Enterprise Management System Provides Real-Time Business Intelligence

September 1, 2001

QualityQuotient

Adonix X3 can be customized to display information in a variety of visual formats, such as bar charts, pie charts and scatter diagrams.

The software enables companies to keep their inventories constantly updated as information is entered into the database.

Companies need to analyze sales, operations and finances to improve their efficiency and competitiveness. Because most traditional enterprise-management systems store business-intelligence data in a separate data warehouse and update it in batch mode, the most recent data is usually omitted from their analyses.

Adonix, www.adonix.com, has remedied this problem by integrating real-time business-intelligence tools into the latest version of its Adonix X3 suite of enterprise applications. "Small and midsize companies ($10 million to $500 million in sales) are particularly susceptible to changes in the market," said Bill Owens, business development manager at Adonix. "To respond promptly, they need business-intelligence tools that can give them an analysis of the immediate situation, not the situation as of a week or a month ago."

Adonix X3 business-intelligence tools draw data directly from working databases as it is entered, eliminating the lag of batch updates. The software enables companies to define an array of criteria:

Business metrics - performance measures, such as lost sales opportunities, order delivery and accuracy, revenues and profitability by customer and product, order-cycle time, and fill rates;
Events that trigger the capturing of information for statistical analysis - for example, receipt of a certain kind of order;
The rules and conditions for capturing information - for example, orders from specific customers or for certain products.

"With Adonix business-intelligence tools, a midsize company can easily add, modify or discard these criteria as business needs change or as managers discover better ways to analyze data," said Owens.

Information from sales, purchasing and production is automatically updated in accounts payable, accounts receivable and the general ledger as soon as it is posted.

System Can Be Customized

Adonix X3 displays information in a variety of formats customizable to the needs of individual users or departments. Choices include inquiry screens, hardcopy reports and visuals such as bar charts, pie charts and scatter diagrams. "There is no need to learn complicated report-creation software," said Owens. "An employee can click on the screen icon for one of the user-defined formats and view the data displayed exactly as he or she wants to see it."

The Adonix suite's business-intelligence tools provide the ability to store forecasts for comparison with actual data, for example, to evaluate a salesperson's performance or a customer's sales volume. Users can also drill down from summary information into supporting information and back again.

"Providing real-time business intelligence is an extension of Adonix's approach to complete information integration," said Owens. "In the same way, information coming from sales, purchasing and production is automatically updated in accounts payable, accounts receivable and the general ledger as soon as it is posted."

Adonix X3 is an all-new, highly functional system of integrated business applications with an advanced technical foundation. It is engineered to be easy to install, maintain and use. It is also easier to customize and extend than traditional systems, saving time, lowering costs and reducing implementation risks.

Adonix develops fully integrated, e-business-enabled manufacturing, distribution and financial software. Adonix supports more than 4,000 customer installations worldwide through a network of independent sales and service organizations.