Maximizing Return on Investment Using ERP Applications

GETTING INFORMATION AND ANALYSIS OUT OF THE DATA OCEAN (1997–2007)

At the same time, more attention was being paid to enriching the ability of management to get better and cleaner access to analytics and reports. Data warehouses with more advanced analytical tools were developed, both by ERP vendors and by other competitors, and business content was added to enhance analytics and presentation layers. While data warehousing was a growth area by itself, the development of this tool in the early days was viewed by business mostly as a better way to generate the same types of reporting it had used for decades, and the capability to include analytics was poorly understood but was growing.

Why, then, is this important? Essentially, it turned around the design algorithm for reporting systems and provided the opportunity to gain more control over the ultimate outcome of the back-office transaction engine. Now, it was not only possible but should have been required that before designing and implementing ERP, management should be challenged to provide an outline of the information it needed to see as it decided how to operate the business. Most early reporting systems started with what was there, selected the data, organized it, and compiled the report.3 User organizations would then find the reports to be lacking and ask for additional information, which could be added if it existed in the application or added to the system over time, if not. There was little to be gained by thinking about ...