In many companies, data is scattered between Excel, sales, finance, and production, which gives managers a distorted picture of the business. Odoo's integration with BI platforms consolidates data in one place, automates metrics, and allows you to build dashboards that truly reflect the state of the company.
In this article, we will discuss the benefits of integration, which dashboards are important for business, and how to ensure that data is up to date.
Benefits of integrating Odoo with BI platforms
The combination of Odoo and Business Intelligence (BI) enables teams to see the complete picture of their business in real time.
Benefits of integration:
- One source of truth.
- Automation and time savings.
- In-depth analysis and forecasting.
- Data-driven decision making.
- Flexibility in visualization.
Integrating Odoo with BI allows you to control your business and helps you make accurate and timely decisions based on numbers.
What BI tools can be integrated with Odoo?
Odoo has an open architecture, so it easily integrates with most modern BI platforms. This gives businesses the freedom to choose a tool that suits their company size, reporting complexity, and budget.
The most common BI solutions are:
- Odoo Spreadsheets AI - a built-in tool for operational analytics without integrations or third-party services. Suitable for teams that need quick dashboards based on live data from Odoo.
- Power BI from Microsoft is one of the most popular tools among managers and financial teams. Suitable for dashboards, financial analytics, forecasts, and complex reports.
- Tableau - a powerful visualization platform. It is often used in companies that require advanced graphics, complex models, and large amounts of data.
- Metabase - an easy and affordable tool for SMBs. Suitable for quickly creating dashboards without complex analytics.
- Looker Studio (Google Data Studio) is often used for marketing, e-commerce, or companies that work with large amounts of web data and want to combine it with ERP.
- Qlik Sense - a powerful corporate solution in cases where BI must operate as part of a broader analytical infrastructure.
- Superset - an open source alternative for companies that want to keep data within their infrastructure and avoid using commercial solutions.
- Redash - a tool for SQL analytics, suitable for technical specialists who want to work with clean queries to Odoo data.
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7 key areas for creating dashboards
Odoo analytics combined with BI allows the team and manager to see the state of the business at a glance. Below, we have listed seven areas where BI dashboards are most effective.
Sales
Sales dashboards should answer three questions: Is there a plan? Are we moving towards it? What's next?
Key metrics:
- Sales funnel: number of leads → opportunities → closed deals
- Forecast based on conversions and historical data
- Profitability by channel, manager, product
- Speed of passing stages
- Average check and margin
The dashboard reflects not the number of deals, but the stability of conversions and the quality of the pipeline.
Finance
Financial dashboards are the basis for management decisions. The CFO does not wait for the “monthly closing” but sees the financial situation on a daily basis.
Key metrics:
- Cash flow (plan/actual, monthly/quarterly forecast)
- Accounts receivable: terms, risky customers
- P&L dynamics (revenue, expenses, margin)
- Expense structure
- Overhead and operating expenses
Profitability
Odoo + BI allows you to accurately determine which products, customers, or areas are really driving your business forward.
Key metrics:
- Margins on products and services
- Customer LTV
- ROI by channel
- Profitability of areas or projects
- Cost-to-serve customers
Operational activities
Operational efficiency dashboards help identify bottlenecks in each process. They visualize not the total volume of tasks, but where exactly the business loses time every day.
Key metrics:
- Task and order completion time
- SLA by department
- Number of uncompleted/overdue operations
- Process delays (who is blocking the stage, where is the queue)
- Team workload
Warehouse and inventory
For trading and manufacturing companies, this is one of the most critical areas—whether the problem lies in demand, procurement, or warehouse planning.
Key metrics:
- Inventory turnover (what is stockpiling and why)
- Dead stock and slow-moving items
- Replenishment needs
- Accuracy of inventory balances
- Order fulfillment rate (OTIF)
Production
In production, BI allows you to see how synchronously workshops, people, and equipment are working.
Key metrics:
- Plan/actual fulfillment of production orders
- Lead time
- OEE (equipment effectiveness)
- Cost control
- Bottlenecks in technological stages
HR and productivity
HR analytics in Odoo allows you to see real productivity—where the team is working efficiently and where there is a lack of resources or processes.
Key metrics:
- Task and project completion
- Team workload
- Response and ticket closure speed
- Participation in key processes
- Performance dynamics
Odoo's integration with BI provides access to up-to-date data, automatically updates key indicators, shows the root causes of events, and warns of risks before they turn into problems.
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How to keep dashboards up to date? Checklist for teams
To ensure that dashboards truly reflect the real picture of your business, it is not enough to simply create them. Let's look at the basic six rules that will help ensure that analytics in Odoo with BI are always up to date.
- Automate data updates via API, direct connection, or ETL to ensure that dashboards always display the latest data. The frequency of updates can range from every 5 minutes for operational dashboards to once a day for strategic ones. Avoid manual data collection to prevent errors and delays.
- Data should be updated synchronously with changes in sales, orders, production, and inventory. If processes are delayed or performed manually, dashboards will not reflect the real situation, and decisions will be made based on incomplete information.
- Ensure data quality in Odoo, because BI only shows what is in the ERP. Therefore, it is important to organize statuses, reference books, and process stages, establish data entry rules for the team, and regularly check information. Clean and structured data is the basis for accurate dashboards.
- Set up triggers. Integrating Odoo with BI allows you to automatically signal critical situations: a drop in sales, an increase in accounts receivable, an accumulation of dead stock, or delays in production. This allows you to respond to problems before they turn into serious losses.
- Identify those responsible for data integrity in sales, finance, warehousing, and HR. When everyone knows their area of responsibility, BI works as a unified system, and managers receive reliable information for decision-making.
- Once a quarter, check and evaluate whether dashboards reflect current KPIs, whether processes have changed, and whether metrics or data sources need to be updated. This allows the dashboards to remain useful and show the real picture of the business.
Following these rules not only helps maintain data accuracy, but also fosters a culture of managing the business based on facts, not assumptions. When BI receives clean and timely data from Odoo, managers can make decisions quickly, confidently, and effectively.
We recommend to read the article A CEO’s Guide to ROI of ERP
Key takeaways from the article
- Odoo integration with BI brings together data from sales, finance, production, and other systems in one place.
- Dashboards show the current state of the business without manual reports and help track key metrics.
- Managers get a clear picture of the company and can respond to problems before they turn into losses.
- Clear data entry rules and people responsible for different areas ensure the reliability of analytics.
- Triggers and alerts help warn of risks in sales, finance, inventory, or production.
- Odoo integrates with various BI platforms, allowing you to choose the tool that best suits your business needs.
