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Using Ensemble to integrate disparate application systems
We have been InterSystems partners for a number of years and tremendously enjoy the reliability, powerful features and excellent support of its software products for developers, most notably the Caché object data base and developing environment, as well as Ensemble, its powerful integration platform.
With this post we make the readers of our blog aware of the unique capabilities Ensemble holds for integrating disparate systems. While Ensemble is known for being heavily deployed in the medical space, we use it successfully for building composite applications in the Cloud for other industries, such as Financial Services and Accounting.
Enjoy both videos:
First video: Paul Grabscheidt from InterSystems Corp explains why Ensemble is the better Integration platform for composite applications:
Second video: Joe de Santis from InterSystems Corp demonstrates key features of Ensemble for building composite applications:
Posted by Wolf Schumacher
SMSF administration in the Cloud - A RSDataWeb case study
Our recent article about "Accountants moving into the Cloud to administer SMSFs", yielded an excellent response by some large and mid-sized Accounting firms with SMSF clients.
Most of these firms are well aware of the benefits that Cloud computing can offer and are keen to start moving into the direction. The automation of investment and cash transactions is an excellent area to start, as it allows to integrate with a large number of external data providers.
RSDataWeb is a web-based data automation & integration platform, that integrates a wide range of electronic financial data feeds into streams of real-time and historic data helping to eliminate the tedious tasks of client data preparation in most accounting offices. RSDataWeb is not an afterthought by otherwise non-web oriented software vendors, but a powerful scalable web solution that saves Accounting and Advice firms real staff time and money.
As a case in point, we’ve put together a case study of an Australian Accounting firm, which automated its data preparation with the help of RSDataWeb.
Enjoy the introductory video!
View and download the presentation slides shown in the video here.
Posted by Wolf Schumacher
RSDataWeb and Topdocs integration live
This short video demonstrates the automatic integration via web services between RSDataWeb and the leading online legal document facilitator Topdocs.
Subscribers to our RSDataWeb platform can now easily order, pay for and receive a wide range of legal documents online right from inside RSDataWeb.
The video shows an accountant using RSDataWeb select one of their SMSF clients, reviews its stored client data for completeness / correctness and subsequently orders and pays for a customized Trust deed document in one go.
This online process takes only a few clicks with the mouse and results in an automatically populated and downloaded trust deed to the accountant’s section on RSDataWeb. Enjoy the video and send us your comments below this blog entry!
Going forward and in close cooperation with our partner Topdocs we will make all current and future Topdocs legal documents available to our RSDataWeb users.
Author: Wolf Schumacher
Web services in action: Sharesight and RewardSuper
Sharesight provides automated, online portfolio management software for share market investors. As well as the usual compliance reports for tax and accounting, Sharesight answers the big question that every investor wants to know: "How well has my portfolio really performed?" In other words Sharesight calculates the per annum return (including dividends and currency movements) across any date range.
Like RewardSuper, Sharesight provides Software as a Service (SaaS). Our philosophy is simple: We provide the service and the customer owns the data. We took this a step further by developing our Sharesight Connect API. Sharesight Connect allows our customers to authorise third parties like RewardSuper's Accounting and Advice customers to have secure access to their portfolio data.
How the integration works
Our integration with RewardSuper’s RSDataWeb platform is a great example of web services in action. In a typical example, RewardSuper's Accounting customers will obtain permission from their clients to receive their trade records (contract notes) from the broker. This trading data is then electronically populated into Sharesight via Sharesight Connect, ensuring the client’s Sharesight portfolio is up to date with no manual input required. By combining this share trading data with comprehensive share market data, Sharesight automatically populates dividend records and adjusts for share splits, bonus issues, consolidations, name changes and capital returns for any shares listed on ASX, NYSE, LSE, NASDAQ and NZX. This data can be checked and maintained by either the client or their accountant. The complete portfolio data is then available to be automatically read back into RSDataWeb via Sharesight Connect where it is made available to be imported into one of the range of RSDataWeb's supported accounting systems.
Everybody wins
For the first time we are seeing a seamless flow of data between the broker’s trading platform, the client’s portfolio management software, and the accountant’s accounting system. Gone are the days where portfolio data is manually duplicated into a number of disparate systems. Accountants win by being able to provide clients with a more cost effective solution. Clients win by getting better value for money and, if they are using Sharesight, being much better informed about the performance of their portfolio with virtually no effort required by them.
Author: Scott Ryburn, Sharesight.com.au
Data integration in the context of SMSF industry integration
(click image to zoom)
Our valued blog contributor and SMSF specialist Aaron Dunn very recently published an excellent overview of the SMSF industry in his highly respected SMSF blog www.thedunnthing.com. His chart depicts various categories with its major players. What the chart doesn’t show is the dataflow between the players.
This blog post discusses elements of the transactional dataflow between SMSF industry players.
Network thinking is not prevalent in the SMSF industry
For years “straight-through processing” has been a catchword in the Financial Services Industry. While a lot has been achieved over the years, the SMSF industry players and adjacent data generating industries are not thinking and acting in networks (yet). Too many entities still think they can do it all themselves and leave their Accounting and Advice clients alone with barely integrated compliance solutions (aka accounting software) and a few data feeds. What is missing is true network thinking and acting and using web-services technology which is readily available today but unfortunately not used enough. The industry is stuck with on-premise accounting software and vendors who try to bolt on web features to their existing products; some being more successful than others, though.
RSDataWeb, the “Switzerland” of accounting and advice systems
At RewardSuper we’ve understood that the Internet has dawned on the SMSF industry and that network thinking and acting are the way to make it stick. Not only web services technology but the willingness to actively exchange data electronically without manual intervention is the way forward. With our RSDataWeb solution, we are at the bleeding edge of this new technology adoption. We team up with forward thinking companies in the industry to automatically hook up client authorized data streams such as share trading data, and feeding the resulting cleaned and fully matched data into the compliance systems of choice, such as BGL Simple Fund, Acurity, superMate and others. In the industry we are all in this together with trying to deliver the best possible data as quickly as possible and untampered by manual interventions into the books of SMSFs (i.e. trial balances).
Integrating the SMSF accounting data value chain
The key to data integration and resulting high data quality is for the players in the data value chain to let their systems talk to each other across all process steps. No manual interventions such as keying in contract notes data into compliance software, which represent broken links in the data flow (see picture). While the process flow should be automatic to represent true integration, there needs to be ongoing control of the process by the process owners. In the example of an SMSF conducting share trades, there are three types of owners: trustees, who decide and effect trades, stock brokers, who execute trades on behalf of the trustees, and accountants, who also act on behalf of the trustees by making sure that the trades are correctly represented in the SMFS's books.
The example process has two integration points
(1) The broker’s order system automatically produces trade confirmations (aka contract notes) for their clients, the trustees. With RSDataWeb the contract notes are automatically picked up and reconciled with the cash book.
(2) RSDataWeb automatically codes all reconciled transactions and delivers them to the respective accounting system.
Both integration points need to be carefully monitored by the accountants (via automatically produced exception reports), who are in control of the process from step 3 onwards. An automated, integrated and well controlled process delivers the results, which the trustees the Auditors and the SMSF regulator rightfully expect to see.
Author: Wolf Schumacher
RSDataWeb - a SaaS Data Automation & Integration Platform
What exactly is SaaS?
Software-as-a-Service (short: SaaS) is a software application such as RSDataWeb residing in the Cloud that is licenced to users and accessed via the Internet as a service (source: Wikipedia http://bit.ly/icIpOS). Among the many advantages are scalability, reliability and the absence of system installation and maintenance, which are all included in the web-based service.
What is Data Automation?
RSDataWeb collects transaction data, reconciles and transfers them to various accounting systems. It does this without human intervention, which classifies it as an automated system. Humans instigate and supervise the automated processes and handle exceptions from automated business rules.
What is Data Integration?
RSDataWeb organises the process of feeding systems delivering required data into the system and also the process of how to get completed data out of the system into targeted accounting systems.
The level of integration is largely dependent upon the capabilities of the feeding and the target systems. RSDataWeb deals with incomplete and complete feeding and target systems in an organised way:
Complete systems are able to send through and/or receive data via so called web services, which allow machine-to-machine communication without any human intervention. Incomplete systems typically restrict their users to download / upload data files manually.
Two examples
RSDataWeb can handle both situations. For example Macquarie Bank organises their data feeds as a web service, which allows RSDataWeb to import the data daily without any human intervention.The Macquarie system moves the transaction data without any manual intervention directly into RSDataWeb, where they are subject to automated reconciliation procedures.
On the other hand, the well known Banklink service requires Accountants to download data to their computers, before they can be made available in RSDataWeb. Unfortunately there are no web services available from Banklink. Consequently their system requires the manual upload of the transaction files into RSDataWeb, where again they are subject to automated reconciliation procedures.
Pulling it all together in one Platform
RSDataWeb functions as a data preparation platform for Accounting and Advice firms. It allows for the automated integration with data sources and the automated export of completely coded transactions to Accounting packages.
Automation and Integration means there is no human intervention required other than downloading and uploading of data files in case of feeding and target systems not being on web services standards yet.
A system which requires source data to be manually amended (keyed in), is not an automated or integrated system.
These system are not capable to reach similar scalability, high data quality and low cost status as the completely automated & integrated RSDataWeb platform.
You can read more about RSDataWeb here: http://www.rewardsuper.com.au
Author: Wolf Schumacher
