Ed-Fi Financial Reporting with an API – Let’s Get Automated!
Entrance has successfully automated the financial submission process for a charter school network that serves around 34,000 students in Texas.
The finance team was responsible for providing various financial data to the Education Agency throughout the school year. This process involved manually uploading the data to an Operational Data Store in the form of an XML file. However, as the Education Agency has phased out the use of XML upload processes in favor of an Application Programming Interface (API) solution, the finance team’s current submission process has become incompatible and obsolete.
Entrance was able to automate the submission process using a ReactJS single-page web application that utilized Azure Functions, Cosmos DB NoSQL database, and Azure Queue Storage. It resulted in reducing the finance team’s weeks-long manual data reconciliation process to a two-click solution.Read More
Custom Software: DIY Advantages and Disadvantages
Good Planning a Key Differentiator for Custom Software
Custom software can be a great tool to match processes to your business. The recent proliferation of do-it-yourself tools makes this even easier because they allow people who aren’t professional programmers to create their own software. Read More
Iterative Custom Software: Consolidating Timesheet Tickets
For long-standing clients for which we have created custom software applications, the process of improving and adding features is continuous, with new additions several times a year. For one project, a field ticket management application, not only has the application been a big success, it is also a perfect example of this process.
Improved Timesheet Reporting with One Simple Fix
One of our most successful projects is for a client called TG Mercer. We created a pipeline logistics system for them that automates the tracking and management of their inventory for its entire lifecycle. Entrance recently released an update to TG Mercer to improve their reporting capabilities through improvements to their timesheet process.
TG Mercer has employees working across the globe, in a number of different time zones. As managers reviewed reports, employees clock-in and clock-out times were logged either as Central Standard Time, or the timezone the managers themselves were working in. Depending on the time zone, employees could look like they were clocking in a whole day later or earlier. In addition, it resulted in some rather bizarre clock-in times, for example 1:00 am instead of 8:00 am.
Key Performance Indicators: Not Just for Internal Metrics Anymore
We’ve talked a bit lately about key performance indicators (KPI) and how they can be used internally to measure things like customer retention, capital expenditure, loan loss, refinery capacity and more. But what about using those same KPI’s to please your customers?
For a major equipment rental company, Entrance built a Silverlight application, hosted as part of a larger application, in order to report their key performance indicators. Some of their most important KPI’s include where money is being spent on equipment, such as backhoes, generators, pumps, etc., in addition to utilization of this equipment.
Midstream Services Data Analysis Results in $5 million Profit
Electronic Field Ticketing Results in Net Gain
Over the past six years, Entrance has worked for a large midstream services company to develop a field ticket management system. Previous to the system, the client billed their customers based on hand written tickets that noted who had worked on a job, for how long and with what materials. Field tickets are now an automated, digital process, ensuring better accuracy and circumventing lost or misplaced paper tickets.
Nate Richards Speaks on Lease Compliance at Shale Conference
Nate Richards, President of Entrance, presented a case study on lease compliance at the conference, “Managing Regulatory and Legal Issues in Shale Plays” in Houston, Texas. Nate shared the innovative solution implemented for one shale E&P client. He explained how the platform allows proactive notification about lease compliance and is protecting key assets in multiple domestic shale plays from potential lease jeopardy by improving administration of common shale lease language. The case study included an explanation of industry drivers that are causing a new set of pressures on compliance.Read More
TG Mercer and Entrance – Engineering Intelligence for Midstream Energy
Our partnership will push the entire midstream forward in efficiency and safety compliance with strategic software.
TG Mercer and Entrance have partnered to create SpreadBoss, a logistics support tool that allows thousands of joints of pipe to be tracked, providing customized inventory reports and creating a pipeline status history database. Not only does the software reduce time and effort spent on tracking pipe, it also provides accurate and timely data capture, as well as consistent documentation. The software solution has become a differentiator for TG Mercer, because it makes them the best in the industry for providing fast and accurate field data for corner office decisions, while reducing the labor cost of that information and making it easily available for regulatory and safety purposes. The project was recently covered in Pipeline and Gas Journal!