Many organisations have reporting and analytics tools which lack the functionality required to meet their reporting requirements. Reporting tools can be complicated to use and difficult for staff to work productively with. Companies could benefit from a simple and easy-to-use reporting and business intelligence platform in order to work more efficiently.
A simple and easy-to-use reporting tool should:
- Reduce the burden on staff – An effective reporting solution should make it easy for staff to quickly and efficiently produce reports. Staff need to be able to access information to make fast, accurate business decisions. Unfortunately, with many reporting tools it is common for staff to have to data match manually in order to produce a report, which is hugely time consuming and inefficient.
- Provide flexibility – A flexible solution should make it easy for staff to access data they need. Many solutions fail in this respect due to limited flexibility. For example, with many reporting solutions, data stored in multiple sources cannot be accessed at the same time through one application. Furthermore, many reporting solutions are unable to be utilised by different staff across an organisation as they are managed and owned by the technical/IT team. The more a solution is utilised across an organisation the higher your ROI will be.
- Consist of standardised, user-focused interfaces – This makes user training easy and reporting writing techniques reusable. Many reporting solutions do not provide standardised user interfaces whether they are stand-alone, in Excel or on the Web.
- Have self-service functionality – Users want to be able to create and distribute reports themselves and not rely on IT consultants, who can focus instead on data access and security. This is not possible with many reporting solutions as staff rely heavily on IT and report specialists for their report writing.
- Present information visually – Staff need to be able to easily transform data into an actionable visual representation quickly in order to transform data into actionable business insights. Whilst older reporting solutions are unable to do this, many modern solutions have dashboards which can provide this.
- Be accessible from a mobile device – With more staff on the move and not always at their desk, it is important for a reporting solution to be accessible from a mobile device. Not all reporting solutions enable report writing from a mobile and so their use is restricted.
Sharperlight is a reporting and business intelligence tool that features all the above functionality and more. It is extremely easy-to-use and can quickly transform data into business intelligence for enhanced decision making. For more information, contact us on +44 203 866 8800, or download our '10 Ways Sharperlight Can Transform Your Reporting Process’ eBook:
