Your company has implemented an ERP in the last 12–18 months. You’ve successfully replicated your legacy and critical financial reports. Some would have covered variations of income statements, balance sheets, cash flow, and a few HR reports like headcount analysis and employee turnover. But now what?
Many businesses stop here, as basic reporting needs are covered. Others use their Analytics Tools as a replacement or supplement for Excel-based reports.
In countries like South Africa where statutory reporting requirements are critical and your ERP solution has not delivered the localisations, you may have started with additional layers of race and gender or environmental sustainability reports but have only covered the tip of the iceberg.
While all these are great first steps, your Analytics Tools have far more potential than static financial and headcount reporting. How do you utilise your Analytics Tools to their full capacity?
Why you should think differently about your Analytics Tools
- Beyond replication – Replicating old reports in a new tool limits innovation. Your Analytics Application allows real-time, interactive analytics that Excel never could.
- Real-time decision-making – Instead of waiting for month-end reports, your Analytics Application can provide live data insights that drive daily decisions.
- Laying the foundation for AI – AI needs structured, reliable data to generate insights. Simply recreating old reports doesn’t prepare you for AI-driven decision-making.
Each week, we’ll be covering short, actionable items that will help companies take the next step on their Analytics roadmap.
There is a lot of hype about AI’s impact on Reporting, but how do you get AI ready and decide which AI insights would benefit your company most? Where do you start having covered the basics? Can you make a start this week?
- Move beyond static reports
- Identify areas where real-time data would improve decision-making
Look at where teams spend the most time manually creating and analysing reports – this is where automation can add the most value. Prepare for Week 2, where we’ll continue expanding on the topic and discuss exception-based reporting and proactive insights.
