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CHAPTER 1 BUSINESS REPORTING PARADIGMS
are for enterprise-wide comparisons, long-term trend analysis, and corporate decision support, you will
be met with significant challenges trying to run these reports with operational data sources.
Summary reports on occasion will evolve to include components of truly analytical reports and, when
that happens, it’s important to consider whether they should be migrated to a business intelligence
reporting model. The paramount question to consider is whether the report exists to support a specific
business operation within the scope of that group, department, and leadership.
Status Reports
The term ‘‘status report’’ means different things to different people but the common theme is that
this type of report is used to provide concise results that are comparable over periods of time. It’s
important to understand the needs of the person who will use the report and the message it should
convey. A common report may be for a team leader to get the status for a project or task. This should
typically summarize data points to a standard indicator at the end of a time period or project phase,
relative to some goal or objective. For example, is the project on schedule, behind schedule, or ahead of
schedule? Is the application component development completed or incomplete? These simplified results
are typically broken down by tasks, stages, or responsibilities for comparison over each reporting
period to measure progress.
Status reports can vary in sophistication but most are fairly simple. Figure 1-7 shows an example of a
Top 10 report of ranked values, which is common in many business scenarios where leaders may want
to see the best producing items.
FIGURE 1-7
ANALYTICAL REPORTING
The concept and purpose of business intelligence (BI) is much more than just reporting. BI solutions
help business leaders make critical decisions. A complete BI strategy involves financial forecasting and