Types of reports in ERP Implementation

ERP Reports can be categorized as Operational, Tactical and Strategic.

Operational Reports are used to review transaction and take operational decisions and actions. For example a Sales Invoice will be used by the Receivables Accountant to review before sending it with the Sales Dispatch. A Customer Summary Ledger will be routed to the customer to provide month end summary and facilitate quick collections.

Tactical Reports are normally used by Line Managers and Finance Managers to take Business Decisions. For example Receivables Aging Report could be used to recognize Bad Debts and create Bad Debt Provisions. These could also be comparison reports like Profitability of each Product Line. Collection efficiency of each collector is another example of a Tactical Report.

Strategic Reports are also called Business Intelligence Reports that help business to review business trends (Revenue Trends by Center for example), Capacity Utilization etc and help business to take strategic decisions. For example, 6 Months trend of falling revenue will help Business Decide whether to drop a product line altogether. Budgets versus Actual is a classic example of a Strategic Report.

In most of the implementations, the list of reports proffered by the business is tilted towards Operational and Tactical reports. There will be minimal Strategic Reports that will help the Senior Management to take strategic decisions like pricing decisions or cost control decisions. This is due to the fact that the Operational and Tactical Reports will need to stabilize before an Organization can focus on Strategic Reports

The management may give some leeway for developing the Strategic Reports. After all these reports will need management time to be devoted to giving the right specification for developing these reports. These reports have mostly to be delivered by internal IT Team. Any delay in delivering these reports will result in Senior Management considering ERP Implementation as an Expenditure and not as an Investment. The common refrain will be that 'Top management is not getting any benefit out of ERP'. ERP will end up becoming a Data Entry application and as a Cost Center rather than a Profit Center as it should be.

The CIO will always end up defending IT expenditure and all the budget discussions will focus on cutting the IT Budget. This is a wall no CIO would want to climb.

While it is fine to have Operational and Tactical Reports during ERP Implementation (immediately after go live), please don't stop thinking about how you can elicit Business Intelligence out of the Information available in ERP.