The sheer volume of transactional data captured by comprehensive ERP systems often makes business information difficult to analyze as presented in static reports and inquiries. Pro Decisions addresses this challenge by extracting the data locked in your ERP system and making it come to life in a series of graphical dashboards and pivot tables for much more effective data analysis. The information is stored in a SQL data warehouse and presented in Excel, making it both affordable and familiar to a large number of people in your organization.

How it Works

Pro Decisions works by extracting data from a variety of areas in the host ERP system and then transforms and stores it in a SQL database. A series of Excel spreadsheets accesses the data directly from the SQL tables. End users are presented with easy-to-read graphs, charts and pivot tables to facilitate better decision making.  

Features

• Available for Infor Distribution Business (FACTS), Infor Distribution Enterprise (SX.e) and Infor ERP TakeStock
• Data is stored in a SQL database and presented in Excel spreadsheets
• Automatic/Scheduled data extraction from the host ERP system and transformation into the SQL database. The complete set of data extraction programs are included as well as the scripts to schedule and automate the process.
• Dozens of standard charts, graphs and pivot tables are pre-defined and included for many functional areas including past sales, past purchases, inventory, accounts payable, accounts receivable, open sales orders, open purchase orders, quotes, and general ledger
• Custom charts, graphs and pivot tables are easily added

Benefits

• Benefits of Graphical analysis
  • Saves time versus trying to analyze large data samples
  • Much more intuitive and exciting compared with b&w reports
  • Ideal for sharing information and group presentation
  • Easier to spot trends
  • Allows for exception highlighting
• Benefits of Pivot tables
  • Interactive data analysis versus a static presentation of predefined numerical data in reports
  • Quick summarization of data with expansion into detail in selected areas, as desired
  • Quick and easy addition of slicers (point and click filters)
  • Quick calculation of totals, averages, counts and percentages
  • Quickly sort data based on any column desired
  • Generate custom charts from pivot tables to view graphically on the fly
  • Add custom spreadsheet calculations based on the pivot table data
• Benefits of storing the data in SQL
  • Allows analysis outside of the host ERP database without impacting daily ERP processing
  • Easily accessible to Excel and a wide range of SQL reporting tools including the built in SQL Server Reporting Services
  • Comparatively low cost solution for data warehousing
  • Widely understood and supported
• Benefits of using Excel as graphing and pivot table tool
  • Lower cost by leveraging your existing Excel user licenses
  • Lower training curve by utilizing a widely-known Microsoft Office solution
  • Built-in capabilities, ease of use and presentation are very good
  • Ability to access multiple data sources. This makes it possible to display and use data from the Pro Decisions SQL data warehouse, any other SQL database, and directly from the ERP data real time using an ODBC connection.

Company Sales Analysis

Pivot Table showing ease of expanding to detailed invoice level