Revelwood

The GDPR and What This Means for You

September 18, 2019 by Revelwood Leave a Comment

This is a guest blog post from Revelwood’s summer IT Policy Intern, Emily Kanter.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is Europe’s new and improved data security legislation. It’s a complex 88-page document, comprised of 99 articles and 173 recitals (principles and intentions). While the GDPR gives individuals security to be more forthcoming with their information, it has definitely proved to be a bit of a headache for Revelwood and companies like Revelwood.

Emily Kantor: Why you should care about GDPR. Revelwood.com

As the IT Policy Intern at Revelwood this summer, my job centered around the research of the GDPR and the individual intricacies that we must comply with. So, for about two and a half months, I dissected every part of the 88-page document and created materials to help ensure that Revelwood is GDPR compliant. I revised Revelwood’s IT Policies to abide by the GDPR, and I began the process of creating educational materials (procedural documents and an education program) so that all Revelwoodians would be aware of their responsibilities to be GDPR compliant.

At this point, I am sure you are wondering why you should care about the GDPR and why my work matters to you.

Let’s start with why you should care. Ensuring that you are GDPR compliant takes a lot of time, and it is both necessary and completely worth it to take the time, whether it be weeks or months, to research and to educate yourself. While the GDPR is based in Europe, its effects span globally. No matter where a company is, if it has clients in Europe or even prospects in Europe, it must be GDPR compliant. For example, if your company processes any information from European clients and your company is not GDPR compliant, it is subject to some hefty fees and potential lawsuits. So, while it may take a few weeks or months, it is worth it to ensure your company is GDPR compliant.

And lastly, why should my work matter to you? At Revelwood, we are committed to our Core Values, with one being “Do the Right Thing.” While we do not directly work with clients in Europe, there is a possibility our current clients process information from EU citizens. If we overlooked the GDPR and decided to address these issues when the time came, we would not be doing the right thing. At Revelwood, we stick by our Core Values, and to do just that, we abide by the GDPR.

A Successful Summer of Internships at Revelwood

October 17, 2018 by Lisa Minneci Leave a Comment

This summer, Revelwood kicked off a new internship program. While we’ve had interns in the past, this year we kicked off a new intern program modeled after that of one of our vendor-partners in a different industry. The Lead Development Rep (LDR) program is a business development and sales internship program. Our LDR internship kicked off with a week-long intensive boot camp that included workshops with various members of the Revelwood team and concluded with each intern presenting their findings on a separate, special project. Along the way, we all met up with our vendor-partner to share best practices and learnings from each of our programs.

Our inaugural class of interns for this program consisted of four college students. Before they left to return to college, they surprised us with a video of their experiences at Revelwood, and we interviewed them for their thoughts on the LDR internship program.

Kim Davis, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, New Jersey

Kim is working toward her MBA at Fairleigh Dickinson, with a concentration in marketing. She decided to intern with Revelwood as a way to expand her communications skills beyond advertising. “Before working with Revelwood, I didn’t realize how hard it was to get someone’s attention,” said Kim. “Now I understand how challenging it can be to sell a product and how important it is to be persistent.

“One of the best things about Revelwood was the company’s culture, which is fantastic. Despite being an intern, I never felt like I was ‘just an intern,’” continued Kim.

Zach Gold, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio

Zach is an economics major at Case Western Reserve University and was referred to Revelwood by two of his friends who had previously interned with us. “I was surprised how close-knit the company is,” said Zach. “Many of the consultants are often on-site at clients, so there were times when not many people were in the office. Despite that, everyone was invested in our success.

“What I learned most from Revelwood and the people here are the intangibles,” continued Zach. “I learned general business communications skills and how to format my LinkedIn profile, but more importantly I learned how to develop personal relationships in a business environment and how important the seemingly small things are.”

Myles Gross, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania

Myles is a dual major at Muhlenberg College, studying marketing and media & communications. He chose to work with us because he’s interested in technology, particularly in analytics. “I really wanted to get my ‘feet wet’ in sales and marketing,” said Myles. “Since this was my first real sales and marketing internship, I intentionally selected a smaller company where I’d be able to have a hands-on role.

“We had two workshops with Ken Wolf, Revelwood’s CEO,” continued Myles. “I really learned a lot from him on writing skills, overall communications skills, and research skills. Revelwood also gave me an opportunity to learn how to use Pardot, Salesforce and LinkedIn.”

Alison Ward, Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey

Alison (Ali) is a psychology major at Montclair State University who hopes to start a career in business. Rather than switch majors, which would extend the amount of time she’d need to spend working on her undergraduate degree, she is learning business through a series of hands-on internships. Her summer internship with Revelwood is the second such business internship she’s worked.

“I learned more in my 11 weeks with Revelwood than I have in previous business environments,” said Ali. “Revelwood gave me a great opportunity to build on essential sales skills, such as how to communicate effectively in a business environment.

“It’s very important to grab people’s attention through email by creating a compelling subject line that makes them open the email,” continued Ali. “We then learned how to follow up with people and continue communicating with them through the sales process.”

We wish Kim, Zach and Myles all the best as they finish their college educations and begin their professional careers. Ali is staying on with us to continue her internship for fall 2018 and spring 2019.

If you are interested in finding out more about Revelwood’s LDR internship program, please reach out to us at info@revelwood.com. We are currently hiring for our spring 2019 and summer 2019 programs.

What They Don’t Teach You in College

July 17, 2018 by Ken Wolf Leave a Comment

Every summer Revelwood hires 2-4 college interns to join its ranks for 10 weeks of immersive experience in the world of business and technology. Our internship positions have ranged from technical to marketing to sales to general business research. What’s critical to us is that all internships are mutually beneficial: interns must feel they are receiving at least as much value from Revelwood as they are giving.

This summer we have four ambitious interns who’ve joined us for an inaugural sales program we developed to help generate business opportunities for Revelwood. We modeled the program after a similar one that one of our vendor-partners in a different industry had created for its sales team. In fact, we are holding some joint best-practice sharing events across the two teams.

While mobile app development or predictive modeling and machine learning might seem extremely technical and challenging, I must say that sales is one of the hardest disciplines in business, and one that is not taught as much in America’s colleges and universities as it should be. Our sales program kicked off with a 3-day intensive boot camp of interactive learning, including lots of role playing. The team then jumped into action and hit the phones. Over the course of the summer they will learn critical business skills such as organization, discipline, perseverance, communications and building self-confidence.

I am impressed with how much our interns have learned already and their results so far. And, their positive, can-do attitudes are rubbing off on the rest of our team. We provide them with daily and weekly coaching and mentoring, so everyone is benefiting. Whether any of these students decide to pursue a career in technology sales is not so important. We hope their time at Revelwood will provide them with a valuable learning experience and set of skills they can take with them in whatever career paths they decide to pursue.

Why, you might ask, should all this matter to Revelwood clients? As individuals and as a company, we’re committed to continually learning. Not only do we expect our team of interns to learn new skills, but we also anticipate that many of our established Revelwoodians will learn to look at what we do – and the value we bring to our clients – with a new perspective.

Revelwood Labs – How We’re Adding Value to your Analytics Investment

October 5, 2016 by Ken Wolf Leave a Comment

For over two decades, Revelwood has been offering leading edge, high value TM1 and Cognos Express products, solutions and services in the FPM marketplace. Up until a year ago, all of these offerings were managed under a single organization—Revelwood. Given the changing dynamics in the market, with a greater emphasis on self-service products and industry-specific solutions, Revelwood has restructured itself and launched a separate product division called Revelwood Labs. This allows us to put more focus, ownership and strategic emphasis on new products and solutions that meet our clients’ needs and those of the ever-expanding analytics market space.

This year, for example, we relaunched our former BPM Suite accelerator as an all new cloud-based solution (also offered on-premise) that leverages the best of Planning Analytics Workspace, TM1 Web, CAFÉ and Watson Analytics, yet still powered by the industry leading TM1 multidimensional database engine. Called Lightspeed, this solution helps our clients get up and running faster and smarter, with pre-built FP&A functionality and embedded best practices from hundreds of TM1 implementations over the years.

Also in 2016, we launched our first ever mobile app called Quantum. It’s designed to untether TM1 administrators from their desktops and allow them to access and manage their TM1 environments anytime, from anywhere. Quantum launched on the Android platform at IBM Vision back in May and comes out on the iOS platform for Apple devices next week. The iOS beta launch is by invitation only, so please contact us if you are interested. It’s incredibly convenient, easy to use and totally FREE!

More importantly, Revelwood Labs has developed a roadmap that will enable us to continue developing products and solutions that add significant value to our customers’ analytic agendas. Right now we are working on several industry solutions that incorporate the use of TM1, SPSS, Watson Analytics and other IBM analytic product offerings. We are also working on a next generation solution to Revelwood’s Performance Toolkit that incorporates the “best of” functionality from Dynamo!, Data Manager and Application Manager for the CAFÉ environment.

There is much to look forward to from Revelwood in the months and years to come. We are confident that the creation of Revelwood Labs will help us help you get more value and results from your IBM analytic investments.

Life Lessons Learned as an Intern at Revelwood

August 16, 2016 by Revelwood Leave a Comment

This is a guest blog post by Revelwood intern, Zachary Vinik.

When I told friends and family that I was interning at an established business they all made jokes. “You are just going to organize papers and deliver coffee to everyone.” My mom even told me that in her first internship she had to highlight any English words in hundreds of pages of computer code. I’ve never been happier that everyone else was wrong.

Walking into my first office job I pictured what I’ve seen on TV. A boss that is either too strict or too aloof. Coworkers that spend their time complaining about work. A college student that is treated like trash. Revelwood took those expectations and flipped them upside down. I found a boss that allowed me to go in my own independent direction, noticed when I took a wrong turn, and then subtly pushed me back on the right path. I found coworkers that didn’t just complain about work, but coworkers who seem to actually enjoy what they are doing. And I, the college student, was treated like a valuable member of the team.

The type of camaraderie that exists at Revelwood can only really be understood by being here, but I can attempt to show it in two stories.

My second day at Revelwood, I was doing basic Financial Performance Management (FPM) training. It was just Brian (a coworker) and me in the room. After many hours of basic training we were going over FPM job listings, and at the top of every listing there was a single line, “ad hoc reporting”. When it showed up on the first one I asked a quick question about it, Brian gave a quicker answer, and we moved on. When it showed up on the second one, I made a snarky comment and Brian smiled a little. “Ad hoc reporting” showed up on every listing that we looked at that day. By the end of it I could not read the word “ad hoc” without Brian and I sharing a laugh about it. Even today, whenever I see “ad hoc” on any document, I smile.

The second half of my internship, I was given a programming assignment. The first thought that popped in my head was something like, “Oh god. I’ve never done anything past high school assignments. How the hell am I supposed to do this?” I wore my worry on my sleeve, and Rob came over to the office I was using that day and took an interest in what I was doing. My original thought process was to lie and say something like, “This project isn’t that bad,” but I didn’t. I was honest with how difficult I thought the project was. Rob looked at me and instantly gave me relief. “Just try the best you can. Any result is a good result.” Everyone gave me help on the project when I needed it and in the end I exceeded both Rob’s, and my own, expectations.

Revelwood has these five core values, and when I was introduced to them within my first 15 minutes of stepping into the office, I ignored them. All I wanted to do was move onto, in my opinion, my actual training. Ending the internship has shown me that those first 15 minutes were the most important training I received while here. Everyone here is passionate, does the right thing, takes initiative, focuses on the team, and cares. Hopefully, with what I’ve learned here at Revelwood I will be able to take these core values wherever I eventually go.

IBM’s Cloud Strategy and How Revelwood Can Help

July 14, 2016 by Ken Wolf Leave a Comment

IBM is investing heavily in its analytics solutions, which means lots of things are changing for the better. At Revelwood, we see it as our job to help our clients interpret these changes to better understand how they might affect your organization in a practical way.

One critical component of IBM’s strategy has been the move to cloud. Not only has IBM acquired cloud-based companies like Softlayer to address the world’s infrastructure and platform needs, but it is migrating virtually all of its software solutions to the cloud, as well. TM1 moved to the cloud back in early 2014. Late last year, TM1 Cloud was reincarnated as IBM Planning Analytics (IPA), which includes TM1 and much more.

Here is a quick summary of the key components that are part of IPA:

TM1 – Multidimensional database engine (same as on-prem)
TM1 Web – Web environment, including Websheets, cube browsing, etc. (same as on-prem)
CAFÉ for TM1 – Excel add-in for TM1, including new functionality not available in Perspectives (Perspectives is also supported in IPA, but only for administrators as a means to publish Websheets)
Planning Analytics Workspace – a visual, self-service dashboard and lightweight reporting and data capture tool to interact with TM1 data (New!)
Watson Analytics – self-service cognitive discovery and prediction (New!)
Cognos BI – business intelligence and robust reporting against the TM1 data source (New!)

Moving to IPA on the cloud has its advantages, as well as some considerations to be aware of. For example, not all existing functionality in on-premise TM1 is ready for the cloud just yet. We’ll be covering more on IPA in upcoming blogs, so be sure to check back here often.

What we at Revelwood find most compelling about IBM’s direction is the dual “on-premise or in-the-cloud” strategy. Your organization can choose the right solution at the right time. We can help you understand the differences, develop a roadmap for migration, structure your renewal contract to include the cloud option and, of course, work with you on the migration itself. Just let us know and we’ll get the conversation started.

Who at Revelwood should I call, you ask? Great question. If you haven’t met him already, you should meet John Pra Sisto. John joined Revelwood last year as our first ever Client Success Manager. Yes, his entire purpose at Revelwood is to ensure that our clients are happy and successful. If you don’t know who to turn to, contact John. He can be reached at 201.984.3025 or jprasisto@revelwood.com.

Thanks for listening…we look forward to hearing from you.

Meet Alex Needham: Ridding the World of Inefficient Planning and Reporting

June 1, 2016 by Revelwood Leave a Comment

I started my career in the automotive industry. I started off as an intern and worked my way up to FP&A coordinator / assistant manager over five years. During this time, I realized how much time our Financial team wasted on horrifically inefficient planning and reporting processes. I knew there had to be a better reporting solution than nesting IF/VLOOKUP statements and a better planning solution than spending weeks rebuilding dozens of Excel workbooks every year.

Luckily, I was selected for a project management class. I knew that I wanted my project to be an efficiency project. After looking at several systematic solutions, I realized TM1 was the only product that showed the flexibility, speed of development, and intuitiveness that we needed. After some demonstrations and discussions with management, they accepted my recommendation and the project began. I quickly realized that developing our environment in TM1 was not just something I was good at, but was actually my passion.

After roughly a year and a half of developing in TM1, including a few weeks as a consultant at another one of our factories, I wanted to take the next step forward in learning the software. I looked at several consulting companies across the industry, but kept finding myself coming back to Revelwood. The longevity, the client list, and the reputation made Revelwood the place to be.

During my interviews, I got to speak with a Revelwood employee. He told me: “You know how you’re in the top 10% of your company? That’s everyone here.” That statement stuck with me and has proven to be true. There has not been a day yet where I haven’t learned something since I started with Revelwood, and I feel very proud to be a part of such a capable team.

Why Revelwood’s Professional Services Group is Different

February 11, 2016 by Revelwood Leave a Comment

This is a guest blog post by Revelwood’s Lee Lazarow.

Designing and developing successful business analytics applications requires a unique blend of skills; a team must understand both the nuances of the technology and the idiosyncrasies of business. We’ve built – and are continuing to build – our PSG team with those needs in mind.

Each Revelwood PSG team member understands both the technology and the overall business goals. Some consultants are stronger on the technology while others excel at understanding the business issues, so we put together our client teams with the goal of balancing that knowledge. To paraphrase the Greek saying, I truly believe that the strength of the whole team is greater than the sum of the skills of each individual.

Revelwood consultants are a true team. One way we demonstrate this is via our daily “huddle.” Every morning our team has a 15 minute phone call to share who’s working on what, who may need help with something, and what’s going on. Like many services firms, we have team members who work remotely and we never want to get in the position that they feel they are “alone.” Our huddles benefit both our team members and our clients.

I have recently started playing chess and I believe that a TM1 project can be very similar to the game. One aspect of chess is deciding how to use all the individual pieces in conjunction to achieve a common goal … just like the concept of creating a project team. Another thing about playing chess is that strategy requires you to think a few steps ahead. We are able to do this in our projects because of our deep and lengthy experience with business analytics technologies. Revelwood has been around long before Cognos and IBM bought TM1 and there’s not much we haven’t seen. That experience, combined with our commitment to exceed our client expectations and focus on putting the business goals first, means we understand where things are going. Like chess, we can easily read the board, assess the situation, and come up with the right strategy to win the game.

“Winning the game” can mean different things to different people and organizations. Some may view it as closing as many sales as possible and churning through projects quickly. But for us, “winning the game” means we get our projects delivered on time and under budget, while having clients tell us “I trust you.” That’s when we know we’ve achieved our checkmate!

A Strange Journey from Hospitality to TM1 Consulting

May 6, 2015 by Revelwood Leave a Comment

Just about a year ago I joined Revelwood as an associate consultant working on client implementations using IBM Cognos TM1 and IBM Cognos ICM. It was a great move for so many reasons, but also a surprising one in the context of a career path.

Ten years ago I started my professional life as a reservations agent with Starwood Hotels & Resorts. In those intervening ten years, my jobs transitioned from guest relations roles to operations roles, where I analyzed sales revenue. Most recently, I was the manager of sales analysis for Starwood, working on the standardization and development of analytical tools for system reporting and sales trend analysis. During that time I worked on a web application and relational database for complex performance compensation plans and developed a property-level scorecard for key reporting metrics. Oh, and I was a TM1 administrator.

While I loved working in the hospitality industry, the opportunity with Revelwood meant I’d be able to expand my technology expertise and work in a number of different industries. To date I’ve worked on TM1 and Cognos ICM implementations for businesses in the media & entertainment and financial services industries.

One of the things I love about working with TM1 is that it’s both “like and unlike” working on one of my hobbies. During my free time, I love doing artistic things – creating art, painting, refurbishing furniture. It both fuels my creativity, but also forces me to focus on small details. And there’s nothing like the feeling of seeing the finished product – especially if the “before” required a lot of work to get to the “after.” It’s a huge payoff.

Some might argue that working with TM1 is not really a creative exercise. That might be true, but I do see a creative angle to it. TM1 offers so many ways to get something done, there’s room for creativity. And the software has so many pieces to it that working in it requires great attention to detail. I love that TM1 provides an almost limitless opportunity to learn and do different things. I get the opportunity to build a model or create a piece of code, go back and improve it, and then see the results.

Just as I enjoy the diversity of working with different businesses, I also like the opportunity to work on not just TM1, but also Cognos ICM. And those technologies are very different from TM1. The approach is quite different from that of TM1. There’s more building and putting together of “pieces” in Cognos ICM. Once you’ve built, say, a report, if there’s an error, you have to go back through those pieces to find where the break is.

Even though I never imagined my career would take me from a reservation agent at a hotel chain to working with the latest in analytics technologies, it’s been a great journey. And as I mark my first year at Revelwood, I’m looking forward to the new clients and new projects I get to jump in to in 2015!