Is the business intelligence data your company provides being used by employees? Many companies find their employees struggle with interpreting the data generated by their enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
ERP systems collect an enormous amount of data. Data can be useful, but business intelligence data is most useful when it is displayed in a visual representation. Companies often find their business intelligence data isn’t used because employees struggle to interpret raw numbers. By using data visualization, endless rows of figures suddenly become actionable insights.
If your company is among the many struggling to encourage everyone to use its business intelligence data, we’ve put together three possible reasons why it’s not being used and the solution to each problem. Use this to address common data challenges and see if it makes the impact we believe it will.
Business Intelligence Data: Challenges and Solutions
Challenge 1: Business intelligence data must be manually exported into another program to make data visualizations.
Solution: Find an ERP with automatic reports to make it easy.
“It takes too much time” is the common theme when people are asked why they aren’t using business intelligence data. That “too much time” isn’t the time it takes to find the data, but the time it takes to export data and import it into programs that can make graphs and charts.
The solution is to either figure out how to manage data visualization needs through your current ERP system or start searching for a new one. A new ERP is neither a quick nor easy decision to make, but if your employees need additional programs to complete their work or aren’t using the ERP they have, it makes sense to start the search for a new one.
Challenge 2: Too many KPIs confuses everyone, and they don’t know what to focus on.
Solution: Identify the most critical performance indicators and place them front and center.
If it feels like your business intelligence data takes weeks to review and use, the problem may be with the KPIs you’re tracking. Companies often add KPIs until they have too many to focus on efficiently. It begins to take too much time to review the data and report it back to the KPIs, so people tend to procrastinate, ignore, or push through it. The solution is to identify only those KPIs that are quantitative and useful to your company. Anything else is wasted effort.
Another step to streamlining KPIs is to review them in light of the company’s goals and objectives. Pare them down to only those that support the overarching company goals. This helps everyone focus on what’s essential and makes KPIs manageable.
Challenge 3: Access to business intelligence data is limited. Only a handful of employees can run reports.
Solution: Increase access.
People may not be using business intelligence data because their access to what proves useful is severely limited. If your current ERP system limits the license so only a handful of employees can use it, it’s limiting your company’s ability to use data.
If you cannot add access to additional employees, a few steps can still be taken to ease the data bottleneck. First, review the list of employees who have access to the data. Check to make sure they are current employees and they still require access. You may find that some have retired or moved on to other jobs, yet their logins remain in the system. You may be able to reuse the existing access after assigning it to others.
Gems in Your Business Intelligence Data
Gems are waiting to be mined inside your company’s business intelligence data. Once you’ve overcome the challenges facing widespread use of such data, you’ll find the information within the ERP system provides your team with the insights they need to succeed.
Acumatica ERP
If you’re using Acumatica ERP, you can enhance its ability to use business intelligence data for data visualizations. Learn more in this article: Extend Your Acumatica ERP with Business Intelligence Analytics.
Emerald TC
Emerald TC provides software and consulting for manufacturing companies. We can help you choose the right ERP system for your needs and offer Acumatica and other software packages for every type and size manufacturing company. Contact us or call 678-456-6919 for more information.