For business teams
For the questions that don't have a report yet.
If your ERP runs on IBM i (many still call it AS/400), years of orders, customers, items and invoices are already there. Your team can ask about them in plain language, in an AI assistant such as Claude, and get the answer from live data. Your reports and tools stay as they are.
Watch
What it is, in under two minutes.
What your team can ask, how it fits next to your reports and Excel, and what it can and can't do with your data. With sound and captions.
Today
Next to what you already have.
Companies with an ERP like yours usually get their answers in one of three ways. Each one handles the questions it was built for.
ERP screens and reports
The system your team works in every day, with the reports that were built for it.
Excel linked to the ERP
Workbooks that pull data straight from the ERP, so the numbers land in a sheet your team can work with.
A data warehouse or BI tool
ERP data copied into a warehouse or data lake, with dashboards and reports on top.
Then there is the one-off question, such as why a large customer ordered less this month. This is for those. It reads the ERP's own database directly. It doesn't connect to your reports, spreadsheets or warehouse, and it doesn't replace them. If your reports use their own definitions, such as what counts as an open order, your IT team can give the assistant the same ones.
Works with any business data in Db2 for i: ERPs such as JD Edwards, Infor LX, XA and System21, SAP on IBM i and Iptor DC1, and also banking, insurance, warehouse and in-house systems. Not affiliated with any of these vendors; product names are trademarks of their owners.
Examples
The kind of questions people ask.
Your team types a question. The assistant finds where the data is, looks it up, and answers with the numbers. In Claude and in a chat page of your own, people can also ask for the answer as a chart and switch between the chart and the table.
Sales
- “Which customers ordered less this quarter than last?”
- “What is still open on our ten largest orders, and when is it due?”
Purchasing
- “Which purchase orders are late, and from which suppliers?”
- “Which items have we bought from more than one supplier this year, and at what prices?”
Service
- “Which service orders have been open longest, and for which customers?”
- “Which items come back for repair most often?”
Manufacturing
- “Which work orders are behind schedule this week?”
- “Which components are short for the orders due next month?”
Finance
- “Which customers have invoices more than 60 days overdue?”
- “How do this month’s sales compare with the same month last year, by product group?”
In Excel
Ask from Excel, too.
With Claude for Excel, people ask the question in the Claude sidebar and the answer goes straight into the sheet. It uses the same connection and sign-in, so your IT team sets it up once for both.
About Claude for ExcelIn the browser
Or in a chat page of your own.
Your IT team can also run a chat page in the browser, starting from an example in the project. People sign in with their own user, and nobody needs an AI subscription of their own. It uses one company account that is billed by use, or a model that runs inside your network.
About the example chat appDefinitions
Your definitions, not the assistant's guesses.
Every company has its own meaning of “open order”, “active customer” or “on time”. Your IT team can write those definitions down once: what a status code means, which data belongs together, and how to answer common questions such as “late purchase orders”.
The assistant then uses your definitions instead of guessing. The logic that already lives in your reports and Excel queries is a good place to start.
How business definitions workSafeguards
What it can and can't do with your data.
- It only reads. It can look data up but never change it, and every request is checked before it runs. If a question takes too long, it is stopped automatically so it doesn't keep your system busy.
- Everyone signs in as themselves. People sign in with their own user on the system, often the same user name and password as for the ERP. The system decides what each person can read.
- You choose what is visible. Your IT team decides which parts of the ERP data it can see, and can hide sensitive fields such as personal details.
- Everything is logged. Every request is recorded, so your IT team can see what was asked.
- No copy of your database. Nothing is copied into a new database. The answer to each question goes to the AI assistant you use, so use one your company has approved.
Good to know
Before you start.
Setup
Someone sets it up once
Your IT team sets it up. After that, people only add a link in their assistant and sign in.
Scope
It is not your financial reporting
Official figures still come from the reports your finance team relies on. This is for exploring and for the questions in between.
Quality
Better notes, better answers
The assistant is only as good as what it knows about your data. A few definitions make a big difference.
Next step
Share it with your IT team.
Copy the email below and send it to your IT team. It links to the security and setup docs, so they have what they need to decide.
Subject Could we try an AI assistant on our ERP data?
Hi, I came across mcp-server-db2i, an open-source, self-hosted tool that lets AI assistants such as Claude answer questions about our ERP data in plain language. It only reads data, people sign in with their own credentials, and it also works inside Excel through Claude for Excel. It is free. I'd like to use it for the one-off questions we don't have reports for. Could you take a look and let me know if we could try it? Overview: https://db2i-mcp.com/ Security: https://docs.db2i-mcp.com/security Setup: https://docs.db2i-mcp.com/quickstart Thanks!