Well laid out, clear and consise reports are essential to business. It is important to note, however, that report content and presentation options are as diverse as the line of business functions they are intended to support. Not only are the department needs different, but various levels of management and individual preference can also influence how and when the content is designed.
As the annual Garter Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms shows, there are a number of vendors vying to be your go-to BI tool. Is there a single one that can meet ALL of your reporting needs? The simple answer is probably not, at least not easily or completely. If you choose one reporting tool and try to produce every type of report with it, you will run into either limitations or at the very least, find that it is extremely difficult to create and more importantly, maintain reports that are pushed into producing output they were not designed to do.
There are niche products for formatted ( standard ) reports, dashboards, mobile devices, three dimensional ( cubic ) analysis and more. Depending on the underlying source data, the information presentation requirements and the target audience preference, some tools are just better designed to meet specific needs.
As report developers, we need to chose the best tool for each task while being aware of the fact that each product has a learning curve and cost associated with adopting it’s use. So we need to balance the need for the best tools with the practical business requirement of being cost-conscience. Not just for the cost of the tool itself, but also for the cost of learning how to use the tools, train staff, ensure the vendor will be there in 10 or 15 years down the road for support and ongoing technical advances. You will not only have to create the reports, but have the trained resources to maintain them.
Can one BI tool do it all? In short, no. But there is one change management tool that can help you maintain all of those reports using any BI tool you have selected, Find it EZ. Both the Code Search Pro and Dev Surge 365 product suites allow you to easily search and document your entire BI report analytics library, no matter which leading vendor tools you chose. One tool to meet all your needs allowing you the freedom to chose whichever combination of BI tools work best for you!
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