Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and data analytics go hand-in-hand, helping to solve many age-old challenges in manufacturing environments, including:
- How manufacturers can deliver goods on time and accurately
- How manufacturers can operate efficiently
- How to improve staff productivity and performance
- How to get 360-degree insights on every customer
- How to unify sales, projects, suppliers, and operational data
A massive amount of data is being generated every day from the top sources such as web channels, IoT, company servers, media, etc. Your ERP system is gathering a lot of enterprise data comprising HR, finance, CRM, projects, sales, suppliers, marketing, and other essential business functions. What if, you can leverage this data and make your ERP functionality better?
Zoho Analytics for ERP systems gives manufacturers the insights to solve these problems based on real-time business intelligence and powerful data.
How Zoho Analytics Works
Connect to Any Data Source
Wherever your data is, you can now use this application for in-depth reporting and analysis. Data sync is automatic and can be scheduled periodically. Zoho Analytics offers 250+ native and live data connectors with a plethora of data sources:
- Files such as CSV, XLS, XLSX, JSON, TSV, HTML, XML, etc.
- Cloud Storage such as Zoho Docs, Box, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, etc.
- Cloud and Local Databases such as Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS Access, Teradata, MongoDB, etc.
- Popular business applications such as Salesforce CRM, QuickBooks, Google Analytics, Microsoft Dynamics 365, HubSpot CRM, Facebook Ads, etc.
By blending data from all different sources, Zoho Analytics provides a unified business analytics platform across the strategic, tactical, and operational levels of your organization.
Visually analyze your data
Create reports and dashboards with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop designer. Use different visualization tools to drill down to specifics.
Why Your ERP System Needs Advanced Data Analytics and Business Intelligence?
By giving manufacturers real-time data analytics and forecasting capabilities, Zoho Analytics can increase your sales, save 1000s of hours, reduce data gathering and analysis time, and increase productivity.
Let’s take a closer look at each aspect.
1. Helps you save 1000s of hours
Zoho Analytics’ three important functionalities – self-service data preparation, computer-augmented analysis, and in-context storytelling via Zia (Zoho’s AI-powered assistant) – help you save time spent on report generation and sharing from days to minutes.
Example: Premo Group, a Spanish company that manufactures electronic components using IoT, M2M, VR, and connected and electric vehicles, had multiple systems with copious data.
PREMO Group wanted to analyze a large number of sales, operational, logistics, project-based, and client data coming in from multiple systems including Salesforce, SAP, Zoho Projects, Zoho Creator, and other databases.
PREMO Group was already a customer of Zoho Projects and Zoho Creator. When they started using Zoho Analytics, they were able to save thousands of hours.
How? Nearly 40 managers from different departments within PREMO perform have now become smart managers. They perform analysis with Zoho within minutes. Earlier, they used to spend nearly 1,000 hours compiling, blending, and analyzing data manually before getting meaningful insights. Now, these 1,000 hours had been saved using Zoho Analytics and they have actionable insights within minutes.
2. Helps you increase sales
With Zoho Analytics, you can analyze your sales data in-depth, identify win-loss rates, and measure sales rep performance. Zoho Analytics helps you make informed decisions from your sales data and in turn manage your cash flow, workforce, and resources. You can predict sales revenue and plan for future growth.
Example: Springfield Mechanical Services, a commercial and industrial mechanical contractor in southwest Missouri, was in need of a business intelligence solution that could not only integrate data from all systems into one analytics platform to generate deep decisive observations and forecast realistic sales targets for his sales team.
With Zoho Analytics’ built-in connector and data connectivity options, data from Zoho CRM and Zoho Creator was seamlessly integrated into Zoho Analytics.
Springfield now tracks individual sales performance, quantity, and quality of proposals, quotes and order analysis, the productivity of employees, and even set realistic sales goals.
The result? Springfield saw a 20% increase in sales year-over-year and reduced time taken for analysis and insights generation from 4-5 hours to 15 minutes.
3. Saves 90% of the time in data gathering and analysis
When Zoho Analytics is integrated with your ERP software and other systems, it manages all the business data and gives you useful insights into the demand and supply equation. With Zoho’s cognitive and advanced analytics, you can go beyond. You can capture actionable data insights to boost operational efficiency and productivity and make better forecasts about the demands and future needs.
Example: Flexxaire, a company that designs and manufactures reversible fans for diesel engines used in forestry, agriculture, mining, and others, reduced the time it takes to do analysis by 90% by using Zoho Analytics.
The company downloads its sales data from MRP systems as Excel files and quality reports from Zoho CRM and uploads them into Zoho Analytics using automatic scripts for analysis.
Since most of the analysis work is done through Zoho Analytics, the time taken for performing data analytics dropped by 90%. Now it just takes 10% of the time to perform analysis and get insights.
4. Increases staff productivity
Zoho Analytics is a Big data Analytics solution that enhances the functionality of an organization. Big Data in simpler terms is a field that collects, organizes, and analyzes huge sets of data. It is impossible to do so by traditional analytic tools.
Zoho Analytics enhances the working efficiency of employees and increases a company’s performance capacity without any added cost.
Example: FANDELI, the only producer of coated abrasives in Mexico, wanted to track the performance of the business. They were looking for a single BI solution that can analyze data from multiple pieces of software, such as Oracle JD Edwards as ERP, Salesforce, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, and SuccessFactors, for ad-hoc departmental analysis.
With Zoho Analytics, FANDELI finally got an insight into their operational team’s performance. Anyone across HR, support, and inventory teams were able to do a quick analysis to identify gaps and compare efficiencies with set targets.
The result? FANDELI increased overall productivity with end-to-end departmental analytics using Zoho Analytics.
Conclusion
Manufacturing companies are looking to utilize their valuable ERP data to enable agile and modern analytics and to address internal complexities. First Direct Corporation has partnered with Zoho to offer this powerful BI and data analytics solution designed to automate data pipelines that deliver ERP data in real-time and enable enterprises to drive smarter decisions. Contact us at (845) 221-3800 or fill out our online form here to send your queries to us.
Check Zoho Analytics Pricing here and sign up now for your FREE Zoho Analytics Trial.
