Why did organisations only purchase and use SAP Business Intelligence (BI) for Sales and Financial reporting?

The answer is simple; because they were the two areas perceived by management at that time, which required better and sexy, granular reporting and they’d also be able to demonstrate and justify a better ROI to their Company. That was then, this is now.

Increased focus on Supply Chain activities
Today’s business environment demands instant and actionable reporting straight onto your mobile device or the Web. Your organisation and customers expect so much more from other Business functions and especially your Supply Chain or Logistics teams.

Whether they are Internet or traditional B2B, your customers demand fast, seamless and trouble-free Supply Chain activities as a given; from order-to-billing, and can and will penalise organisations who don’t meet their Industry benchmarks. BI enables you to be proactive in knowing your own internal Key performance indicators (KPIs) and addressing areas for improvement before your customer does.

Order to Cash – it’s all measurable
If you’ve implemented SAP ERP Order-to-Cash then BI can measure and report every detailed step you require.

How many organisations know the following metrics in Order fulfilment by customer, sales region, sales region or plant and shipping point?

• Order receipt to delivery creation
• Delivery creation to goods issue
• Goods issue to physical delivery and the proof of delivery confirmation
• Customer’s required delivery and time versus actual date and time
• Proof of delivery to invoice creation

Collaborate or die
Using SAP’s BI solution to deliver your Supply Chain KPIs as well as your Sales and Finance reporting has become a necessity for customer collaboration.

With SAP BI you can measure out-of-stocks, late deliveries versus required delivery date, cuts and damages, credit notes, payment timing and Days-Sales-Outstanding. BI’s actionable and graphical reporting helps you to spot trends and areas for improvement which can lead to real business benefits.

BI reporting can be used or merged with your customer’s own reporting on their key business drivers such as Sales Forecasting, On-shelf-availability (OSA) and Promotional shapes and uplifts and performance and this approach delivers real collaborative tools to use together and build better plans for the future together.

The future is now
Too many organisations have focussed on the initial BI wave in Sales and Finance and not thought about where they could utilise the reporting tool elsewhere to gain competitive advantage and internal value. The next wave is within the Supply Chain.

Richard Dayman, Supply Chain Consultant, Bluefin Solutions