Description
Making Sense Of Business Intelligence In The Mid-market
Making Sense of Business Intelligence in
the Mid-Market: Why Sage Intelligence Is
the Right Fit for You
2
Making Sense of Business Intelligence in the Mid-Market: Why Sage Intelligence Is the Right Fit for You
Table of Contents
Introduction ......................................................................................................... 3
Why Your Organization Needs Business Intelligence ............................................ 4
What Solution Is Best for Your Company? ........................................................... 5
What Is Sage Intelligence? ................................................................................... 6
How Sage Intelligence Can Meet Your Needs ...................................................... 7
Sage Intelligence Delivers Bottom-Line Savings .................................................. 8
Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 9
3
Introduction
As the amount of social and organizational data continues to grow, businesses of all sizes are
trying to figure out how to manage it all. For years, business applications have captured data
to help give executives insight into business performance. However, these solutions have been
largely disjointed and provided static views of performance.
Business intelligence (BI) solutions are becoming increasingly popular as they promise real-time
views of data from across the business to enable better-informed decision making in less time. As
described by one consulting group, “In its simplest form, BI is the ability to accumulate, organize,
and analyze data from multiple sources.”
1
As data discovery needs intensify, BI is becoming more
visual in order to provide executives and managers with faster access to information and a real-time
overview of the company’s top Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Traditionally, BI solutions have catered to larger, more complex organizations with sophisticated
cube-based OLAP tools and expensive implementations. Small and midsized businesses (SMBs)
have relied on Excel
®
spreadsheets for data manipulation and analysis. However, a sea of change
is upon us as approachable BI tools are making their way to the middle market.
Though Excel is a powerful tool, SMBs have struggled with its limited ability to roll up data from
multiple sources and maintain control and accuracy of data. Spreadsheets can be time consuming
to maintain and input new data. They are also error prone, especially as they are shared throughout
the organization and multiple versions get created. As a result, Excel does not suffice as a BI solution
when used as a stand-alone application. However, it can be a powerful decision support tool when
integrated and utilized within a structured framework.
Analysts agree that the importance of BI and analytics is rising in corporations of all sizes. IDC
predicts the business analytics market will reach $50.7 billion by 2016, and some analysts believe
it will reach as high as $136 billion by 2020.
2
The Essential CIO, IBM’s study based on face-to-face
conversations with more than 3,000 CIOs, found that three key business issues that will be
top of mind for both the CEO and the CIO in the coming years:
• Data—business intelligence and analytics.
• People skills to manage growing organizational complexity.
• Client relationships.
This survey revealed that “92 percent [of CIOs] said they would lead or support efforts to drive
better real-time decisions and take advantage of analytics.”
3
Gartner’s 2012 CIO survey also
showed that analytics and BI is the number-one technology priority for CIOs.
4
1. “Business Intelligence: Turning Data into Wisdom,” Brown Smith Wallace Consulting Group, October 2010.
2. Chris Kanaracus, “IDC: Analytics software market will remain strong,” InfoWorld, July 11, 2012.
3. “The Essential CIO: Insights From the Global Chief Information Of?cer Study,” IBM, May 2011.
4. “ Gartner Says Worldwide Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management Software Market Surpassed
the $12 Billion Mark in 2011,” press release, Gartner, April 2, 2012.
4
Making Sense of Business Intelligence in the Mid-Market: Why Sage Intelligence Is the Right Fit for You
Why Your Organization Needs Business Intelligence
Companies of all sizes are turning to Business Intelligence (BI) tools to help make sense of the
information overload. Forrester Research analyst Boris Evelson reports, “Actually businesses
have no choice but to act and react quickly in the face of financial volatility and rapidly changing
business and regulatory conditions.”
5
Business Intelligence pulls company data into an easily digestible format and gets the right
information to the right people when they need it. BI paves the way for collaboration across
a business as more people have access to information they need to make better decisions,
faster. And as teams can collaborate more effectively, people will be more productive, and
decision makers more proactive, which gives a company a competitive edge.
BI can help you work smarter. With access to real-time accurate information from across
the business, CEOs can make better informed business decisions. Small and midsized
companies pride themselves on being more agile than large enterprises and much quicker
to make decisions. Not only the ability to make more effective decisions, but the time it takes
to arrive at decisions is important.
BI reports and dashboards provide information when needed, eliminating the costly wait times
for data pulls and number cruncher analysis. Instead, you have a customized management
dashboard that provides a real-time overview of your company’s top KPIs and the ability to
drill down to detailed transactions.
A 2011 study found that data mining (60%), collaboration (48%), and operationalizing business
intelligence (75%) are very important to organizations.
6
These businesses understand that
without insights into historical data and the ability to generate what-if scenarios, data is just
data. BI reports and dashboards can provide users with insight and perspective, making it
quicker and easier to focus on running the business.
Mobile BI is also proving to give companies an added competitive advantage. A recent
Aberdeen Group report shows that organizations using mobile BI can make decisions 2.5
times faster than those who do not.
7
5. Boris Evelson, “Top 10 Business Intelligence Predictions for 2012,” Forrester blog, November 15, 2011.
6. Howard Dresner, “Six Recommendations for Implementing Business Intelligence Solutions,” Sandhill.com, December 5, 2011.
7. “Mobile BI 2012: Accelerating Business on the Move,” The Aberdeen Group, March 2012
5
Making Sense of Business Intelligence in the Mid-Market: Why Sage Intelligence Is the Right Fit for You
What Solution Is Best for Your Company?
There are many business intelligence tools available for SMBs. When evaluating BI solutions
for your company, you should consider your needs and look for the following features:
1. Addresses your financial reporting needs. What are your business requirements?
Your BI solution should meet your organizational needs and goals. The right solution
will provide insights into historical data and help increase transparency of your company’s
financial events and overall health. And with better insight, you have the ability to make
better decisions.
2. Consolidates reporting from multiple sources. To stay competitive, you need more
than simple general ledger reporting. A good BI solution should go beyond financials and
allow you to combine information from multiple sources, including your ERP, CRM, and
payroll databases, to deliver a 360-degree view of your company. Your BI solution pulls
all of your existing information together from multiple companies, divisions, and data
sources and provides an easily digestible format for in-depth analysis.
3. Easy to use yet offers advanced tools. There is a reason why Excel is so dominant—
it is easy to use, global, and can handle data manipulation, analysis, as well as deliver
the graphical representations required for most reporting. It can be a powerful tool when
used within a structured BI solution, and your end users already know how to use it.
The ability to pull and manipulate data from multiple sources, obtain insight into trends,
and perform multidimensional analysis on demand is what SMBs need to improve
visibility and decision making.
4. Provides visual elements to support agility. Executives and managers want
information quickly. Graphical dashboards provide a time-sensitive, real-time overview
of the company’s top KPIs so they can track performance from anywhere and make
timely decisions when they’re needed most.
5. Includes additional tools to support business insight. Writing for ChannelPro SMB,
the Sage ERP senior director of product marketing, Jean Huy, lists some other
functionality your company should consider when selecting a BI solution:
8
• Alerts—With automated monitoring and notifications, your company will always know
when numbers fall outside of acceptable benchmarks.
• Drill-down or inquiry tools—Learn more about the numbers behind your data
points and drill down to detailed transactions.
• Remote access—Delivering immediate access to information accelerates the
decision-making process.
• Flexible reporting—Empowers you to quickly and easily obtain information from
multiple sources to improve operations and reporting across your entire business in
a user-friendly Excel format.
8. Jean Huy, “4 Myths About SMB Business Intelligence: Cutting Through the Hype,” ChannelPro SMB, July 26, 2012.
6
Making Sense of Business Intelligence in the Mid-Market: Why Sage Intelligence Is the Right Fit for You
What Is Sage Intelligence?
Sage Intelligence sets itself apart as a flexible, Excel-based reporting tool that is a module of your
Sage ERP solution. Sage Intelligence empowers you to quickly and easily obtain the information
required for improved operations and reporting across your entire business. Based on the familiar
Microsoft Excel application, Sage Intelligence lets you effortlessly create reports and analyze data,
improving visibility into your organization.
Sage Intelligence is a new-generation BI product, designed from the ground up with your needs
in mind:
• It specifically addresses serious challenges around financial reporting including departmental
reporting, GL segmentation, and project reporting.
• It offers consolidated reporting from multiple sources.
• The product components are structured to cater to both basic and advanced users.
• It includes access to numerous free resources on the BI Community, free webcasts, and
training on Sage University.
This powerful reporting tool is gaining traction in the mid-market, as it saves customers time and
money through the provision of reports in a user-friendly Excel format. Sage Intelligence addresses a
number of pain points endured by senior level executives in terms of business reporting capabilities,
including flexibility, accuracy, and timeliness. Sage Intelligence draws up-to-date, trusted data directly
from your Sage ERP database and other unrelated data sources and delivers a single version of the
truth that can be easily analyzed, customized, and distributed in the familiar environment of Excel.
“ We use Sage Intelligence
extensively in our business.
I believe that being able to
obtain a ´snapshot view´ of
your business is critical in
today´s business environment
when there is just too much
information floating about.
Managers need to dedicate
their skills to managing—
not sifting through endless
reports trying to make sense
of heaps of information. Sage
Intelligence does this neatly
and efficiently—with no fuss at
all and delivers this information
´on demand´ and through
Excel. What more could you
ask for?”
Steven Cohen
Managing Director
Softline (Pty) Ltd
7
Making Sense of Business Intelligence in the Mid-Market: Why Sage Intelligence Is the Right Fit for You
Sage Intelligence is the integrated business intelligence solution for the following Sage ERP
and accounting products:
Part of your Sage ERP package, Sage Intelligence can be rapidly deployed without new or extensive
IT investments. It automatically pulls data from your accounting system into Microsoft Excel—the
tool many end users are already using today for static reports. Sage Intelligence empowers users
to work within Excel to make and save changes to their reports so that they can be delivered in the
required format in the future.
How Sage Intelligence Can Meet Your Needs
1. Saves time and money. Sage Intelligence automates report preparation by pulling trusted
information from your ERP system and other sources into Excel report templates when you
need it, so you can spend your time analyzing the data, rather than pulling it together.
2. Out-of-the-box value. The solution comes with predefined financial, sales, dashboard,
and other reports.
3. Eliminates “spreadsheet chaos.” Sage Intelligence provides a controlled and secure
environment to store and run your Excel reports.
4. Easy to use. Employees can view, analyze and customize reports in the familiar interface
of Excel. This leverages existing Excel skills in your business, maximizes flexibility, and
lowers your total cost of ownership.
5. Improves collaboration. Automated report distribution can be set up which allows for
improved access to information and collaboration amongst teams.
“ I’m completely blown away
by this product. I managed to
install it and link it to my data
in about 30 minutes tops.”
Keith Castle (MD)
Antimony
• Sage 50—U.S. Edition
• Sage 50—
Canadian Edition
• Sage 100 ERP
• Sage 300 ERP
• Sage 500 ERP
• Sage PFW ERP
• Sage ERP X3*
• Sage
Pastel Accounting
• Sage Pastel Payroll
• Sage VIP Payroll
* For financial reporting only.
8
Making Sense of Business Intelligence in the Mid-Market: Why Sage Intelligence Is the Right Fit for You
“ Our expectations have been
exceeded in the way Sage
Intelligence delivers critical
business information from our
system. We have converted
weeks of repetitive work every
month into a few hours. Now
that´s what I call a measurable
return on investment.”
Ravind Sukdeo
(Financial Director)—
Bidfreight Port Operations
(Pty) Ltd (member of the
BIDvest Group Limited)
6. Consolidates data. Data from multiple companies, divisions, and departments can be
consolidated into one report using information from any ODBC compliant database.
7. Flexible reporting. You can take full control of financial reporting with the Report Designer
module, which fast tracks the building of financial reports through an easy-to-use, drag-and-
drop interface. Reporting Trees functionality allows you to model a reporting structure and
view your organization in many different ways. The Report Designer Add-in provides an
alternative to the Report Designer Layout Generator by providing an easy way to drag
and drop pieces of a financial report, including prebuilt financial formulas, into Excel
and then arrange them as desired.
Sage Intelligence Delivers Bottom-Line Savings
With Sage Intelligence, you will reduce manual report preparation, repetitive data pulls, and
complex back-end data joins. Instead, you’ll spend more time focusing on strategic analysis
and interpretation with up-to-date, accurate, and presentation-quality reports.
When you boost productivity, your company saves time and money. Here is an example return
on investment calculation:
• Number of people manually preparing data from Excel: 6
• Average number of hours spent per day on data entry: 2
• Hourly rate per person: $50 USD
• An efficiency improvement of 25% could save this company $3,000 per month!
To calculate your company’s potential ROI, visit:http://go.sageerpsolutions.com/forms/100Intelligence
9
©2013 Sage Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Sage, the Sage logos, and the Sage product and service
names mentioned herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sage Software, Inc., or its af?liated
entities. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. 12-02727 02/13
Sage
6561 Irvine Center Drive
Irvine, CA 92618-2301
866-530-7243
NA.Sage.com/ERP
Conclusion
The right business intelligence solution can provide many benefits to your business. From access
to real-time data across the organization and graphical reporting tools to better insight and
collaboration, BI can give your company a competitive advantage. Using a solution like Sage
Intelligence, you can empower employees to analyze and report on data in a familiar Excel-based
environment so that everyone in the organization can visualize current performance—and plan
how to best achieve company objectives.
Three key business issues
that will be top of mind for both
the CEO and the CIO in the
coming years:
Data—business
intelligence and
analytics.
People skills to
manage growing
organizational
complexity.
Client
relationships.
“92% of CIOs said they
would lead or support
efforts to drive better
real-time decisions and
take advantage of
analytics.” 1
Why Your Organization Needs
Business Intelligence (BI) What Solution Is Best for Your Company
48%
Collaboration
75%
Operationalizing
business intelligence
60%
Data Mining
Data mining (60%), collaboration (48%), and
operationalizing business intelligence (75%) are
very important to organizations.
Those using mobile BI can make decisions
2.5 times faster than those who do not.
2.5 times faster
An introduction to Business Intelligence for the Mid-Market Enterprise
»
»
»
Business Intelligence
accesses trusted information
in a timely manner, then puts
it into a useable format.
So that people across the
organization can collaborate and
make better business decisions.
Which gives
the company
a competitive
edge.
It must address your financial reporting needs
The right solution will provide insights into historical data and help increase transparency
of your company’s financial events and overall health. And with better insight, you have the ability to make
better decisions.
It must be able to consolidate reporting from multiple sources
To stay competitive, you need more than simple general ledger reporting. A good BI solution
should go beyond financials and allow you to combine information from multiple sources, including your ERP, CRM, and
payroll databases, to deliver a 360-degree view of your company. Your BI solution pulls all of your existing information together
from multiple companies, divisions, and data sources and provides an easily digestible format for in-depth analysis.
An Excel-based solution will be easy to use
There is a reason that Microsoft Excel® is so dominant—it is easy to use, global, and it can handle data manipulation and analysis and deliver the
graphical representations required for most reporting. It can be a powerful tool when used within a structured BI solution, and your end users already
know how to use it.
Graphical dashboards support agility
Graphical dashboards provide a visual overview of the company’s top KPIs so you can track performance. Trends are easily recognizable to aid
decision making.
Additional tools support business insight
For example (a) Alerts—With automated report distribution and notifications, your company will always know when numbers fall outside of acceptable
benchmarks. (b) Drill down or inquiry tools—Learn more about the numbers behind your data points and drill down to detailed transactions.
HowSage Intelligence
Can Meet Your Needs
x
Saves time and money
Sage Intelligence automates report preparation
by pulling trusted info from your ERP system and
other sources into Excel report templates when
you need it, so you can spend your time analyz-
ing the data rather than pulling it together. You
will reduce manual report preparation, repetitive
data pulls, and complex back-end data joins.
Eliminates “spreadsheet chaos”
Sage Intelligence provides a controlled and secure
environment to store and run your Excel reports.
Flexible reporting
You can take full control of financial reporting with
the Report Designer module, which fast-tracks the
building of financial reports through an easy-to-use
drag-and-drop interface. Reporting Trees
functionality allows you to model a reporting
structure and view your organization in many
different ways.
Easy to use
Employees can view, analyze, and customize reports in the familiar
interface of Excel. This leverages existing Excel skills in your business,
maximizes flexibility, and lowers your total cost of ownership.
Out-of-the-box value
The solution comes with predefined financial,
sales, dashboard, and other reports.
Improves
collaboration
Automated report distribution can
be set up, which allows for
improved access to information and
collaboration among teams
Consolidates data
Data from multiple companies, divisions, and departments
can be consolidated into one report using information
from any ODBC-compliant database.
• Automatically
works with Outlook
profile
• Exchange or SMTP
can be set up
• Only set up once
• Set up instructions
for each unique
distribution
method
• Only set up once
per instruction
• Select which
instructions to use
for your report
• Create and link
your report in the
Report Manager to
retain your settings
for each report
• Select Send Now
to execute your
Distribution
Instructions for the
current report
• Can also be
executed using a
scheduler
command
Distribution
Settings
Manage
Distribution
Instructions
Select
Instructions Send Now
Other key points:
• Part of your Sage ERP
package, which makes
implementation seamless and
cost effective
• Reporting tool of choice for
Sage ERP and accounting products
1 The Essential CIO: Insights From the Global Chief Information Ofcer Study,” IBM, May 2011.
Need a concise visual summary of this whitepaper? Download the full-size version of this infographic:http://img.en25.com/Web/SageSoftwareInc/Intelligence infographic_FINAL.pdf
To learn more about
Sage Intelligence, visit
our microsite, click:
Sage ERP Solutions
doc_915967485.pdf
Making Sense Of Business Intelligence In The Mid-market
Making Sense of Business Intelligence in
the Mid-Market: Why Sage Intelligence Is
the Right Fit for You
2
Making Sense of Business Intelligence in the Mid-Market: Why Sage Intelligence Is the Right Fit for You
Table of Contents
Introduction ......................................................................................................... 3
Why Your Organization Needs Business Intelligence ............................................ 4
What Solution Is Best for Your Company? ........................................................... 5
What Is Sage Intelligence? ................................................................................... 6
How Sage Intelligence Can Meet Your Needs ...................................................... 7
Sage Intelligence Delivers Bottom-Line Savings .................................................. 8
Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 9
3
Introduction
As the amount of social and organizational data continues to grow, businesses of all sizes are
trying to figure out how to manage it all. For years, business applications have captured data
to help give executives insight into business performance. However, these solutions have been
largely disjointed and provided static views of performance.
Business intelligence (BI) solutions are becoming increasingly popular as they promise real-time
views of data from across the business to enable better-informed decision making in less time. As
described by one consulting group, “In its simplest form, BI is the ability to accumulate, organize,
and analyze data from multiple sources.”
1
As data discovery needs intensify, BI is becoming more
visual in order to provide executives and managers with faster access to information and a real-time
overview of the company’s top Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Traditionally, BI solutions have catered to larger, more complex organizations with sophisticated
cube-based OLAP tools and expensive implementations. Small and midsized businesses (SMBs)
have relied on Excel
®
spreadsheets for data manipulation and analysis. However, a sea of change
is upon us as approachable BI tools are making their way to the middle market.
Though Excel is a powerful tool, SMBs have struggled with its limited ability to roll up data from
multiple sources and maintain control and accuracy of data. Spreadsheets can be time consuming
to maintain and input new data. They are also error prone, especially as they are shared throughout
the organization and multiple versions get created. As a result, Excel does not suffice as a BI solution
when used as a stand-alone application. However, it can be a powerful decision support tool when
integrated and utilized within a structured framework.
Analysts agree that the importance of BI and analytics is rising in corporations of all sizes. IDC
predicts the business analytics market will reach $50.7 billion by 2016, and some analysts believe
it will reach as high as $136 billion by 2020.
2
The Essential CIO, IBM’s study based on face-to-face
conversations with more than 3,000 CIOs, found that three key business issues that will be
top of mind for both the CEO and the CIO in the coming years:
• Data—business intelligence and analytics.
• People skills to manage growing organizational complexity.
• Client relationships.
This survey revealed that “92 percent [of CIOs] said they would lead or support efforts to drive
better real-time decisions and take advantage of analytics.”
3
Gartner’s 2012 CIO survey also
showed that analytics and BI is the number-one technology priority for CIOs.
4
1. “Business Intelligence: Turning Data into Wisdom,” Brown Smith Wallace Consulting Group, October 2010.
2. Chris Kanaracus, “IDC: Analytics software market will remain strong,” InfoWorld, July 11, 2012.
3. “The Essential CIO: Insights From the Global Chief Information Of?cer Study,” IBM, May 2011.
4. “ Gartner Says Worldwide Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management Software Market Surpassed
the $12 Billion Mark in 2011,” press release, Gartner, April 2, 2012.
4
Making Sense of Business Intelligence in the Mid-Market: Why Sage Intelligence Is the Right Fit for You
Why Your Organization Needs Business Intelligence
Companies of all sizes are turning to Business Intelligence (BI) tools to help make sense of the
information overload. Forrester Research analyst Boris Evelson reports, “Actually businesses
have no choice but to act and react quickly in the face of financial volatility and rapidly changing
business and regulatory conditions.”
5
Business Intelligence pulls company data into an easily digestible format and gets the right
information to the right people when they need it. BI paves the way for collaboration across
a business as more people have access to information they need to make better decisions,
faster. And as teams can collaborate more effectively, people will be more productive, and
decision makers more proactive, which gives a company a competitive edge.
BI can help you work smarter. With access to real-time accurate information from across
the business, CEOs can make better informed business decisions. Small and midsized
companies pride themselves on being more agile than large enterprises and much quicker
to make decisions. Not only the ability to make more effective decisions, but the time it takes
to arrive at decisions is important.
BI reports and dashboards provide information when needed, eliminating the costly wait times
for data pulls and number cruncher analysis. Instead, you have a customized management
dashboard that provides a real-time overview of your company’s top KPIs and the ability to
drill down to detailed transactions.
A 2011 study found that data mining (60%), collaboration (48%), and operationalizing business
intelligence (75%) are very important to organizations.
6
These businesses understand that
without insights into historical data and the ability to generate what-if scenarios, data is just
data. BI reports and dashboards can provide users with insight and perspective, making it
quicker and easier to focus on running the business.
Mobile BI is also proving to give companies an added competitive advantage. A recent
Aberdeen Group report shows that organizations using mobile BI can make decisions 2.5
times faster than those who do not.
7
5. Boris Evelson, “Top 10 Business Intelligence Predictions for 2012,” Forrester blog, November 15, 2011.
6. Howard Dresner, “Six Recommendations for Implementing Business Intelligence Solutions,” Sandhill.com, December 5, 2011.
7. “Mobile BI 2012: Accelerating Business on the Move,” The Aberdeen Group, March 2012
5
Making Sense of Business Intelligence in the Mid-Market: Why Sage Intelligence Is the Right Fit for You
What Solution Is Best for Your Company?
There are many business intelligence tools available for SMBs. When evaluating BI solutions
for your company, you should consider your needs and look for the following features:
1. Addresses your financial reporting needs. What are your business requirements?
Your BI solution should meet your organizational needs and goals. The right solution
will provide insights into historical data and help increase transparency of your company’s
financial events and overall health. And with better insight, you have the ability to make
better decisions.
2. Consolidates reporting from multiple sources. To stay competitive, you need more
than simple general ledger reporting. A good BI solution should go beyond financials and
allow you to combine information from multiple sources, including your ERP, CRM, and
payroll databases, to deliver a 360-degree view of your company. Your BI solution pulls
all of your existing information together from multiple companies, divisions, and data
sources and provides an easily digestible format for in-depth analysis.
3. Easy to use yet offers advanced tools. There is a reason why Excel is so dominant—
it is easy to use, global, and can handle data manipulation, analysis, as well as deliver
the graphical representations required for most reporting. It can be a powerful tool when
used within a structured BI solution, and your end users already know how to use it.
The ability to pull and manipulate data from multiple sources, obtain insight into trends,
and perform multidimensional analysis on demand is what SMBs need to improve
visibility and decision making.
4. Provides visual elements to support agility. Executives and managers want
information quickly. Graphical dashboards provide a time-sensitive, real-time overview
of the company’s top KPIs so they can track performance from anywhere and make
timely decisions when they’re needed most.
5. Includes additional tools to support business insight. Writing for ChannelPro SMB,
the Sage ERP senior director of product marketing, Jean Huy, lists some other
functionality your company should consider when selecting a BI solution:
8
• Alerts—With automated monitoring and notifications, your company will always know
when numbers fall outside of acceptable benchmarks.
• Drill-down or inquiry tools—Learn more about the numbers behind your data
points and drill down to detailed transactions.
• Remote access—Delivering immediate access to information accelerates the
decision-making process.
• Flexible reporting—Empowers you to quickly and easily obtain information from
multiple sources to improve operations and reporting across your entire business in
a user-friendly Excel format.
8. Jean Huy, “4 Myths About SMB Business Intelligence: Cutting Through the Hype,” ChannelPro SMB, July 26, 2012.
6
Making Sense of Business Intelligence in the Mid-Market: Why Sage Intelligence Is the Right Fit for You
What Is Sage Intelligence?
Sage Intelligence sets itself apart as a flexible, Excel-based reporting tool that is a module of your
Sage ERP solution. Sage Intelligence empowers you to quickly and easily obtain the information
required for improved operations and reporting across your entire business. Based on the familiar
Microsoft Excel application, Sage Intelligence lets you effortlessly create reports and analyze data,
improving visibility into your organization.
Sage Intelligence is a new-generation BI product, designed from the ground up with your needs
in mind:
• It specifically addresses serious challenges around financial reporting including departmental
reporting, GL segmentation, and project reporting.
• It offers consolidated reporting from multiple sources.
• The product components are structured to cater to both basic and advanced users.
• It includes access to numerous free resources on the BI Community, free webcasts, and
training on Sage University.
This powerful reporting tool is gaining traction in the mid-market, as it saves customers time and
money through the provision of reports in a user-friendly Excel format. Sage Intelligence addresses a
number of pain points endured by senior level executives in terms of business reporting capabilities,
including flexibility, accuracy, and timeliness. Sage Intelligence draws up-to-date, trusted data directly
from your Sage ERP database and other unrelated data sources and delivers a single version of the
truth that can be easily analyzed, customized, and distributed in the familiar environment of Excel.
“ We use Sage Intelligence
extensively in our business.
I believe that being able to
obtain a ´snapshot view´ of
your business is critical in
today´s business environment
when there is just too much
information floating about.
Managers need to dedicate
their skills to managing—
not sifting through endless
reports trying to make sense
of heaps of information. Sage
Intelligence does this neatly
and efficiently—with no fuss at
all and delivers this information
´on demand´ and through
Excel. What more could you
ask for?”
Steven Cohen
Managing Director
Softline (Pty) Ltd
7
Making Sense of Business Intelligence in the Mid-Market: Why Sage Intelligence Is the Right Fit for You
Sage Intelligence is the integrated business intelligence solution for the following Sage ERP
and accounting products:
Part of your Sage ERP package, Sage Intelligence can be rapidly deployed without new or extensive
IT investments. It automatically pulls data from your accounting system into Microsoft Excel—the
tool many end users are already using today for static reports. Sage Intelligence empowers users
to work within Excel to make and save changes to their reports so that they can be delivered in the
required format in the future.
How Sage Intelligence Can Meet Your Needs
1. Saves time and money. Sage Intelligence automates report preparation by pulling trusted
information from your ERP system and other sources into Excel report templates when you
need it, so you can spend your time analyzing the data, rather than pulling it together.
2. Out-of-the-box value. The solution comes with predefined financial, sales, dashboard,
and other reports.
3. Eliminates “spreadsheet chaos.” Sage Intelligence provides a controlled and secure
environment to store and run your Excel reports.
4. Easy to use. Employees can view, analyze and customize reports in the familiar interface
of Excel. This leverages existing Excel skills in your business, maximizes flexibility, and
lowers your total cost of ownership.
5. Improves collaboration. Automated report distribution can be set up which allows for
improved access to information and collaboration amongst teams.
“ I’m completely blown away
by this product. I managed to
install it and link it to my data
in about 30 minutes tops.”
Keith Castle (MD)
Antimony
• Sage 50—U.S. Edition
• Sage 50—
Canadian Edition
• Sage 100 ERP
• Sage 300 ERP
• Sage 500 ERP
• Sage PFW ERP
• Sage ERP X3*
• Sage
Pastel Accounting
• Sage Pastel Payroll
• Sage VIP Payroll
* For financial reporting only.
8
Making Sense of Business Intelligence in the Mid-Market: Why Sage Intelligence Is the Right Fit for You
“ Our expectations have been
exceeded in the way Sage
Intelligence delivers critical
business information from our
system. We have converted
weeks of repetitive work every
month into a few hours. Now
that´s what I call a measurable
return on investment.”
Ravind Sukdeo
(Financial Director)—
Bidfreight Port Operations
(Pty) Ltd (member of the
BIDvest Group Limited)
6. Consolidates data. Data from multiple companies, divisions, and departments can be
consolidated into one report using information from any ODBC compliant database.
7. Flexible reporting. You can take full control of financial reporting with the Report Designer
module, which fast tracks the building of financial reports through an easy-to-use, drag-and-
drop interface. Reporting Trees functionality allows you to model a reporting structure and
view your organization in many different ways. The Report Designer Add-in provides an
alternative to the Report Designer Layout Generator by providing an easy way to drag
and drop pieces of a financial report, including prebuilt financial formulas, into Excel
and then arrange them as desired.
Sage Intelligence Delivers Bottom-Line Savings
With Sage Intelligence, you will reduce manual report preparation, repetitive data pulls, and
complex back-end data joins. Instead, you’ll spend more time focusing on strategic analysis
and interpretation with up-to-date, accurate, and presentation-quality reports.
When you boost productivity, your company saves time and money. Here is an example return
on investment calculation:
• Number of people manually preparing data from Excel: 6
• Average number of hours spent per day on data entry: 2
• Hourly rate per person: $50 USD
• An efficiency improvement of 25% could save this company $3,000 per month!
To calculate your company’s potential ROI, visit:http://go.sageerpsolutions.com/forms/100Intelligence
9
©2013 Sage Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Sage, the Sage logos, and the Sage product and service
names mentioned herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sage Software, Inc., or its af?liated
entities. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. 12-02727 02/13
Sage
6561 Irvine Center Drive
Irvine, CA 92618-2301
866-530-7243
NA.Sage.com/ERP
Conclusion
The right business intelligence solution can provide many benefits to your business. From access
to real-time data across the organization and graphical reporting tools to better insight and
collaboration, BI can give your company a competitive advantage. Using a solution like Sage
Intelligence, you can empower employees to analyze and report on data in a familiar Excel-based
environment so that everyone in the organization can visualize current performance—and plan
how to best achieve company objectives.
Three key business issues
that will be top of mind for both
the CEO and the CIO in the
coming years:
Data—business
intelligence and
analytics.
People skills to
manage growing
organizational
complexity.
Client
relationships.
“92% of CIOs said they
would lead or support
efforts to drive better
real-time decisions and
take advantage of
analytics.” 1
Why Your Organization Needs
Business Intelligence (BI) What Solution Is Best for Your Company
48%
Collaboration
75%
Operationalizing
business intelligence
60%
Data Mining
Data mining (60%), collaboration (48%), and
operationalizing business intelligence (75%) are
very important to organizations.
Those using mobile BI can make decisions
2.5 times faster than those who do not.
2.5 times faster
An introduction to Business Intelligence for the Mid-Market Enterprise
»
»
»
Business Intelligence
accesses trusted information
in a timely manner, then puts
it into a useable format.
So that people across the
organization can collaborate and
make better business decisions.
Which gives
the company
a competitive
edge.
It must address your financial reporting needs
The right solution will provide insights into historical data and help increase transparency
of your company’s financial events and overall health. And with better insight, you have the ability to make
better decisions.
It must be able to consolidate reporting from multiple sources
To stay competitive, you need more than simple general ledger reporting. A good BI solution
should go beyond financials and allow you to combine information from multiple sources, including your ERP, CRM, and
payroll databases, to deliver a 360-degree view of your company. Your BI solution pulls all of your existing information together
from multiple companies, divisions, and data sources and provides an easily digestible format for in-depth analysis.
An Excel-based solution will be easy to use
There is a reason that Microsoft Excel® is so dominant—it is easy to use, global, and it can handle data manipulation and analysis and deliver the
graphical representations required for most reporting. It can be a powerful tool when used within a structured BI solution, and your end users already
know how to use it.
Graphical dashboards support agility
Graphical dashboards provide a visual overview of the company’s top KPIs so you can track performance. Trends are easily recognizable to aid
decision making.
Additional tools support business insight
For example (a) Alerts—With automated report distribution and notifications, your company will always know when numbers fall outside of acceptable
benchmarks. (b) Drill down or inquiry tools—Learn more about the numbers behind your data points and drill down to detailed transactions.
HowSage Intelligence
Can Meet Your Needs
x
Saves time and money
Sage Intelligence automates report preparation
by pulling trusted info from your ERP system and
other sources into Excel report templates when
you need it, so you can spend your time analyz-
ing the data rather than pulling it together. You
will reduce manual report preparation, repetitive
data pulls, and complex back-end data joins.
Eliminates “spreadsheet chaos”
Sage Intelligence provides a controlled and secure
environment to store and run your Excel reports.
Flexible reporting
You can take full control of financial reporting with
the Report Designer module, which fast-tracks the
building of financial reports through an easy-to-use
drag-and-drop interface. Reporting Trees
functionality allows you to model a reporting
structure and view your organization in many
different ways.
Easy to use
Employees can view, analyze, and customize reports in the familiar
interface of Excel. This leverages existing Excel skills in your business,
maximizes flexibility, and lowers your total cost of ownership.
Out-of-the-box value
The solution comes with predefined financial,
sales, dashboard, and other reports.
Improves
collaboration
Automated report distribution can
be set up, which allows for
improved access to information and
collaboration among teams
Consolidates data
Data from multiple companies, divisions, and departments
can be consolidated into one report using information
from any ODBC-compliant database.
• Automatically
works with Outlook
profile
• Exchange or SMTP
can be set up
• Only set up once
• Set up instructions
for each unique
distribution
method
• Only set up once
per instruction
• Select which
instructions to use
for your report
• Create and link
your report in the
Report Manager to
retain your settings
for each report
• Select Send Now
to execute your
Distribution
Instructions for the
current report
• Can also be
executed using a
scheduler
command
Distribution
Settings
Manage
Distribution
Instructions
Select
Instructions Send Now
Other key points:
• Part of your Sage ERP
package, which makes
implementation seamless and
cost effective
• Reporting tool of choice for
Sage ERP and accounting products
1 The Essential CIO: Insights From the Global Chief Information Ofcer Study,” IBM, May 2011.
Need a concise visual summary of this whitepaper? Download the full-size version of this infographic:http://img.en25.com/Web/SageSoftwareInc/Intelligence infographic_FINAL.pdf
To learn more about
Sage Intelligence, visit
our microsite, click:
Sage ERP Solutions
doc_915967485.pdf