A recent client engagement saw us working a company who was integrating various systems directly with their ERP system, Sage X3. Everything would be humming along nicely – until reporting would run and the entire ERP and the supporting systems were reduced to a snail’s pace.
The Problem: Reporting at the cost of business operations
Reporting directly from their main business system resulted in crippling the client’s operations:
- The customer-portal crawled to a halt;
- The accounts payable department could not process payments efficiently;
- The backlog of sales and other integration tasks would spiral out of control;
- Transactions would pile up for processing.
Simple day-to-day operations felt sluggish under the weight of necessary reporting queries.
The natural instinct? “Buy more hardware!” or“Run the reports after hours.”
Thankfully not the case.
More powerful hardware or dedicating personnel to after-hours work was not the real fix – smarter architecture was.
