Reporting tool is flexible, allowing the user to easily create new columns, calculations, and formats without developer assistance

Description

This feature allows users to create reports for any data in the system independently, without consulting or technical support. This includes incorporating calculations, row/column layouts, re-usable variables, and formatting. This does not differentiate between an Excel-based report writer and a web-based report writer.

Example Use Case

Scenario: An international manufacturing company uses CPM software for their quarterly performance review. During a specific quarter, a new product was launched in the market, and the management wants to track its sales performance separate from the rest.

Solution: Using their flexible reporting tool within the CPM software, the financial analyst creates a new column labeled 'New Product Sales'. She calculates the sales numbers specifically for this product and formats the information in a way that easily compares the new product's performance with the rest of their offerings. This ability to intuitively create and modify components within the report, without needing a developer, allows more efficient and effective tracking of this new initiative.

Considerations

This broad requirement is focused on the ability for any finance or accounting user to build a useful report in a short period of time. Some products on the market claim to have reporting tools with a brief learning curve - but in reality, those tools are a nightmare to learn. Other products cram multiple reporting interfaces into the tool, making it difficult to know which reporting UI to use for which use case.

The best tools on the market list all your data elements and allow the user to simply drag and drop them onto a canvas. That canvas renders the data, and can then be formatted. Columns or rows can be included that contain a formula that takes report data and produces an output. And ideally, the tool allows the user to make it re-usable by including filters along with variables that keep the report current as time goes on.

The worst tools on the market are dependent on custom syntax to do just about anything. Those types of tools are only useful for trained consultants. The might be valuable for something incredibly complex, and something that is never changed. Other than that, avoid those types of products.

In summary, go with your gut on these reporting tools. If your first impression is “yikes!” then you should ask if they offer other reporting interfaces.

Questions to Ask a Vendor

• Report Creation: Can we drag and drop elements where they're supposed to go, like rows and columns?
• Data Elements: What are available data elements in the reporting tool? Dimensions, accounts, attributes? Anything else?
• Calculated Columns and Rows: Can we insert a custom column that contains a calculation against other columns in the report?
• Variables: Can we include variables, like floating dates, that change as time goes on automatically?
• Filters: Does it allow custom filters like date to date, dimension values, dollar amounts and so on?
• Formatting: What kind of formatting can we apply? Is it simply colors, fonts and styling, or can we include conditional formatting as well?