One of the things I always hear from end-users about Business Intelligence Reporting, is that no matter what tools
they have in place, they always have to end up using Excel Spreadsheets!
No matter where in the world, you go to, you will hear this story without fail. The blame lies all around!
End users are notoriously unable to articulate their precise information needs ahead of time. So it is not surprising that the data warehouses created and data being collected for business intelligence is always behind a bit compared to end user needs.
Consequently, invariably, every organization in the world, extracts data even from Business Intelligence tools into Excel spreadsheets, and then shape it the way they want manually. This seems to be a universal theme!
It doesn't have to be this way! Of course users are known famously for assuming that data exists and available readily in the format they need for doing their work.
Classic example is an audit trail of actions or events happening in a company. For example, someone wants to collect the beginning timestamp and ending timestamp of say when an Accounts Payable Invoice is beginning to be processed and when it is all done. They want to see how long it took. They also want to track all the people who processed this Invoice all through its processing lifecycle.
Unfortunately, most database tables are designed to capture Modified By, Modified Date/Time. These fields get written over again and again. This means that only the last set of changes are available for use!
So even though users want the information, and they assume that it is readily available, and captured in the backend, expect these to show up in the reports they need, it may not be possible. This is because the data is
captured in an incomplete form!
However tools are evolving, especially in the lower end of Business Intelligence tools. Open Source and Business Intelligence solutions that are served as a hosted model (Software as a Service - SaaS) seem to be supporting more end-user driven reporting.
At a time, when almost all applications and software products seem to be already supporting a web/browser interface, Business Intelligence solutions can also support end-user driven reporting easily.
If it is a Hosted model, by its very nature, the service/software provider may need to push many of the reporting
design functions down to the end user! Otherwise, the economics of that hosted model may not work for the customer or the provider.
The time seems to be right for end-user driven reporting. It can drive up the utilization and value of business intelligence tools!
One of the Internet's strengths is its ability to help consumers find the right needle in a digital haystack of data - Jared Sandberg
Good premise, I am looking at possibly writing a book on this as a follow up to my BI for the Enterprise tome - 2003