ERP Reporting, Analytics & Business Intelligence Flashcards

What is an ERP exception report used for?

Answer: Highlighting records that fall outside defined thresholds or business rules requiring attention

Exception reports filter out normal records and surface only the anomalies — such as overdue invoices or inventory below reorder point — that require action.

In ERP financial reporting, what does variance analysis measure?

Answer: The difference between planned (budget/standard) and actual results to identify performance gaps

Variance analysis compares actual financial results against budgeted or standard costs to identify favorable or unfavorable deviations requiring investigation.

Which ERP report type is most useful for monitoring customer payment behavior?

Answer: Accounts Receivable aging report

An AR aging report categorizes outstanding customer invoices by time buckets (e.g., 0-30, 31-60, 61-90 days) to prioritize collection efforts.

What is a balanced scorecard in the context of ERP performance management?

Answer: A strategic framework that monitors performance across financial, customer, internal process, and learning perspectives

A balanced scorecard translates an organization's strategy into a set of KPIs across four perspectives: financial, customer, internal processes, and learning and growth.

In ERP systems, what does ad hoc reporting allow users to do?

Answer: Create custom, on-demand queries and reports without requiring IT intervention

Ad hoc reporting empowers business users to build and run their own custom reports on demand using self-service query tools.

What is the purpose of report bursting in an ERP system?

Answer: Automatically distributing a single report run as multiple segmented outputs to different recipients based on data filters

Report bursting splits one report run into personalized subsets and automatically distributes each to the appropriate recipient, such as regional managers receiving only their region's data.