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 most end users are not getting the information they need when they need it and in the form they like ( typically Microsoft Excel ). Surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of organisations could solve the issue easily, thanks to an existing information asset: the present report output already produced by the organisations current applications, data warehouses and third-party report providers.

Activating existing data:

Conventional wisdom says that existing reports can't be used as a supply of data analysis or visualisation because theyre static; they do not allow the user to ask questions about the data and to see different data views. Thanks to Report Activation, this is no longer true.. existing reports can now be transformed on demand into live, actionable data for straightforward analysis, without reviewing new database programming.

Most information systems typically provide 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 need for programmers and other expensive IT resources.

Reported by IBM and industry studies, an average billion dollar organisation has no fewer than 48 disparate financial systems in use inside the company. Additionally, as much as 40% of IT budgets might be spent on data integration projects to bring 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 ability 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 can 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 quantity 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.