What Are the Best Tips for Business Intelligence Reporting?

One of the most important tips for business intelligence reporting is to define the problems you need solutions for before attempting to integrate a business intelligence system. Without first doing this, you can end up with a lot of data that is poorly organized and which can be quite difficult to sift through. Sit down with colleagues and determine where your organization can benefit from business intelligence reporting then integrate a capable system into your established business system. Once you successfully have integrated your business intelligence system, it is important that you or an Information Technology (IT) professional continually performs data management to ensure that data definitions and names are consistent throughout a system.

Business intelligence reporting describes the act of generating data that help professionals to make business decisions. In most cases, users have access to a data warehouse where all business intelligence is stored. When users access and view selected data, they are performing business intelligence reporting.

If you need to integrate a business intelligence system, it might be a good idea to stick with one vendor, as opposed to purchasing applications from a number of different providers. When you have a business system that is an amalgamation of different products, it is common to experience compatibility problems. Users might experience difficulty moving data from a database to outside programs. IT professionals might find it difficult to ensure that data names and definitions are consistent throughout a system.

When performing business intelligence reporting, it is important to understand that there are different levels of complexity. You should use a reporting style that fits your needs. For example, a professional who is interested in seeing sales numbers for one particular month might want to generate a standard report that lists requested data. This kind of report often is generated immediately upon request.

Business intelligence that is generated in a dashboard format, on the other hand, usually enables users to perform a strategic analysis. Professionals use dashboard business intelligence reporting to compare performances in different periods or even among different organizations. Graphs and charts are common in this kind of reporting, which often needs to be prepared by an IT professional or analyst.

It also is important that IT professionals perform their own business intelligence reporting on a data warehouse. For example, a professional such as a data custodian might periodically go through stored data and erase information that is no longer relevant. He or she might also create reports that allow him or her to see how often certain data sets are accessed, who has been accessing data, and how often data is updated.