A specialist form of business intelligence

Business intelligence

Business intelligence mainly refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by associated costs and incomes....

, accounting intelligence is the general name for the set of technologies used to extract , analyse and present information from accounting and ERP

Enterprise resource planning

Enterprise resource planning systems integrate internal and external management information across an entire organization, embracing finance/accounting, manufacturing, sales and service, customer relationship management, etc. ERP systems automate this activity with an integrated software application...

 applications such as JD Edwards, Oracle E-Business Suite or SAP

SAP AG

SAP AG is a German software corporation that makes enterprise software to manage business operations and customer relations. Headquartered in Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg, with regional offices around the world, SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software...

.

Accounting intelligence compared to business intelligence

Accounting intelligence differs from standard business intelligence in some key ways:-

• Accounting intelligence applications are specifically designed to analyse data from specific ERP systems. Business intelligence is a more general tool that can be applied to any application that uses a database.

• In an accounting intelligence, there is no staggering of data in a data warehouse
  Data warehouse
  In computing, a data warehouse is a database used for reporting and analysis. The data stored in the warehouse is uploaded from the operational systems. The data may pass through an operational data store for additional operations before it is used in the DW for reporting.A data warehouse...
  
   or OLAP
  OLAP
  In computing, online analytical processing, or OLAP , is an approach to swiftly answer multi-dimensional analytical queries. OLAP is part of the broader category of business intelligence, which also encompasses relational reporting and data mining...
  
   cube. Information is extracted directly from the ERP at the time that a query is run. A Business Intelligence application typically involves a batch process to extract data from the live database, and store it in a denormalised form. This process is normally referred to as extract, transform, load
  Extract, transform, load
  Extract, transform and load is a process in database usage and especially in data warehousing that involves:* Extracting data from outside sources* Transforming it to fit operational needs...
  
  , or ETL. Typically around 75-80% of the development cost expended when creating a business intelligence system, goes into the design and development of the ETL process.

• Accounting intelligence applications leverage the structure of the chart of accounts, so for example dimension structures can be automatically created based on business unit hierarchies, level of detail or account category codes. Time-based functions specifically allow for YTD, rolling average and year on year analysis.

• Querying an accounts database directly means the information returned is up to the second real time data. Discrepancies in the accounts can be corrected and a fresh trial balance viewed immediately. Some aggregation in accounting systems is performed by the ERP when new journal entries are posted, so there is no need to use a cube to aggregate every journal entry from scratch.

• As there is no ETL process, accounting intelligence solutions are typically much simpler to install, implement and maintain than traditional business intelligence solutions. Inquiries and reports typically created by end users rather than software developers.

• Accounting intelligence solutions can make SOX
  Sarbanes-Oxley Act
  The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 , also known as the 'Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act' and 'Corporate and Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act' and commonly called Sarbanes–Oxley, Sarbox or SOX, is a United States federal law enacted on July 30, 2002, which...
  
  compliance easier for many companies, as there is no need to separately audit both the accounts themselves and a separate data warehouse and ETL process.

Key advantages compared to business intelligence

• Accounting intelligence system ensures that an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is the single source of all operational reporting and analysis, and that it can be relied upon to give accurate and secure information.

• Out of the box solution, much quicker to implement than a standard BI solution.

• As there is no data warehouse, there is no need to separately audit the staged data.

• Data returned is real time, live data, not a snapshot.

Key disadvantages compared to business intelligence

• Can only be applied to specific ERP systems, such as JDE, Oracle E-Business and SAP.

• Can not integrate data from outside the ERP system.