Improving Business Processes with Data Solutions

Continuous Improvement

Business process improvement is a continuous goal throughout an organizations life cycle. Some of the most common areas of business process improvement are:

• Operations
• Inventory Management
• Accounting (i.e. month-end closing)
• Purchasing/Sales

A lot of what drives continuous improvement is the implementation of better controls and reports that reduce time and effort in finding discrepancies and increase efficiency in making effective business decisions. Since the world is ever changing and with ephemeral conditions, an organization has to continue to improve business processes to keep up with the dynamics of a transient ecosystem.

Controls and Reconciliation Reports

Enterprise companies that have multiple points-of-entry into their ERP due to many operating legal entities face an overwhelming amount of challenges dealing with data consolidation. During month-end operations, their accountants will spend most of their time reconciling data between point-of-entry applications and the master ERP system holding the chart of accounts. Often times these issues arise from lack of controls and reconciliation reports.

Controls and reconciliation reports can help an enterprise organization manage its consolidation strategy effectively by running transactional comparisons daily and distributing variance reports to all constituents impacted as a result. These variance reports provide actionable data that facilitates an organizations ability to address issues proactively and quickly. In addition, long term solutions can be further implemented to prevent system errors and discrepancies that may compromise data integrity in the future. When data is trustworthy, business professionals can spend most of their time analyzing trends and coming up with strategic and creative ways to improve business.

Upgrading the ERP System

To implement better controls and reconciliation reports that would ultimately speed up business processes, the master ERP system may need to undergo an upgrade. Because the ERP system communicates with so many other applications, often times the unification of data requires a significant amount of development. ERP upgrades often provide better integration with the following:

• Data Integration with Database Servers
• Cloud Application Foundation and Services
• Web Services
• Application Development Frameworks and Tools
• Service Integration (SOA)
• Enterprise Performance Management
• Business Intelligence
• Enterprise Performance Management
• Business Collaboration (CRM)
• Identity Management

Upgrading the ERP system will allow for tightly coupled integration with various technologies and advance user experience and collaboration tremendously. Controls can be implemented on the database server that run as jobs (nightly, weekly, monthly, etc.) to check balances between financial applications within the enterprise. This also facilitates unified reporting in one system due to increased data integrity. A reporting portal can then be setup to provide dashboards, along with branch, area, and regional reporting throughout the company.

An upgrade will also refine the level of skill for existing developers and support teams that maintain the ERP. Not only will an upgrade advance the internal team skillsets, but it will facilitate on-boarding additional IT professionals that specialize in technologies relating to the integrated applications. This is an effective benefit because too often organizations find themselves with one or two team members that can actually support the legacy system managing their financial assets. With an upgrade, the risk of silo-dependability is mitigated substantially.

Moving beyond the limitations on what can be implemented is the primary goal of upgrading as it distinctly points to a necessity for continuous improvement. With legacy systems, limitations on scalability is one of the most common factors as to why companies are stifled in growth and adaptation.

As a final note, before any technological implementations are introduced, it is very important to establish manual processes and best practices. This will help identify what areas can be improved with technology and shed light on an organization's overall return on investment.