With more companies facing overwhelming amounts of enterprise data, it’s critical they chart a course for building a sustainable ERP reporting strategy. Learn how a successful reporting strategy—one focused on clean, consistent, and well-defined data—can position companies to drive growth, profitability, and overall competitiveness.
Today, companies are inundated with data and are looking for better ways to get to near-real-time reporting, data visualization, and valuable insights. This information can help facilitate decisions that will drive competitive advantage, growth, and profitability. Leading companies are taking the next step and using analytics to identify issues and trigger automated responses to improve their processes. There are numerous digital technologies available today that are being leveraged to achieve that objective. Many of these are listed here and were previously outlined in Deloitte’s Reporting in a digital world report.
Robotic process automation (RPA) software shortens the time company spend on data manipulation by automating routine tasks.
These dedicated virtual assistants enable users to interact directly with data using voice or text queries.
These now familiar tools allow people to display and play with data dynamically, so it's easier to understand and interact with.
This collection of technologies includes natural language tools that can read and write, as well as machine learning.
This statistical technique uses algorithms to execute forward-looking analysis—especially routine financial forecasts.
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Technologies are often implemented without yielding the results envisioned and become overly complex to maintain as new needs are built into an inflexible architecture. Why? Simply put, it’s the lack of an overall ERP reporting strategy to integrate, synchronize, govern, and flexibly match structure to objectives. What’s more, while companies are inundated with data, much of that data is in disparate, nonintegrated systems. The data in existing ERPs is not captured or attributed in a common, standardized model, which then requires data mapping, reconciliation, and harmonization. In many cases, some data simply isn’t captured at all.
Let’s explore some of the common challenges and how a reporting strategy can help. Experience shows many reporting issues are driven by:
Companies that don’t address the issues above may not have the information needed to run the business. Worse yet, information may be interpreted differently across the organization, resulting in confusion, mistrust, and missed opportunities.
Let’s start by defining what it means to have a successful enterprise reporting strategy, one that:
To build a successful ERP reporting strategy, companies must start by accounting for different stakeholders across the organization. Each has unique information needs.
Once you understand the needs of your stakeholders, you need to account for the four key elements of a successful ERP reporting strategy:
As companies define their reporting strategy, there are a few guiding principles to consider:
As mentioned, thinking through chart of accounts (CoA) design is a key part of reporting and ERP strategy. Read more about the guiding principles for building a comprehensive CoA in our report on optimizing ERP through your chart of accounts design.
Learn more about ERP strategy for finance transformation.