Works Management (WM), the voice of UK manufacturing, provides a forum for the process management and improvement industry to exchange views on business improvement.  WM interviews the industry’s leading strategic thinkers behind manufacturing in the UK and brings to light how business intelligence and process management can drastically improve business management and the bottom line.

InterWorks Director of Business Intelligence, Dan Murray, was mentioned in an article highlighting the benefits of the intuitive BI tool, Tableau Software.

WM article “Clever Business” states that BI is not just a reporting tool, but is also about intuitive data analytics.  “BI’s value is in providing useful business insights to everyone that needs them on demand.” (Tinham, 2011). 

Tinham also states that many are skeptical of BI and the concept is misunderstood.  For so long, ERP systems were not effectively delivering results to the end users, leaving these programs frustrating and difficult to use.  Users had trouble dissecting data and had to submit requests for additional reports, often times forgetting what the original question was.

Fast forward to present day BI.  With intelligence analytical software like Tableau, we can view and dissect data any way we choose.  Users can point and click, drag and drop to answer questions as quickly as they are asked.

One of the companies highlighted in “Clever Business” is Blastrac, where Dan Murray, former Blastrac CIO and current Director of Business Intelligence at InterWorks was able to create interactive reports and dashboards by taking data from the existing ERP systems.  Tableau Software allowed for the integration of business data from six ERP systems’ databases without the need to build a metadata layers like most other BI software programs.  By using Tableau Software, Murray was able to improve reporting productivity by a staggering 95%.

Instead of rolling-out a new global, million dollar ERP software or use a lesser expensive (still costly) option of building a new central data warehouse to utilize enterprise-wide BI, Murray chose a much more affordable and simpler option of Tableau Software to achieve better results. 

Murray’s decision to use Tableau Software was a success.  Interactive reporting dashboards were created for end users and the data extraction process was streamlined.  This project reduced errors in order entry, prevented problems on the shop floor, and in the end, improved margins.

We are in the age of high value/low cost BI.  The new age of business intelligence is here.  Gone are the days of inadequate BI reporting programs and the frustrations surrounding them.

Click here to view the Works Management article.