WHY BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE IS IMPERATIVE IN ERP SYSTEMS
ERP system is responsible for receiving and organizing data of the organization, while business intelligence (BI) tools analyze this data to provide actionable insights. While ERP systems can track the details of every operation and transaction, many ERP solutions do not have the capacity to translate this data into insights you can use, at least not quickly or easily. Broadly speaking, Business Intelligence (BI) can be defined as the transformation of raw data into meaningful metrics reflective upon historical, current and predictive business operations and performance
Modern enterprises need a solution that will manage large volumes of data and turn it into insights that organizations can act on. This is where BI comes in. Business intelligence functionality can take all the data your ERP system captures, analyze it, and turn it into customizable, user-friendly reports.
One of the most visible benefits of BI software that integrates with an ERP system is its ability to give managers a real-time look at the data they need to make intelligent decisions in the short and long terms. For example, a production manager in a manufacturing environment will want to keep a close watch on the floor's scrap rate. With a quick glance at the dashboard, he or she will be able to see the floor's scrap rate in real time, since workers will be entering that data as it occurs. Should the rate reach an unacceptable level, the production manager can halt the process and identify the root cause before too much time and material is wasted. This data can then be applied to long-term analysis to help identify trends and opportunities for process improvement.
Why Business Intelligence in ERP?
Business Intelligence in ERP systems allows an organization to analyze and leverage massive data that is captured by the ERP software. The BI software uses the data, analyses it, and represents it in an actionable and easy to interpret format.
The critical elements of BI include:
Dashboards:
The interactive dashboards are responsible for providing the businesses with the insights that have never been possible before. These dashboards offer a more holistic view of the company by allowing the decision-makers to deeply analyze the data from different perspectives with just a few clicks.
To list a few benefits:
Data is quickly accessible and actionable.
Offers complete flexibility for business growth
Data Visualizations:
Data visualization is a process of representing the data in graphical form. As visual information is processed 60,000 times faster than text, it is more likely to be absorbed by the people of all levels within the organization.
The common motivating factor for a beginner in Business Intelligence is a tool that can convert data from numbers on a spreadsheet to insightful visualizations.
Benefits of data visualization include:
Quick absorption of data improves insights and helps in faster decision making.
Data is easily accessible and understandable.
Data Reporting:
Reporting is a part of Business Intelligence that provides data in visualized forms such as tables, graphs and charts. BI reporting analyses the data more accurately for easy understanding.
There are a few business reporting techniques which include scorecards, dashboards, KPI metrics, OLAP, ad hoc queries, etc. that provide value to summarize the past.
Benefits of Business Intelligence Reporting:
Improves the quality of data
Streamlines procurement process
Live streaming of data
Predictive Analytics:
Predictive analysis is the combination of data, statistical algorithms and machine learning techniques to provide better insights into the future outcome of data based on historical information. More precisely, it's not about what happened, but why it happened and what could happen in the future.
Benefits of predictive analytics:
Improves pattern detection and prevents criminal behavior.
Helps businesses attract, retain and grow customers.
Business Intelligence Tools and Platforms
Microsoft Power BI is the top leading BI tool that offers data preparation, visual-based data discovery, interactive dashboards and augmented analytics via a single product which is the Microsoft Power BI. This tool unifies data from many sources to create interactive, immersive dashboards and reports that provide complete data and also drive business results.
Microsoft BI is available as a SaaS option running in the Azure cloud or as an on-premise option in Power BI Report Server.
According to the Gartner report, the new features added to the Microsoft BI recently, include decomposition tree visuals, LinkedIn data connectivity and geographic mapping enhancements.
Eventually, an ERP System with integrated BI software will render all the information under a single platform. If you are looking make your ERP smarter by implementing BI, Please visit us at www.aptocoineranalytics.com