By Nathan Dukes
GL Wand for SAP is an Excel based tool that streamlines reporting for finance departments that run SAP Financials.
As part of the SAP PartnerEdge Program, Excel4apps works closely with SAP to develop and certify the technical integration of GL Wand with SAP software.
GL Wand augments SAP by helping users access and analyse live financial information more productively through a familiar Excel front end.
Michele Buson, Director and Co-Founder of Excel4apps, said GL wand offers similar functionality for both SAP and Oracle customers.
“GL Wand for SAP extends the same benefits to SAP users that customers of GL Wand for Oracle have appreciated for years, including more efficient finance reporting, shorter monthly closes and faster refreshes directly from ERP system data,” he said.
“Our development team of chartered accountants and experienced SAP users has created an entirely new code base for this version of GL Wand that is tailored exclusively for SAP, and initial SAP users cite the product as indispensable for expedited analysis and ad hoc reporting.”
GL Wand links directly with SAP, without the need for a data warehouse or additional hardware, as with other reporting tools.
The solution can be installed within minutes and requires little support from information technology staff for support and programming.
Report creation can be achieved by accountants and other financial users with minimal training, and reports can drill down into line items and individual cells within SAP data.
Sphere Healthcare, a large-scale pharmaceutical contract manufacturer based in Australia, has conducted a trial of the product.
Simon Taylor, Finance Manager for Sphere Healthcare, said the company has already experienced benefits.
“Our very first month-end on SAP was only made possible by migrating the trial version of GL Wand into production,” he said.
“We recognised the instant value of GL Wand and immediately issued a purchase order for the software to IQX, our reseller.”
GL Wand also enforces SAP authorisations, as opposed to those of a separate data warehouse, for unparalleled data security.
Grant Peterson, Product Manager, GL Wand for SAP said the architecture protects data from unauthorised access while producing highly auditable reports
“GL Wand’s integration architecture is based on SAP’s connector for Microsoft .NET v2.01, which allows users to log onto SAP via GL Wand and read requested financial data as SAP authorizations allow,” he said.
GL Wand 1.10 for SAP is available for free trial and down load at:
