Background

Your organisation has invested in the INFOR Approva software to manage financial control and compliance. As a result of this investment, you now have on your agenda, or are compelled by the Internal Service Level Agreement, to manage the availability, quality and stability of this system. Undertaking this measure, however, presupposes having the following capabilities all at once:

• instant information availability on the health and status of all Approva environments
• easy automated access to all relevant elements linked with all Approva environments
• automatic alerts issues BEFORE Approva runs into trouble, for instance due to database-space issues
• an up-to-date overview of all installed and running Approva components
• a complete overview on which software versions are installed on various Approva environments

Most Approva users who deal with functional and technical application management will acknowledge the daily relevance of these requirements. However, in the current practice, addressing all these points is not possible or it becomes possible only after creating expensive custom designed tools. Why is that?

Firstly, every Approva deployment consists of multiple servers such as application, database, reports and multiple environments like: test, QA, production, provisioning, region, etc. Users require specific access for each server in each environment to get status information, albeit access to shared servers may not be allowed, it may be restricted or only possible via special requests procedures. Secondly, assuming an Approva process stops due to an error, it can take a long time before it is noticed. Typically, the first stakeholder to spot it is the business management e.g. because of an undelivered expected report. Thirdly, Approva implementations are often integrated with other applications and tools in your organisation for which you may not have access but depend on a working interface to Approva (e.g. Identity Management solutions, document and report solutions).

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Solution

To address the issues and requirements detailed above, you need to gain a real-time overview of the status and usage of all your Approva environments, monitoring when issues arise or thresholds are met.

For this purpose a management console is required with the capacity to:

• offer a centralised web-based management console monitoring all Approva environments
• secure one-click access to relevant related components and infrastructure
• provide real-time data on the status and usage of all Approva environments
• ensure automatic alerting when issues arise or when thresholds are met

Our recommendation is for a fast, secure and light-weight web application, easy to install in the existing infrastructure, in other words a QuickDash^TM , Consider Solutions’ application monitoring console. Inspired by the requirements of the Approva community, QuickDash^TM seeks to addresses all of the issues discussed above. It is designed as a secure web-based monitoring console that provides real-time data on the status and usage of all your Approva environments with automatic alerting when issues arise or when thresholds are met.

The QuickDash^TM solution structure was conceived as follows:

• offered as a subscription only service so no need for software investments
• light-weight to be installed in your existing infrastructure so no need for hardware investment
• alternatively, it can be run remotely via Consider Solutions servers, i.e. internet access is the only requirement
• intuitive user interface and help-function with no training requirements
• fast, secure and very low system resource requiring web application and server agents
• the standard subscription for the installation, upgrades and support
• the extended subscription includes setting up alerts and connections to your custom components
• the tailored subscription is a fully customised Management Console exactly tailored to your organisational needs

 Areas to be monitored include:

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Savings

The Result

Each time you endeavour to verify and manage the health of your Approva system, you waste time and effort to gain a clear and complete overview of all your Approva environments. It is difficult to keep track of the entire range of software versions and patches installed and you do not have a preventive system in place to alert you before the Approva system encounters issues.

With an application management console such as QuickDash^TM, you can improve the quality of operations around your Approva implementation and cut costs. A subscription model such as the one suggested in this article offers you a low threshold for implementation with no software licenses and dedicated hardware required. Moreover, given the subscription cost, the Consider Solutions QuickDash^TM Application Monitoring Console will pay for itself through time and effort saving, in addition to the quality improvement to your organisation’s Approva Service Level.

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Next Step

Convinced? Contact us to make you an offer on implementing QuickDash^TM in your organisation.

Want to know more? Contact us to get a demo on QuickDash^TM for your organisation

Want to test it yourself? Contact us for a 30 days free trial to install QuickDash^TM on your Approva environment.