19 Dec Real-Time Company Performance Using Business Intelligence With ERP

Many companies have come to realise the importance of providing accurate, relevant and real-time information that allows their key personnel in effective decision-making practices. Companies do implement business intelligence software as an extension of their ERP systems in order to gain greater insight into their business processes. It is noteworthy that business-related information that is subsequently analysed is stored in the company’s ERP system. Business intelligence can be used to extract this information and transform it into a format in order to facilitate analysis.

Business intelligence and ERP

Business intelligence (BI) as a term can be defined as a system that collects, processes and transforms data into information, and then into knowledge facilitating decision making. Business Intelligence takes raw data from a company’s business systems and analyses it for actionable information. Business intelligence is used by companies to support a wide range of business decisions ranging from operational to strategic. Business Intelligence tools assemble the data from internal and external sources, organise it, and present the results to decision-makers.

Effective use of business analytics is considered one of the most important factors of the company’s competitiveness, especially in today’s changing markets.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) as a term can be defined as a set of management tools that balances demand and supply, which includes the ability to link customers and suppliers with a full supply chain, using proven business processes for decision making and ensuring a high degree of inter-functional integration between sales, marketing, production, operations, procurement, finance, and human resources. It allows people to run their business with a high level of customer service and productivity, at the same time reducing costs and inventories.

Business intelligence with ERP is expected to be more competitive and flexible in order to share information and data for decision making and control. Companies using business intelligence with ERP are able to perform various operations, in particular, facilitate the means of creating, modify and distribute standard reports, explore the data, data relationships, and trends through relevant methodologies to draw conclusions, and these processes can stimulate revenue growth and improve a company’s performance in real-time.

Today businesses experience a wide range of benefits from ERP systems. But ERP systems were not originally designed to provide real-time reports to massive users, so the entire system could not facilitate the decision support function. Within the context of ERP, business intelligence is the process of leveraging detailed customer behaviour information to best manage relationships for maximum customer satisfaction, loyalty, retention, and profitability. Thus, a key component of this business intelligence strategy is the data management infrastructure, which allows companies to recognise in real-time changes in customer’s behaviour that signal a high probability of a positive customer response to a proposal.

Although ERP systems robust for processing and storage transaction information from a variety of internal and external sources, it is not the most efficient data-sharing system. The integrated systems of ERP and business intelligence can improve and enhance the ability of companies to make decisions leveraging the ability to manage data from the ERP system and the business data analytics of the business intelligence system. This integration leads to optimal use of both ERP and business intelligence systems.

   Benefits of integrating BI and ERP:

• Allows to control the recognition of corporate cash flow in real-time;
• Reduces the time required to generate regular reports;
• Facilitates the organisation of cooperation between departments;
• Enables finance personnel to create financial revenue reports and expenses quickly;
• Improves accounts payable and vendor relationship management;
• Improves profitability by transaction data analysis and forecasting business trends;
• Enables the management of the sales force management;
• Provides online access to data saving access time;
• Shares information with a sales department and this allows to make informed decisions;
• Improves relationships with customers through sales of the in-depth study of data.

  How Business Intelligence can work for your company?

• BI provides with information about business in order to help spot trends, identify inefficiencies, and make more informed decisions.
• BI helps to aggregate the data automatically from various systems, extract actionable information for strategic and tactical decision-making, and present it visually to stakeholders.
• BI helps to make sense out of all the raw data from a system, such as finding your most profitable products and sales regions or identifying the weak links in the supply chain.
• BI displays only the information necessary for each user. Confidential information can be reserved for those who have the appropriate access rights.
• BI helps to explore the data visually with free-form drag-and-drop and multiple display options.

CONCLUSION

Lately, ERP systems have transformed companies by improving their financial visibility, supply chain operations, and minimised human resource processes. Business intelligence solutions collect, process, transform and analyse the vast amounts of data generated by the company. Such solutions are highly reliant on ERP systems functionality. They have a direct impact on the success of any business. Companies are increasingly focussing their information systems efforts around business intelligence solutions.

Business intelligence with ERP has become a key strategic component that helps CEOs to gain greater insight of all business processes. Business intelligence systems now implement as extensions of their ERP systems. The integration of business intelligence with ERP leads to optimal use of both ERP and BI systems. It also ensures the availability of information in which both personnel and management can access important information to make vital decisions irrespective of their location. The integration of business intelligence with ERP enables business leaders to report on, analyse and optimise business operations to reduce costs and increase revenues.

In a nutshell, business intelligence is just a facilitator for reporting and hence it is the decision-making solution for all businesses. An implementation of business intelligence with ERP will drive your business speedily to success and give competitive advantage in today’s challenging market.