Sage 200 Business Intelligence (BI) is a module that comes as standard as part of Sage 200 Financials. It helps users understand their data using Excel-based reporting and analytics, and can be easily integrated into existing business operations. In this article, we’ll run through everything you need to know about Sage 200 BI.
What is Sage 200?
Sage 200 is a robust Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that is available as both cloud (Sage 200 Standard) and on-premise (Sage 200 Professional) versions. It comes with a variety of core modules such as financials and commercials, with additional modules available for Sage 200 Professional such as manufacturing and job costing (Sicon Projects).
To learn more about the differences between the two versions of Sage 200, you can read our informative article Sage 200 – Standard vs Professional Compared.
Sage 200 Standard comes pretty out-of-the-box however Sage 200 Professional offers the flexibility to choose additional modules you can implement within your business, usually to meet industry specific needs.
One highly popular module in both Sage 200 Standard and Sage 200 Professional is Business Intelligence (BI), which comes as part of the finances module in both versions.
What is Sage 200 Business Intelligence?
Sage 200 BI is an advanced reporting tool that is designed to help businesses make informed, strategic decisions by analyzing and displaying their data clearly.
The software can identify key patterns and trends in business data that could have otherwise have been missed. It allows businesses to produce key predefined reports and dashboards that can be easily customised with a functional report wizard. Data can be displayed in easy-to-read graphs, charts and reports ready for strategic action to be taken upon their findings.
Sage 200 BI uses multiple predefined data cubes, which means it can analyse your data from a range of angles and produce the most effective, multi-faceted view of your data to assist the decision-making process.
It can access data from Excel spreadsheets, including the integration of macros, making it simple to edit inputs and add new data sets when you need to. This means there is limited training or special skills needed to operate Sage 200 BI, apart from standard Excel knowledge. The data is refreshed and updated on the system in real-time, so there is no inaccurate information or loss of productivity. Data can then be exported in a wide range of pre-formatted Excel reports.
Features of Sage 200 BI
Sage 200 BI has 82 built-in reports that are designed to present data in the most effective manner. Some examples include customer and supplier trends, allowing you to spot your most loyal clients, stock profitability for enhanced decision making, and business analysis for a dynamic insight into profit and loss by cost centre and department.
There is also the option to create your own reports using its simple report wizard interface that utilises drag and drop functionality and other tools to ensure you get the data you need, when you need it and with ease.
There are various options for summary tables and charts to bring together reports that are relevant and useful, featuring KPIs and trends. Sage 200 BI allows unlimited amounts of reports to be kept within one workbook, keeping your business organised and easily navigable.
There are 16 predefined data cubes:
- 8 Commercial cubes
- 5 Financial cubes
- 3 Project cubes
These allow you to easily integrate data from other Sage 200 modules and quickly get a 360-degree view of the current position of your business. You can layer the report parameters and synchronise different reports to gain a full view of the data, and using filters, you can drill down to the most important and hardest to reach numbers.
The Sage 200 BI platform is intuitive to use, and thanks to its toolbars and search functionalities, it’s easy to find the information you need.
The Importance of Business Intelligence
There are many key benefits to using Sage 200 BI, not least the ease it grants to decision-making within a business via visualised and easily accessible data. This gives you further clarity for your business insights that can be shared across the company, so that the critical data can be analysed and used effectively in more powerful detail.
The functionality to make visually striking and accurate charts and graphs ensures that you can make sense of the data and present it to others. This helps you to establish trends and understand anomalies, meaning it’s easier to discover areas for improvement and plan for growth.
Sage 200 BI helps highlight areas for potential revenue or profitability gains, bringing together the important KPIs in one place. Project management and analysis are made easier too, with Sage 200 BI offering a review of the cost, progress and gross and net profits throughout the process, allowing for easier redirection.
In summary, Sage BI offers businesses a way to more powerfully use their data. With so many functions to most businesses, it’s easy for key trends get missed and the resulting opportunities to remain uncaplitised on. Sage BI solves this by giving you an easy-to-understand 360-degree of your business that utlises every last piece of data in your Sage 200 ERP.
Why choose Eventura and Sage 200?
With two decades of Sage deployments under our belt, we are experts in delivering robust Sage 200 solutions that are meticulously designed to suit your specific business needs. We take a full 360-degree view of your business, and help you identify all of your requirements.
Our team of expert business analysts, developers, consultants, technicians and support staff will guide you through your Sage 200 project from conception, through to deployment and ongoing support.
If you would like to speak with one of our Sage 200 experts, you can request a free call back here.
