The ERP Dashboard You Can't Afford Not To Have

With ERP systems handling everything from finance to customer relationships, the dashboard is where it all comes together — or falls apart. A well-designed dashboard should prevent data silos, improve accuracy, and give you the insights you need, exactly when you need them.

But even though ERP solutions have been around since the 1960s, the dashboards within still have some catching up to do. In this article, we explore what makes an ERP dashboard truly effective and, notably, why Mosaic’s dashboards are unique.

What are ERP Dashboards?

ERP dashboards pull essential data, metrics, and key performance indicators (KPIs) from your business systems and present them in a clear, easy-to-understand format. With real-time updates, ERP dashboards offer valuable insights into your operations, empowering you to make smarter, more informed business decisions.

3 Key Features To Look For in an ERP Dashboard

An ERP dashboard should provide a clear view of your business’s performance and financial health, and it needs to be simple enough for everyone in the company to use without getting tangled in complexity.

However, most ERP system dashboards fall short. So, let’s dive into the essential features your ERP dashboard should include.

1. Flexibility

An ERP dashboard should do more than pull data from different parts of your business — it should let you dig into the details and see what’s really happening. Beyond that, the real value comes from turning that data into actionable insights. Ideally, your dashboard should simplify reporting, making it easy to generate reports directly from the data.

Most importantly, your dashboard needs to keep up as your company grows. You should be able to easily add new metrics or adjust existing ones as your needs change.

2. Customization and Control

You’re likely one of many stakeholders using the ERP dashboard. Each department needs different insights, so your dashboard should be flexible enough to show relevant data to every team.

For example, you might focus on financial metrics like total revenue, cash inflows and outflows, the amount of invoices, collections, overdue invoices, cash balance, cash runway, and expenses by department, revenue, and gross margin.

Meanwhile, sales might be more interested in performance indicators such as the average sales cycle, deal conversion rates, and annual contract value (ACV).

No matter who’s using the dashboard, they should be able to find the insights they need to drive business decisions. At the same time, the dashboard should include control features to make sure only authorized individuals have access, keeping sensitive information secure.

3. Data Visualization

No matter how well your ERP dashboard reports financial information, it falls short if it can’t effectively visualize that data.

In an ideal world, your ERP dashboard design would update in real-time and present data visually through charts, graphs, and tables, allowing you to interpret the information and make informed decisions quickly.

CFOs across the industry understand the critical role of data visualization. According to a report by the CFO Alliance, 44% of mid-market CFOs — the highest percentage — identified data visualization and business intelligence as their top tech priorities for 2024. And this aligns with broader industry research. As PwC highlights, data visualization is a top trend that every CFO should prioritize:

The benefits don’t stop there. Data visualization allows business leaders across the company to access live, real-time performance data, fostering greater transparency and accountability.

“It allows for continuous monitoring and proactive solutions by indicating problems before they inhibit the go-to-market aspect of the business,” added Becker.

However, finding a dashboard that can deliver on all these fronts isn’t easy — unless you use a strategic finance platform like Mosaic.

Why You Need More Than Just an ERP Dashboard

Finance is changing fast, and a lot is expected of you. An ERP dashboard should simplify your job, so you don’t have to dig through endless numbers to find what you need.

This means your dashboard has to do many things: give you a clear, detailed view of how customer behavior and needs are shifting, arm you with the financial insights to make informed decisions, improve financial reports, and offer a unified view of risk across the organization — all in real-time.

However, even when companies start with a well-thought-out ERP implementation, they might not foresee all the issues they’ll face due to limitations in their dashboards. And the gaps are even more apparent if you rely on a patchwork of outdated, disconnected tools that create data silos and block effective collaboration.

That’s where a solid ERP dashboard with strong collaboration and data visualization features,  like what Mosaic offers, can make all the difference.

Mosaic Takes Your ERP Dashboard to the Next Level

Most finance dashboards, even those built with robust business intelligence (BI) tools, need to catch up when it comes to collaboration. They might show you the numbers but often fail to bring other business stakeholders into the financial conversation.

Mosaic’s canvas changes that. It’s a dynamic, living document that allows you to create, track, and convey the right financial information with the right people at the right time.

And Mosaic canvases go beyond the typical data visualization dashboards found in most financial reporting software. Mosaic integrates with all your business systems — ERP software, HRIS, CRM system, billing, data warehouse, and flat file upload — to pull all your important data together in a single place. And with Metric Builder, you can create additional custom metrics.

These integrations automate metric calculations, letting anyone in the business drag-and-drop charts and graphs, update scenario planning to see real-time financial impacts, and add context to the numbers with text comments. And the best part? Data collection is automated (and updated) in real-time, so you’ll always have the most current information.

Plus, with the canvas, you have an interactive workspace that fosters collaboration between finance and the rest of the business. And Mosaic enables you to create financial dashboards to meet pretty much every stakeholder’s needs — from a sales dashboard and cash flow analysis dashboard to executive dashboards and CFO dashboard.

A truly collaborative, modern finance function tells the story behind the numbers clearly and effectively to anyone in the company. That clarity is essential for strategic decision-making.

With Mosaic, you can quickly spot patterns and trends in large data sets and, more importantly, communicate complex data and insights in a way that’s easy for everyone in the company to understand and act on. Because with the right knowledge, staying ahead of the competition will be much easier.

Curious to see Mosaic dashboards in action? Get a personalized demo.