ERP Module

What is a Business Intelligence ERP Module?

The Business Intelligence (BI) Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP module provides organizations with greater insight to make organizational planning and decision making easier.  BI ERP modules enable organizations to perform ad-hoc reporting and querying.  Business Intelligence ERP modules usually come with a set of definable KPIs or Key Performance Indicators.  KPIs provide organizations with a way to measure performance and goal achievement.  Organizations may opt to define one KPI or several KPIs based on goals the organization wants to achieve.  For example, if an organization’s goal was to attend to all customer needs within one week, the organization could establish a KPI to measure how many customers needs where attended to within a one week timeframe.  KPIs must be defined so that there is something to measure.  Timeframes and quotas are typically used when defining a KPI.  As organizations change their goals, their KPIs will change too.

All Business Intelligence ERP modules differ in terms of functionality and user-interface from vendor to vendor.  Some vendors offer a BI module that is part of their Enterprise Resource Planning solution.  Other vendors only offer a Business Intelligence solution.  If you select a BI module that is part of an Enterprise Resource Planning solution, the module is already integrated and all of the other ERP modules and will run off one database.  This setup will enable information sharing across your organization.  If you select a standalone BI solution, you will need to integrate the solution with your other software solutions.

Business Intelligence ERP modules typically have user-friendly interfaces filled with easy to read charts and graphs that help organizations identify trends, future goals, and budgets.  Business Intelligence solutions may vary greatly in costs.  Enterprises that need robust solutions will most likely need to spend more on a BI solution.  However, there are some rather good open source BI software solutions on the market today.  Open source solutions are free and can be downloaded from the vendor’s website.  There are also several SaaS (Software as a Service) Business Intelligence solutions available.  SaaS solutions are hassle free because the vendor hosts the solution.  Small and medium sized businesses often opt for SaaS BI solutions.  There are pros and cons to each type of Business Intelligence solution.  You must select the solution that best suits your business needs.

Written by :

kristine H