Still Using ERP for Business Intelligence? There’s a Better Way

Many distributors still struggle to extract timely, meaningful business intelligence from ERP systems. By the time they’ve gone through the time-consuming process of scouring data to prepare a report or hire a consultant to produce one, the insights are already obsolete and irrelevant. In an era of increased global competition and shrinking margins, distributors need data at the speed of now.

Stories from three of our customers, Airmatic, Southern Marketing Affiliates and Callico Distributors, illustrate how they’re seeing success with real-time BI dashboards and reports.

The Limitations of Using An ERP for Business Intelligence

Airmatic, a distributor of industrial and construction supply products, struggled to extract actionable insights from its ERP. The company’s sales and operations teams often found themselves bogged down by time-consuming manual processes, delaying critical decisions and hindering their ability to swiftly respond to market trends​. 

“We needed a better idea of why we were losing business with certain companies,” said Dawn Witte, Director of Marketing and Customer Service. “The built-in report writer in our ERP system wasn’t cutting it.” 

Similarly, Southern Marketing Affiliates (SMA), which specializes in sales of agricultural parts, struggled to provide their territory managers with insights into localized sales activity. They were unable to see which customer locations generated sales in the prior month or past year, so they missed out on easy opportunities to anticipate reorders based on buying cycle insights.

“We wanted to be able to provide ship-to-level details of how our territory managers’ customers were performing so they could start taking ownership of their properties,” said Luke Gazaway, National Sales Director of SMA. 

Callico Distributors, a family-owned wholesale distribution company selling janitorial, food service and packaging supplies, also lacked visibility into the purchasing behavior of its customers. To address this gap, they routinely hired a data analyst to produce reports for them. 

“We didn’t have any insight into purchasing behavior, and we couldn’t report on accounts receivable or accounts payable,” said Cole Callahan, Director of Strategic Initiatives for Callico Distributors. “We didn’t have any executive reports. We were just blind in a lot of ways. And then it was so tough to get a report once we decided something might be worth looking into.” 

Relying solely on an ERP system for BI comes with inherent drawbacks:

A Complex Learning Curve

ERP tools require extensive training, making data extraction a challenge for many team members. This reliance slows decision-making and tends to create over-dependency on a few skilled employees​​.

Lack of System Integration

ERP systems often operate in silos, limiting access to data across sales, marketing, and customer service. Without integration with a CRM, sales teams miss out on valuable customer insights and opportunities for personalization​​.

Inability To Automate Workflows

Critical workflows, such as reorder alerts or follow-ups, aren’t automated within most ERPs. This leads to inconsistencies in customer engagement, missed sales opportunities, and can even impact customer experience and satisfaction rates​​.

Why Business Intelligence Is Crucial to Distribution Sales

Distributors rely on data-driven insights to thrive. BI tools enhance decision-making across several areas:

• Historical sales activity – Accessing trends over time helps predict future sales opportunities.
• Territory-specific insights: Tracking sales by territories allows sales leaders to evaluate performance by region and develop more localized strategies​.
• Timely reordering data: Predicting customer reorder cycles ensures no opportunity is missed​.
• Emerging trends and popular products: Knowing what’s trending helps distributors stay on top, or even ahead, of demand.
• Product pairings for cross-selling and upselling: The best business intelligence solutions make it easy to see which products are typically purchased together, maximizing revenue from every sale​​.

It’s also a vital resource for sales leaders, giving them insight into each rep’s performance with clear metrics and the ability to review lost and won deals for more meaningful coaching and professional development. 

Business intelligence dashboards allow a company’s leadership to see year-to-date sales against targets so they know how close they are to reaching goals. They can see top-performing products and evaluate inventory to adjust operations and sales strategies. They can even evaluate vendor performance and leverage this data in negotiations for better rates. 

What Options Do Distributors Have for BI Tools?

Many distributors initially rely on tools within their ERP systems for business intelligence until they realize their shortcomings and blind spots. At that point, they may look to other solutions or even hire someone to help them make sense of their data. Here are a few common solutions that might be familiar to your team. 

Epicor Data Analytics

While Epicor Data Analytics offers reporting capabilities and dashboards, some users say its learning curve makes it challenging. It’s primarily used for financial and accounting data and is less common among sales teams.

Although Epicor does not disclose pricing details, there are potential cost considerations because of its subscription model. 

Epicor Report Studio

While Epicor Report Studio allows Prophet 21 users to create reports, it has a similarly steep learning curve as Data Analytics. Users often describe it as overly complex for everyday tasks​. Though there are about 200 reports out of the box, they don’t always meet the needs of the customer and modifying the canned reports is complex as well. They don’t necessarily provide insights about the data, leaving users to draw their own conclusions. 

In environments with large data sets, users may also notice the system is slow to generate reports. And distributors who need highly customized reports may not be able to produce them without advanced technical skills. 

One question within the EpiUsers forum illustrates what’s required to add purchase order numbers:

Integrating it with other systems can be challenging, requiring additional IT resources. 

Microsoft PowerBI

To create customized business intelligence reports and dashboards, some companies use 

Microsoft PowerBI. However, the system’s extensive features require significant time and effort to master, especially for users without experience in data analytics or data analysis expressions (DAX), the software’s language. Typically, a company will have just one or two power users, which puts a lot of the workload on a few people and makes it difficult to maintain consistent reporting when someone leaves the organization. 

Some users mention PowerBI does not allow them to create highly customized data visualizations, and they are limited by standard chart types. 

It can also be difficult to integrate the system with any platform that isn’t within the Microsoft ecosystem, including most ERPs. 

Hiring a Data Analyst

To address reporting gaps, some distributors like Callico hire data analysts, a costly and inefficient solution. By the time they generate reports, the data and takeaways are often outdated, leading to missed opportunities​​.  

This was true for Callico, which had salespeople frequently searching for up-to-date information about which accounts were most profitable, which products had the highest demand, and which customers were at risk of churning. 

How White Cup BI Transformed These Distribution Companies

Airmatic, SMA and Callico all addressed reporting challenges by implementing White Cup BI. They immediately gained access to pre-built dashboards and customizable reports, eliminating reliance on IT support.

With real-time data, they could identify trends earlier, enabling quicker responses to market demands​​. They could use automated workflows, alerting sales reps to opportunities and customer interactions, improving retention and engagement​​. 

White Cup BI allows the Airmatic team to merge data from multiple sources, such as combining ship-to and bill-to files, to create more meaningful reports. Instead of hiring a data analyst to export data and build reports from their system, they can focus on growing their team in more strategic ways.

“The sales team can really easily get at the reports they need without having to access the ERP,” Witte said. 

SMA has experienced significant growth since implementing White Cup more than a decade ago. With more detailed dashboards and reports on territory-level sales, top products, and suppliers, they can see which product lines to expand and which items to recommend. 

“You can go by product group and supplier to see how many customers actually adopted that product group; was our fill rate as good as we thought?” Gazaway said. “Having the ability to put all that into one report and see it side by side is valuable.” 

At Callico, the sales team frequently uses customer scorecards in White Cup BI to prepare for meetings. They can easily see which customers have open orders, late shipments and past-due invoices before they meet with them so they can have more productive conversations. 

The Advantages of CRM for Distributors With Built-In BI

White Cup CRM comes with built-in business intelligence that includes more than 1,200 pre-built reports and the ability to build your own, giving every team member immediate access to insights on customers, products and vendors. 

Because it’s already integrated with your ERP, there’s no need to export data from multiple systems and spend time compiling it into one consolidated report. 

Another important distinction is White Cup BI’s capability to offer insights instead of just compiling reports for someone to analyze. Reports and dashboards are built in a way that makes your next best actions immediately clear, whether it’s recommending products from a certain category or showing you which products in your inventory are overstocked (and who is most likely to purchase them.) 

Sales reps can use customer scorecards to ensure they always have the most up-to-date details on each account. AI-powered recommendations help them suggest related products to drive more upselling and cross-selling. They can use automated email workflows to follow up with them and receive notifications when customers open emails or take other actions indicating interest. 

With eCommerce integration, they can even see which products customers recently ordered or added to their cart on your website. 

Sales leaders can use BI dashboards to coach their team, helping them identify trends and have more meaningful conversations about opportunities. 

Your executive team can instantly see how your company is performing against your goals and optimize inventory based on product performance, vendor metrics, and more. 

White Cup CRM + BI helps your team surpass sales targets with deeper insight into every customer and protect your profit margins with full transparency into every deal. 

Schedule a consultation to learn how we can help you win more deals with better business intelligence.