Founded in 1979, and headquartered in the United Kingdom, CODA Group is a finance management systems specialist, and part of the publicly traded CODASciSys plc. group (AIM: CSY). After a series of changes which began in the late 1990s when it was first acquired and then divested by former Baan to Science Systems, and then in early 2000, CODA changed its name to CODASciSys. (See Baan Posts $236 Million Loss and Sells Off Coda for Nearly $40M Less Than It Paid). The group offers a broad suite of products and services designed to meet the needs of financial and accounting departments. Its offerings range from financial, accounting, and procurement systems linked to a complementary suite of applications that support finance, reporting, and analytic processes across the organization, through to planning, budgeting, consolidation, reporting, and analytics. It also encompasses process control and compliance management. Its traditional transactional systems are applications that optimize accounting, procurement, asset management, and e-commerce across (and beyond) the entire, often distributed, user enterprise.
Lately, the vendor has expanded into a range of integrated business intelligence (BI), planning, forecasting, and consolidation analytic tools to deliver a more complete, near real time picture of the user organization's finances, performance, and opportunities. Among these complementary applications, which will explained in more detail in this article series, is a range of new collaborative applications that will streamline and automate key business processes, such as regulatory compliance, financial period-end close, and corporate responsibility programs.
Currently CODA employs more than 550 people around the world and delivers global sales, service, and support through its own offices in 11 countries. It has a carefully selected network of partners in a further 17 countries to provide implementation services, training, and support for over 2,500 customers in over 100 countries. Of its total number of employees, about 170 are in research and development (R&D), 60 in support (with 15 based in the US), and 110 in consulting. Its worldwide customer base includes medium and large user organizations found across many industry sectors, such as insurance, shipping, transportation and logistics, retail, banking and finance, professional services, and the public sector. While retail is one of the stronger sectors for CODA in the UK, transportation and shipping and financial services companies are the frequent users in North America.
CODA Financials, Inc., located in Manchester, New Hampshire (US) is one part of the CODA Group. Present in the US and Canada since 1988, CODA Financials has a rich history of helping finance departments solve complex problems where issues of scale or high transactional volumes, reliability, and performance are of primary importance. While many may not have heard of CODA itself, many have heard of some of the global, blue chip organizations that are using CODA products and services to support their business. CODA has more than 250 customers in the US and Canada, including Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Maher Terminals, Texas Pacific Group, Lin TV, Pan-American Life Insurance, and Reno Depot, that have delegated their financial intelligence requirements to CODA. Globally, and across some industry sectors, clients include IKEA in retail, AMBAC Assurance Corporation in the financial services, Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) in transportation and logistics, and the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in education.
A key attribute of CODA's offerings is its "multi" features. It can handle multiple companies, multiple currencies, multiple languages, and multiple charts of accounts in a single product's instance or database. Thus, its single or "unified" ledger architecture, which processes and holds the user company's financial data in a single ledger and in real time, eliminates traditionally lengthy and tardy batch updates between sub-ledgers. Consequently, a near real time financial position is always maintained, and the entire general ledger (GL) should always be balanced. Additionally, the Multiple Dimensional "Flexchart" capability supports up to eight variable length account code segments, which enable revenue and expense tracking at a highly detailed level. The Hierarchies and Account Groups features add virtually unlimited account "roll-ups" to meet inquiry, reporting, and drilldown needs.
Additionally, the complementary CODA analysis and collaborative solutions have been designed to integrate seamlessly both with CODA applications and other leading operational systems to capitalize on customers' existing information technology (IT) investments. Increasingly, CODA solutions are also being used to address the complex requirements of companies that need to intelligently share information with business partners, customers, and suppliers. Furthermore, "upgrade friendly" interfaces underline the vendor's technical vision for integration. For instance, CODA's application programming interfaces (API) "de-couple" the source and feeder applications, thereby enabling system upgrades without having to reengineer interfaces. Application-driven form and report customizations are preserved during upgrades.
Last but not least, the open and standards-based product architecture supports multiple platforms, third party reporting tools, secure Microsoft Office integration, and extensible markup language (XML) and Web services integration. Earlier in 2005, Microsoft Corp. and CODA announced a multiyear alliance intended to enable CODA to deliver a range of financial accounting, management, analysis, and control solutions that take advantage of the Microsoft platform. In addition to CODA's existing line of financial management products for the Microsoft platform, versions of the company's next generation of analysis and process control solutions—including CODA-Analytics and CODA-Intelligence for corporate performance management (CPM), and CODA-Control for compliant process management—will be built using Microsoft technology. Among these are the Microsoft .NET Framework, Structured Query Language (SQL) Server 2005 Integration Services and Analysis Services, Microsoft Office System, Windows Server 2003, and SharePoint Portal products and technologies. CODA maintains that the alliance should help it deliver solutions that will allow enterprises to analyze, control, and exploit changing business dynamics and realize greater value from their financial systems investments. By building on the Microsoft platform, CODA pledges to deliver greater customer value with solutions that are even easier to use, deploy, and maintain, and will help reduce ownership and integration costs.
The alliance between CODA and Microsoft builds on the late 2004 announcement that highlighted CODA's support for the new Microsoft Development Center in Denmark. CODA was the first Microsoft independent software vendor (ISV) partner to take advantage of the center to design, develop, and improve solutions that use the latest advancements to the Microsoft platform. The resulting system architecture designs now include a number of new technologies that aim to helping performance and customer usability, as well as to accelerate CODA's time-to-market with its new application architecture. The new technologies include
* Information Bridge Framework (IBF). Allows data from line of business (LOB) systems (such as CODA�Financials) to be "brought to life" inside the Microsoft Office Suite and related systems that use MS Office technology (such as CODA Collaborative Control and CODA XL)
* Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004. Microsoft engineers reportedly helped the CODA team understand the tight integration of BizTalk into CODA applications, facilitating complex hub-and-spoke back-end business integrations.
There is also an apparent commitment to Microsoft technologies; for example, analytics solutions like Analytic Explorer and CODA Intelligence will exploit SQL Server 2005 integration services, analysis services, and reporting services, while process automation and modeling solutions like CODA-Control will exploit latest Microsoft Office technologies. However, other CODA transactional solutions for financial management support many other platforms and configurations, including OpenVMS (Virtual Memory System), IBM iSeries (AS/400), UNIX, open source, client/server, Web technologies, and Web services (without imposing the choice between client/server and Web-based configurations on the customer). On the application server side, with the choice of the Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2/400, or Sybase database platforms and the choice of Windows Server, UNIX (HP UX, Sun Solaris, and IBM AIX versions), and IBM iSeries operating systems (OS), application services provide and enforce business rules, security, and validation. The application server includes a single point of maintenance for users, roles, business rules, account validation, reporting roll-up structures, master file details, document posting rules, inquiry templates, pay, matching, etc. The system features a scalable financial engine that can accommodate between tens and thousands of concurrent connections with a farm enabled Web server.
On the other hand, by leveraging extensible markup language (XML) and transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP), Web servers (which can be eithher the open source Apache on UNIX/IBM iSeries/Linux or Microsoft Internet Information Server [IIS] on Windows) enable a scalable delivery of CODA functionality to a Web browser and to Web service-enabled user interfaces (UI), and also serve as gateways for integration. They enable location independent, tailored, intuitive user operation. Form modifications are stored as separate XML documents, and thus become "upgrade friendly" as customizations are preserved during future upgrades. In addition, the use of hypertext markup language (HTML) over HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)/ Secure HTTP (S-HTTP) enables multi-window, browser-based access to complete CODA functionality, as well as centralized configuration, rollout of the user's desktop environment, and a zero-client footprint installed across a secure intranet connection. Moreover, CODA-Portal provides a common platform to view both live CODA data and non-CODA data published as Web documents.
Lately, the vendor has expanded into a range of integrated business intelligence (BI), planning, forecasting, and consolidation analytic tools to deliver a more complete, near real time picture of the user organization's finances, performance, and opportunities. Among these complementary applications, which will explained in more detail in this article series, is a range of new collaborative applications that will streamline and automate key business processes, such as regulatory compliance, financial period-end close, and corporate responsibility programs.
Currently CODA employs more than 550 people around the world and delivers global sales, service, and support through its own offices in 11 countries. It has a carefully selected network of partners in a further 17 countries to provide implementation services, training, and support for over 2,500 customers in over 100 countries. Of its total number of employees, about 170 are in research and development (R&D), 60 in support (with 15 based in the US), and 110 in consulting. Its worldwide customer base includes medium and large user organizations found across many industry sectors, such as insurance, shipping, transportation and logistics, retail, banking and finance, professional services, and the public sector. While retail is one of the stronger sectors for CODA in the UK, transportation and shipping and financial services companies are the frequent users in North America.
CODA Financials, Inc., located in Manchester, New Hampshire (US) is one part of the CODA Group. Present in the US and Canada since 1988, CODA Financials has a rich history of helping finance departments solve complex problems where issues of scale or high transactional volumes, reliability, and performance are of primary importance. While many may not have heard of CODA itself, many have heard of some of the global, blue chip organizations that are using CODA products and services to support their business. CODA has more than 250 customers in the US and Canada, including Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Maher Terminals, Texas Pacific Group, Lin TV, Pan-American Life Insurance, and Reno Depot, that have delegated their financial intelligence requirements to CODA. Globally, and across some industry sectors, clients include IKEA in retail, AMBAC Assurance Corporation in the financial services, Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) in transportation and logistics, and the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in education.
A key attribute of CODA's offerings is its "multi" features. It can handle multiple companies, multiple currencies, multiple languages, and multiple charts of accounts in a single product's instance or database. Thus, its single or "unified" ledger architecture, which processes and holds the user company's financial data in a single ledger and in real time, eliminates traditionally lengthy and tardy batch updates between sub-ledgers. Consequently, a near real time financial position is always maintained, and the entire general ledger (GL) should always be balanced. Additionally, the Multiple Dimensional "Flexchart" capability supports up to eight variable length account code segments, which enable revenue and expense tracking at a highly detailed level. The Hierarchies and Account Groups features add virtually unlimited account "roll-ups" to meet inquiry, reporting, and drilldown needs.
Additionally, the complementary CODA analysis and collaborative solutions have been designed to integrate seamlessly both with CODA applications and other leading operational systems to capitalize on customers' existing information technology (IT) investments. Increasingly, CODA solutions are also being used to address the complex requirements of companies that need to intelligently share information with business partners, customers, and suppliers. Furthermore, "upgrade friendly" interfaces underline the vendor's technical vision for integration. For instance, CODA's application programming interfaces (API) "de-couple" the source and feeder applications, thereby enabling system upgrades without having to reengineer interfaces. Application-driven form and report customizations are preserved during upgrades.
Last but not least, the open and standards-based product architecture supports multiple platforms, third party reporting tools, secure Microsoft Office integration, and extensible markup language (XML) and Web services integration. Earlier in 2005, Microsoft Corp. and CODA announced a multiyear alliance intended to enable CODA to deliver a range of financial accounting, management, analysis, and control solutions that take advantage of the Microsoft platform. In addition to CODA's existing line of financial management products for the Microsoft platform, versions of the company's next generation of analysis and process control solutions—including CODA-Analytics and CODA-Intelligence for corporate performance management (CPM), and CODA-Control for compliant process management—will be built using Microsoft technology. Among these are the Microsoft .NET Framework, Structured Query Language (SQL) Server 2005 Integration Services and Analysis Services, Microsoft Office System, Windows Server 2003, and SharePoint Portal products and technologies. CODA maintains that the alliance should help it deliver solutions that will allow enterprises to analyze, control, and exploit changing business dynamics and realize greater value from their financial systems investments. By building on the Microsoft platform, CODA pledges to deliver greater customer value with solutions that are even easier to use, deploy, and maintain, and will help reduce ownership and integration costs.
The alliance between CODA and Microsoft builds on the late 2004 announcement that highlighted CODA's support for the new Microsoft Development Center in Denmark. CODA was the first Microsoft independent software vendor (ISV) partner to take advantage of the center to design, develop, and improve solutions that use the latest advancements to the Microsoft platform. The resulting system architecture designs now include a number of new technologies that aim to helping performance and customer usability, as well as to accelerate CODA's time-to-market with its new application architecture. The new technologies include
* Information Bridge Framework (IBF). Allows data from line of business (LOB) systems (such as CODA�Financials) to be "brought to life" inside the Microsoft Office Suite and related systems that use MS Office technology (such as CODA Collaborative Control and CODA XL)
* Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004. Microsoft engineers reportedly helped the CODA team understand the tight integration of BizTalk into CODA applications, facilitating complex hub-and-spoke back-end business integrations.
There is also an apparent commitment to Microsoft technologies; for example, analytics solutions like Analytic Explorer and CODA Intelligence will exploit SQL Server 2005 integration services, analysis services, and reporting services, while process automation and modeling solutions like CODA-Control will exploit latest Microsoft Office technologies. However, other CODA transactional solutions for financial management support many other platforms and configurations, including OpenVMS (Virtual Memory System), IBM iSeries (AS/400), UNIX, open source, client/server, Web technologies, and Web services (without imposing the choice between client/server and Web-based configurations on the customer). On the application server side, with the choice of the Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2/400, or Sybase database platforms and the choice of Windows Server, UNIX (HP UX, Sun Solaris, and IBM AIX versions), and IBM iSeries operating systems (OS), application services provide and enforce business rules, security, and validation. The application server includes a single point of maintenance for users, roles, business rules, account validation, reporting roll-up structures, master file details, document posting rules, inquiry templates, pay, matching, etc. The system features a scalable financial engine that can accommodate between tens and thousands of concurrent connections with a farm enabled Web server.
On the other hand, by leveraging extensible markup language (XML) and transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP), Web servers (which can be eithher the open source Apache on UNIX/IBM iSeries/Linux or Microsoft Internet Information Server [IIS] on Windows) enable a scalable delivery of CODA functionality to a Web browser and to Web service-enabled user interfaces (UI), and also serve as gateways for integration. They enable location independent, tailored, intuitive user operation. Form modifications are stored as separate XML documents, and thus become "upgrade friendly" as customizations are preserved during future upgrades. In addition, the use of hypertext markup language (HTML) over HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)/ Secure HTTP (S-HTTP) enables multi-window, browser-based access to complete CODA functionality, as well as centralized configuration, rollout of the user's desktop environment, and a zero-client footprint installed across a secure intranet connection. Moreover, CODA-Portal provides a common platform to view both live CODA data and non-CODA data published as Web documents.
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