DEIDRE FRYER A continuous, real-time flow of data makes production and business processes visible, predictable and controllable
South African enterprise resource planning (ERP) multinational Syspro’s Version 8 offers artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of things (IoT) platforms and analytics as part of its capabilities to allow for near real-time monitoring of all aspects of a business.
Syspro Africa product manager Deidre Fryer says that the purpose of the capabilities, which can be deployed as cloud services, Web-based or on-premise, is to transform the system of record into a system of engagement. The company focuses on the manufacturing and distribution sectors.
“Users can get real-time insights into business operations as the numbers come in and keep a pulse on the organisation. Significant effort has been put into improving intuitiveness and surfacing business insights that improve productivity, promote collaboration and encourage workplace autonomy,” she highlights.
Specifically, the company has applied AI to the user interface, which enables it to present potentially useful information to users. The interface is integrated with other processes and information flows, and is personalised according to the role a person fulfils and personal preferences.
“AI and predictive analytics are used to reveal trends that provide actionable insight. As with social media, popular trending information can be useful to an organisation to understand what entities are trending within the data and so that it can provide the user with a view of data that may not have ordinarily been identified.
“Vast quantities of structured and unstructured data are aggregated and processed to reveal trends and offer recommendations on actions to be taken,” she says.
Further, the Syspro Harmony capability provides a social media-type user interface and improves collaboration within the network of the organisation.
“It provides the equivalent of a newsfeed or notifications and auto-populates conversations with relevant information, based on key ERP components the user chooses to ‘follow’. The system intelligently pushes information to the user, alerting the user of activities related to those components,” says Fryer.
A Web version of Syspro, Avanti, is available on any device and any platform anywhere. It is designed to run Syspro’s applications in a private or public cloud, and can also be deployed on-premise.
The Avanti interface is designed to be intuitive, flexible and simple to use. It uses the latest Hypertext Markup Language 5 technologies and delivers an uncluttered, simple interface, akin to browsing the Web, she says.
“This innovation surfaces insights that drive business behaviour by showing the most critical parts of customer accounts in one snapshot. Predictive searching anticipates queries and issues ahead of time and allows for one screen with actionable insights to be presented.”
Additionally, role-based workbenches provide users with digital tools and information needed to perform their roles efficiently and effectively.
The Business Insights capability provides instant insight into status, key performance indicators, and measures and actions required to improve business behaviour.
“A continuous, real-time flow of data provides information and actionable insights that make production and business processes increasingly visible, predictable and controllable.”
The open reporting application interface of the Syspro Version 8 improves collaboration by providing document generation and distribution for external systems and integrated systems, simultaneously reducing duplication.
“Syspro 8 is designed to provide and support the latest business and manufacturing technologies, from multicurrency accounts for financial use to IoT for manufacturing and AI to provide deeper insight into every transaction,” Fryer concludes.