A Possible Solution To Operational Reporting Problems

Many organisations face a paradox in their own data management. On the one hand, they hold vastly increasing quantities of data; on the other hand, they find it increasingly difficult to extract meaningful information from the data.

The larger corporate issue is that the majority end users are not getting the information they need when they need it and in the shape they prefer ( typically Microsoft Excel ). Surprisingly, the vast majority of organisations could solve the problem easily, thanks to an existing information asset: the present report output already produced by the organisation’s current applications, data warehouses and third-party report providers.

Activating existing data:

Conventional wisdom says that existing reports cannot be used as a source of data analysis or visualisation because they are static; they don’t allow an individual to ask questions concerning the data and to see different data views. As a result of Report Activation, this is no longer true.. existing reports can now be changed on demand into live, actionable data for easy analysis, without reviewing new database programming.

Most information systems typically offer a vast library of existing reports and business documents like invoices, purchase orders and bills of materials. Such systems range from legacy mainframes, ERP, HR, and payroll, industry specific core processing systems for banking, healthcare and retail, whether these systems are managed in-house or by an out side data processing firm. These reports are the chief source of information in most businesses.

Using Report Activation technology to access existing report output from these systems provides a systematic solution to accessing required information without the requirement for programmers and other expensive IT resources.

According to IBM and industry studies, an average billion dollar organisation has no fewer than 48 disparate financial systems in use within the company. Additionally, as much as 40% of IT budgets could be spent on data integration projects to pull these separate databases together.

Report activation technology enables the building of data extraction models that perform intelligent recognition and parsing of data functions within existing reports (typically in plain text of PDF format). Executed models extract desired information from the reports and transform the data into usable, computer-readable formats. Extracted data can be loaded into valid data tables, complete with optional calculated fields of data as well as database lookups. The data extraction models have the capability to perform data sorting and filtering functions, as well as the ability to combine data from other report sources.

The self-service capabilities of Report Activation may also translate readily to compelling reductions to an organisations total cost of ownership (TCO) of its enterprise information systems. Because users of a Report Activation system are accessing data mined from archived report output instead of, as an example, live data from a production ERP system, the organisation can reduce significantly the number of live seats to the ERP system.

So a Report Activation system can benefit companies with a dramatically faster and simpler implementation cycle, extreme ease of use and ability to produce the right person at the right time, at a fraction of the complexity and cost of traditional business reporting solutions and processes.