Tag: Business Intelligence Reports

BI Reporting Tools Can Make or Break Decision-Making!

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December 17, 2024

Choose a BI Reporting Tool that Tells You What You Need to Know!

The ideal business intelligence and analytics solution includes traditional BI features, modern BI and analytics components and a full suite of reporting capabilities that are easy for your team to use, and will produce clear, concise results for fact-based decision-making.

According to a recent TechJury survey:

  • Data analytics makes decision-making 5x faster for businesses.
  • The top three business intelligence trends are data visualization, data quality management, and self-service business intelligence (BI).
  • 7 out of 10 business rate data discovery as very important.

‘A BI reporting tool that enables users to customize their view and approach and is easy to understand and use will make the user more productive and ensure Return on Investment (ROI).’

If you are considering a Business Intelligence or Augmented Analytics solution, be sure to select a software suite that provides your business users with personalized dashboards, multidimensional key performance indicators, and KPI tools, report software, Crosstab and Tabular reports, GeoMaps and deep dive analytics with 100% browser based interface and self-serve features that encourage and support Social BI and collaboration.

Select a Business Intelligence (BI) Reporting Tool That is Flexible, Agile and User-Friendly

By providing your team access to flexible, agile reporting tools, you increase the probability of user adoption, and improve the outcome, with reports and results that are meaningful to the user, and to the target audience of a presentation or distributed report.

Every business has unique reporting and documentation needs. Whether you are a business user or an analyst or IT professional, you use augmented analytics and BI tools in a way that is meaningful to your role. Gathering, preparing and analyzing is important but the final step in this process is equally important and that task often frustrates the user more than anything. Excel, cross-tab and tabular reporting are helpful, but those report and documentation options typically present data in columns and rows. A BI reporting tool that enables users to customize their view and approach and is easy to understand and use will make the user more productive and ensure Return on Investment (ROI).

Consider a Business Intelligence reporting tool that enables report, template and document design and configuration and supports preprinted fixed formats too. IT team members or consultants can leverage a simple, basic programming or scripting environment to define format templates and use data from Datasets and objects to produce stunning pixel perfect reports. Users can preview reports, export data to PDF files and share documents and reports via email at predefined frequency using delivery and publishing agents.

Benefits of Agile, Flexible Business Intelligence Reporting

  • Customize and Format Reports, Documents, Forms and Templates Using Basic Scripting Skills
  • Generate Reports from BI Datasets in Predefined Formats
  • Satisfy Unique Business, Departmental, Functional and Statutory Requirements
  • Present Information in a Clean, Attractive Format for Customers, Partners, Suppliers, Team Members
  • Allows Business Users to Gather, Present and Share Information via Email and Publishing Agent

‘If you are considering a Business Intelligence or Augmented Analytics solution, be sure to select a software suite that provides your business users with personalized dashboards, multidimensional key performance indicators, and KPI tools, report software, Crosstab and Tabular reports, GeoMaps and deep dive analytics.’

For out-of-the-box reporting and flexible, interactive formats, explore our full suite of reporting tools: Pixel Perfect Print Reports, Business Intelligence Reporting. If your organization is looking for BI Tools and Augmented Analytics that leverage advanced techniques to keep pace with changing enterprise needs and support business agility, let us help you realize your business goals and objectives with fact-based information, and flexible, scalable technology solutions that will support Citizen Data Scientist initiatives, and improved data literacy and data democratization.

Original Post : BI Reporting Tools Can Make or Break Decision-Making!

Combine Traditional and Modern BI for the Best Results!

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September 17, 2024

Give Your Team Traditional and Modern BI in One Solution

Business Intelligence (BI) solutions have been around for some time. The traditional BI tools were designed to be used by the IT team, business analysts and data scientists and utilized sophisticated features which required specialized knowledge and skills possessed only by the technical and analytical community. In this environment, business users were consumers of content, and while they could access information from dashboards, reports and KPIs, they had very limited access to date and they could not interact with that data. Where users had access to data, BI objects, reports and dashboards were developed, provisioned and presented to them by the IT team, so the business user had no control over what they could see or the format of the data.

‘In the past, business users were restricted to analytical content provided by IT staff and Data Scientists with limited interaction and access to data’

Gartner predicted that ‘…smart/augmented, nonrelational-, search- and visual-based data discovery capabilities will converge into a single set of next generation data discovery capabilities as components of modern BI and analytics platforms.’

When You Combine Traditional and Modern BI Tools, You Give Your Team Comprehensive Support

In line with Gartner predictions, the new world of Augmented Analytics and Modern BI solutions enables end-users and team members to access and use business intelligence (BI) to combine their industry and functional knowledge with clear, concise data. These new solutions are focused on business users, and on their empowerment, placing the power of true insight into the hands of business users and transitioning business users into Citizen Data Scientists. These solutions provide more value to the organization, improving technology Return on Investment (ROI), Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and increasing efficiency with fact-based decisions. Modern BI and Augmented Analytics offers data integration and sophisticated analytical models and techniques in an easy-to-use interface that provides auto-suggestions and recommendations to speed the analytical process and ensure that users get what they need. It also provides report formats, publishing tools, alerts and analysis that can be shared by team members to encourage user adoption and collaboration.

As the needs of the average user evolve, most businesses find that a combination of traditional BI tools and Modern BI tools will best meet the needs of the team and ensure that every team member has the tools they need to get the job done.

Here are the primary features and functionality your business will need to capture Traditional Business Intelligence components and provide comprehensive coverage for your team. These solutions allow the IT staff to provide dashboards and reports for business user consumption and review:

  • Personalized Dashboards – Users with average technical skills can design personalized dashboards in minutes without programming knowledge.
  • Multidimensional Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) – The team can define KPIs using an intuitive expression engine and KPI software to set polarity, frequency and threshold levels.
  • Social Business Intelligence – Imagine an environment where business users can access a business intelligence and analysis portal and see popular data to rate, share and comment.
  • What-If Analysis – Enables business users to determine how a prospective change to a product, service, resource allocation, budget, schedule, pricing, raw material cost, labor cost, or other factors might affect the business bottom line.
  • Graphical Analysis – Business users can leverage stunning visualizations, alerts for exceptions and trends, and intuitive, mobile BI dashboards with true deep dive capabilities!
  • Mobile Business Intelligence – Business intelligence solutions your business users can enjoy with high-performance BI tools that will work on any size or type of device.
  • GeoMap Support – Users can leverage geo maps, analyze data for any location, and define geographic areas with support for drill down, spot lighter and other features.
  • Exceptions and Personalized Alerts – With exception reporting users can define thresholds, monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and metrics, and even receive alerts when exceptions occur with the ability to set, modify and delete alerts based on specific thresholds.
  • R Integration – Integrates seamlessly with R (the popular open source programming language and software environment for statistical computing), so users can integrate any R script with simple input and output configuration.
  • Print Reports – The IT team can leverage a simple, basic programming or scripting environment to define format templates and produce reports for delivery by email.
  • Web-Based BI Reports – Business intelligence reporting software enables users to point-and-click and drag-and-drop to create a report summarizing performance metrics, or operational data, without programming or database or SQL skills.

Modern BI and Advanced Analytics – Augmented Analytics enables the transition from business user to Citizen Data Scientist and supports data democratization and data literacy, allowing Data Scientists to focus on strategy and business user access to analytics to perform day-to-day analytics.

  • Assisted Predictive Modeling – Predictive analytics for business users provides predictive modeling capability assisted by auto-recommendations and auto-suggestions to simplify use and optimize outcomes, allowing business users to predict outcomes without the expertise of a data scientist.
  • Auto Insights – The Auto Insights Smarten toolset allows business users to simply select the dataset to be analyzed and let the system interpret the dataset, select important columns of data, analyze its type and variety and other parameters and use intelligent machine learning to automatically apply the best algorithm and analytical technique and provide data insights.
  • Key Influencer Analytics – Focus on what matters and find the most relevant influencers for your target KPIs. Business users often find it difficult to identify the right targets and to understand relationships and factors that influence results.
  • Anomaly Analysis – Reveal trends, anomalies and answers, map targets, focus on influencers that matter and adapt to succeed.
  • Smart Data Visualization – Smart data visualization allows business users to view and analyze data to identify a problem and clarify a root cause and to make confident decisions.
  • Self-Serve Data Preparation – Smart data discovery tools and augmented data preparation features allow business users with average skills to perform data preparation and transform, shape, reduce, combine, explore, clean, sample and aggregate data, without the need for SQL skills, ETL or other programming language.

‘As the needs of the average user evolve, most businesses find that a combination of traditional BI tools and Modern BI tools will best meet the needs of the team and ensure that every team member has the tools they need to get the job done.’

There are other many other features and components available to support users, IT, business analysts and data scientists in the traditional and modern analytics environment.

To find out more about Business Intelligence (BI) Solutions And Reporting, Contact Us. Discover the power of Augmented Analytics and see how your team can benefit from fact-based decisions, and cost-effective analytics and achieve a market advantage.

Original Post: Combine Traditional and Modern BI for the Best Results!

How Can Data Visualization Help Me Achieve Business Results?

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August 27, 2024

Reporting and Data Visualization Improves Team Understanding!

Statistics reveal that many people learn best when they see a story or information depicted in an image. Graphs, charts with colors, lines and shapes can often tell a story and communicate issues, challenges and opportunities in a business environment.

According to Forbes, ‘Almost eighty-thousand scientific studies attest that visual images promote retention.’

‘Visualization and presentation formats can include personalized dashboards and visualization techniques, alerts for exceptions and trends, and intuitive, mobile BI dashboards.’

Let’s consider a few examples of data presentation to illustrate how images, graphs, charts and visualization techniques can improve data understanding and retention.

How Can Data Visualization Help Me Achieve Business Results?

Cross Tabulation – Data presentation consists of categorization of data into groups, such as products, geographies, demographics, etc. It can be very useful in understanding sales results, product pricing response, target audience assessment, etc. Cross tab analytics can help your team understand market research, survey responses, seasonality and other factors.

KPI Reports – Key Performance Indicators (AKA KPI) can provide metrics in a dashboard environment that is easy to understand, so users can monitor and manage success factors, and quickly see where there are problems. KPI reporting can be used to identify and capitalize on opportunities and to adjust to challenges in the market and within the walls of the organization.

Custom Print Presentations and Reports – Every organization has a need for custom reports. Needs vary from division to department to user, and these needs can be expensive to accommodate. Custom reports to present data for decision-making, or to monitor results on an ongoing basis are crucial to the organization. But if the enterprise has to ask IT or business analysts or data scientists to satisfy the need, they are losing productivity, time and efficiency. By giving users the ability to design, format and product reports for a particular staff meeting or project, the enterprise can keep the process moving and ensure that the team has what they need to gather, analyze and understand results in a meaningful way. Custom formats might include customer statements, management reports, compliance reports, project templates, etc. Users can present data in a clean, colorful, attractive way to satisfy customers, partners, suppliers, executives and team members.

‘According to Forbes, ‘Almost eighty-thousand scientific studies attest that visual images promote retention.’

These are just a few examples of reporting formats and types, and how they might help your enterprise. Other types of visualization and presentation formats can include personalized dashboards and visualization techniques, alerts for exceptions and trends, and intuitive, mobile BI dashboards.

Team members, managers and executives typically think of reporting and presentation as boring, detailed and unintelligible. They rarely see the value in using data to make decisions when, in fact, this approach is the wisest and produces the best results. But it is understandable that the staff, customers, partners and suppliers would cringe when a report is placed in front of them, emailed to them or presented on a screen.

What if you could create, format, present and share data in a way that quickly communicated results, delivered a message, identified an issue or illustrate dan opportunity? Change the way your enterprise uses and interacts with data, with clean, clear, concise, elegant and colorful presentation.

Explore the benefits of Smarten Reports, and Pixel Perfect Print Reports and the use of this this seamless PDF Pixel Perfect Reports Solution, and the Smarten suite of Augmented Analytics can support your business users with self-serve tools that are intuitive and will encourage user adoption and fact-based decision-making.

Original Post : How Can Data Visualization Help Me Achieve Business Results?

Integrated Tally Analytics = Small Business Results

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June 11, 2024

Business Benefits for Small Businesses Integrating Analytics with Tally Solutions!

Some small business owners believe they do not need, or cannot afford, business analytics. Nothing could be further from the truth! If your business is currently using Tally Prime or Tally ERP, you can leverage your existing accounting and financial modules to create an augmented analytical environment that is suitable for every team member.

Continue reading “Integrated Tally Analytics = Small Business Results”

Combine Mobile Analytics with Tally Solutions!

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April 16, 2024

Get the Most Out of Your Tally Solution with Integrated Mobile Augmented Analytics!

If you are a Tally ERP or a Tally Prime user, you know the value of the comprehensive financial management solution for managing accounting, inventory, purchasing, sales, finances, taxes, etc. But, what if you could take your Tally solution to the next level with integrated analytics that will allow your business professionals to add value to clients and colleagues by analyzing data across the Tally modules to discover trends, patterns, and data insight and forecast and predict results.

Continue reading “Combine Mobile Analytics with Tally Solutions!”

Understanding BI Tools in Today’s Market

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November 17, 2023

How Do We Define Business Intelligence Today?

Business Intelligence (BI) is the lifeblood of an organization. Without business intelligence, the enterprise does not have an objective understanding of what works, what does not work, and how, when and where to make changes to adapt to the market, its customers and its competition.

You may be interested to know that TechJury reports seven out of ten businesses rate data discovery as very important, and that the top three business intelligence trends are data visualization, data quality management and self-service business intelligence.

As the Business Intelligence solution market evolves, it may be difficult for an organization to know when to invest in these tools, and which tools are best for enterprise and user needs.

Continue reading “Understanding BI Tools in Today’s Market”

Self-Serve KPIs Allow Teams to Manage and Adapt!

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August 8, 2023

BI Tools with Self-Serve Multidimensional KPIs Enable Agility and Accuracy!

Gartner research reveals that, ‘data literacy will become an explicit and necessary driver of business value, demonstrated by its formal inclusion in over 80% of data and analytics strategies and change management programs.’ When  businesses adopt and embrace business intelligence and augmented analytics, the expectation is that the enterprise will benefit by improving data literacy as well as productivity.

But if your business wants to make the most out of BI tools and augmented analytics, it is important to choose the right solution; one that is easy to use and will provide clear results – results business users can leverage to make decisions and to plan accurately. To understand the results and whether policies, processes and tasks are effective, your organization must establish metrics, and those metrics must also be clear.

‘Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are crucial to this feature set, as they provide critical metrics that enable the business to discover and manage results objectively and to adapt and change quickly and effectively.’

A solution that provides easy-to-use, multidimensional key performance indicators (KPIs) will allow your team to establish metrics that are unique to your needs and to your industry and market and help the enterprise understand how the business measures up in the competitive market, how well the products and services are faring with customers and whether workflow and business processes are having the desired effect.

Multidimensional KPIs Provide Easy-to-Use, Objective Metrics

Benefits of Self-Serve, Multidimensional Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

  • When the organization gives business users the tools to establish and manage KPIs, it can become more productive. There is no waiting for the IT team or a data scientist to produce important reports, so the team can be agile and flexible.
  • Interactive KPIs provide tools to gather, analyze and measure with breakdown and dynamic frequency and slice and dice so users can focus on critical metrics and gain true insight into results. Users can leverage a powerful expression engine to set polarity, frequency and threshold levels in a browser-based interface and go beyond static monitoring to change frequencies, and dimension breakdowns and gain an understanding of performance and issues.
  • Users can establish and monitor KPIs at the individual, team, department, division, and company level and KPIs are integrated with other features to further analyze trends. Multidimensional KPIs gives business users the opportunity to monitor and manage results against goals and objectives and change processes, tasks, and activities as and when change is required.

‘When your business chooses a BI tool, it is important to choose the right solution; one that is easy to use and will provide clear results – results business users can leverage to make decisions and to plan accurately.’

If your business wishes to improve data literacy and productivity by implementing or upgrading a Business Intelligence or Augmented Analytics solution, it is imperative that you review the available modules, tools and features to ensure that the solution provides easy-to-use, sophisticated functionality that is suitable for your business users. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are crucial to this feature set, as they provide critical metrics that enable the business to discover and manage results objectively and to adapt and change quickly and effectively.

Choose a  Business Intelligence Reporting Solution that include Multi-Dimensional Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Provide business intelligence that your IT team can easily implement and support, and a solution that business users will want to adopt. Choose  flexible, agile business intelligence solutions that can be used at all levels to collaborate, share data, and report and communicate with clarity. Self-Serve BI Tools can provide your business with the foundation to achieve your data democratization and user adoption goals.

Original Post : Multidimensional KPIs Provide Easy-to-Use, Objective Metrics!

Self-Serve Cross-Tab BI Tools Reveal Issues and Possibilities!

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July 11, 2023

Self-Serve BI Tools with Cross-Tab Reporting Improve Clarity and Results!

If you are considering a Business Intelligence solution or BI tool, or if you wish to upgrade your business intelligence and reporting tools, look for a solution that has self-serve cross tabulation, or cross-tab reporting. Cross-Tab reporting reveals the relationship between two factors or targets. This analytical tool can be used for side-by-side comparisons and to compare results for one or more data points, variables, or targets.

Did you know that, by some estimates, data-driven businesses are nearly 25% more likely to acquire customers? If you can give your team easy-to-use BI tools with self-serve cross-tab reporting, you can put the power of market and customer knowledge in their hands!

‘Business Intelligence solutions with self-serve cross-tab reporting can provide an intuitive, clear method of data analysis for your business users by revealing relationships in a way that makes the results clear and helps the organization to make the best decisions.’

In this article, we discuss the value of self-serve BI tools with Cross-Tab capabilities and the benefits of this type of focus and insight.

Cross-Tab Reporting Gives Business Users Insight Into Data

Benefits of Self-Serve Cross Tabulation Reporting

Flexible for Business Use Cases

Cross-tab reporting allows for intuitive use by business users with average technical skills, and can be beneficial for all types of business functions and industries. In an educational setting, a university or school might use cross-tab reporting to analyze teacher or course evaluations, looking at the relationship between student satisfaction and the subject, the class time, class location and other factors. Businesses can analyze team and employee satisfaction and attrition by looking at job location, benefits, the results of exit interviews, available training, and support, etc. Cross-tab reporting is frequently used in market research to analyze the various factors that relate to product or service satisfaction, including product features and options, where and how the product is sold, the sales and marketing approach, etc. A retail store owner might use cross-tab data analysis to determine customer satisfaction by looking at demographics, the gender of the person buying the product, the price of the product in a particular region, etc.

Data Clarity

There are many ways to slice and dice data and many ways in which crucial information can hide inside that data. The self-serve cross-tab reporting approach allows business users to examine relationships among data points and factors, with more clarity and accuracy. This type of analysis provides more clarity and reveals results, interdependent relationships and factors that might otherwise be missed. Users can avoid confusion when working with data and analyze large datasets to reveal frequencies and percentages. With this information, the business can understand the ‘what if’ of the various factors and see how results would change if one factor or relationship is changed.

Fact-Based Decision-Making

Self-serve cross-tab reporting simplifies analytics and allows business users to spot trends and patterns and collaborate with other team members to adapt tasks and activities to resolve issues and/or capitalize on opportunities. Using cross tabulation reporting to understand the connection and relationship between two or more factors allows the business to make a decision, with confidence. Rather than guessing the reason for declining results, increased employee attrition or other problems, the enterprise can clearly see what factors (and the relationships among factors) are the cause of a problem and how to change those factors to get better results.

‘If you can give your team easy-to-use BI tools with self-serve cross-tab reporting, you can put the power of market and customer knowledge in their hands!’

Business Intelligence solutions with self-serve cross-tab reporting can provide an intuitive, clear method of data analysis for your business users by revealing relationships in a way that makes the results clear and helps the organization to make the best decisions. By giving your team members these tools, you can leverage domain and industry knowledge and combine data analytics in a day-to-day environment without the need for assistance from data scientists or the IT staff. Self-Serve Cross-Tab reporting produces clear results that are easy to understand and can be used in staff meetings and presentations to support recommendations and help the business become more agile.

Look for seamless Business Intelligence Reporting And Flexible Tools that include self-serve Cross-Tab reporting. Provide business intelligence that your IT team can easily implement and support, and a solution that business users will want to adopt. Choose  flexible, agile business intelligence solutions that can be used at all levels to collaborate, share data, and report and communicate with clarity. Self-Serve BI Tools can provide your business with the foundation to achieve your data democratization and user adoption goals.

Original Post : Cross-Tab Reporting Gives Business Users Insight Into Data!

Business Users Love Simple (Yet Sophisticated) BI Tools!

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June 15, 2023

If You Want Business Users to Embrace BI Tools, You Need to Focus on Simplicity!

If your enterprise has not already adopted business intelligence tools, it is missing a crucial benefit in competitive positioning and accurate, dependable decision-making. If your organization has implemented BI tools, but you are falling short on user adoption success, return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO), it is probably because the business intelligence solution is not meant to support business users.

PC Magazine says that, as business users are asked to leverage BI tools, the enterprise must focus on simplicity to engender user adoption.

‘When your team can access BI tools that support the way they work and provide meaningful views and features to easily integrate with work and business processes, user adoption is easier and more immediate.’

To achieve your enterprise goals, ensure user adoption and get the most out of your investment, you must focus on two things: user-friendly features and function and sophisticated analytics.

BI Tool User Adoption Depends on Simplicity!

In this article, we list some of the considerations for business intelligence solution selection or product upgrade. This list is meant to help you assess your current solution, and/or review the capabilities of any BI tool you are considering.

Simplicity in Technology:

  • 100% browser-based solution
  • Intuitive interface
  • Mobile application that is suitable for iOS and Android
  • Simple, affordable licensing
  • Rapid implementation (roll out in minutes, not months)
  • Simple, multi-layered access and user rights management
  • Simple architecture

Simplicity of Use:

  • Ability to personalize dashboards
  • KPI Reporting
  • Easy-to-use reporting tools
  • Collaborative features
  • Social BI for sharing, ranking and commenting
  • Smart Data Visualization
  • Assisted Predictive Modeling
  • Self-Serve Data Preparation
  • Clickless analytics for easy searching and results

The business intelligence tools you select can and should include out-of-the-box, ready-to-use features that are designed to support your applications, your industry, and/or your business function. When your team can access BI tools that support the way they work and provide meaningful views and features to easily integrate with work and business processes, user adoption is easier and more immediate.

‘To achieve your enterprise goals, ensure user adoption and get the most out of your investment, you must focus on two things: user-friendly features and function and sophisticated analytics.’

Look for Ready-To-Use Tools that users will want to adopt. Provide business intelligence that your IT team can easily implement and support, with features your users will readily leverage. Choose  flexible, agile business intelligence solutions that can be used at all levels to collaborate, share data, and report and communicate with clarity. Self-Serve BI Tools can provide your business with the foundation to achieve your data democratization and user adoption goals.

Original Post : BI Tool User Adoption Depends on Simplicity!