Information for everyone!
The latest Treasury & Risk explores how mid-level managers are enjoying the drill down capabilities and real time metrics reporting of business intelligence dashboards. A case study featuring Dow Corning demonstrates how dashboards support a company wide dispute management system, providing dispute coordinators and managers in sales, customer service, credit and collections with a consolidated data source. When a payment doesn't match the corresponding invoice a dispute is logged, generating an automatic email to the appropriate dispute coordinator with a link to the dashboard for research.
Dow Corning's Success Metrics
- 18% drop in the total number of disputes
- 10 day reduction in the average cycle time for issues to be resolved
- 50% reduction in the amount of working capital tied up in payment disputes
We can count on broader use of business intelligence tools in finance as a result of the big ERP vendors recent acquisitions (Oracle + Hyperion and SAP + Business Objects & OutlookSoft). Perhaps the day will finally come when all of a businesses transaction data can truly drive better decision making. In the meantime, there are plenty of data integrity (incongruent data definitions) and systems challenges (multiple ERP instances, often from various vendors) to overcome.
Read more:
Dashboards for Everyone
Treasury & Risk
March 2008 (pages 24-25)
