Software to find pins in data mountain

Even if you are not making any adjustments to your production processes, you are still sitting on a mountain of data. Data that can help you adjust your organization and make the right choices. However, collecting, analyzing and reporting data manually is too time-consuming. There is a lot of business intelligence software that can work with this for you to come up with value-added insights. But how do you get started?

Most metal processing companies possess much more interesting data about their business processes than they themselves suspect. In the control of machinery, but equally in administrative processes. A potential that now often remains untapped. Most business managers use their, admittedly well-tuned, gut feeling and business sense to make decisions. A process that will become increasingly difficult as a company grows. The facts, which can point them in the right direction in black and white, remain snowed under in numerous processes. Data that, by the way, continues to grow every day. Business intelligence software is needed to make the best possible use of these immense amounts of information. That can continuously and specifically collect and analyze data within and outside the company.

Where does it go wrong now?

Anyone who takes a moment to browse the pages of the VDAB will see that there is no shortage of vacancies. The greatest brake on growth in manufacturing companies is currently finding suitable personnel. The job package of most employees in manufacturing companies is therefore well filled. If a report is needed, you will most likely have to wait a while for the production manager to compile the figures. After all, data collection is now done on the basis of KPIs and weekly reports. Data that then disappear into Excel lists to gain insight into operations. But those tools have little flexibility to distill customized information from the data. In addition, the unwieldiness hinders the user who wants to be informed - in real time, of course - of what is going on. That much of this reporting is also human work means the error rate is higher. In a world where the amount of data is increasing every day, this way of working is not future-proof.

What is needed?

So how do you steamroll your business for the future? Technological developments have followed each other in rapid succession in recent years. For example, there are now many more devices and computers that generate data. In order to extract information from this, the data must first be stored. An ERP system is a good start for streamlining business processes and making data available within the organization. After all, data is carefully and structurally stored in it. But that's pretty much where it ends. To get started with all that data, more is needed: business intelligence software. Using various tools, this valuable data is analyzed and reported in no time. This gives you real-time and proactive new insights that can be used to optimize business processes.

What does it all add up to?

As mentioned, an ERP system provides the overview. What business intelligence software adds to that is control of business processes. You always know perfectly how your business is doing. This obviously saves a lot of time. After all, manual tracking and data entry is a thing of the past. A business intelligence software package is able to consult and process data from various sources and provide an overview of what is going on in your company. Data only needs to be entered once, reducing the risk of error. It also benefits the quality and speed of processing. Not to mention, the response time for new insights is also much faster.