As a small business, the need to be able to track specific changes that you make within your ERP solution is crucial to successfully identify and resolve any time critical issues within your business as soon as possible. Without this capability available in your business, you could find it extremely difficult to keep tabs on changes made within your ERP system.
So just why should you be using audit trails to track changes? This is where our blog article will help to provide you with some practical reasons as to why you should consider implementing audit trails in your business.
You can’t fix what you can’t find in your ERP system
Are you able to see what has been changed in your ERP system? If not, you really do need to be able to track changes in your ERP as it can make it much easier to be able to find and fix errors or to even spot any fraudulent activity. Granted some of these change errors are basic, such as the change of a customer address which will mean that you have sent out an invoice to the wrong address. A more serious change error could be a schema change to your ERP system that means that your whole business loses critical access. After these issues are raised, it is crucial to be able to resolve them straight away to mitigate the impact that it could be having on your business.
With an audit trail module in place, you can easily identify what changes have been made within your system. Furthermore, as a detective tool, Audit Trail simplifies the process for finding errors or being able to detect any fraudulent activity. With this capability in place, it gives you the opportunity to review before and after values which enables you to correct any issues once you have located them.
Implementing change tracking doesn’t need to slow your ERP system down
You will find that within your ERP system there is some sort of change or activity tracking feature included somewhere. Using this feature can be extremely useful, however the main issue with this is the fact that tracking features are designed for troubleshooting and not suitable for ongoing auditing, so may have a negative impact on your system by slowing it down.
This is also the case where features don’t give you the option of selective auditing. An example of this is when you are following changes made to customer data: address changes are important, their birthday less so, however most systems may by design force you to track all the changes made on the form which of course is going to impact on the speed of the system.
Through the use of an audit trail module you have access to numerous templates that allow you to only track the most commonly audited items within your system, without impacting on the system itself. Furthermore the audit trail will allow you to pick and choose what is tracked to the lowest security level enabling you to ensure that each report is only tracking the changes you want to include.
If you are wanting to integrate Audit Trails into your Dynamics GP or Dynamics NAV solution to transform the way you track changes in your business then please get in touch with our team of ERP experts who will be able to discuss your specific requirements.
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