Rest, Relaxation and Reporting – Why good support matters

This is a real-time account of a financial manager faced with a Sage Intelligence Reporting issue late on a Sunday afternoon. This is why good support matters.

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It’s 3pm on a Sunday afternoon and I’m trying to get my last bit of relaxation in before starting the work week ahead. The result… I stumble to the fridge, open a can of beer, grab some Biltong, and sit myself down onto the couch, in front of the television. It’s at that exact moment I realize my CFO is coming into the office tomorrow—which means he’ll want his financial reports on his desk at 8AM sharp!

OH NO! It’s time I did away with relaxation, and un-plonk myself (not sure if that’s even a word but it’s a Sunday, so it’ll pass) from these couch-potato tendencies, I think to myself.

I push the power button on, and my computer starts up with an all-too-familiar BEEP and WHIRRR sound. It suddenly feels like Monday has burst in early to announce the end of the weekend.

Once my machine realizes that it’s alive and not in fact dreaming, it lets me navigate to a little green icon with an “R” on it. Although this is not the “Relax” icon on my PC, but rather the Report Manager icon from Sage Intelligence Reporting, it’s pretty much the same thing to me. You see, this little icon opens up a clever solution that allows me to create customized, reusable reports in Microsoft® Excel®, and we all know how much financial gurus like myself love Excel! This gives me even more flexibility to analyze my financials. All in all, this little intelligent application gives me back my time.

So, I click on the magical little “R” icon and suddenly it seems like it too has got the Sunday spirit… I think the software sensed my urgency to get this done, and just like the office printer—it refused to work! Murphy’s law, I thought to myself, while my mind frantically tried to think of a plan B. Eventually my lump of grey matter came up with a bright idea. I’ll call in sick the next morning. Evidently this lump of grey matter was not cooperating, and this wasn’t unusual for a Sunday afternoon.

I then remembered that Sage Intelligence Reporting has a host of resources available online—and one of them were bound to help me get around this error that everything except eye-of-newt might solve.

First stop—the Sage Intelligence Community website.  There’s tons of content here and quiet a lot of activity. I decide to post my issue here to see if anyone is online to assist me right away. While I wait for a response, I think I’ll do the same on Sage City—another community-based website.

Hang on a second… why am I waiting for a response?! The Sage Intelligence Knowledgebase is available to everyone, and they most likely have a solution to my problem! I quickly navigate to the Knowledgebase website and type my error in the search box. Low and behold, a hit. Someone’s had the exact issue I’m currently having, maybe not on a Sunday, but close enough! Reading through the steps outlined in the article, it becomes clear that this site will help. Easy enough for a Sunday-induced, beer-brain to follow. I manage to resolve the issue and get my financial packs out in no time with my favorite piece of financial reporting software. Bliss!

Monday morning arrives, and I’m stuck in traffic. It’s after 8AM! Good thing I was able to email those report packs through last night… I think to myself.