Globalization, supply chain complexity and commodity and currency volatility combine to produce mountains of business data. In the past, just being able to collect and manage the data was task enough, but now companies are looking to mine the data mountain to drive actionable value.
Enterprise resource planning systems provide much-needed capabilities, such as management of financial, product/inventory, human capital, purchasing, and other transactional data within one environment. The value proposition for investing in ERP has traditionally been tied to the standardization of business processes and centralization of information that makes it easier and faster to collect and manage data across many areas of the business. Increasingly, ERP customers have come to realize that the value from ERP investments can be increased dramatically through analysis of the consolidated data captured within and around the ERP system.
