Make Sense of Your ERP Data Using Power BI
July 29, 2025
ERP systems are great for collecting and storing data. They’re typically not-so-great at extracting trends, insights and analytics. For manufacturers who rely on an ERP to track operations, customer, and production, being able to extract and transform that raw data into actionable insights is the next level up.
If you’re looking for an easy solution, look to Power BI. Don’t scrap your current ERP if it’s working - use your ERP as your internal hub and source of truth. Use Power BI as an add-on to elevate your reporting capabilities.
What is Power BI?
Power BI is an intelligence and data visualization tool by Microsoft. To make it simple: it’s really good at taking bucketloads of raw data and transforming it into reports, models, and dashboards. You can compare multiple records and types of data against each other or drill down into hyper specific data.
If you want to get a taste for what Power BI can do, check out some of our case studies.
How Power BI Can Make Sense of Your ERP Data
The possibilities within Power BI are only as limited as what you want to see. For manufacturers, some of the cool stuff you can do with Power BI include…
- Tracking production, capacity and operations
- Actual production levels vs. targets
- Predict production capability for future projects
- Pinpoint cycle time by project type, manufacturing methods, materials, and more.
- Track current open vs. closed orders (and predict future flow based on pipeline)
- Procurement and supply chain
- Real-time stock by location
- Map supplier lead times
- Compare cost variances per supplier
- Explore spend analysis by category or part
- Carrier performance tracking and freight costs per unit or route
- Labor and resource management
- Identify operator efficiency - look at teams, shifts, and/or machines
- Explore overtime trends and make predictive analysis for future project needs
- Chart results and failure types for quality assurance
- Monitor equipment reliability metrics
This is in addition to high-level overviews. Look at all your key KPIs in one place & drill-down by location, shift, or team. You can also use the data charted in Power BI to set up custom alerts for threshold breaches.
Power BI transforms your ERP data from something functional into something actionable.
Make Sense of Your ERP Data Using Power BI
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Superior Consulting Services (SCS) is a Microsoft-centric technology firm providing innovative solutions that enable our clients to solve business problems. We offer full-scale data modeling, analytics and custom app development.