Master Data Management Best Practices

Master Data Management Best Practices
  • by bista-admin
  • Mar 09, 2016
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In this business world, We manage people, inventory, and time. All these things are essential for business but the business that doesn’t care about their data can fall in big trouble after a few times when their business goes ahead. Because data grows unexpectedly and if your data is not accurate, not in proper understanding format then you are going to make bad decisions, inaccurate reports.

Hundreds of company in this corporate world is following proper data management by putting their data in appropriate place. Hence to achieve this we should start with most important information about data.

1. How Master Data can provide efficiency to a business:-

A master data provides decision-making process better to carry your business ahead in right direction. For example, if I am going to buy certain product for business before that I will check my master data that will this be beneficial for me by looking at my master data product chart. After observing my master data I can decide in how much quantity which product I should buy.

2.Collection of data from different sources:-

We collect data from different sources and put that into the data warehouse. But to make proper and accurate decision our data should be in structured format .The redundant data should not be present in our database. In this case industries requires Business Intelligence developer who can retrieve the data from different sources and can provide report on their daily business activities by putting their data in structured format.

3.The role of data model and data container in MDM:-

  • Data container: It holds the data that we manage for processing.
  • Data Model: A model which helps in validating the data and defines data type of attributes .The data model helps finding the relationships of data like customer to account, customer to product and their location. This data model helps in finding the schema of entity.

4.Fuzzy search:-

Mdm provides fuzzy search mechanism for searching the data in data container. It helps in processing the record efficiently. With the advent of this user need not to type exact word in search bar of data.

5.Handling of data duplication:-

MDM uses data deduplication algorithm to put consistency in data.

6.Data Auditing:-

MDM puts the track of all dml operation performed on it. This is achieved by putting the record of user and action performed by them with the timestamp in audit table.

7.Data Integration:-

MDM provides easy to integrate with third party application and business process. This provides the features of data to process in batch mode.

8.Customization:-

MDM provides customization without affecting the performance to meet the customer requirement by following agile methodology. This leads to flexible data model and scalable architecture.

The Worst Advice we’ve ever heard about Enterprise Resource

Enterprise Resource

As a Business owner or a manager, you may have got many business suggestions/ advice from friends, consultants and other people around, but most of them would be misinformation and misconceptions which can hamper your business. Today ERP is acting as a backbone of every company. It has become an important aspect for all type of Businesses. In this article, we will be highlighting some major misconceptions which you may think about ERP system.

1. My company is too small to implement ERP, It is only for Large organizations:

This is one of the major misconceptions we hear a lot, many company owners think that they are not big enough to start with an ERP Solution. The objective of ERP software is to streamline and automate business processes across all the departments in an organization and this works with any size of companies.

ERP implementation becomes little expensive when it has to acquire huge IT infrastructure and IT staff for regular maintenance, but the latest cloud technology is a preferable solution for SME’s. Cloud ERP helps reduce the upfront cost by minimizing IT infrastructure cost and subscription fees to zero %. Moreover, Cloud ERP gives SME companies the ability to plan and execute their business as large organizations

              2. Take too long to Implement:

Another common misconception people have that most of the ERP implementation takes years to roll out. This myth is may be through the stories of large and complex implementation in the early ERP days.

Today most of the ERP systems are affordable and easy to implement, they are now more reliable and the earlier day’s issues are been transformed into advance ERP. Thus, these ERP’s systems can be implemented in reasonable time.

3. My Business Process is too difficult to convert into ERP System

This sense is a perception of difficulty; you may want your business processes should be adaptable along as company grows.

Instead of looking at how outdated business processes can be adaptable to a new phase, you need to look at the end results. Do your orders get fulfilled very fast and accurately? Are you’re shipping and payments are taken in a timely manner? ERP is beyond managing all of these business processes

                     4. ERP systems are very easy:

Another myth which people think about. “ERP software systems are very easy”. After implementing ERP system, you and your employees will have to put some time and efforts to learn the software. ERP software’s improves your business processes by increasing your business efficiency, but your employees still need to know how to use the software on daily basis. It is similar to learning new rules of the game before you start playing it.

5. Difficulty in Integrating with the devices/ other services:

A very common question people want to know before ERP implementation is that, “Will it be integrated with current – ongoing software’s”? And the answer is “Yes” Some flexible ERP solutions such as Odoo, NetSuite and Ramco can be easily integrated with any third party applications, software’s, and web portals. In fact, the data can be easily transferred from other software and portals to these ERP systems.

Importance of Data Visualization in Analytics

Importance of Data Visualization in Analytics

We are living in the era of big data where Data has been described as the raw material for business.

The volume of data used in businesses, industries, research organisation and technological development is massive and it continues to grow every day. The more data we collect and analyse, the more capable we become in making critical business decisions.

But with the massive expansion of data, It has becomes harder and harder for business to find key message from this universe of data.

That’s where the importance of data visualization comes in

Data Visualization is the presentation of data in graphical format. It helps people understand the significance of data by summarising and presenting huge amount of data in a simple and easy-to-understand format and helps communicate information clearly and effectively.

Data Visualization

Humans understand data better through pictures rather than by just reading numbers in rows and columns. So if the data is presented in a graphical format, you are more able to effectively ask and answer these important questions as “What are my Sales and Profit Nos.?”, “How much is my Sales growth? Which client of mine is giving me more business?”, Where am I losing? Blah blah ……..

Data visualisation helps the business achieve their goals in the following ways–

Help business convert their data into interactive graphs, dashboards or maps and embed them on their website or blog to engage their customers.

The BI tool connects easily to nearly any data sources, be it a corporate Data Warehouse or  Microsoft Excel or web-based data and helps the business with the insights by transforming data into visually appealing, interactive dashboards on the go.

The data visualisation tool supports a wide variety of tables, charts and graphs and grant the user the ability to visualise the same set of data in different ways thereby strives to create more attractive and informative dashboard every time.

I.e. there are many ways to present a simple Sales data – from a crosstab report to a Daily Sales Chart to Sales by Category by month. Different views answer different questions.

The tool also gives you the capability to look at data with a geographic element on a map and brings in an entirely new dimension in the analysis.

It helps the businesses make appropriate decisions by drilling into the data and finding the insights. I.e. Business can see the patterns, trends and correlations in the data being analysed that will tell them where they can cut cost, improve operational processes and thereby grow their business.

The Storytelling feature available in the data visualisation tool is an emerging art that shows that the data is just not about figures but it’s a way people see the world around them.

The tool allows user to organize and present massive data intuitively. This is very much important as otherwise the information is meaningless without a way to organize and present important findings from the data.

In this age of Globalisation, organisations are trying to expand their reach beyond geographical boundaries and there are required to make quick and informed decisions, this is best justified with data visualization tools.

 

Collaboration of Business Intelligence with Online Marketing

Business Intelligence is an elusive concept that never quite finds its way to the top of the priority list. When it comes to Business Intelligence and Online Marketing both have emerged to work hand in hand. As both are based on data to analyze and make decisions to improve investment gains and processes.

Business intelligence allows companies to craft their audience behaviour patterns across multiple forms of media considering the data collected across online platforms. Online advertising can usually generate faster results reports because they are generally based on impressions, clicks and online purchases as it basically deals with market research strategies. BI offers real-time analytics based on online marketing efforts.

COLABRATIVE

When offline events are promoted online, it gives a good insight into overall customer patterns which helps to increase event marketing effectiveness. A proper online event marketing campaign can trail a customer’s interaction from start to finish which includes tracking of how they found out about the event through metrics such as custom promo codes, referral sites and entrance pages. The chance to combine promotions and real-world events with online marketing campaigns is one of the best ways online marketing and business intelligence can work together.

Companies can use business intelligence to enhance the overall effectiveness of their website by examining the site performance, audience circulation, usage trends, visitor loyalty, search engine performance, content, product placement and overall visitor behaviour.

Suppose a company wants to launch an advertising campaign for a product. Among its current customers the company wish to post product information to those customers with a high probability of buying the product. The company holds data describing each of its previous customer’s behaviour and personal data. There are also customers who have previously bought the product for example in a trial period. The customers of the trial period are divided into two categories those who have purchased the product and those who have not. With this data, a prediction model can be created to predict the probability of buying the product. After that the probability of buying the product is predicted for all other customers. Only those customers with a higher probability are addressed.

When it comes to online marketing and business intelligence, taking big data and forming it into goals and then interpreting it back into actionable vision is one of the best ways to craft a promotional and advertising strategy that works and is continually optimized.

How Can Predictive Analytics Help Small Businesses ?

What is predictive analytics?

 

predective-analysis

 

Predictive analytics is the use of variety of statistical techniques that analyses current and historical facts to make predictions about the future events.

The goal of predictive analytics is to forecast what might happen in the future rather than finding descriptive statistics and reporting on what has actually happened in the past. Predictive models use the past data to develop a model that can be used to predict the future values. This is different from the descriptive models that help you understand what has happened in the past.

What can predictive analytics do?

Predictive analytics can help to:

  • Identify the trends
  • Understand customers
  • Improve business performances
  • Predict future behaviour

Predictive Analytics for Growing Companies:

There are many advantages of predictive analytics for the growing businesses. The most widely used objectives are

1) Customer Retention &

2) Demand Forecasting

Customer Retention:

It’s always good to keep your loyal customers than to get the new ones. Predictive analytics help you to analyse your customers’ behaviour, to predict what and when a customer may buy. It is important for new businesses to identify which prospect groups are most likely to buy their products or services so that the precious marketing money can be spent on the most promising ones.

For example, suppose an online shopping company Flipkart.com has the data of customer purchased specific product (say Books). Then this company can use the predictive data to send the emails to the loyal customers. Once a customer has purchased online a book three times, then the predictive analytics automatically finds the next order date and the products, after which the company can send mails marketing the various  products based on the customer’s purchasing behaviour.

Demand Forecasting:

Demand forecasting is the most common application of predictive analytics. In business, if the demand is more than the inventory, sales can be lost due to the lack of supply and if demand is very less than inventory, then there is huge stock of particular inventory then also it will incur financial loss. If any company knows the demand of their products and services in advance, then the company can plan for the future production. Predictive analytics is a statistical approach applicable for demand forecasting. It is used to detect the pattern in the data.

For example, suppose a company wants to know the how much sales will happen in the next quarter. In this case, predictive analytics can be used to estimate the current trend in the market and the seasonal pattern of the sales for the next quarter. Using this, the company can review the inventory of the particular product. If the demand of that product is more than the inventory of the specific product then the company can plan for the production of that particular product.

Conclusion:

If you want to use predictive analytics you have to first understand the idea behind it and the difference with the other methods. The predictive analytics is used to forecast the event which might be happen in the future by calculating the probability of the occurrence of event on the basis of the historical patterns. For example, to predict the annual sales (target) we will need to have the historical annual sales data with a bunch of variables related to sales. Then we can study the relationship and patterns between the variables and the annual turnover. Using this relationship and the historical pattern we can predict the future sales. The predicted results can be used to make various business decisions.

ERP Implementation Strategies: Big Bang vs. Phased

ERP Implementation Strategies

BIG BANG ERP IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY:

Big bang ERP go-live strategy is the one where all of the main modules of an ERP system go live at the same time.

PHASED ERP IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY:

A phased approach describes a scenario where elements or modules of the ERP system are introduced in a planned sequence, replacing the old systems gradually.

The feasibility of a strategy is based on the following factors:

1. Impact on the organization

A big bang approach exerts additional pressure on the business and the project team during the cutover – simply because there’s so much activity going on all at once. A phased approach can lead to quick wins, which provides confidence and helps in selling the advantages to the rest of the organization. On the other hand, poor experiences in early phases can lead to the negativity around the ERP project, and in a worst-case scenario, it could even undermine a rollout plan.

2. Temporary Interfaces:

Phased implementations often require temporary interfaces to provide a temporary working solution. It is costly to implement temporary interfaces.

3. Duration

Phased strategy implementation takes longer time than big bang strategy. Factors such as regulatory compliances, acquisitions, new product introductions, and other capital expenditure programs can influence the required timescale for an ERP implementation. Planning the project will need to take these other factors into account and could well influence the big bang versus the phased decision.

4. Business units

Generally, it is easier to manage multi-site and multi-business unit implementations in a phased manner. Except for the scenario involving a hub site with satellite or regional sites dependent on the hub, it may be easier to go big bang for this full group of sites due to the interdependencies involved.

5. Expenditure

Phased implementations levy:

  • Additional external costs
  • Additional internal costs
  • Additional costs for temporary interfaces

6. Risk

Generally, big bang implementations are much riskier than phased implementations.

  • It’s more difficult to revert to the old system if everything goes wrong.
  • There’s a higher risk of serious damage to the business.
  • Full end-to-end testing is much more difficult to achieve
  • A big bang go-live places a huge strain on all parts of the organization

If you’re interested in implementing an ERP system and want a consultation, contact us or email us at sales@bistasolutions.com

TTC (Task to Complete) Functionality in Odoo

Bista Solutions has developed TTC (Task to Complete) feature for Service based customer.

Generally this Feature helps project manager for adequate project planning and controlling. 

Let us discuss in detail:

Project-Task Management: Project management in Odoo includes the terminology for creating project and then subdividing them into tasks. Each task has its own start date, end date, deadline and planned hours (initial planned hours); based on these parameters we can plan our project schedule, however, the deadline, start date, end date and planned hours are not interrelated to each other. As a result, if we make changes in the start date, or deadline it doesn’t get reflected to other field.

TTC-Task to complete: TTC terminology is used to calculate the start date for the respected task.

The date for the TTC is calculated as per the planned hours and deadline mentioned. The computation for the TTC Date will consider deadline as end date for the task, and will give us least start date for the respected task. Also, the computation for the TTC date would exclude weekends (Saturday and Sunday) and we will consider five days in a week with working hours as 8hrs/day.

Odoo task management

The TTC computation will be based on two parameters for the task, namely the deadline and initially planned hours.

As we can see in the above screen shot, our deadline, start date TTC and our initial planned are related to each other, we have start date TTC as 08/13/2015(Thursday), Deadline as 08/17/2015(Monday); so we need to compute our planned hours based on these parameters. In this scenario, we are having weekend hours excluded from the planned hours, so we have only three working days including the deadline date; so these would be 3*8 hours=24 hours

Computations of TTC When We have Dependencies OF Task (Chain of Task):

In the scenario where we have task interrelated with each other, we would compute start date TTC value based upon the parent task or predecessor tasks. In such case, we would find the maximum Deadline for our predecessor tasks and that would reflect as TTC for our Current Task.

To view the functionality for adding predecessor task and successor task for the respected task, we need to check the check box named as “Compute earliest start date”, when we make these check box “True” , it will compute our start date TTC based upon the task we select in our predecessor task. As a result, these would form an iterative graph for the computation of the TTC.

 

Task-Managament

 

The change in the start date TTC will again reflect the change in planned hours based on given deadline for the task.

Note: When we compute start date TTC based upon the maximum deadline for my predecessor task; it does not make change in the deadline value, we just update our planned hours based on the deadline and TTC date computed.

 

As we can see in the screen shot above, we have check box “Compute earliest start date” and we will compute for TTC based upon the maximum deadline for my ‘n’ numbers of predecessor task.

For more information on this module or to learn about project management in Odoo, kindly email us at sales@bistasolutions.com

Bista Solutions Certified for Avalara’s Sales Tax Automation Solution

As a result of this partnership, customers of Odoo now have access to AvaTax™, Avalara’s cloud-based solution, to automatically calculate the final sales tax amount on every invoice. This eliminates the tedious work and complexity of calculating taxes across multiple jurisdictions and helps businesses focus on their core offering.

Avalara Partnership

Avalara, Inc., a leading provider of cloud-based software delivering compliance solutions related to sales tax, VAT and other transactional taxes, today announced Bista Solutions Inc., a leading provider of ERP, BI and Big Data solutions, has joined Avalara’s community of certified solution partners. Avalara’s solution partners are software publishers that integrate Avalara’s software as a service (SaaS) offering for sales tax management directly into their own applications.

As a result of this partnership, customers of Odoo now have access to AvaTax™, Avalara’s cloud-based solution, to automatically calculate the final sales tax amount on every invoice. This eliminates the tedious work and complexity of calculating taxes across multiple jurisdictions and helps businesses focus on their core offering.

“We pride ourselves in understanding the business needs of our clients and providing the right solutions to help them achieve maximum ROI,” said Faisal Basar, Chief Technology Officer for Bista Solutions Inc. “Our integration with Avalara will allow Odoo users to easily manage and remain up-to-date on increasingly complicated tax regulations.”

Pascal Van Dooren, Chief Revenue Officer at Avalara, said, “This partnership allows Avalara to provide its comprehensive solutions to Odoo customers in a fast, easy and cost effective way. In today’s electronic world, it just doesn’t make sense to manually manage sales tax. We’re pleased to welcome Bista Solutions into our community.”

Read Full Story here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/10/prweb13050754.htm

 

If you are looking to integrate Avalara with Odoo, you can contact us using our contact form or at +1 (404) 631-6219.

Difference between Self Service BI vs. Traditional BI Solutions

Self-Service BI vs. Traditional BI

The facilities within the BI environment enable BI users to become more self-reliant and less dependent on the IT organization. These facilities focus on four main objectives: easier access to source data for reporting and analysis, easier and improved support for data analysis features, faster deployment options such as appliances and cloud computing, and simpler, customizable, and collaborative end-user interfaces.

Traditional-BI
Short comes of Traditional BI Tools

  1. Technology is around 20 years old.
  2. The architecture was based on hardware limitations like limited memory, and CPU which was very scary when Architecture for Traditional BI was designed.
  3. Traditional BI Tools are based on Aggregations, Filters & Disk Space access, so the inherent problem with these BI Tools is very old Architecture which results in a very complex set of technologies to support a very old Architecture.
  4. The Problem with Traditional systems is that they cannot exploit In-Memory, Multi-Thread, or Multi-Core computing.
  5. Dimensions are decided at the time of designing the View, structure.
  6. Has a pre-defined view of the data.
  7. Data is aggregated even before the data is viewed by the Business User, rather than when the question is raised.

Business Intelligences tool

Power of Self-Service:

  1. In-memory is useful when used with Advance Technologies like using Memory instead of Disk for any operation.
  2. Associative Search: Operations like aggregation, Summing total are performed on the fly.
  3. Productivity: Self-service BI tools increase productivity by decreasing longer turnaround times often found when there is a need to go through multiple business departments such as IT operations.
  4. Flexibility: Each end user may be asking different questions, and looking for different answers. With flexible in-memory acceleration, users are able to create reports and answer questions for themselves, rather than having an IT department create reports for each question/user.
  5. Scalability: BI tools are not just for the big players in business anymore. Using self-service options, BI becomes more affordable and available for smaller companies. IBM, reviewing the rise of personal, mobile, and social BI, added “BI software has historically been the domain of larger enterprises – mainly due to skill, time and cost required to implement, but today it’s being used by businesses of all sizes.”
  6. Predictability: Predictive analytics is playing a pivotal role in business operations today. The ability to perform real-time “what-if” analyses throughout a workday creates a self-sufficient, informed workforce.

Conclusion: Can both Self-Service vs. Conventional BI co-exist?

Many enterprises have invested a large amount in Traditional BI, it will be difficult to rip off and replace, which will give no value to their investments. Ideally, they could both co-exist so let’s take an example where a Company has invested a lot in Data-warehouses and IT Infrastructure or maybe a data management layer then tools like Tableau can sit on top of the data management layer and help in Analysing and Visualisation of data in the best possible way as compared to Conventional BI.

If you’d like to implement BI for your business, give us a call at +1 (858) 401-2332 or reach us using our contact form.

Project Management Software

Project Management Software

Unlocking the Secret to the Best Project Management Software: 

“Balancing Time, Cost, and Quality in One Comprehensive Project Management Software Package”

 

In today’s fast-paced business world, efficient project management is crucial for success. Finding the right project management software that balances time, cost, and quality can be challenging. We aim to unlock the secret to the best project management software that offers a comprehensive package to streamline your business operations.

 

Key Features Your Business Needs in Project Management Software

Task Management Capabilities:

  1. Ability to create and assign tasks to team members.
  2. Option to set deadlines, priority levels, and reminders for tasks.
  3. Easy tracking of task status and progress.

Project Views:

  1. Dashboard view for high-level project overview.
  2. Gantt chart view for timeline.
  3. Calendar view to keep track of project events and deadlines.

Collaboration Features:

  1. Team communication and chat function.
  2. Document sharing and version control.
  3. Task comments and mentions to keep team members updated.

Project Reports:

  1. Customizable reports that provide an overview of project health.
  2. Progress reports tracking task completion.
  3. Budget and expense reports to monitor project costs.

Time Tracking:

  1. Ability to track time spent on tasks and projects.
  2. Automatic time tracking.
  3. Integration with invoicing and billing functions.

Third-Party Integration:

  1. Integration with other CRM, ERP, and Accounting.
  2. Integration with communication tools such as Slack or Microsoft Teams.
  3. Integration with file-sharing tools such as Google Drive or Dropbox.

Mobile Access:

  1. Ability to access the software on mobile devices.
  2. The mobile app is available for iOS and Android devices.
  3. Mobile-responsive design for easy to use on different device types.

Ready-to-Use Templates:

  1. Project templates to help with project setup.
  2. Task templates to make task creation easier.
  3. Report templates to speed up reporting and tracking.

Invoice Generation:

  1. Ability to generate and send invoices directly from the software.
  2. Integration with accounting software to simplify invoicing and billing.
  3. Automatic billing and invoicing to save time and reduce errors.

Overall, these Key features of project management software are important for any business that wants to streamline its project management processes, increase efficiency, and ensure successful project completion.

Odoo: The Top Choice for Project Management Software

You must have realized after analyzing the features of different project management software that only the best project management software can provide a comprehensive collection of capabilities that can really make or break a project’s success. Odoo is a comprehensive business management software that includes project management features.  Some of the Best project management features offered by Odoo are: 

Modular Approach: Odoo’s project management module is designed to work seamlessly with other modules in the ERP system, such as accounting, inventory, and sales. This means businesses can easily manage all aspects of their projects in one system.

Customizable Workflow: Odoo offers a customizable workflow for project management that allows businesses to define their project stages and automate tasks, streamlining project processes. This means that businesses can adapt the software to their specific needs, rather than being forced to work within a rigid framework.

Kanban View: Odoo project management module offers a unique Kanban view that allows users to visualize and manage their tasks more intuitively. The Kanban view displays tasks in a drag-and-drop format, making it easy to move tasks between different stages of completion.

Task Dependencies: Odoo project management module offers task dependencies, which means businesses can set up tasks that depend on other tasks being completed first. This ensures that tasks are completed in the right order and helps businesses avoid delays.

Resource Planning: Odoo project management module offers resource planning capabilities, which means businesses can allocate resources to different tasks and projects. This helps businesses manage their resources more efficiently.

Timesheets: Odoo project management module offers a timesheet feature that allows users to track the time spent on each task. This feature is integrated with the accounting module, which means businesses can easily generate invoices based on the time spent on each project.

Project Templates: Odoo’s project management module offers project templates, which means businesses can easily set up new projects based on predefined templates. This saves time and ensures that all projects are set up consistently.

Project Forecasting: Odoo project management module offers project forecasting capabilities, which means businesses can estimate the cost and time required for each project. This helps businesses make better decisions about which projects to take on and how to assign their resources.

Gantt Charts: With Odoo’s Gantt chart feature, you can visualize the timeline of your project and track the progress of each task in a graphical format. This helps you to identify dependencies and optimize the project schedule.

Budget Management: Odoo’s Budget Management feature allows you to set and track project budgets. You can customize the budget fields and workflows to fit your specific needs.

Why Bista is the best choice for implementing project management software?

Consulting Expertise: Our team of expert consultants provides comprehensive guidance and support throughout the implementation process.

Award-Winning Odoo Gold Partner: Consistently recognized as the Best Odoo Gold Partner, with multiple awards in years 2022, 2021, 2018, 2016 & 2014.

Custom App Development Experts: Successfully developed over 200 custom apps, tailored to meet the unique needs of various businesses.

Experienced Odoo Developers: A team of over 250 experts.

Proven Track Record: Over 350 successful implementations delivered.

Trusted Partner: Recognized as the Most trusted Odoo Gold Partner by numerous clients, thanks to our commitment to quality solutions.

Global Presence: We are present in 10+ countries.

24/7 Support: Our team is available 24/7 to provide support and assistance to clients.

Looking for the perfect project management tool for your business? Don’t just invest in any tool without considering your unique project and team needs. Let us help you assess the features of the best project management software and choose the one that complements your requirements aptly. Deploy the right features to get the most out of your project management tool with Bista solutions. Contact us today!