"Monarch is one of those applications I cannot imagine now working without. It is a must-have in my toolbox along with Microsoft Word and Excel."

 

Minerva is the oldest olive oil production company in Greece, having established its business over one hundred years ago, originally as an olive oil trading company. Today Minerva operates a state-of-the-art olive oil production and packaging facility, recognized as one of the finest in Europe. Minerva is now the largest exporter of brand-name olive oil.

To support its growth, Minerva has invested sensibly in information technology systems, notably its QAD MFG/Pro ERP system. Since 1998, Monarch has also played an important part in Minerva's technology solution set, to mine and extract information easily from the company's MFG/Pro ERP report output and printed data into flexible spreadsheets and end user reports.

Managers and workers were eager to make use of Monarch, enabling them to work with ERP data on their own, without any advanced IT skills and no need to wait for resources from the IT department.

"Monarch is one of those applications I cannot imagine now working without. It is a must-have in my toolbox along with Microsoft Word and Excel," says Glen Rigby, Project Manager at Minerva.

"I primarily use it for extracting data from MFG/Pro reports, which offers many advantages. One of these benefits is that proven business logic is already present within the reports I'm using."

Glen goes on to explain why Monarch is so easy to use. "There is a lot of technical information, such as database schemas and table relationships, which I do not need to know about in order to get at important data. It also means I am less likely to miss something important that would otherwise lead to incorrect results. I am therefore better placed to make more informed and timely business decisions. Plus, it is far cheaper and faster to develop a Monarch model than it is to write and maintain a new report."

Glen continues, "(Monarch) also provides me with the flexibility to use the excellent built-in analytical facilities [and] extract the data for quickly loading into Excel. However, as I've become more familiar with the features available within Monarch, the need to extract data has reduced. Being able to get my hands on the information I need using the in-built functionality of Monarch means I spend less time moving data from one product to another, which means I'm better placed to make that quick decision."

"As much of my work involves implementing new systems, I often find myself having to migrate data from a legacy system to a new one," Glen adds. "At times, it is easier, quicker and more reliable to use Monarch to extract data from the reports available in the legacy system than more time-consuming and costly alternatives. In fact, sometimes it's the only way to get at the data I need!"

Minerva has standardized the company's Monarch licenses, ensuring that everyone is benefiting from the same features, while reducing its internal application support.

Monarch Pro adds the ability to extract data from PDF files as well as other key enhancements, enabling Minerva to gain real cost and time advantages from its use in-house.

"Since these Monarch models were devloped, the supporting IT resources required have been significantly reduced and daily business runs more smoothly."

Account reconciliation is a significant area of use for Monarch within Minerva, affecting several business-critical and legal tax reports. For example, a typical monthly ERP report such as the Inventory Book, containing all monthly stock transactions, produces 5,000 pages of output. These transactions must be reconciled to the General Ledger.

By any means, this would be a daunting task without Monarch. By using Monarch, the reconciliation takes moments. Thanks to Monarch's filtering, sorting and summary functions, Monarch has saved time among end users who take responsibility for cross-checking and finalizing legal reports by the third business day of the following month - an impressive accounting-close schedule for any organization!

"Since these Monarch models were developed, the supporting IT resources required have been significantly reduced and daily business runs more smoothly," says Stamatis Vlachos, IT Manager at Minerva.

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