You would have expected more... Share

You recognize this?

Since some time, ERP has been installed at your company. Logistics seems to be running rather well, but you lack the relevant information for checking any further. Your controllers cannot readily answer your questions regarding profitability of specific customers, subactivities or departments. Each month, they go through a long closing process in order to finally deliver a P&L, but there is no real basis for further analysis. And when subresults appear to be available, they do not seem to add up with the overall result.

The impact is underestimated

The impact is often underestimated: product costs may be incorrect and there is an incomplete or incorrect view on profitability. This may lead to incorrect price setting, and wrong decisions for investment or dis-investment in customers, products, market segments or even factories.

Department managers may loose their confidence in figures, and may start to develop own reports, which obviously does not reconcile anymore with the overall 'P&L'.

There is an overall loss of confidence in figures, and much time and energy gets lost in getting those figures reconciled, if at all possible. 

What can you do about it?

Obviously, you are disappointed in that part of the ERP solution. You expected more of the package in the area of reporting.

You expected to get KPI's and P&L's by subarea with dashboards to indicate where things possibly could go wrong.

You also thought such information would be generated automatically, and not days or weeks after processing and interpretation of information.

What can you do about this?