In this episode of ADDcast, Bryan Walline, Lead Developer of Business Intelligence at ADD Systems, speaks about Atlas, our web-based reporting tool that streamlines data analysis and automation. Zach Swartley of Penn Valley Gas also discusses the ADD User Group’s Business Intelligence and Reporting Committee’s focus on leveraging data for better decision-making.
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Brian Cohen: Welcome to ADDcast. I’m ADD Systems’ Multimedia Specialist, Brian Cohen. Joining me today is Bryan Walline, Lead Developer — Business Intelligence at ADD Systems. Bryan, thanks so much for joining me today.
Bryan Walline: No problem at all. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Brian: Can you start by telling us a little bit about your role at ADD Systems?
Bryan: Yeah. So my role involves spending time working directly with our customers, talking with them to review the reporting needs, and then working with my team to provide solutions for those reporting needs. Also, if our customers have any of their own report developers on staff, I’ll also spend time working with them to help them learn how to modify and create Atlas reports on their own.
Brian: Well, Atlas is the subject of our conversation today. So can you start by maybe giving listeners an overview about what Atlas offers users?
Bryan: Yeah, definitely. So Atlas is an easy-to-use web-based reporting tool. It’s where users can go to run reports, set up automated email delivery of those reports. They can also set up notifications for any data exceptions. Atlas reports on E3, eStore, and point-of-sale data, but it also provides a good opportunity to centralize reporting, things like third-party data sources. So for example, we’ve implemented solutions where we pull data in from payroll systems to add labor costs to Atlas profitability reports, phone systems to report on call statistics, like inbound calls, outbound calls, drop calls, those kind of things. Other common requests we’ve gotten from customers is to pull in data from Great Plains so they can take a sales report in Atlas and add budget data to it.
Brian: So I’m sure there’s a lot of reports within Atlas that kind of rise to the top as the most popular. Can you talk about some of those?
Bryan: Yeah. So from my experience, it really depends on the user that’s requesting the report. So some employees may want to see data at a very high level. They usually request something like a dashboard or a scorecard, maybe a scorecard that focuses on your division’s performance on a specific group of products, like fuel or propane products. And then there are other users, like maybe a sales manager who wants to run a report that provides all their sales so they can calculate their commissions. Other users have found sales analysis by customer reports helpful, especially when it comes to lubricant sales. Recently, we’ve worked on some reports that track customer gains and losses so you can see month to month how many accounts you’re bringing in and how many accounts you’re losing. Store managers are often looking for sales and margin reports for their merchandise and fuel. Also, store inventory-tracking reports so they can identify where shrink is coming from.
Brian: Well, I’m sure that for some users, all of this data and the multitude of reports you can run within Atlas could be a little bit intimidating or overwhelming. If anyone were to come to you with those concerns, what would you say to them?
Bryan: Well, I’d ask them to think about their business and identify what they’re trying to measure and improve. From there, we can figure out what reporting could be used to help with that. Once we know that, we can set up emailed reports or exception alerts so that we can keep those priorities in focus and allow their users to quickly address any potential issues. We can also create custom dashboards and scorecards that are very specific to your daily business.
Brian: Now, if somebody has more questions about Atlas, how can they reach out to you?
Bryan: They can just give us a call, send us an email, log a call through our Client Portal. If you’re looking for a report, it may be something we’ve already made in the past. So we can send you some examples and help you get exactly what you need.
Brian: Bryan, thank you so much for joining me today.
Bryan: No problem at all. Thanks again, Brian.
Brian: And joining me now is Zach Swartley of Penn Valley Gas, who is the Chair of the AUG Business Intelligence and Reporting Committee. Zach, thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.
Zach Swartley: My pleasure.
Brian: Can you start by talking about the BI Committee’s purpose and your current role within the committee?
Zach: Sure. So the BI Committee, as the name suggests, is focused on reporting and data. So we’re really looking at all the reporting and data that go into making business decisions or solving business challenges. We don’t have a litmus test for joining the committee. It’s people from a lot of different roles and backgrounds, and we don’t necessarily require you to have a certain software. So at end value, we use Atlas, but members use lots of different tools. Yeah, I’m currently the chair. I’m looking for a co-chair, if anyone’s interested.
Brian: And what are some of the recent topics that have been addressed in BI Committee meetings?
Zach: Well, the topics are really member driven, so people raise issues that are important to them or important to their companies. So I’ll give a few examples from this past season, and maybe talk about AR in collections, so all the reporting that your collections team might need to be successful. In June, we did a show and tell, so people showed off the reports or the KPIs or the dashboards that they were most proud of or that were most important to their companies. In September, we focused on deliveries. We’re looking at deliveries from end-to-end, and the analysis and KPIs and tools that help make your delivery team successful. And in October, we had an open forum. So some of the topics that came up there were the service department and measuring service department performance and profitability, how to forecast winter demand and things like that.
Brian: Now do the conversations tend to get overly technical in nature, or can a regular user join and still get benefits from this?
Zach: Yes. I think that’s a good question. I think the acronym BI, or even the term business intelligence can be a little bit off putting. It can kind of suggest a high buyer of entry, or that it’s not very accessible, but it’s definitely not the case. I think we maybe have trained data scientists on our committee, but I don’t know if we do, and they definitely don’t determine the tenor of the conversations. So every company runs some data, whether you know it or not, and the tools really vary, from Excel to Power BI to maybe Microsoft Fabric or AI tools, but we really try to make the conversations accessible and relevant to everyone, helpful to everyone. So I myself am not a BI specialist. We’re a small or mid-sized company. I wear different hats, but I get a lot from this committee, and that’s part of why I was willing to take on this leadership role. I think another important point to emphasize is that the tools themselves have really changed over time. At one point, to really create great reporting or BI you need to have a lot of training. The tools have really kind of come to the point where they’re accessible to pretty much anyone, and we try to present that in our meetings.
Brian: And what are some of the most beneficial aspects of the BI Committee, in your opinion?
Zach: Well, I think for me, when I joined — so I joined Penn Valley Gas in 2020 and I joined the BI Committee soon after that. I think it was really important and helpful for me, for someone coming into the industry and into the software to understand those things better. I think all of us are in a little bit of a silo within our role, within our company, within our region. So it helps, I think, hearing from people from different contexts, hearing how they pursue challenges or solve challenges, and how they do things. The best practices other companies follow, I think it really helps, kind of inform your decision making and how you view things. I think it’s probably true of all the committees, like we’re all kind of creating creative commons where we’re sharing ideas and perspectives that are helpful across the board. And that’s personally, that’s what I’ve taken from this committee over the last four years.
Brian: And if someone wants to learn more about the BI Committee, or like you mentioned earlier, if they’re interested in becoming a co-chair with you, how would they go about doing so?
Zach: My email is probably the best way. It’s zach@pennvalleygas.com.
Brian: Well, Zach, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.
Zach: My pleasure.
Brian: To keep up with the latest happenings at ADD Systems, visit addsys.com/blog, or connect with us on social media by following ADD Systems on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or X. If you have any questions about ADDcast, feel free to reach out to us at addcast@addsys.com. Thanks for listening and have a great day.
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