The one big truth for all businesses out there today is that they run on data. From customer files to project details, to inventory records to financial analytics and reporting– every business unit today processes a tremendous amount of data. Processing this much data would not have been possible without technological advancements.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have also made it easier to manage it by eliminating departmental data silos. While each department may only need access to a subset of this information, bringing it all together within a single system provides a much richer dataset for analysis.
Let's say you are a company operating in the current business climate. If you want to take full advantage of the raw corporate data available to you from your company's operations, you need good analytics. These include creating dashboards, producing analytical reports, and tracking your KPIs.
While many software providers offer these tools, all systems are not created equal. Choosing the wrong solution can severely limit your ability to leverage the information you have and ultimately impact business performance.
With this in mind, here signs that your analytics capabilities may be holding you back.
Inflexible financial reports
Typically, accounting and ERP software providers offer a variety of pre-formatted reporting templates that can be used to produce financial statements and other standard reports. ERP solutions also include standard reports for other modules that are part of the system, such as warehouse management or manufacturing execution. This saves time and money by eliminating the need to create frequently used reports from scratch.
While having a set of predefined reports is useful, a format that works for one company doesn't necessarily work for others. Different audiences may need data tailored and presented in different ways. The board of directors may be satisfied with a summarised income statement, but internal leaders require more detailed information. It should be easy to change the layout or including additional data elements on a report, but it often isn't. Hard-coded designs can be difficult or impossible to modify, preventing you from communicating information in a way that makes sense for your business.
Spreadsheets, spreadsheets, and more spreadsheets
There will always be a need for custom reports, no matter how many pre-defined reports come standard with an accounting or ERP system. A sales manager may want to know why a new product isn't selling well in a given region or you may want a specialised report to track performance in a way that is unique to your business.
In the past, creating ad-hoc reports required a level of technical expertise that few people in an organisation possessed. It could take weeks to have a new report created and given the pace of business today, waiting around for someone else to do the work is no longer acceptable.
The business expectation has changed now, and no one has time to wait around for so long for reports. If your business uses spreadsheets or waiting around days for custom reports, you will end up with reduced productivity and quality.
A popular reporting tool due to their ease of use is spreadsheets. But they have important limitations, making them a poor choice for running analytics. Spreadsheets utilise static rather than real-time data and spreadsheet-based reports are out of date almost as soon as they're created. Working with spreadsheets also increases the risk of reporting errors as they are easily modified and inherently insecure. Changing a single formula in a widely distributed report can have significant consequences, causing recipients to question the accuracy of the underlying data and damaging credibility.
Unreachable data
One of the benefits of having good reporting tools is the ability to combine data in unique ways, such as by bringing together financial, production, and organisational data to evaluate the cost of producing a given product at one location versus another. By providing centralised access to data from different departments, an ERP system makes this easy.
If information is being captured within the system, it should be available for analysis.
If your business is using separate systems or spreadsheets, this may not be possible. Your analytics solution may only have access to financial data, but not project management details because the two modules have different architectures.
Limited KPIs
Key performance indicators help you focus on achieving specific objectives and see how your team is performing against those objectives and let everyone know if performance is falling below targets.
No two companies are the same. Even companies in the same industry may have different goals and objectives. Software providers often overlook this, assuming that a handful of standard KPIs are all that any business needs. Having the right KPIs is essential, you can't manage what you can't measure.
If your analytics tools don't support industry-specific KPIs or allow you to track custom KPIs, they aren't doing you any good.
Inflexible dashboards
Dashboards are also an important tool for everyone in an organisation. In addition to displaying KPIs, they help individual team members stay focused by alerting them to tasks that need to be completed or issues that need to be addressed. No more time is wasted searching for reports or features that are used frequently.
Dashboards that are difficult to tailor to specific roles or hard to personalise are often more of a hindrance than a help and are unlikely to provide insights and efficiencies your business needs.
Flexible Analytics for Everyday Users
NetSuite's analytics solutions give you the tools you need to produce meaningful reports, track KPIs in real-time and glean new insights that lead to better decisions and improved performance. Hundreds of standard and industry-specific reports are easily adapted to meet the needs of your business. Powerful reporting and analytics tools are designed so even inexperienced personnel are comfortable working with them. While flexible, configurable dashboards provide critical information at a glance. Combined, NetSuite's powerful reporting and analytics capabilities help your team make smarter and more informed business decisions.
Join the webinar Improving Financial Visibility Through Dashboards and Reports to see a live demo of how NetSuite helps improves financial visibility.
