define in your sales cube between revenue, costs, and units? | Define separate accounts for each of these items. This then also allows you to create some calculated accounts (like sales $/unit). |
| Can you discuss the pros and cons of sharing dimensions between similar cubes? | Pro: eliminates the need to maintain the same dimension data twice. Con: impacts both cubes when processing a dimension update. Tip: find a balance within your data that allows you to share some of the less impactful dimensions, and avoid sharing extremely large dimension sets. |
| The management at my company loves the “Gauge” charts. And I see this is available in Prophix. Are they easy to manage and construct within Prophix? | Yes, super easy to create and manage the gauge values (i.e., what is red, yellow, and green). The values are all definable based on the data you need to present. |
| Can you explain how the additional cubes make it back into the finance cube? Are the cubes linked by an account? | Use an export/import functionality from the process manager. So, from the sales cube, export to a text file the relevant summary data needed and then import it into the financial cube. This can be done quick and seemless in process manager. |
| When building all the various cubes, how do you prevent Prophix from getting bogged down (aka- slow to respond)? Thanks! | Look for the highest level of summary data that can be pulled into the model that gives you the analytical abilities you’re looking for. You often don’t need to pull in all the details. This will limit the number of dimension members. |