Burghclere: The NAV People looks to revolutionise reporting

Ian Humphries, managing and product director at The NAV People, sees a fundamental change in the approach to business intelligence, reporting and data, with the reporting debate moving away from “How do I get this information?” to “Which of the many ways should I use to get this information?”

Most firms, of every size, need to know the same things about their business: “How much am I selling, what is the margin, who owes me too much money or has owed me money for too long, what is my inventory, what are my best sellers, which lines are not worth selling?

"Often 'reports' are the only way to get to the figures being sought, and in written reports the key information tends to be found on the last page, in the totals. Spreadsheets, however, help one to filter, and dig a bit deeper into the detail of the data.

"Then there is Business Intelligence (BI), but it is very often a high-cost IT project which never quite gets finished because the project sponsor moves on to the next big thing before the BI solution can be properly embedded within the business culture.

"With a modern ERP system, however, users can interrogate the live system. The total inventory value, for example, can be viewed in real time. By clicking on a button only high value items will be shown, another click and the items will be listed in value order. No paper in sight, and often one has exactly what one is looking for.

"But for this panacea to be attained, the ERP system in question needs a range of tools which are easy to use, and where each one is good at a particular job. On our smartphones we have a range of apps – a calendar, maps, something for booking train tickets, and another for identifying stars in the night sky. We don’t expect one large app to do everything. It is the same for answering those key business questions.

"Instead of trying to achieve an all-singing, all-dancing BI solution and suffering from 'analysis paralysis', SMEs should aim to implement something that provides the information needed. And if that comes in the form of several tools then so be it.

"In five years’ time the reporting discussion will no longer be in an ERP context. User interfaces and the range of integration/data mining tools will be such that everyone will be able to find exactly the information required with no special training or additional tools. Thank goodness for that.