What are the most innovative ways to use data analysis in ERP?

Once data is stored in an ERP properly it can be used for increasing profitability and efficiency through predictive forecasting, product associations as well as improving visibility into the business with reporting dashboards.

Data visualization serves as the initial step in configuring an organization's data warehouse. Vendors like Oracle offer visualization layers tailored for Oracle ERP.Many Software-as-a-service applications also include Transactional Business Intelligence dashboards,essentially functioning as data visualization layers. By adopting a visualization layer, customers can easily identify data discrepancies occurring at the end-user or data entry level, thus preventing the incorporation of erroneous data into any business application. In essence, Data Visualization serves as the gateway to embarking on a broader data warehouse journey, equipped with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning capabilities, ultimately enabling predictive analysis.

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ERPs today have data visualization and In Context BI within your work areas of the ERP giving you realtime insights and support in your decision making process. As all the transactional data is within the ERP transactional BI provides all the visualization and analytics without going out of the ERP or has a need for external visualization tools.

Couple of points: 1) Although most of the ERP solutions now provide data visualization - I have not seen big adoption specifically in large enterprise- due to limited KPIs and does not fit their needs. 2) few cons of direct analytics a) Performance Issues: High demand for direct data queries can affect ERP system performance. b) Limited Historical Data: ERP systems may not retain historical data for extended periods. c) Complex Queries: Directly querying ERP databases can be complex and may require significant SQL knowledge. d) Data Silos: Difficulties in integrating data from multiple sources for comprehensive analysis. My recommendation and the best practice is to build a data warehouse and build data visualization on top of it.

Careful preprocessing and maintenance of data sources can be an ally to create your own specialized prediction system, that can help organization to monitor and plan possible events in it's future. Be it predicting rise in demand or bracing yourselves for a challenging time, predictive analytics can help a great deal.

When examining the lifecycle of upgrading ERP systems,it becomes apparent that organizations tend to rely on the same ERP for an extended period, often surpassing 5 years.Notably,organizations usually opt for product upgrades rather than completely changing their ERP.Consequently,this results in the accumulation of a substantial volume of data within the ERP.With the exciting prospect of integrating ERPs with cutting-edge technologies like GPT4,and the impending launch of GPT5 in Dec-2023,the potential for conducting predictive analyses using ERP data in combination with external sources becomes increasingly promising. This allows entities to harness the power of data-driven insights to enhance decision-making and drive meaningful outcomes.

It's hard to disagree. When we started mining processes from our ERP, we discovered that the purchasing process, for example, branches into 200+ sub-processes. It was impressive! Such results can only be obtained through data analysis.

Use data analysis in provisioning to ensure up-to-date and appropriate access. If you have role-based and/or user-based security groups with access to data, do regular analysis of what data is and is not accessed by each group or user. This helps not only in allowing timely access to approved data, but also helps revoke rights to users who no longer need access to data. Most modern ERP systems can even be configured to automatically remove access that is not used within a defined period. It can help with data accuracy by ensuring that only the right users can crowdsource data. It also reduces the risk of data leak by only giving data access to users who absolutely need it.

Data analysis can help in improved decision making, efficiency and competitiveness using it in ERP. Some ways to use data analysis could be: 1. predictive analytics to predict future trends 2. real time monitoring and alerts 3. strategic decisions using data analytics in the organization 4. quality control 5. financial risk management and many more. By implementing few of these data analysis can provide a significant competitive advantage in today’s data driven business landscape.

Yes, we use this approach too. In our DWH repository, an array of basic terms and connections with terms from all used information systems is created. This is how we successfully integrate ERP, Directum, WMS and other systems, and also easily extract data for mixed reports.

Data integration is a powerful tool that provides a comprehensive view of your projects and products, facilitating more informed analysis. By consolidating procurement, cost, sales, and inventory data across various geographies, you can gain valuable insights into product profitability and regional acceptability. Understanding these metrics is crucial for identifying your top-performing products and evaluating their performance across different markets. Identifying Regional Performance Disparities For instance, a high-margin product might excel in certain areas while underperforming in others. Analyzing these discrepancies can reveal underlying reasons, enabling targeted actions to boost acceptance and performance in weaker regions.

For companies to benefit from ERP, it is imperative that ERP is implemented successfully. Most of the ERP implementations are sub-optimal, users struggle and management do not get any value add. Even today ERP is being used only as a data entry tool. Management still use Excel Reports and tracks the Pre-ERP KPIs. In those instances where I have seen huge benefit from ERP data, the senior management themselves embraced ERP and became its passionate advocates. They owned the ERP process design, demanded and got what they wanted and used their authority to ensure process changes. Once they knew what was there, it was easy to demand and get financial benefits out of ERP. Trusting key users to deliver ERP benefits will never work.

Well, as systems analysts, we constantly use simple SQL-based data analysis in our daily work when testing improvements or finding examples for them.

You are absolutely correct. Unless management gets involved in to ERP Implementation they won't get the benefits. Otherwise it is just data entry. I am experiencing this in my current organisation where I am working now. Half ERP is implemented. Don't underground what and who is getting benefit from this.