The Value of Cloud ERP Data Visibility – Why your new ERP solution needs Web Services like oData

Almost everyone recognises that the most basic function of an Enterprise Resource Planning system is to act as an accounting system – to track and report on where the organisation has allocated its resources – both human and financial.

And of course, almost every ERP solution does that – with varying degrees of ease of use and with different ways of automating the tasks and business processes that have to be executed on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

However, it’s now a universally accepted truth that the value of any ERP solution or accounting software package comes from its ability to take the data that has been entered and turn it into meaningful insight into the business and give everyone that’s interested the ability to interpret that insight and turn it into action.

And the same thing applies there as well unless you are running on an old AS/400 or Unix-based system that still runs in character mode, almost all applications give you some way of accessing that data and pushing it into a file that can be in some way, shape or form be read with Excel.

But the newer generation of applications is now able to take that capability and wrap it in a level of “ease of use” that makes it possible for even the most technophobic of executives or system users to start to extract meaningful data, visualise it in an attractive format and use it to tell a story that leads to a clear actionable plan to have a positive impact on the business in some way.

And the most effective way to do that is to expose that data out using the very latest open standards like the Open Data Protocol or oData delivered via a Cloud ERP solution like MYOB Acumatica (formerly MYOB Advanced).

Now before you switch off because I started using what looks like computer jargon – give me one more minute because I’ll explain it.

All this is a universal way of accessing information that most business intelligence tools can connect with – these days even Microsoft Excel uses open data.

Gone are the days of creating ODBC data connections with all kinds of parameters and firewalls to work through, with a system like MYOB Acumatica that natively supports oData, all you need is the right access to be granted to the data and you can securely connect to it using the same URL (or Uniform Resource Locator) that you use to connect to the main system via your web browser.

As an example, to access the Leverage Cloud Technologies demonstration MYOB Acumatica system all you do is open your web browser and type in https://demo.leveragecloudtech.com.au and you are presented with the login screen, enter your user ID and password and you are connected. To connect to the data via oData, it’s the same process. In Microsoft Excel you choose Data | From Other Sources | From oData Data Feed and you are prompted for the same URL – except in this case, the URL would be https://demo.leveragecloudtech.com.au/oData to tell the system you want to connect via the oData interface, not the normal user interface.

An Excel oData Connection using the Leverage Cloud Technologies MYOB Acumatica Demo System

So all you need then is to understand how the data is structured right?

Not necessarily because this is usually prepared for you by a business analyst who understands all this but again the developers of MYOB Acumatica (and the underlying Acumatica Cloud xRP engine) have made that even easier with the addition of a data querying and structuring tool called generic enquiries that enables you to build your own views of the data and with one click publish them out so they can be read via oData.

So a picture speaks a thousand words and a video even more so I have created a video for you that will show you how this process works from start to finish in MYOB Acumatica. You can access it in the frame embedded in this page.

To learn more about MYOB Acumatica and how you can make the most of this powerful solution subscribe to the blog by filling out the form on this page or if you would like to talk to me about MYOB Acumatica and how your business could benefit from a solution visit the Contact page on the site or click on the Help/LiveChat button on the right hand side of the page.

I would love to talk with you about how you can leverage our people to realise your business potential.

We are focused on delivering business value by implementing MYOB Acumatica Cloud ERP for Small and Midsized businesses like yours in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.