Business intelligence can automate stodgy manual dashboards; but there’s a ways to go.
Scorecards and dashboards are two important reporting tools necessary to provide relevant, concise, financial snapshots to senior management. This most treasurers can agree on.
The problem is this type of automated reporting does not exist within the current database environment. According to pre-meeting survey results of a recent Global Cash and Banking Group (GCBG) meeting, nearly 65 percent of members create these reports manually by pulling information from existing databases like an ERP or treasury workstation. Information is then most often formatted using an excel-based template, with reports generated on a weekly or monthly basis. It goes without saying that the manual effort involved in preparing and publishing these reports can be significant.
As treasurers continue to pursue ways to improve operational efficiency and reallocate resources to more value-added tasks, implementing a Business Intelligence solution can give reporting that much needed efficiency.
A win-win.Historically, to automate a unique report request, treasury had to work with IT to create a work-order request, wait for them to prioritize the request, and ultimately receive the report. This timeline can range from several weeks to several months depending upon the workload and prioritization of IT.
Business Intelligence software is seen as a win-win for both IT and the business users. Treasurers may see it as a way to increase automation without the hassle of internal IT resource allocation debates, while IT may see it as a way to accommodate corporate-wide reporting requests following a ‘self-service’ business model.
Business Intelligence software can access virtually any corporate data source, regardless of the platform. The software provides detailed, understandable views of the data and allows for further slicing and dicing of information depending on the individual business needs. Once implemented, the user follows a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) report writer to build templates tailored to their organization’s needs.
Promises promises.Software providers promise a new business environment whereby IT collects and distributes the data (via the ERP, TWS, CRM, or other system), which then empowers business users to create meaningful reports in a timely manner with accurate information to make better business decisions. But when that will happen is anyone’s guess and further to this, companies might have other things higher up on the To-do list.
But if management is game there are plenty of companies to choose from, ranging from the very large to the very small. Big names like Microsoft, Oracle and IBM offer BI tools as part of their enterprise software solutions. Several ‘pure play’ BI software vendors, like MicroStrategy and Tableau provide these tools as a standalone solution.
Some of the top providers of Business Intelligence software include:
- SAP – Crystal Reports
- SAS – Enterprise BI Server
- Oracle – Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus
- IBM – Cognos 8 BI
- Microsoft – PowerPivot
- MicroStrategy – Reporting Suite
- Salesforce – CRM
- TIBCO – Spotfire Analytics
- Information Builders – WebFOCUS
- Tableau – Business Intelligence Software
Soon, Business Intelligence software may be yet another tool in the treasurers’ tool kit.