Manufacturing data analytics for a single source of truth

Today, manufacturers face a challenging business climate. There is pessimism about the global demand for manufactured goods and the slow recovery of the economy due to covid-19. There are frustrations about political instabilities, shortage of skilled labor, and declining foreign trade. The concern for intensifying competition is rising as revenues and margins are shrinking, and there is pressure to invest in technology from security to manufacturing data analytics. During slow growth, manufacturers need to focus on efficiencies and strengthening customer relationships using data.

A single source of truth to become data-driven

Phocas BI software serves as a single source of truth to ensure everyone is in sync and working towards the same goal. Phocas allows manufacturers to aggregate and query data and then report in real-time to quickly reduce costs, identify opportunities, optimize sales and marketing strategies, and eliminate the need for gut-feel decisions. Phocas has nearly 20 years of experience helping manufacturers achieve success, much of that driven by providing an out-of-box solution that is easy to understand and use.

From day one with Phocas, users get tracking and reporting on essential KPIs and metrics specific to their role and industry. But users can also add custom measures, dimensions, dashboards, and scorecards to meet their business' unique needs.

Competitive advantages

Phocas offers several competitive advantages over other products on the market. They can be summarized as:

• Ease of use - No more waiting for IT, easily analyze data and create reports and dashboards;
• Scalable - Flexible solution that scales to meet your data, reporting and infrastructure needs;
• Performance - Process queries and reports quickly, instant access to data;
• Integration - Easily integrates to the solutions your company uses with pre-configured connectors.

Phocas integrates with hundreds of systems and solutions, including leading CRM and marketing tools and ERP systems such as Apparel 212, Epicor, Infor, Microsoft, MYOB, Oracle, Sage, SAP, and Syspro. Phocas’ in-house expertise is paired with leading international technology partners that deploy their best practices to help support, deliver, manage, and maintain Phocas software for customers globally. Phocas partners with technology businesses that also know the manufacturing sector intimately. Together with resellers, system integrators, referral partners, and other complementary software publishers, they help organizations find ways to sell better, buy, operate, and service.

"You don’t have to look very far to see how important data analytics has become to our world. We recognize that companies around the world are using our software to help them maximize efficiencies, reduce costs and respond to the global uncertainty,” says Deubler.

Phocas helps to foster growth

For instance, Monument Tools—one of the largest specialist hand tool manufacturers in Europe—had large amounts of data sitting in its ERP system and desperately wanted to draw insights from their data.

Using Phocas, Monument Tools can access all data from one location, run interactive reports, gain access to previously unavailable data, and reduce costs and save time. Monument believes that Phocas contributed to its three-year double-digit growth because, without the analysis function, they wouldn’t have known what customers to target.

“You don’t have to look very far to see how important data analytics has become to our world. We recognize that at Phocas, and companies around the world are using our software to help them maximize their efficiencies, reduce costs and respond to the global uncertainty,” says Jay Deubler, US Market President.

“We are working to prepare our technology to meet the future demands of our customers, which includes the convergence of business intelligence and finance.”

Phocas recently relaunched its Financial Statements solution, which brings active analysis, data drill down, and dashboarding to finance and management teams.

“This is a major initiative for Phocas. We are also looking at introducing Phocas into new markets, including the construction industry. Thanks to some significant partnerships, we are already building traction,” adds Jay.