Visualization and Reporting

The increased levels of interactivity, which have evolved as business needs have, means that the way in which users interact with reports has changed. What used to only be simple visualizations of data, are now being used more and more for the purposes of data discovery, and in some cases full-fledged data analysis.

This means that the ability to slice and dice and drill down/through data, utilize formulas, and even some base level data modeling is now being moved from the hands of dedicated data scientists and analysts to the hands of non-technical decision makers. With this added functionality, the ability to make more objective, data-driven decisions is becoming easier an easier.

Multi-Platforms

As previously referenced, today’s visualizations contain many different ways to interact and manipulate data. The increased levels of interactivity, which have evolved as business needs have, means that the way in which users interact with reports has changed.

Enterprise Reporting

However, the rise of enterprise-wide reporting capabilities has led many organizations to now face the risk of data overload or analysis paralysis. The systems which were designed to bring all of the data gathered from different disparate systems an enterprise business might have to a centralized system for the purposes of driving increased efficiency are now acting as a hindrance. A big picture view can sometimes be too big to be understood easily let alone acted on. For this reason, many organizations are now demanding a more siloed approach, and moreover an approach which makes viewing actionable intelligence, and taking actual action, easier.

This demand has created an increased need for reporting tools to be integrated with the enterprise systems different departments rely on to run a business. Embedded analytics or embedded business intelligence now plays an ever more important role for the software companies who develop these business to business applications.

Self-Service Reporting

The emergence of self-service analytics or ad hoc reporting capabilities has also driven the levels of interactivity even further by giving the power to create and edit reports directly to decision makers, further empowering them to drive businesses forward while decreasing the workload on developers and report developers.