During the implementation, the client may require data streams from the Oracle EBS into Demantra worksheet which is not populated through standard workflow. To meet such client specific requirement, Demantra has provision in the tool called Business Modeler where you can create custom integration interfaces to populate the custom data from EBS and then push it into the Demantra table sales data using Demantra workflow.
This blog provides an insight into this functionality provided by Demantra-Business Modeler to import the custom data into Demantra Demand Management.
Designing Demantra Integration Interface:
Demantra integration interface is used to create the interface tables where we can populated the custom data from EBS. The following basic steps we required for defining the integration interface:
Create new import integration interface with user defined name from Business Modeler: Navigation: Business Modeler> Tools> Integration Interface.
Select the series during defining this integration interface. These are the Demantra series where you wish to populate your custom data.
Define the time scale (Weekly, Monthly, quarterly or yearly etc.) in which we want to aggregate and load the data and also define the time period range for which you wish to load this data.
It also allows for the selection of Demantra Levels to import the data e.g. if we want to import the pricing data at Item and customer levels, we can select Item and Customer levels in during its definition.
Further you can apply filter within these selected level e.g. we can import the item prices for selected customers only by applying the appropriate filter
During the creation of the integration interface you can decide to create the workflow automatically or manually.
Worksheet can be created automatically or manually during the definition of the integration interface.
How Demantra Integration Interface works?
Demantra integration interface creates view tables to hold custom data.
Workflow can be created automatically during the Demantra integration interface definition or manually from Demantra Workflow.
Demantra workflow is launched to push the records from the interface tables, analyze them and populate all the valid combinations into the Demantra base table i.e. sales data.
Records which error out during the workflow runs are populated in respective error tables.
Errored out records are fixed at the source and populated again in the interface tables.
Finally the Demantra workflow is run again to push all valid records into the sales data table.
Pre-Requisites:
Make sure that all series where we are planning to load the data are already defined.
Make sure that all the custom time levels where we want to load the data are created and imported in Demantra.
Make sure that all the Levels where we are planning to bring the data are already defined.
Conclusion
Demantra Demand Management is a powerful, flexible and feature rich forecasting application and therefore, the clients easily get tempted into implementing all the bells and whistles from the very start. However, such an approach can lead to steep learning curve for the business users and it can seriously undermine the adoption of this module.
We caution and encourage our clients to adopt step approach in Demantra implementations in order to ensure success.
