At the heart of information sharing is the concept of reporting. Reporting provides organizations with the ability to standardize and automate the structuring of information for employees, associates, customers, board members and others. In many cases executive quality reporting is fundamental to a Business Intelligence (BI) initiative. There are several aspects to reporting solutions that address key needs for organizations of all types. Understanding them will help you select the best solution for your needs. Important considerations include:

• Report Design: Designing reports is usually not something that business analysts, executives, managers and other end users are prepared to do. In most cases report design requires a detailed knowledge of the database systems that provide data as well as competency with the design tools. However, the toolset you select may make a significant difference in the turnaround time and relative effort needed to produce and maintain report templates. Be sure you spend some time reviewing the design tools in addition to how the reports look and work for end users.
• Online Reporting: The ability to access and run report templates in near real time is often critical to supporting operations, finance and other critical business areas. A review of such things as parameter prompting, navigation, drill-down, charting, remote printing and exporting is important. If the presentation of online reporting is inadequate or unacceptably complex very little value will be realized from the investment. Be sure to carefully review how online reporting looks and works and include several representatives from your target audience.
• Report Distribution: The ability to push highly formatted reports out to end users both internally and externally has become a fundamental need for many organizations. This can represent a low cost way to distribute timely information in a high quality format to a broader audience. Careful review of such things as data driven publication, output formats (PDF etc.), processing infrastructure and more should occur.
  

Contact us for a FREE consultation about your online and report distribution needs. Our team works with the leading technologies in these areas.