Businesses use a variety of software to help them improve and enhance business performance and productivity. Some of the most popular systems include enterprise resource planning systems and business intelligence software. While many businesses continue to use these two in isolation, many experts are now suggesting that it’s time businesses use both these systems to complement each other and gain very valuable insights into business performance as a whole.
What Is ERP Software?
ERP software is an essential part of businesses of any size these days. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems integrate internal and external management information across an entire organisation, embracing finance/accounting, manufacturing, sales and service, customer relationship management, etc. ERP systems automate this activity with an integrated software application. Their purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the organisation and manage the connections to outside stakeholders.
What Is BI Software?
Businesses collect vast amounts of data but sometimes it all goes to waste because no one really knows what to do with the data or how to interpret it in a useful manner. Business Intelligence Software (BI Software) is designed to help you understand this data and gain easy access to business analytics, intelligence and other reports so you and your staff can gain key insights into the performance of your business.
Combining ERP And BI Software
Both ERP and BI Software by themselves are a crucial part of business but using a combination of both is going to enhance your business performance. This marriage between business intelligence software and enterprise resource planning software will give you an excellent competitive advantage and help you make more informed decisions through added data and insights available to you.
The use of BI software helps you tap into vast amounts of data that ERP systems make available to you. The insights you gain from using your BI software can be used for enhanced productivity for your ERP systems. The additional knowledge you gain from carrying out business intelligence reports will help you enhance the functioning of your business and manage all your stakeholders in a much more productive manner.
In the pursuit of cost reductions and transparency and in the struggle to sustain and grow revenue and profits it becomes more important to preserve a level of visibility. This is becoming more and more elusive as SMEs grow in both size and complexity. There is no doubt that both ERP software and BI software provide value, but the marriage of the two becomes the perfect storm, igniting improved performance and visibility.
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Guest article written by Markinson. It is a business software company, dedicated to the creation and provision of innovative solutions such as CRM, retail point of sale (POS) & ERP Software and services to companies across Australia, New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region.
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