Import data from an ERP that goes beyond the general ledger, such as Products, Units, or SKUs

Description

The integration of Corporate Performance Management (CPM) software with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems enables the transfer of operational data that is used in forecasting. Most ERP products include a general ledger, which is table stakes for a CPM to function. This requirement specifies that the integration must be much more comprehensive.

Example Use Case

Scenario: A mid-market manufacturing company uses an ERP system to manage operations including product ordering, distribution, and financial reporting. The company currently uses CPM software for performance management but struggles to analyze performance at the product or SKU level as the data imported from their accounting system only includes summarized account values from the CoA. This leaves them to extract and manually upload performance data such as units sold from the ERP.

Solution: The company enhances its CPM software to import detailed data from the ERP such as product categories, units produced, and SKU data. This integration enables the company to perform a granular analysis of performance and improve its decision-making capabilities.

Considerations

ERP systems include a broad set of data, from basic ledger information to projects, unit sales, vendors, payroll, and so on. This requires an integration that is very robust and uses all aspects of the ERP's API. Many CPM systems have single threaded themselves into just the ledger information, which is incredibly short sighted as an ERP is a treasure trove of drivers that are needed for an effective forecast.

What matters here is the ERP you are using. Some vendors will work well with one ERP, and poorly or not at all with another. It all depends on their customer base. You can tell a lot about a CPM vendor based on their preferred integrations. Are they working mostly with project-focused ERPs? Or ERPs that sell to tech companies? Or manufacturing ERPs?

Questions to Ask a Vendor

• Integration Capability: Is your product able to automatically import detailed ERP data such as products, units, SKUs, projects, vendors and so on?
• Metadata Integration: Can your solution import metadata along with actual data from ERP? In other words, can it import dimensions and attributes we need for forecasting?
• ERP Compatibility: How compatible is your software with our ERP? What data interchange limitations should we expect?