We are honored to be named one of the “75 Fastest Growing Companies in Greater Washington” for 2020, by Washington Business Journal. The annual Fastest Growing Companies award ranks 75 companies by average revenue growth, and cBEYONData is excited to be featured on this list with other amazing companies. At the Washington Business Journal virtual awards ceremony on October 21st, cBEYONData was ranked #60 of the 75 companies nominated for this award.

From the Washington Business Journal website:

While the Washington Business Journal has been highlighting these companies for years, 2020 marks the third year that Data Editor Carolyn M. Proctor has compiled a List of just privately held companies for the awards program. The qualifications? Companies must be locally headquartered and independently owned with no parent company as of the date our survey process ended. Revenue for the companies also had to grow for each of two consecutive years between 2017 and 2019. Each company’s revenue had to total at least $2 million in 2017 and at least $10 million in 2019.

Read the rest of the article here.

cBEYONData is excited to announce that we will be sponsoring and attending the 2020 Shared Services Summit virtually this year. This year’s conference is a collaborative endeavor between ACT-IAC (American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council) and the Shared Services Leadership Coalition.  The virtual summit will be September 16th-17th and will feature government and industry leaders with expertise in shared services. We are proud to partner with ACT-IAC and Shared Services Leadership Coalition in their goal of “Keeping Shared Services in the forefront as we look to transform government“.

Register to attend today!

From Shared Services Leadership Coalition:

The Summit is the biggest and most important event of the year for the Federal shared services community.  We’re expecting government and industry leaders from across the “CXO” communities (HR, FM, IT, acquisition, etc.) with common interests in shared services. Topics will include:

• Progress and advancements in enterprise shared services 
• Building more robust partnerships between government and industry
• Re-skilling labor: from low value to high-value work
• What’s next for government shared services

From American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council:

OBJECTIVES

• Provide success stories and experiences that can assist attendees in doing things better, faster and cheaper
• Demonstrate to attendees what is available and possible with Shared Services
• Obtain one or two actionable activities that can be shared and executed at the office in a short period of time
• Share experience of all professional communities such as Human Resources, finance, logistics, training, information technology, security, grants management, health, customer experience

OUTCOMES

• You will have a clear understanding of what Shared Services is and what is happening in Shared Services across government
• You will know who the players are in government and industry
• You will have a clearer understanding of what is ahead for shared services
• You will know how you can support Shared Services NOW

We are excited to announce that cBEYONData has been awarded the distinction of a 2020 Great Place to Work by the Great Place to Work Institute! It is an honor to receive this certification, recognizing cBEYONData as an employee-validated great workplace. Our certification came from positive employee feedback, where 100% of employees at cBEYONData say it is a great place to work compared to 59% of employees at a typical U.S.-based company. The employee feedback was collected with the Great Place to Work Trust Index™ survey.

Review our Great Place to Work profile and feedback on our profile.

While we are pleased with this certification, we will continue to strive to provide the best workplace possible for our employees, as our leadership understands that a company’s employees are its most important and valuable asset. At cBEYONData, we strive to be the employer of choice in business intelligence (BI), data analytics and business automation solutions by providing top-level benefits, a training/professional education program, and an atmosphere for personal and professional growth. cBEYONData’s culture combines challenging work with a professional, respectful, collaborative, and exciting environment.

Thank you to Great Place to Work for this honor! Please be sure to visit their website, to learn more about this certification, and how your company can become a Great Place to Work!

The cBEYONData team is going to be attending the Association of Government Accountants PDT 2020 virtual event, July 20–22! PDT is AGA’s premier training and networking event. This year’s plenary speakers are going to be excellent, we cannot wait to hear from Alison Levine, Leon Logothetis, Gene Dodaro as well as the other speakers on the agenda! 

Along with attending, cBEYONData will be sponsoring a virtual booth with CEO Dave Schmidtknecht and VP Michael Huffman and available to answer questions. Be sure to register to attend and stop by to say hi!

From the AGA website:

AGA’s Professional Development Training (PDT) brings together a broad audience of more than 2,000 federal, state and local government financial professionals, including federal agency and state/local government CFOs, inspectors general, government accountants, auditors and financial professionals from the private sector.

PDT offers educational sessions over three days of training. Participants can earn up to 21 hours of NASBA approved continuing professional education (CPE) credits and/or 20 Professional Development Units (PDUs). Participants gain skills and knowledge to help them become effective leaders, learn strategies to improve performance in a cost-constrained environment, share best practices, find solutions to shared challenges, and learn from top government financial management leaders and industry experts.

Register to attend today!

We are excited to announce we will be participating in the SAP Poolside: “Dive into Data” Summertime Enablement Series for Federal and Civilian Agencies. We are excited to partner with SAP for a webinar on July 9th. From cBEYONData, Michael Huffman (Vice President, Sales), Frank Ruff (Director of Planning Solutions) and John Maryanopolis (Director of Financial Solutions) will be presenting, along with Jason Hurd (VP Platform & Technology Public Sector) of SAP. Register on their website for FREE.

From the SAP website:

Sit by poolside as you join us for a webinar series this summer from June 11–July 23. This webinar series is designed to provide you with the latest insights into data management technologies to help ensure your organization or agency keeps running at its best – even during times of uncertainty.

“Is planning, budgeting and meeting all the Treasury/OMB initiatives (DATA Act, GTAS, etc.) keeping you up at night? Give us 50 mins and we’ll give you back night after night of the healthy, restful sleep you miss so much.”

We’ll showcase how we have helped agencies enhance their financial systems, maintain internal and external compliance, and solution produce correct outputs on time, every time.

Together with cBEYONData, we will review how we have helped agencies solve their reporting challenges with automated reconciliation and file comparisons.

With this webinar, we promise:

• Real and relevant information
• A fast pace, info rich format

Register today for FREE and learn how to solve your reporting challenges!

We are excited to announce that we will be partnering with 360Suite, SAP, Carahsoft and SAP NS2 to put on the next SAP BusinessObjects user group for the Public Sector (Federal, State & Local) on June 25th. This user group is going to be a great time to “Take Your SAP BusinessObjects To The Next Level!”

From the 360Suite website:

Join Us For 1 Day Entirely Dedicated To 360Suite Solutions

– Register once.

– Pick and choose the sessions that you want to attend.

– Get notified between each session with your own access link.

– Ask questions during the sessions.

– Then grab a coffee, sit back, relax, and enjoy the event!

Agenda:

– Understand SAP BusinessObjects Licenses & Roadmap

– 15 SAP BusinessObjects Tips And Tricks Every Administrator Should Know

– 10-Step Process To Upgrade To BI 4.3, The Cloud Or Any Version

– Getting Started in Your Hybrid Business Object SAC Environment

– SAP BusinessObjects Backup and Contingency Planning

– How To Implement A Disaster Recovery Plan For SAP BusinessObjects That Actually Works

– Share Your Business Challenge

Register on their website today!

We are excited to announce that cBEYONData will be virtually attending the 2020 Information Builders Summit! cBEYONData is also a part of the “Interactive Solutions Pavillion”, as a sponsor of this year’s virtual event. While COVID-19 keeps us from physically attending, we are extremely excited to be present virtually, and to interact with the other attendees! Over 2 days, with 8 tracks and over 70 sessions, you do not want to miss out on this summit! There is going to be excellent information and speakers, and we cannot wait to join the community at this pivotal moment in time.

From the Information Builders website:

“Each year, our Summit User Conference attracts our customers and partners, industry press and analysts, thought leaders, and more to exchange knowledge and ideas about using data and analytics to make their organizations smarter and more effective.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference is going virtual. While we’re saddened by the reasons behind this move, we’re truly excited at the opportunity to re-imagine the possibilities of Summit. We can connect with more builders of innovation around the world, and deliver unprecedented access to content to all.

We’re focused on helping our customers build a better future. It feels especially relevant and meaningful now.

We hope you’ll join us.”

You can register to attend on their website. We look forward to “seeing” you there!

Written by Jeremy Kuhlenbeck

What Is RPA

Years ago, GPS was introduced to automatically steer you to your desired location without printing out paper directions from MapQuest or physically looking up the address on a paper map. This luxury, now a part of your daily routine, was something that revolutionized a person’s lifestyle. Now, we have Robotic Process Automation, or RPA. I believe that RPA could largely change your repetitive daily tasks, just how GPS changed your daily driving. Yes, this is meant to be a broad stroke.  In every field of work, repetitive tasks are being tackled by automation behind the scenes only to provide you the luxury of time to get to work on what truly requires your attention.

I believe that RPA will do to your repetitive daily tasks what GPS did to the map.

In this article, we will dive into the training and instructional aspects involved in RPA, how to receive your Developer training and certifications, and what types of other roles are also involved in an RPA implementation.  We will focus on RPA through the lens of UiPath, a leader in the industry and Gartner’s Magic Quadrant leader in RPA Software.

What are the Different Types of RPA Roles?

While the primary role for an RPA implementation is the RPA Developer, there are a few other roles that are involved.

UiPath’s training is grouped into learning paths for the following roles:

• Business Analyst

• Implementation Manager

• Infrastructure Engineer

• Solution Architect

• RPA Developer

Some of these roles may be fulfilled by one individual wearing multiple hats, but as RPA gets a foothold in your company, you will begin to see one or more individuals in each role. From the beginning, it’s important to establish your company’s standards, so look to develop an RPA Center of Excellence or RPA CoE. If that responsibility falls to you, then definitely take the time to complete the classes for each role’s learning path.

What You Will Learn

Let’s take a look at RPA Developer training.  This role speaks to the heart of RPA – the part that makes automation happen.

RPA Developer Foundation course

The RPA Developer Foundation course trains you in the following:

• Variables, Data Types, & Control Flow

• Data Manipulation

• Excel & Data Tables

• User Interface (UI) Interactions

• Selectors

• Project Organization

• Error and Exception Handling

• Debugging

• PDF Automation

• E-mail Automation

• Orchestrator for Developers

• Robotic Enterprise Framework (REFramework)

You may find yourself feeling a bit overwhelmed at the list above.  Do not worry.  Let’s look at the positive side – this list shows us that UiPath has done a great job of breaking down the necessary components.  The training is well organized and hands-on.  The hands-on part is important because you will feel confidence growing from the moment you start using the software since UiPath is primarily drag-and-drop and very intuitive.

Developer Basics

The first two bullets in the points in the Developer Foundation course list are key to understanding and working with data once you bring it into UiPath.  Setting the correct data types determines how you are able to manipulate the data.  Note, data can be a single digit, a string of characters like a phrase, an entire document’s text, or even an image.

The next couple of bullet points help you understand how to interact with the usual applications on a computer.  Applications can be installed applications like Excel, Word, Outlook, Adobe Reader, or a custom application developed for your company.  Applications can also be web-based like Quickbooks.com or Salesforce.com.

The last two bullets in the list will advance your developer training beyond the basics.

Orchestrator for Developers

Orchestrator is the server component in UiPath’s software that allows you to centrally manage automations and bots.  The course allows you to practice “connecting robots, publishing packages, running jobs, and using assets and queues.”

Robotic Enterprise Framework (REFramework)

UiPath has developed a state machine framework template.  Don’t know what those words mean?  Again, don’t worry.

First, realize that this is a template.  For you.  For your automation.

The template is a development model provided by UiPath to get your projects started quickly while incorporating exception handling mechanisms.

The state machine simply means that your automation is grouped into phases:

1. Initialization (Init) Phase:  Load your webpages, open up applications, log into things that are needed for the automation, acquire the data / datasource, etc.

2. Get Transaction Data Phase:  Get the next piece of data to be processed

3. Process Transaction Phase:  Do something with or to the data

4. End Process Phase:  This is the cleanup section of the automation where you close browsers if the automation used one, log out of applications, etc.

RPA Developer Advanced course

The RPA Developer Advanced course does a deep dive into the overall best practices utilizing the prebuilt REFramework template.  Do not fret if you are not familiar with the state machine model.  I was not.  UiPath’s training definitely helps you to get familiar with this model and the template they provide.

This course will take you through three in-depth projects using the REFramework, each one expanding on the pieces built in the previous project.  One of the main lessons to learn here isreusability with the code or workflows that make up your automation.

Mastering these projects all but ensures your ability to pass the hands-on portion of the certification.

Certification Test

A couple notes on certification.  There are two parts to the certification test.  The first is a timed multiple-choice question test.  There is a heavy focus on the Foundation Course, so make sure you pay attention to the quizzes along the way as you work through that course.

For additional study, do a google search and look for results from Quizlet.com.  Many people have created flashcards for everything you need to study, and they are available out on Quizlet.  If you see Level 1 or Level 2, just know that the Foundation Course is an updated and combined version of Level 1 and Level 2 from UiPath’s previous coursework. The questions and answer will still be the same.

The multiple-choice section will also ask you questions about the phases in the state machine.  If you see a question mentioning the Init phase, the Get Transaction Data phase, the Process Transaction phase, or the End Process phase, you know they are testing you on the REFramework template.

The second part of the certification test is the hands-on test.  This hands-on automation project is not quite as difficult as the three projects in the advanced course, so build your confidence by mastering the advanced course and then don’t worry about the hands-on part of the certification test.  While the hands-on project is a timed project, UiPath allows… actually, UiPath wants you to reuse the workflows you previously built in the advanced class.

Where You Can Learn

You can find good UiPath training on a couple sites, but don’t overthink this.  UiPath has built a great learning site with a multitude of courses and grouped them all appropriately into the various roles for RPA.  You can find all this training at UiPath’s Academy site.

https://academy.uipath.com

As of right now, the training on UiPath’s Academy is still offered for free, so take advantage while it lasts.

Finally, do not hesitate to reach out on LinkedIn if you get stuck.  Toiling for more than five minutes most likely means you need a little help.  Reach out to the UiPath community or message someone that has already gone through the training.

As for the other sites that offer training, they are good, but this article is long enough.  I’ll touch on some of those classes in a future article.

John Maryanopolis has been with cBEYONData since 2014 and has been promoted to Director of Financial Solutions.  In this new role, John will be responsible for moving our CFO Control Tower product forward with new releases and functionality. He will continue to be involved with the implementation and delivery of Control Tower projects to ensure successful deployments and build-up of resources.

Frank Ruff’s role with cBEYONData will be as the Director of Planning Solutions where he will be responsible for the management, enhancements and integration of Federal Planning platforms with CFO Control Tower. Frank will also assist project delivery teams with customer implementations.

We are excited to be attending the Association of Government Accountants (AGA) 2020 Performance Improvement Officer/Chief Financial Officer Summit (PIO/CFO Summit) in Washington, DC! This year we are excited to hear from PIO/CFO leaders such as Christine Heflin, Karin O’Leary, Steve Brockelman, Satya Thallam and more! Due to the current public health emergency, 2020 PIO/CFO Summit is now virtual. 

Important information about COVID-19 virus and AGA training events

From the AGA website:

One year after the Foundations for Evidence-based Policymaking Act became law, government leaders are actively transforming their agencies into learning organizations. At the same time, major changes to the Chief Financial Officer function are under serious consideration in the Congress.

Join the hundreds of federal PIOs, CFOs and other federal officials, managers and analysts who will attend the PIO/CFO Summit to hear about these activities and learn what’s working best.

Register to attend virtually on the AGA PIO/CFO website!