Reporting and Analysis
It's likely that the people in your organisation are inundated with data—like
formal information from structured sources to RSS feeds, information in e-mails,
numbers from Wall Street, and on and on.
It's a never ending struggle to provide people with tools to report on and analyse all
that information while remaining focused on constantly moving business targets.
People need access to the right information at the right time, and to decision-making
tools that fit their work processes.
To understand how Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) can help, first consider how traditional
BI solutions are tied to the ERP system or the data warehouse. They are outside
the flow of a person's daily tasks. They don't empower people to take advantage
of all the information they have at hand when making decisions. So people turn to
informal systems and try to pull it together on their own.
Reporting and Analysis for All the Places Data Lives
People need a way to rationalise all the data they encounter every day. Microsoft
BI provides you with the reporting and analysis tools and technologies to capture
both structured and unstructured information:
- Reporting: Microsoft BI offers three ways of making your
reporting a success:
- Enterprise reporting: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting
Services offers a comprehensive, server-based solution that includes traditional
managed reports, interactive reports, and embedded reports.
- Ad hoc reporting: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting
Services includes Report Builder, a tool that helps securely connect business users
to data so they can explore the relational data and create and update reports with
ease.
- Management reporting: Microsoft Office PerformancePoint
Server 2007, building on the capabilities of SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services
and Microsoft Office Excel 2007, can help your organisation manage all aspects of
complex reporting.
- Analysis: Microsoft BI analysis tools are integrated
with the rest of the BI platform to help you transform data into insight. For example,
you can easily move from monitoring a scorecard or reading a report right into an
analysis of the same information. When you see a problem, you can dive right in.
When you want to take action, you can discover hidden opportunities.
Microsoft BI makes these tools available through its comprehensive, integrated offering.
Related Resources
Case Studies
- EMI Music
Music company enhances efficiency and effectiveness of digital-supply-chain performance
reporting and boosts sales with Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005
and Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
- ABS-CBN Interactive (ABSi)
Wireless services firm generates customer-specific recommendations and doubles response
rates from marketing campaigns with a data mining solution based on Microsoft SQL
Server 2005.
