The Value of BI in ERP Solutions

While ERP solutions are the cornerstone for making data acquisition more efficient, Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics are at the core of high-level decision making in an organization. In fact, 48% firms claim that cloud BI is critical to their business operations.


In broad terms, Business Intelligence is the transformation of raw data into actionable and meaningful insights that reflect upon the historical, current and predictive business trends and performance. BI tools allow companies to monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in real-time and take corrective actions; they’re like your organization’s eyes and ears.
Simply having an ERP solution installed isn’t enough; you need to leverage BI tools to make the data work. BI enables you to push your business forward and stay competitive by facilitating data-driven decisions.
Let’s look at some other ways how BI tools complement ERP solutions in driving a profitable business:

Facilitates Predictive Analysis

For a long time, businesses focused their resources on studying and analyzing historical data, but they soon realized that they needed to predict business trends in order to stay relevant. So, they combined the efforts of historical data analysis and predictive analysis with the help of BI.
BI tools enable users to make data-informed, smart predictions about the future by observing historical patterns. An example of this is sales forecasting—such as determining which products sell the most during certain times of the year, and applying these observations into production.
For instance, the maintenance team can determine machines’ failure rate through old patterns and anticipate machine maintenance schedule. After identifying patterns, BI tools allow you to drill down and find the root cause, supporting better decision-making for sales, inventory, production and distribution.

Go Beyond Traditional Reporting

Traditionally, reporting used to be a static process that was based on a certain data set, analyzed at the end of the week. Modern BI tools go beyond these rudimentary reporting functions by creating a dynamic environment, allowing users to manipulate the data as needed.
BI software when integrated with an ERP solution has a transformative effect on reporting and analysis. It puts all the business’s essential data at the users’ fingertips, allowing stakeholders to make sense of the business operations at a glance. It facilitates a real-time look at the business data, without having to collect it from different departments, consolidate it and arrange it in spreadsheets.
From a line manager to the board of directors, BI modules in ERP systems allow all users at all levels to track summarized KPIs through ad hoc reporting tools.
Enterprise resource planning system, OpenPro, has one of the most comprehensive BI systems in the industry. It uses a powerful SQL database coupled with ad hoc BI tools to grab pertinent data quickly.
If you wish to find out more about our holistic business software, get in touch with us today!

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