Solutions

Abbro generates full functionality, normal data processing applications. This is done quickly, simply and reliably by a combination of parameterised specification for screens, reports, etc. and a formal language defining the object based business rules. To date, we have not found any DP functionality that Abbro cannot handle easily, simply and quickly. This is remarkable, as the usual problem with parameterised approaches is their inability to handle real world complexity – either at all or in a usable manner.

While Abbro gives significant benefit in generating free-standing applications using data feeds to/from existing systems, the greatest benefits come from its ability to:

• Handle changes and enhancements very easily
• Interface (read, write and modify) with data in existing applications and databases

This gives Abbro an unique ability to ‘fill in the cracks’ between existing systems, providing:

• Interfaces between systems that cannot easily communicate directly with each other
• Reporting (real time) across incompatible systems
• Adding functionality to existing systems
• Providing functionality and process support in business areas requiring information held in several systems.

Carrying out these tasks often reveals the poor quality and logical incompatibility of the data held in the disparate systems. Abbro has developed processes, rules and techniques for cleansing and integrating this data.

Abbro’s ability to simply set up read and write for disparate existing systems, combined with the business rules that can be set up, mean that Abbro can be used to cleanse the data, by:

• Reporting on the data incompatibilities, within a work flow, to designated people for correction and then allowing those designated people to correct that data in the host systems
• Making the changes automatically, directly in the host systems, following agreed rules & then reporting on these changes.

This combination of central data definition, data cleansing, work flow to support the cleansing and provision of the corrected data is known as ‘Master Data Management’.

Abbro has a number of major advantages over conventional Master Data Management tools:

• The data can be directly accessed by Abbro rather than requiring special data feeds
• Changes can be made directly in the host systems
• The cleansing can be combined directly with added functionality
• The process can be taken in small value added chunks without the necessity for massive initial outlay, effort and (above all) delay.

Abbro provides support for Regulatory and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance in 2 fundamental ways:

• The Abbro generated applications are Sarbanes-Oxley compliant. This means that Abbro can be used to gradually replace an existing non compliant system (eventually only leaving the database, which can be switched over, allowing the original system to be decommissioned)
• Abbro can be used to add functionality to existing systems, drawing information from those systems, adding additional data and storing it in some combination of the existing systems and Abbro. This means that Regulator requirements for additional information, processes and audit capability can be quickly provided when there are inflexible and incompatible existing systems

All of Abbro’s many benefits and capabilities come together in a business merger or acquisition.

Abbro can be used to:

• Draw together the data from the (usually incompatible) systems
• Provide reporting across the systems
• Step by step, investigate and achieve compatible data (customer, product, etc) across the businesses and systems
• Clean up the data
• Provide new functionality and process support straddling the businesses/systems in real time (i.e. days and weeks not months)

All of this can be implemented in small changeable steps, achieving real benefit early and often.