mrc has announced a new way for businesses with employees that rely on desktop spreadsheet applications such as Excel to incorporate data, analyze it, and provide secure Web views without any prior Web experience.
Even with fortress-like systems in place to protect data, many end-users spend a large amount of time pulling data into spreadsheet programs like Excel and using pivot tables or other means to analyze data. This method:
- Requires repetitive work, making it tedious, time-consuming, and inefficient.
- Means distribution and data errors in these documents are uncontrollable (and untrackable).
- Makes security breaches more likely as essential data is in the inboxes (and on laptops) of many users.
- Delivers business intelligence that is out of date and inaccurate by the time it reaches the final recipients.
A new capability in both m-Power and the mrc-Productivity Series does away with these problems. It gives end-users the freedom to access and analyze the same information they do today, pull data from any outside-spreadsheet, bring it into m-Power, and create Web reports without any previous Web experience.
Additionally, this new capability makes constant re-development of your reports a thing of the past, and makes the input of data the most time-consuming part of the process.
To get a feel for what can be built, here's a Web reporting system one client built to replace their own spreadsheet solutions: MRC Productivity
It also demonstrates the built-in security. Login instructions/passwords are right on the site. Note: As different IDs and passwords are input, there is access to different levels of information.
Here are some of the new features to this capability:
- Easy to Use: Getting the data into the program is incredibly intuitive, even large files, and just takes a simple cut and paste, like Excel. And, there are data checks to make it foolproof.
- Saves days of development: Reports only need to be built once, and can be re-applied each week to the new data, which saves a lot of initial analysis and development time from traditional end-user devices such as pivot-tables.
- Secures and automates distribution: Simply provide a URL. Everyone who has permission can go to a central location to see the report, and this can be controlled with authentication and passwords.
- Guarantees uniform data accuracy: Report is the same for all who view it, so no one is comparing apples to oranges, and everyone is looking at the same crucial data.
- Cost-effective/Budget extending: Because m-Power can be accessed via the Web, end-users company-wide can each access it from their browsers to develop their own applications, and therefore it's a great way to evenly split the cost between departmental budgets.
About mrc
mrc's development tool suites: m-Power and the mrc-Productivity Series, are used to create business applications and can run on any platform that supports Java (e.g. OS/400, Linux, Unix, and Windows). Applications access DB2/400, Oracle, MySQL and MSSQL, or any combination thereof. Using these development tools, users create an endless variety of Java-based business applications from simple queries to reports, to complex custom enterprise systems and dashboards. mrc was a recipient of the 2004 Apex Award for application development, is a long-time IBM Business Partner, and has been producing award-winning development software since 1981.
If you'd like to see how easy m-Power is to use, there is an online test drive available where you can build two server-side Java applications (including tutorial) in under half an hour without any knowlege of Java. Take the challenge! We know you can do it: http://www.mrconlinelab.com.
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