Magic has been a source of obsession, fascination, misunderstanding, fear and hatred in the world since the dawn of humankind. From the time of the cave dweller through to the medieval ages and the stories of King Arthur's Merlin; the infamous witch burnings in Salem; the world of fantasy novels like Dungeons and Dragons; and the spectacular antics of David Copperfield and Harry Potter, magic has dazzled, baffled and terrified the world.
The world of business today is dealing with its own little 'magician', one that has baffled everyone for the last few years, and cost organisations great chunks of money in lost revenue or investment on additional solutions. The magician: enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. The magic: data disappearing into the ether at a rate of knots.
The focus of ERP systems has essentially been about putting in place controls and processes that ensure transactional data is captured accurately, and implementing security and validation checking to ensure the integrity of the data.
Information (data) is the lifeblood of the organisation and ERP systems have been implemented over the past decade to gain control over the flood of data every organisation is faced with, and to provide a means of making that data a valuable asset to the business rather than a space and resource waster.
Having the right information available on a realtime basis enables decision-making that is current and relevant. However, despite the intentions behind the development of ERP systems, they did not live up to the promises made and organisations have been rapidly inputting data into these systems and struggling to get that data back out, or get it out in a format that is user-friendly for non-IT executives.
Now you see it, now you do not
ERP systems are optimised for data capturing, updating, altering and managing transactional information and does not necessarily support the kind of queries required for analytics, planning, modelling or forecasting purposes. What may seem a simple business question like: ‘who are my top 10 customers?’ is a complex question for an ERP system to resolve. Viewing data through ERP systems is parameter-driven, unwieldy and unintuitive.
Furthermore, ERP systems are not typically suited for 'what-if' scenario modelling, which is required for optimal decision-making in the organisation. While an organisation may be able to upload budgets into its ERP system the system does not render itself for performing collaborative budgeting and planning activities.
It is like a magician being able to make someone from the audience disappear and being unable to bring them back. Putting data into a system from which it cannot easily be accessed again can become very costly, with high levels of inefficiencies.
Not all is lost though. Business intelligence (BI) tools are invaluable and complementary to ERP systems as a key enabler to exposing valuable data assets.
Do you know how David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear a few years ago? He put the audience on a revolving platform! It seems almost too simple to be true. ERP does much the same thing: it moves data beyond the average business user's reach. Business intelligence tools are designed with the business user in mind and allow them to bring things back into view.
It enables business users to make any decisions based on easily accessible, up-to-date, single-version-of-the-truth data, without needing to consume scarce IT resources in trying to access that data. It unlocks the business's data assets and so unlocks the value inherent therein.
Analysts have defined business intelligence as a user-centred process of exploring data, data relationships and trends, thereby helping to improve overall decision-making. This involves an interactive process of accessing data and analysing it to draw conclusions, derive insights and communicate findings, with the purpose of effecting positive change in an organisation.
BI tools put in place to complement the ERP system move the focus from data back to the user. Balancing ERP systems with BI tools opens up a world of trending, forecasting, planning, reporting, modelling, and analysis for business executives. Implementing BI tools in a business performance management (BPM) framework implies that the technology solution is implemented while considering and addressing relevant metrics, methodologies and processes.
Using BI tools to obtain greater benefit from an ERP system, organisations can improve the effectiveness, efficiency and levels of productivity of its business users, and prevent the unnecessary use of costly and scarce technical skills on mundane tasks such as extracting data.
Instead of focusing excessive energy on getting information out, leaving limited time for strategic business activities, the organisation should be concentrating on generating value by adding a new tool to its little magician's bag of tricks.
Intellient is the local distributor of Hyperion software and solutions in southern Africa.
For more information contact Tanya Furniss, Intellient, +27 (0)11 607 8200, [email protected]
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