Augmenting ERP Analysis with Self-Service BI

Optimal utilization of resources is the cornerstone of business performance. The Chief Procurement Officer often relies on ERP systems to ensure that all the cogs run flawlessly. The problem with ERP systems is that there is a heavy dependence on skilled resources to make work them for you.

Businesses buy expensive ERP systems that are too complex to use and almost always fail to utilize all the features they are packed with. For the IT staff involved, it’s a lot of hard work and all they want to do is get things done. The features therefore remain unexplored making businesses lose out on richer insights.

Although it would be great to get answers for the following, getting them out of ERP solutions and ancillary cloud-based applications is an uphill task –

• Who are your best, worst and outlier suppliers and customers?
• Is there a way of predicting which ones are going to fail to meet delivery deadlines or increase their prices?
• Which of your products will outperform the others and what external factors might drive its performance?
• Which items in your bill of materials are overstocked, which have you paid too much for and which are going to run out before the next shipment arrives?
• Can you foresee demand spikes or market downturns and understand the impact of those on inventory costs and production hours?

However, the fact remains that an Enterprise Resource Planning Application serves as a repository for transactional data of all kinds be it purchasing, production, finance or sales & service. If used up in the right way, data can reveal areas of strengths and weaknesses.

Furthermore, businesses these days supplement their need for insights with cloud based applications that are purpose built for specific needs. Amalgamating data from each of these critical systems is critical for extracting insights business leaders need on tactical as well as strategic levels.

The problem with preparing data is that it’s a people dependent activity that takes an awful lot of time. This problem is further compounded by lack of up competent data analysts who have the business perspective.

To address these issues, we created DataScout, an insights discovery tool that acts like a catalyst for decision making. DataScout does this by automating the data preparation process through machine learning algorithms. It brings insights discovery time down to minutes and hours rather than weeks and months.

DataScout puts business users firmly in the driving seat to completely utilize their business perspective and support their instincts. The tool achieves this through a highly intuitive interface that eliminates coding skills and takes you straight to insights you need to act. DataScout works around the businesses needs of today to accurately predict outcomes. It does all this while giving you a seamless experience across desktop, tablet and mobile.