The document contrasts reporting and business intelligence (BI), illustrating how traditional reporting offers static, historical information from ERP systems, whereas BI provides dynamic, aggregated views allowing for proactive decision-making. BI utilizes advanced technologies to deliver interactive dashboards and predictive analytics, enhancing data analysis and performance without impacting ERP systems. It emphasizes the need for businesses to transition from static reporting to a BI framework to gain comprehensive insights and maintain strategic oversight.

1. Connecting >
Business with Analytics
BI & Reporting are
not the Same >

2. 📊 Reporting & 📈 Business Intelligence are
Not the Same…
“Many customer I have come across,
immediately get the concept of
Business Intelligence (BI). They
understand that if they keep on
reporting the way they have, i.e.
straight from their ERP system that
they are just like this cartoon.
Struggling to see the bigger picture
and battling with the day to day
delivery of information, they are
dragging a wheelbarrow with a square
wheel. “
Izak Bester, Product Manager, Karabina Software

3. 📊 Reporting
Reporting is seen as static information being retrieved from a source
system like an ERP. Most ERP systems have these static reports as part
of the package as an out-of-the-box (OOTB) offering. Most of these
reports cover areas like purchase orders, invoices, goods received,
debtors balances, inventory on hand, financial statements, vendor
and customer lists, resourcing, planning, etc.

4. 📊 These Reports are mainly in List Format…
These reports are mainly in a list format with multiple lines containing
additional details. Each of these reports is run by supplying additional
parameters to limit the reports in terms of number of rows being
returned from the ERP system.
The main reason for limiting the number of rows is that any ERP has
been architected to get data in very quickly. An ERP’s sole purpose is
to capture information into a database by providing the end-user
with predefined fields to control the input.

5. 📊 Reports are Executed Against the ERP
System Affecting Performance….
The execution of these reports is also directly against the ERP’s
database, impacting the performance of the system when large
reports are run.
You will also find that any ERP system consists of hundreds, some
thousands, of tables within the database to store the data. The data
model is usually referred to as a relational model seeing the way the
tables are related to one-another.

6. 📊 Static Reports are Sufficient if you run your
Business Day-to-Day….
Now these reports are sufficient if you run your business on a day to
day principle, as they are very much historical and transactional in
nature
“Frankly, none of the customers I have met run their business in this
manner.”

7. 📈 Business Intelligence
What is business intelligence (BI)? Business Intelligence allows the
end-user to have an aggregated view of the data by different
dimensions. Each subject area within the business, like sales, debtors,
creditors, finance, inventory, hr, payroll, procurement and marketing
have their measures and dimensions. Allowing these units to have a
360-degree view of the business.

8. 📈 Business Intelligence is a Combination of
Software and Technologies…
BI is a combination of software and technologies that helps you
understand your business from all of these different dimensions. BI
gives you that single version of the truth, by consolidating data
across multiple systems within your business. A BI system is
architected to get information out very quickly. This architecture has
proven to deliver high performance across large data volumes as well
as high number of users.

9. 📈 Business Intelligence uses Technologies to
deliver Reports, Dashboards & Scorecards
BI also uses some technologies like in-memory and On-line Analytical
Processing (OLAP), to deliver reports, dashboards and scorecards to
end users much quicker. Allowing for ad-hoc analysis, for end users
that understands the business as well as the data and would like to
drill, slice and dice and pivot their data, referred to as self-service BI.

10. Some differentiators between
Reporting & Business Intelligence

11. 📊 Reporting VS 📈 BI
Delivery
• Reporting gives static reports, parameterised and in a list format.
• BI allows for dynamic dashboards and scorecards across multiple areas
within the business, providing a consolidated view to drill, pivot and slice-
and-dice your data.
• BI also goes a step further and allows for predictive analytics like
forecasting based on historical data, patterns and trend.
• Allowing you to be pro-active, compared to a reporting environment that
only allows for reactive management.

12. 📊 Reporting VS 📈 BI
Performance
• BI can deliver high volumes of data to a large number of users, because
of the combination of architecture, software and technologies.
• It is important to understand that BI does not sit within the ERP like
reporting as much as it sits on top of the ERP. Thus, the BI environment is
not impacting the ERP environment and vice versa.

13. 📊 Reporting VS 📈 BI
Analytics
• As mentioned before, reporting provides a static list format of data
based on certain parameters, where BI provides dynamic visualisations
to better understand your data.
• End users can easily interact with data like, slicing and dicing the data, to
spot outliers, patterns and trends. Giving business users the capabilities
to analyse their data across time, customers, vendors, products etc.

14. 📊 Reporting VS 📈 BI
Decision Making
• Reporting allows for short term and reactive decision making as the
reports are very static and a lot of manual work needs to be done to
consolidate data from multiple dimensions.
• BI allows decision-making that directly affects your strategy. Key
performance indicators (KPI) are set within a BI environment and can be
closely tracked, to monitor business performance.

15. How do you move from Reporting
to Business Intelligence?
There are many vendors out there that provide BI solutions, some
being more advanced and integrated than others.
“A complete BI solution that provides a data warehouse, business
specific subject area cubes and a visual presentation layer that comes
at an affordable cost is very hard to find.”

16. Use Business Analytics to move
from Reporting to Business
Intelligence?
Business Analytics provides data warehouse automation that allows
for rapid warehouse deployment for that single version of the truth,
cubes that provide business specific subject areas exposed and
visualised through a familiar Excel interface to provide self-service BI
within in the Microsoft framework.

17. Chat to us About Leveraging your
Business Data… Our Customers Did!

18. Business Analytics
Contact Karabina Software
Tel: 011 463 8155
Email: info@karabinasoftware.com
Web: www.karabinasoftware.com