Pentaho Reporting
Today's business depends on data flow at most. Efficient management requires immediate spread of information so that every department of an enterprise is able to use timely and accurate, common for all data. It's quite simple to imagine what would happen if the two departments were using different information. Even though little time decays in making decisions process are unavoidable, significant differences would cause a total disinformation and loss of incomes. We should realize that in today's business the winner is the first to react on market's changes. Thereupon, to facilitate decision making diverse managers are being provided with more and more complex reporting solutions.
Reporting itself is one of the three elements of performance management. It's its mid part as well, as analyzing is the first and reacting is the last element. The role of reporting is strictly to present data gathered during the analysis process in the simplest way. Thank to reporting, managers can see the crucial information without a need for reading all particular numbers and partial compositions. The thing is to let them find the most interesting area of the report and then to let them check its reasons. Nonetheless, the question of reporting is much more complex than it seems and therefore choosing the best reporting solution becomes crucial. Which one is the best depends on each company's needs, and Pentaho Reporting totally is a one worth-considering.
At first, it's free. We've used to think that free things couldn't be valuable and Pentaho Reporting is another prove that we're wrong. Although it's free, Pentaho provides full range of functions which make it a great alternative to paid solutions.
At second, it's open source. It lets Pentaho remain easily-modifiable and easy-to-use. Moreover, thank to light and clear code solution becomes truly usable and does not overwhelm computer systems. Thank to that, most of the memory might remain devoted to solving the problem, not running the program itself.
At third, it's efficient. With Pentaho, user can concentrate on solving the problems and answering questions - preparing a report is easy and intuitive, so that it doesn't require too much time nor attention. It significantly influences on growth of the efficiency.
Pentaho reporting tools
Reporting applications in the Pentaho Open Source BI platform (with the corresponding wide-known commercial applications):
- Pentaho Metadata Editor - mapping of physical database structure to a logical business model. Similiar things do such commercial tools as SAP BusinessObjects Universe Designer, IBM Cognos Framework Manager
- Pentaho Report Designer - statical report design tool. Very similiar to Crystal Reports and Microsoft SSRS
- Pentaho Schema Workbench - OLAP modelling tool. Far less sophisticated than Cognos Powerplay Transformer
- Pentaho Dashboards (only in Enterprise Edition) - dashboard building application. Very simple, however plays similiar role to SAP BusinessObjects Performance Manager and IBM Cognos Go!Dashboards
- Pentaho Design Studio - low-level report and BI content customization tool.