The PeopleSoft Reporting Pyramid
Choosing the Right Reporting Tool
Posted on 1/11/2007 (originally published in print on 8/1/2004)
by Andrew Spidle
As with any job, selecting the right tool is of great importance in being able to complete the task at hand. No one would want to dig a basement for a new home with a spade. While the job would eventually get done, much time and effort would be needlessly wasted. We should let technology do our work for us and go rent a bull dozer. Reporting and business intelligence are no exceptions. It doesn’t matter whether your reporting comes from EPM or ERP; the critical factor is getting the right tool for the right job. You may not need a bull dozer to generate your report; however, you may need its equivalent in the reporting world. Let’s take a look at some of the considerations we should make in selecting a tool.
There are three main areas to consider when selecting the right tool. They are audience, intent and technology. All three should balance to give an optimal solution. However, it is rarely the case when equilibrium occurs. If there is any question as to which area to be favored, it should be the audience. Closely matching your audience’s or user’s wants and desires will send you farther down the road of success than any award winning technology.
Users should be involved in selecting the reporting tool. I know that makes some of us cringe. However, if the end user doesn’t like the tool, they won’t use it. Admittedly, the choice often comes down to a beauty contest of the GUI interfaces. Sometimes subtle guidance is needed in presenting the final choices. The users have to feel the choice is theirs or at least meets most of their needs. Above all, the tool must be pretty and easy to use. Based on past experience, I can’t stress this enough since your ROI is in their hands.
The next area of consideration is intent. Intent really describes the purpose for which the tool will be used. There is a hierarchy of intent or purpose. I like to call it the information pyramid. The pyramid is four levels tall as we can see in Figure 1. The first level represents near real time information needs. This type of information is best described as a single instance which is currently available in the source system. In other words, it represents the last version of the information that was requested. An example of this type of information is the location of a fleet vehicle or aircraft. Often this information is completely dynamic and changes many times in a given time instant. Users who require this type of information may be customer service representatives or actual end customers who want to know an instantaneous status of their transaction. At any rate, the need is for the latest information in small quantities. What kind of technology is needed to support these needs?
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