The Future of Reporting

Today, only a minority of companies say they have a modern reporting landscape and regularly make decisions based on data. In fact, most companies struggle with data-related problems, organizational issues or outdated BI and analytics infrastructures which ignore most recent usage scenarios such as explorative analytics on big data sources. These problems become even more obvious when compared with modern infrastructures built in the cloud and micro services as well as the challenges caused by excessive increase in data volume and variety.

In the meantime, the highest pressure stems from competition. Companies must react quicker than ever to changing demands from their customers to keep pace with the competition. In short, the time has come to modernize reporting landscapes and make decisions based on information rather than emotions. The legacy of the past must be overcome to reach the future of reporting.

The BARC survey “The Future of Reporting” is based on a survey of over 600 participants worldwide from 58 countries across a range of industries and draws attention to 4 key issues that should be addressed by managements in order to provide an effective reporting landscape:

The Key to the Future of Reporting: Flexibility in Information Usage and Personalization

Although a common data model consisting of aligned structures and measures is required for consistency and governance, it will not provide business departments with the flexibility needed to efficiently analyze and interpret data.

Architectures and modern tools which enable business users to search, prepare and analyze data pave the way to reacting promptly to changes in the market. Business users who consume pre-defined content require greater flexibility in data navigation as well as personalized content distributed over a vast number of different channels.

Modern Reporting Tools Must Focus On Business Users

Business users will be the major creators of reports and content in the future. Thus, users require easy-to-use and modern tools which can support them in data analysis and report creation tasks. Technologies to increase automation and efficiency such as machine learning help users to speed up their work.

Fact-Based Decision-Making Requires Trusted and Managed Data

Data management has always been a challenge for companies. The foremost challenge is to overcome multiple and inconsistent definitions for KPIs which are usually addressed with rigid and strongly centralized control. Data quality is rarely handled in source systems in a way that meets the needs of decision support. As the number of sources, volume and variety of data increase, data-related issues are felt more strongly. Therefore, state-of-the-art and future-proof architecture concepts and tools are needed to overcome these challenges.

Searching for an Answer in Reporting and BI: Triggering Action Using Data

Managers are a key element in adoption of a data-based decision-making mechanism in organizations. All employees need appropriately prepared information that is easy to access and to comprehend. Especially latecomers must catch up on regularly supplying their management and operational staff with relevant information.

Leaders Invest in Self-Service BI for Decentralized Content Creation

The survey also includes the recent BI approaches of leading companies. As shown in the table below, a closer look at initiatives run by “leaders” and “latecomers” shows the right actions to take to improve your reporting.

Leaders invest strongly in both data management and front-end related topics. Their top priority is to put emphasis on one of the issues with the lowest satisfaction, namely to offer increased flexibility to answer specific business questions to more users by providing self-service BI.

Contrary to the trend of increase in the use of BI front-end, experts expect fewer challenges from information spread across multiple front-end tools in the foreseeable future. The key here is to get data governance and data management right to carry the consistent data to the right tool for every use case.