INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Want performance management? Start with reporting

April 18, 2007

Reporting is the quickest and easiest way that users can solve their immediate information needs. Because of this, it's often an organization's first foray into business intelligence.

The key, however, is to ensure that it's not the last. Organizations can do this by deploying their reports within the context of a broader performance management solution that encompasses additional capabilites such as scorecarding, analysis, planning, and budgeting.

Reporting to Performance Management

Basic report types

A reporting implementation will often begin with the need for a particular type of reporting. These can include:

Reporting Demo

Simple & Advanced
Reporting

Managed reporting: The classic "one-to-many" approach. For instance: a standard monthly report generated from a data warehouse and pushed out to various users.
Business or ad hoc reporting: Providing users with additional dynamic report creation, such as self-service access to the data to answer a specific question. For instance, "How many units did our unit sell in the Pacific Northwest last year?"
Production reporting: High-volume reporting generated from transactional sources, typically with high-fidelity formatting. Designed by developers to be distributed to recipients or suppliers. For instance, invoices and statements.
Operational or transactional reporting: Real-time or up-to-the-minute reporting from transactional or financial systems that provides immediate and continuous visibility into data. For instance, product quality in manufacturing.
Analytical reporting: For users who need to see trends at the macro level and drill into information from various sources. For example, a sales manager who needs to view revenue by geography, date; and rep, then drill into that data to understand what led to the results.

Conversations between business and IT

Each type of reporting brings with it specific technology requirements, a reality which in turn leads to discussions between IT and business users about how to evaluate the available solutions.

This is a critical step, as business users must see their immediate needs satisfied, while IT must consider the impact of any new technology on its existing infrastructure and anticipate how the situation could change down the road.

If you're in this crucial stage, be sure to consider these questions:

Can I extend this solution to provide other types of reporting than the one my users need right now?
Can it scale to a large and complex user group without taxing my infrastructure?
Our company relies on data from different sources. Will this solution integrate them into a consistent view that users will trust?
Will this solution leverage my existing investments in data, applications, and security? How easily can I modify it in response to new demands?

Addressing all reporting needs with IBM Cognos 8 BI

Many companies have been able to address their full breadth of their reporting needs with IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence, which provides a complete range of reports from one authoring environment.

In addition, self-service capabilities alleviate reporting backlogs and provide a broad range of user access modes, whether it be through a Web browser, Search, Mobile Device, or MS Office application.

IBM Cognos 8 BI provides a common metadata model to provide a consistent view of all data. It's built on a single Web services-based services-oriented architecture (SOA), which means it integrates smoothly into your existing infrastructure and lets you leverage your existing investments.

Start with reporting, build to performance management

Many organizations deploy reporting to their users. Successful organizations deploy reporting within the context of a broader performance management solution. In a future article, we'll explore further how you can build on your initial implementations with additional capabilities.

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