Speaking broadly, Business Intelligence (BI) can be defined as a source of transformation of all the raw data in some kind of meaningful metrics reflected upon the historical, current as well as the predictive business performance along with the operations too. In the previous times, all the activities related to BI used to be performed completely by the gathering of data in a manual from through different kind of the resources or platform, manipulation of the data in spreadsheets by the output of mere statistic report. Multiplication of that effort through the number of different kind of functional areas within any of the organization. In today’s era, ERP have come by the integrated BI modules which helps out in enabling the organization for the provision of dynamic reporting, providing the number of different end users through exactly what they want to see and when do they want to see.

Real time data that allows for the fast decision making

One of the most feasible benefits associated by the use of BI software is that it integrates with an ERP system and it has an ability to give different managers a real time look for the data which they are required to make some sort of intelligent decisions in short as well as the long terms. By the quick glimpse at a dashboard, one can see the scrap of floor in the real time and the workers will then be entering all of the data as it takes place. (Turban, 2010)

Moving beyond the traditional reporting

Another place where the software of BI can have the transformative effect upon the business while reporting anything. Modern software of the BI goes way beyond the functions of rudimentary reporting associated with the business that has been used in the past times by the creation of a more dynamic environment for all of the users to manipulate the data when needed. Process of reporting used to be a kind of static process, different business leaders can even get the snapshot that where a particular set of data stands at the end of each day or even the week as well.

BI even helps in putting all of the data at the fingertips of different users in a way which makes a sense for each of the individual stakeholder. This also helps out for the real time look at the data without even trying to pull it out from the whole system, then enter it into the spreadsheet and start making a complete new report. BI module in the ERP system helps them to allow any of the use no matter whether it’s a line manager or even the C-level executive for the quick accessing of the customized dashboard that has been loaded by the initiative visualization of the data on most of the relevant KPIs, by an ability to for the ad hoc reporting. (Thierauf, 2001)

BI module also helps out in bringing out the high level of the consistency towards the process of reporting. By the use of traditional reporting, if the sales executive need regional managers for the delivering of a report upon the sales for a quarter then each of the report be different in format form along with the source as well that how the data for making of report was collected. Next part is putting up all such pieces together that can even lead towards different kind of errors or mistakes and time can be wasted as well. By the use of BI that is being associated with the ERP system, each manager then will be working with the same set of the data and will also be able to deliver the same reports having similar format.

Role of the Business Intelligence BI in ERP system

ERP solutions are the ones that have become a kind of cornerstone for the making of all the data acquisition and all of the different kind of related operations way more efficient and significant. But here most of the enterprises start learning quickly and in a very short time duration. In simple way, installation of the ERP solution is not of much use. At the hour of need, here it is important to leverage out the business intelligence tools to make all of the data work in an appropriate way.

Below mentioned are some of the important points that why this business intelligence plays a significant role in the ERP:

Data warehousing: Although the sensibly sized ERP solutions have the tendency to generate some tremendous amount of a data on regular basis. This doesn’t happen on alternate basis or days but this process takes place daily without the skipping of any day. On the other side, if the data is not being processed or tagged alongside, then a person ends up with the huge store of data that is of very specific practical use. All this calls for more of the proactive data warehousing, this further comes under the domain of a business intelligence. (Yeoh, 2010)

Legacy of the data: Another vigorous aspect of an enterprise is a legacy of data, which means that the data left over by the previous software or even the whole process as well. There are many different kind of the companies that are well aware of the worth and importance of this legacy data, most of the times they are at loss when all of this comes at the gleaning insights from it. Once again, all of this is only because of the use of business intelligence tools through which the correct analyzation can be made up easily without even getting disturbed or worried.

Guesswork elimination: With the presence and use of right BI tools in the place, then the companies no more have to work upon their gut feelings that are essential for the strategy decisions. Business intelligence is the one that provides the ability to get the correct information from the data that has been given or provided and the interpretation of all the relevant patterns and the trends as well. (Elbashir, 2008)

There is no doubt in this fact at all that business intelligence is the one that happens to be one of the most in demand technology for the enterprise every year. With this, ERP is the one that forms one of the perfect synergy for the applying of BI techniques along with the taking of much better decisions.

Evolution of the BI system

In traditional, different kind of the good decisions results in the better experience and more of the knowledge. But here I want to add one thing that all this takes many years to get such knowledge and the experience while there are some of the employees that never ever achieve this in their whole life. Therefore the decision of the support systems came in use. Back in 1958, one of the IBM researcher famous by the name of Hans Peter Luhn, he was the very first person who used this term of BI and then he defined the intelligence in his own words: “capability to capture the interrelationships of all the presented facts in a way to guide all of the different actions towards the particular or specific goal”. This business intelligence that we understand in today’s world has been evolved from the decision of the support systems whose development started to begin from the 1960 till 1980’s. Again back in the year 1989, Howard Dresner is the one that coined this term of Business Intelligence as a kind of umbrella for all of these systems. Again in the 1980’s some of the manual reports were being made. Data got stored in them manually as each of the transition took place. All these reports were then used for the forecasting along with the demand of supply management. (Mikroyannidis, 2010)

In late 1980’s, Management Information System (MIS) was developed which then further automated all of these business processes under a single network of framework. It helped a lot in providing the managers with the static reports that are being needed to manage out the different kind of organizations in an effective way. As MIS was developed, more and more of the modules got added up which then further covered all of the areas of the different kind of business functions that includes the management of different people, supply chain management, customer relationship management, managing the finance and then performance management as well. But here all of these systems only provided the statistic reports, all of these reports were very good and effective for the analyzing of past transactions but what they did was they did not aid for any of the decision making process. Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) allowed number of different users for the analyzation and manipulation of the data from some of the different perspectives. It helped in arranging out the data in the form of cubes which helped in enabling the users to consider more of the dimensions for the analyzation process. Data mining is another kind of a process for the extraction of different patterns from the data source. Mining of data from the data warehouse was then being used up for the predictive analysis. Querying along with some of the reporting techniques were used at the time for forecasting along with the decision making as well. (White, 2000)

This Business Intelligence BI got developed on the back drop of some kind of data mining technique. BI is a kind of system which helped in analyzing all of the historical, real time along with the productive data as well and then was being provided with the number of different solutions towards the decision making problems.

Performance of the different organizations by the use of BI in EPR

Companies having different sizes are these days implementing the Business Intelligence in the ERP for the optimization of the usage of their own data. According to one of the survey that was being conducted by one of the leading research firm, Business Intelligence in the ERP was considered to be the top most priority of different organizations worldwide. Here we are going to talk about some of those companies that have implemented this Business Intelligence in the ERP. (Harmon, 2010)

Volkswagen AG: This is the name of the company that has implemented this Business Intelligence in ERP in their different departments like sales, finance, purchasing, marketing, research and even in the production department as well. This company is still now considered to be the third largest car manufacturer company in the whole world. It has a market share of almost 20% in the world passenger of the car segment.

MasterCard International: This is the American multinational company, this company helps in processing the payments between the different banks of a merchant along with the card issuing banks as well who use credit and the debit card for making different kind of the purchasing. This company has also extended its BI in the terms of ERP from the internal as well as the external users. It allows the different merchants along with many of the advertising agents to monitor out their business closely by the access to Business Intelligence BI. (Panian, 2012)

Shell services International: Implementation of Business Intelligence in ERP has further resulted in the reduced working capital, increased turnover along with the margin and better deals with the suppliers and the customers. Shell is now known to be the world leader in the lubricant supply.

TruServ: Implementation of Business Intelligence BI in ERP has resulted into the better efficiency in terms of the logistic operations along with the reducing inventory costs as well by the $50 million.

Ben & Jerry’s: This is an American company that makes ice-cream. Business Intelligence has helped a lot this company a lot to better understand the behavior of different consumers and the accordingly adopt the appropriate marketing or even some of the promotional strategies This company has also helped a lot in satisfying all the needs of different customers.

The list of companies just don’t end up here but there are many different companies like these who have implemented this strategy of Business Intelligence in ERP and became much more successful.

Applications of the Business Intelligence BI in ERP:

As we have already seen the implementation of the Business implementation in many of the companies or organizations and it has also helped them to achieve their goals in a much effective way. Application of this Business Intelligence is not just limited to some of the segments. This Business Intelligence has a much wide spread of the use. This has now even become compulsory for every organization to implement this Business Intelligence in ERP for the sustaining and maintaining of their different kind of market shares in a much competitive market. There are some of the industries in which this Business Intelligence in ERP can be implemented as well and they have been mentioned below: (Baumgartner, 2007)

Retailing: Business Intelligence in ERP can be used for the forecasting of different kind of demands along with the analyzation of the fluctuations over the time period. All this will help in the optimization of the size of an inventory just to meet the different demands of the customers that what do they want and how do they want? Customers are the ones that play one of the most important function to raise the standard of any organization. This will also help the different kind of the companies for the better understanding of the behavior of a consumer in order to direct the different campaigns related to marketing. Another benefit is that it will also enhance the relationship with different suppliers. (Olszak, 2006)

Banking: Business Intelligence will help out the banks along with the financial situations in the identification of the customer base. This will help them out to plan the different kind of marketing strategies. This will also help the different kind of banks in deducing out the performance metrics along with the benchmarks just to measure out the performance of a business. This can also help in knowledge management along with the learning management as well. All this will help to manage the large scale of data.

FMCG: Business Intelligence for the ERP will provide the predictive analyzation towards the forecast demand along with the understanding of a consumer behavior. Standardization is the process that will ease out the load of transaction recording along with the multiple sourcing of the reports. (Chee, 2009)

Distribution and the Logistics:

Business Intelligence in the terms of ERP will help in the enhancement of communication with different business partners from the different areas of the world. This process will then lead towards the coordinated as well as the efficient operations. Business Intelligence will provide the different kind of the intelligent reports for the optimization of whole operations of an enterprise.

Airways: Business Intelligence will remove out the hindrance in the ticketing management system. BI can also be used for the analyzation of consumer behavior pattern along with the prediction of different future behavior patterns in increase the efficiency of different operations through the improvement of flight management and then also improve the sales revenue. Demands of the different consumers can be satisfied so efficiently. (Yeoh, Critical success factors for business intelligence systems., 2010)

Manufacturing: Business Intelligence implementation in the terms of ERP will also enhance the communications with different consumers and then standardize all of the different transactions that occurs with them by increasing the efficiency. Business Intelligence will also forecast the demands for the different kind of products that will optimize all of the inventory, production along with the procurement size as well. BI that is implemented in the department of HR will also help in the understanding of all the needs of different employees along with the difficulties which they face while performing any of the activity. This is very important and crucial step as many of the leaders completely forget about the difficulties which the employees face in any of the organization to complete the tasks or undergo any of the activity. Employees should be asked properly and treated equally, communication and the implementation of BI has helped a lot in making this track clear for the employees to talk about the difficulties and the problems which they face.

Hospitality: By the implementation of Business Intelligence in the different companies will also help out to respond quickly towards the different problematic situations. This will help them out in handling all such problems in a much efficient way along with the timely manner as well. The implementation will also give them an edge over the different competitors through notifying them of the new opportunities related to market and then help them out in taking the advantage of it completely.

Different kind of the services: Implementation of the Business Intelligence will help in the people management. This is much important as in the services of different industries of the employees are at much critical point towards the business success. This implementation of Business Intelligence will also help in the performance management of the different kind of businesses by the benchmarking along with enhancing the relationship with the different associates of business. This will further help out in managing the huge amount of the data within a company. This will further help in training the employees because training of the employees is very important part and they should be trained accordingly to run the organization in an effective way and this is being done by the implementation of BI. Implementation of BI is not that difficult method and I believe so that almost every organization can have it easily.

Advantages of using Business Intelligence in ERP:

Every system has its own list of benefits and we have already talked much about the things that are associated with the BI and this has been much successful by now. Let’s talk about some more advantages that are associated with the Business Intelligence in ERP.

Business Intelligence can be implemented in an enterprise wide or it can even be local towards a single department. If it is being implemented in all of the departments then complete organizations will be benefited. (Kabakchieva, 2013)

This also helps in giving the timely solutions to the different solutions that takes place in any of the organization. Things get back to track and place whenever they start taking turn. It helps in preventing the big loss.

Customers who are interested in the analyzation of their behavior, BI can be used for this purpose. It can also find out the cost saving opportunities along with this, suppliers can also analyze their sales data easily. (Turban E. S., 2008)

It also improves the operational efficiency, through providing the real time reports to the different employees and the customers, Business Intelligence enables in giving out the quick solutions to the different kind of problems along with the easy error detection and their correction further on.

Better relationship with the customers and dealing with them in a mannered and appropriate way. Through the analyzation of different kind of historical data, one can easily view the past performance of the different suppliers like whether the delivery was being done on time or not, customers are satisfied from the service and things like these. All of this help out in negotiating with them. Understanding about the customer buying pattern will also allow the organization to qualify some of the customers for some sort of discounts or different kind of offers in order for the maintenance of the long termed relationship. (Wu, 2007)

Conclusion of Real time data that allows for the fast decision making

In any of the organization, managers play a key role in the success of different kind of the operations. Managers are the ones that have to take any of the decision that affect the organization directly and this affect can be in terms of positive way or even the negative way. But still the manager is the one who have to take this decision and the whole organization along with the employees depend upon that decision of the manager without saying anything at all. Bad decision will lead towards the disastrous outcome. This is the decision that is being taken by the manager at the individual level right to the organizational level as well. Implementation of this Business Intelligence in the ERP will help out in improving the decisions that are being taken by the manager for their organization. The Business Intelligence will even empower all of the employees by the enough information and even make them able of the decision making. (Guha, 2012)

In any of the organization, a lot of the data is available. Data can be related to the different customers, suppliers that are available, different kind of the invoices that has been made up, list of the purchasing orders, pay slips, all the information about the employees, data related to finance and the data of client as well. It has also become cumbersome to manage out the huge amounts of the ever increasing data. BI system is the one that can make up the management of all these huge amounts of the data in the easy way by the use of different kind of technologies. This Business Intelligence have number of advantages that are giving a huge list of benefit to different organizations and this is one of the most appropriate system and we should be thankful for such creation as it has made the life much easy of all the managers and different organizations. It doesn’t only has one single benefit but the list goes on and on.

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