Spreadsheets and PDFs are becoming a reporting mode of the past. Advances in technology have truly made reporting easy, more versatile and more relevant to your business. If you’re still using spreadsheets to report data on your business, you’re likely missing out on key data that could change the way you run your business, from inventory to sales. A lot of this data can be created by ERP reporting.
Pivot Tables and User Queries
Using a simple spreadsheet may be the most common way to generate data, but it causes a lot of wasted time. Can you count how many times you have scrolled through a spreadsheet looking for a specific number or column to gain the insight you need? Having the ability through ERP reporting to summarize the data for quick searched through pivot tables eliminates wasted search time.
Financial Reports
Financial reporting is absolutely crucial in business, from balance sheets to income and cash flow statements. With manual entry of this information, there simply isn’t enough time in the week to continually update the information. With ERP reporting, the system can give real-time data and insight into your finances. This allows you to make more informed decisions regarding your business.
Agile Reporting
It’s one thing to manually have to input data into a spreadsheet, it is another to have to then manually generate a report that will actually be useful to you and others. ERP reporting has search tools that allow you to find the information you need and then present that data into easily digestible reports. Decision makers will then be able to make quick decisions when necessary.
Data in Unknown Places
It is nice to have tons of data and numbers to look at, but ERP reporting can also be found in systems in unknown places. Consider your purchase orders. Are you able to easily access the PO for each customer, the label, part number and barcode that prints along with it? ERP reporting, although not usually thought of in this way, can keep track of this instead of rummaging around in files for them.
Dashboards
What use is data to you if you can’t share the most important information with the employees that need to see it? Further, how good is data if everyone is able to see it? ERP reporting offers user access controls, allowing you to share what you need to and keep private based on the user, department or role.
ERP reporting can give your business a lot of insight and save time by automatically updating it for you. Further, the data will become more relevant because it will show in real time.
This white paper will walk you through six of the biggest mistakes you can make in your ERP decision process and show you how you can avert them.Learn More Here
