Effective business decision-making in this fast-paced digital economy depends on accelerated access to information that is accurate and insightful. Yet, data and resource siloes inhibit the delivery of the accurate and insightful knowledge on which decisions are made.
Many organizations rely on traditional enterprise resource planning systems (ERPs) to coordinate information across business applications. In theory, this provides senior leaders with access to data across financial, procurement, and human capital management systems.
However, legacy ERP systems represent an ongoing series of adaptations to accommodate new resource management pools as the organization evolves. Instead of one smooth-functioning nervous system, it’s more awkward with a variety of bolted on appendages that struggle to communicate in the same language; new ERP modules are added, whether to accommodate the business’s growth and scale, or from one ERP vendor acquiring another.
Instead of seamless integrations, organizations often rely on different code bases and data management schema. This creates data-access disparities across the enterprise – some individuals may have rapid access, others less so. Also, data residing in different databases can distort what executives believe is a single source of truth.
Managing resources
It’s helpful to break out of the legacy ERP mode of thinking. To support decision-making in the digital economy, organizations should focus on how to manage disparate resource pools, critical internal systems such as those for human resources and finance, as well as connected systems such as ERP, customer relationship management, and operations.
Instead of constantly tweaking databases, data lakes, and other data storage types, think instead of creating a data framework that allows decision-makers to ingest, manage, and deploy data — and to be confident in its integrity.
Using a robust cloud service and APIs, it’s possible to architect an intelligent data core that ensures a connected view of data — one that is based on applications designed for interoperability and coexistence with third-party applications and sources.
A management cloud platform builds on a trusted data infrastructure to ensure a unified source of truth. That enables fast access to trusted data, less time assessing data accuracy, faster delivery of insights, and enhanced business intelligence. Utilizing an enterprise management cloud simplifies the task of adhering to a unified security and governance model.
Many ERPs require data to be replicated to a business intelligence tool, which can adversely impact timely decision-making. A better approach is to integrate analytics with a system of record to enable real-time reporting and ad hoc analysis on live transactions.
Cloud-based resource management systems can streamline data aggregation and leverage automation and AI capabilities to drive intelligent data insights. Analytics teams can utilize the enterprise management cloud platform to easily ingest data from other sources and organize it into a single data catalog. Secure, self-service access to data empowers business leaders to seamlessly conduct analysis.
Turn insights into action
Workday connects applications in a unified data model and blends contextual, real-time, and multisource data with artificial intelligence so decision-makers can manage their business with confidence. The Workday Enterprise Management Cloud delivers the power to adapt so you can evolve your data and processes to solve the most pressing challenges — and thrive in times of extreme change.
Discover how to better enable business decision-making in the digital economy. Visit Workday.