Businesses are collecting and using data about their sales, supply chain, financials, and operations at an unprecedented pace. As the Internet of Things continues to accelerate data collection, reporting solutions built into ERP platforms might struggle to keep up with the demands of these increasingly data-driven organizations.
Here are some important differences between built-in ERP reporting solutions and their more advanced standalone counterparts:
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What standard ERP reporting solutions do
In traditional ERP reporting, expectations are relatively simple: gather existing information and present it using dashboards to conveniently review past performance. As your business’s needs grow, these built-in options might limit its decision-making abilitiesLet’s suppose the procurement and operations managers of a packaging factory schedule a 30-minute meeting to discuss supply chain changes for the upcoming quarter. They want to review year-over-year changes in demand for eight different products. With standard ERP reporting, they would have access to stats on current demand, but probably wouldn’t have enough time to compare this year’s stats to last year’s for all eight products.
Where do ERPs fall short?
While the information that built-in ERP reporting capabilities deliver is definitely useful, most ERP platforms lack tools for advanced analysis, comparison with previous periods, and the ability to generate accurate forecasts or projections based on historical data.
Standard ERP reporting is also limited in terms of the data it can access. If you wish to compile data from multiple information systems and not just your ERP platform, then standard reporting tools might not provide that functionality.
Advanced ERP reporting solutions
Businesses require a timely 360° view of their customers and operations to make sound decisions and secure their bottom line. Advanced reporting solutions are a more scalable and feature-rich way to address these needs. They can easily consolidate data from any number of systems that a business might deploy, and present it on a single platform. The solution leverages this data to generate consolidated reports that help decision makers identify actionable opportunities and bottlenecks to improve future performance and achieve strategic goals.
Scalability of an advanced ERP reporting solution
Advanced reporting and analytics platforms like Microsoft Power BI can handle large quantities of data. Since they are standalone solutions, you can scale them up or down independently of your ERP platform and other IT systems within your organization. If your requirements vary unpredictably, cloud-based advanced reporting solutions can also be configured to automatically scale according to your current demand.
Conclusion
Has your organization outgrown its existing ERP reporting capabilities? AcuitySpark, our advanced analytics solution, offers intelligent BI dashboards, near-real-time reporting, high scalability, sophisticated forecasting, and data consolidation across multiple sources. Get in touch with Visionet to find out how we can help your company migrate to a state-of-the-art advanced analytics platform.