Why an embedded audit trail holds the key to BI success

Business intelligence (BI) has promised for many years to resolve, once and for all, the information problems that plague organisations. However, almost two decades on since the introduction of packaged BI solutions, finance departments are spending upwards of 70% of their time producing management accounts and only 30% analysing the information. Key reports are still derived through the manipulation of spreadsheets that then require lengthy reconciliation back to the ERP system to ensure their veracity.

The ‘Correct Answer'

The principal reason that finance departments put so much manual effort into producing their reports is that they are required to operate in a particular way and these reports represent the ‘Correct Answer'.  For example: at the highest level, the consolidated Profit or Loss figure for the company will represent the aggregation of every single transaction from the ERP system in that accounting period that has either a revenue or an expense implication. Thereafter, any piece of analysis which derives from those same transactions, whether it purports to be a sales report, an item analysis or an expense report analysed across cost centres should be capable of reconciliation back to that ‘Correct Answer'.

The audit trail is fundamental to the success of any BI project

A transaction goes through many transformations from the point at which it first enters the ERP system to when it ends up as a component part of a number on a report.  This journey through the sub-ledgers, or the audit trail as it is known when examined from a historical perspective, needs to be understood by the BI system for any project to succeed.

Whilst the audit trail is not obvious, data tables are. Most ERP systems are rich in data tables, typically with ...