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Business Intelligence

Unlock hidden value. Make informed business decisions.

Unlock hidden data with Business Intelligence

In recent times the invention of Business Intelligence (BI) tools are helping businesses to access the mass of data hidden in disparate systems and departments. BI tools now allow enterprises to easily gather all related data and turn it into coherent information. The information can then be analysed properly, used for decision making and then quickly acted upon.

This is where IBS Bookmaster’s integrated Business Intelligence module will help your business unlock the hidden value stored within IBS Bookmaster and can be easily accessed by executives with little or no computer expertise.

Business Intelligence is a standard solution within IBS Bookmaster

It’s important to note that IBS Bookmaster Business Intelligence is a standard solution supported 100 per cent by IBS and comes with over 175 pre-defined templates so that you can start using BI from day one. And because Business Intelligence is an integrated part of IBS Bookmaster, you will only get a ‘single version of the truth’.

IBS Bookmaster BI is also quickly and easily implemented for several reasons: it is a pre-built application and not just a tool and it comes with a set of pre-defined templates, views and business rules.

Benefits

IBS Bookmaster Business Intelligence provides a significant leap in information accessibility and manipulation across the IBS Bookmaster system. It arms you with knowledge that is no longer just based on gut feel or experience but on sound and verifiable information.

Make proactive decisions based upon accurate and consistent information

The ability to analyse various areas of your business such as sales and financials will help you optimise revenue, increase product and customer profitability, boost market share, maximise sales and increase turnover as you will be making proactive business decisions based upon accurate and consistent information.

Use Business Intelligence for strategic planning

IBS Bookmaster’s Business Intelligence can play a key part in the strategic planning process of your business providing timely and accurate information whether it’s for marketing competition, customer retention, inventory control or financial modelling.

Features

Business Intelligence reporting features Areas of your business you can analyse include:

  • Sales (returns, gross, profit, discounts, demand, budget)
  • Debtors
  • Inventory
  • Financial
  • Deferred
  • Subscriptions
Business Intelligence allows you to analyse trends, contributions, aging and ratios such as:

  • Sales & gross margin trends 
  • Achievement against budget  
  • Price trends  
  • Supply ratios  
  • Sales & gross margin contribution  
  • Stock turns  
  • Returns contribution  
  • Market Share  
  • Returns aging  
  • Front list/back list contribution  
  • Discount analysis  
  • New release contribution  
  • Sales by rep by ISBN  
  • Profit net of rebates 
Business Intelligence allows you to analyse by various dimensions. Some of these include:

  • Channels - Customer - Head office - Buying Group - Type of business
  •  Product - ISBN - Publisher - Subject - Packs & components
  •  Order - Front/back list - Type of order - Source of order - Returns reason
  •  Sales Force - Rep - current - Rep - previous - Branch / State - Region
  •  Period - Daily - Weekly - MAT (Moving Annual Total) - LTD (Life to Date)

Data warehouse

IBS Bookmaster Business Intelligence incorporates a data warehouse. The transactional information is extracted from the ERP and loaded into the data warehouse which is designed for easy analysis.

Pre-defined Templates and Views

IBS Bookmaster BI contains over 175 pre-defined templates and any of the templates can be changed and saved by users, immediately providing literally thousands of ad hoc enquiries and reports. All of the predefined templates can also be used as the basis for additional user-defined enquiries or reports.

OLAP Viewer and ODBC Interface

IBS Bookmaster Business Intelligence has its own viewer as well as interfaces to any ODBC tool, for example, Excel or COGNOS.

The IBS Bookmaster OLAP viewer provides easy data manipulation, data display and drill ‘anywhere’ capability. For example, you can:

  • perform intuitive ‘what-if’ analysis and get immediate results
  • change views to see information in a format that suits you
  • drill anywhere (down, up or across) for more details to pinpoint problems
  • use ‘traffic lights’ to highlight exceptions and areas of concern
  • filter out irrelevant or unwanted information
  • display the top or bottom ‘N’ in any column (eg, top 20 customers by return rates)
  • save your own analysis for future use
  • automatically post your results on the Internet
  • choose from many types of graphical displays (eg, bar charts, pie charts, etc)
  • export your results to Excel, Access, etc
  • add columns as required (whether data, description or calculated fields)
  • perform two dimensional analysis (ie, cross-tab analysis)
  • use multi-level reporting (9 levels)

Administration Facilities

IBS Bookmaster Business Intelligence has its own administration tools to ensure performance is monitored and optimised and allows high level security to be implemented.

Contact IBS for more information. »