Your metals processing business probably already has loads of data. While it’s important to have access to data, it’s even more important to turn it into insights you can actually use to drive your business forward. The key is being able to collect it, connect it, and analyze it so it’s meaningful to you.
As described in our ebook, New Rules of Metals Operations: How Cloud ERP Delivers Data-driven Insights and Masters Multi-step Processing, you can then translate these new insights into decisions that drive profits.
How do you leverage unified data to improve performance at every level? The answer lies in choosing the right Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution that is uniquely designed for the metals industry. RealSTEEL is a cloud-based ERP solution built for the new age of metals operations and includes dashboards that are targeted specifically for metals processing teams.
What are Dashboards?
Just like your car has a dashboard where all critical functions are easily displayed and quick to act on, a data dashboard serves a similar purpose for a business user.
It’s a tool you can use to display, track, and analyze data in order to gain deeper insights into the overall health of your metals business. Dashboards can be personalized by role and can be used at a department level, for a specific process, or for company-wide overviews for management.
The data can come from many different sources and can include all kinds of metrics and services. Dashboards extract relevant information from a variety of sources and present it in a user-friendly and visual way, making complicated information very simple to read and use.
Dashboard Benefits
Dashboards provide a quick and easy way to access data and improve your business. As an important tool within a cloud-based ERP solution, they bring numerous benefits to your organization.
With cloud-based ERP built on connected data, you can use powerful analysis tools working in the background to provide KPI dashboards with relevant real-time feedback to each manager. By centralizing data, you provide a single source of truth to:
- Measure Performance: You can set specific KPIs to help you track information you need to see in one or more areas. Is a department meeting its goals? How profitable is a particular product? A dashboard provides analysis tools to dig into data across departments, cost centers, product lines, regions.
- Improve Transparency: A dashboard is a front-end solution for lots of back-end data. This helps bridge previously disconnected data siloes, allowing you to slice and dice data in new ways. Dashboards also provide improved visibility and accessibility to users giving the ability to make helpful business improvements.
- Increase Agility: Dashboards can help detect real-time business changes, both good and bad. This provides the ability to course correct quickly and to get in front of emerging trends.
The Importance of Dashboards for the Metals Industry
Because dashboards can organize and display important information at a glance, your workers can be more efficient and knowledgeable. Here are a few examples of cloud-based ERP dashboards and what they can bring to your organization.
- Finance can predict cash positions, forecasts, accounts receivable and DSO all in one place.
- Accounting can track actual results against multiple budgets to manage cash flow effectively.
- Purchasing can track vendors and their performance.
- Production managers can view cycle times and run time analysis to address any problems.
- Shop floor managers can pinpoint downtime, operator errors or material problems on the shop floor.
- Marketing can analyze web traffic and how buyers are discovering your company.
- Sales and Marketing can choose product promotions that maximize revenue.
- Shipping can compare delivery costs and options.
- Management can compare historical data to understand trends and plan more strategically.
In short, the power of a dashboard lies in its ability to provide up-to-date information and context to help inform business decisions and empower all employees.
Schedule Your Dashboard Demo Today
Dashboards are a new tool for many metals businesses and we invite you to explore the power of dashboards with our RealSTEEL experts any time. We are certain you will be impressed!
