Decision makers at global manufacturers need timely, accurate, trusted data-sourced insights to successfully manage the business, optimize operations and respond to disruptions, exceptions and opportunities. They also often require the ability to drill into underlying data to better understand the business or operational situation before making a decision.
At the same time, manufacturers are experiencing dramatic growth in the amount of data they produce and consume due to increasing value chain digitization associated with technologies like the Internet of Things, smart machines and supplier collaboration. Many companies view the data explosion as an opportunity to make their companies more “data driven,” which means decision makers can readily tap into data to help them make more informed decisions.
Unfortunately, there are many hurdles that prevent decision makers from turning data into valuable information. Too often the analytics and reporting tools they have at their disposal are difficult to learn, use and adapt to a specific user’s needs. And they may harbor doubts about the data’s validity, which may prevent them from taking action. On the other hand, expensive data scientists and data analysts possess the skills required to use analytics models and tools, but often lack an understanding about the manufacturing business and operations.
The need for real-time business and operational insight is more important than ever, but the lack of trusted data, easy to understand and use tools and limited analytics expertise often prevent manufacturers from realizing the value of analytics-based insight.
QAD Adaptive ERP includes a comprehensive set of self-service analytics and reporting capabilities that are easy to learn, use, modify and share. The analytics and reporting solution makes use of core, trusted ERP data to ensure data validity. Some of the benefits of this approach include:
Lower costs of analytics and reporting – all the technology, tools and pre-built analytics models come with QAD Adaptive ERP, eliminating the need for a separate system, skills and investment
All decision-making users can become more data driven because the analytics and reporting capabilities use the same user experience as the rest of QAD Adaptive ERP
By using a data lake as a source of real-time and near real-time data, based on transformations from ERP data, the embedded analytics reflects the actual state of the business and ensures excellent performance for analytics without impacting the performance of the rest of QAD Adaptive ERP
Every business area includes a set of pre-defined analytics, meaning that analytics are an inherent part of the onboarding and daily use
QAD Adaptive ERP includes built-in analytics and reporting capabilities. This means that users obtain and use their insight in the context of applicable business and decision-making processes. It also means that the underlying ERP data is true source-of-truth, resulting in trustworthy analytics outcomes. Some of the key capabilities include:
Self-service embedded analytics which use the same user experience as the rest of QAD Adaptive ERP, making the analytics easy to learn and use. By being embedded, users do not need to leave their business process or activity context to access and make use of analytic insights. Everyday users find it simple to modify charts and graphs, add or hide particular data categories, filter data, and save and share the models that work best.
With a simple click on an embedded analytic model, users can drill down into underlying data to perform discovery analyses and can save and reuse the queries for future use
The embedded analytics make use of a data lake to segregate analytic queries from transactional processing. The data lake supports large queries, enhancing the data discovery experience, and the data lake can be configured to support third-party data to address “big data” style analytics needs.
Action Centers offer analytics, process and business activity dashboards that include a choice of KPIs for each business area. Users and administrators can thereafter tailor the default KPIs for the currently offered 60 business areas, and users and administrators can easily add and modify KPIs to personalize dashboards and for various roles.
Not all analytic models apply to specific roles. In many cases a decision maker wants to see analytics from the context of a particular process or data. When a QAD Adaptive ERP user clicks the “Insights” button, the analytics engine dynamically generates a set of metrics based on where the user is in their process or the data being viewed. The user can then choose to save, share, delete or modify the suggested analytics, and attach them to forms and dashboards. Insights also supports full data drill down.
Not every data point becomes clearer in a bar chart. With various chart types, your information can be displayed in the best way possible. For example, your VP of Procurement will love having a geographic heat map based on suppliers’ geographic location next to a pie chart representing spend percentages by department, and a column chart of actual expenses by month (and any bucket they need)
QAD’s Reporting Framework offers an extensive list of built-in reports for specific business areas, like accounting, supply chain and shop floor, but also supports the development of reports from scratch and the ability to quickly modify packaged reports. New or modified reports can be shared. Reports can be downloaded to various formats like Excel and XML as well as printed.
