The second edition of the jtel User Meeting took place on the 1st of October and was enjoyed by all (we hope!). Excitingly, we were able to run a hybrid event, with about 12 people joining us in person, and over 50 participating online. We’re very grateful to our partner, T.D.M. for hosting the event and for extending their hospitality to all.

Reporting and BI integration – making data accessible

One of the key topics was reporting. This has become a growing concern for many, driven by the need to share information between different business processes. Extracting, collating, presenting and transferring key business information is essential for efficient digitalisation and for ensuring that businesses maximise their insights from different systems by sharing data across many sources.

So, both our CEO Lewis Graham and Dietmar Klug, Geschäftsführer T.D.M. Marketing GmbH paid particular attention to the creation of reports. Lewis focused on training that we offer, as well as tips to ensure that you can generate the reports you need for use in your BI and data warehousing systems, while Dietmar highlighted T.D.M.’s efforts in creating its own customised Jasper reports.

As you probably know, Jasper is an open-source tool that can process data and write it to different destinations – PDF files, Excel, CSV and so on – so it was an excellent case study that showed how jtel users can leverage tools to generate the reports they need, in the formats their systems require.

Different stakeholders require different insights from the same data

Of particular interest is the fact that different people in an organisation have different perspectives and they may also interpret KPIs differently, according to their roles and responsibilities. So, the work showcased by T.D.M. was instructive because Dietmar was able to explain how these different needs can be met by presenting the data available in jtel in different formats and ways – ensuring that every stakeholder has the right view on, for example, service level KPIs that matches their perspective.

Finally, a number of you had asked for enhancements to the statistics we provide, so Lewis gave a detailed introduction to the subject, explaining both the complexity of managing these – and also how jtel plans to move forward on this topic. We look forward to your feedback in due course.

A new home for the jtel community

In addition to this valuable discussion, we also introduced delegates to the new platform we plan to launch – a virtual home for the jtel user community. It’s going through the implementation and onboarding phase, but we’re aiming to launch by the end of the year – hopefully in time for Christmas.

This new platform will provide a complete forum for interaction, sharing ideas and tips, as well as exclusive access to jtel content. We’re really excited about this development, because we recognise that learning from each other is a continual process. Yes, we can squeeze a lot into a regular meeting, but we understand that creating an ongoing dialogue and providing ad hoc advice and information is also essential – particularly as our community grows.

Next virtual meeting? Before Christmas! Counting down to our 25th birthday

Of course, this won’t replace our regular meetings – on which note, we’re planning another shorter virtual session in December, with a larger meeting towards the end of Q1 2022. And, the next year will be special – because it represents our 25th anniversary. We’re proud to have served our customers for a quarter of a century (a long time in software – and a lot of cars  ) and will have all sorts of announcements to make soon, so watch out for some exciting news in the coming months.

So, that’s it for now – but we sincerely thank all who attended and our hosts, T.D.M., in particular. Till the next edition!