Michael P McErlain

Mr. McErlain has over twenty-five years of experience in information management, including data warehousing, operational data stores, data management application development, support, and training. His major concentration is in data warehousing deployments using Business Objects. In addition to his data warehouse and Business Objects experience, Michael has a strong background in traditional system development in the mainframe, client/server and Internet environments.

Mr. McErlain has more than 15 years of daily “in-the-trenches” experience in a wide variety of business applications such as Payroll, Human Resources, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivables, General Ledger, Sales Analysis, ERP and Inventory Control. This broad background has provided a strong foundation for solution engineering for his clients along with the strategic ability to provide immediate positive impact on new projects.

For the most recent past 10 years Mr. McErlain has been helping clients use Business Objects with their data warehouses. His technical guidance and skills have helped major corporations resuscitate flagging Business Intelligence initiatives and realize the goals of improved productivity through data access. He can plan your BI deployment, deploy server software across your enterprise, develop security structures to support access controls, define the methodologies and procedures for universe development, design universes, produce reporting systems and managing user base.

Mr. McErlain’s recent experiences have focused on Business Intelligence deployments, data warehousing solutions, and Business Objects installations. He has designed and implemented Business Intelligence deployment strategies, provided best practice guidelines, defined installation standards for managing enterprise wide Business Objects deployments.

State Compensation Insurance Fund
Mr. McErlain was the delivery architect for the BI data warehouse solution using Business Objects to support the Business Analysts community. The implementation had stalled with a number of problems including software distribution, database design and unfriendly user interface design. Mr. McErlain provided the guidance and execution to overcome these problems and move their deployment forward. He delivered standards for user interface development and maintenance, database design changes to improve usability, overhauled the security infrastructure to support access controls for strategic data, revised universes design that require less training efforts and reporting systems that give broader access to more users. The effectiveness of his efforts showed a 1000% increase of user base in just 3 years with a projected growth rate of 15% per year.

Mr. McErlain is also responsible for the migration of the State Fund’s Business Objects 6.x environment to the new XIR2 environment. These responsibilities include the planning and design of the enterprise wide deployment, server installation and configuration, developing the test plan, developing the training plan and ultimately the final delivery of the upgraded environment.

Dialog Corporation
Mr. McErlain was brought in to implement a new Business Intelligence initiative to eliminate a bottleneck in the procedure to supply analyst with data. The Business Objects solution provided gave users immediate access to a broader range of data without the limitations of the previous method. He designed user interfaces and reporting solutions to address key management reporting initiatives

Cisco Systems
Working with the Executive Information Systems group, which provides management sales reporting to the Executive Management staff, he delivered an integration solution using Business Objects that cut the lead-time for implementing new Sales Territory reporting from six weeks to three days. This solution improved the process for introducing new reporting hierarchies so dramatically that the department was recognized with a superior performance award for the year.

Sun Microelectronics
Implemented an Executive Information Service data mart to access Billings, Bookings and Backlog information using Business Objects.

Sun Microsystems, Accounts Receivable
Implemented a Customer Receivables data mart to expedite credit and collections activities. The implementations helped the department exceed targeted DSO goals and significantly reduce receivables over 90 days aged.