Business intelligence reporting

At Phocas, we believe that reporting should be a breeze, not a burden. Our BI reporting tools are designed to be intuitive and human-friendly, ensuring that you can:

Access real-time data: Say goodbye to outdated figures. Our reports are as current as your latest data, offering a real-time snapshot of your business.

Customize with ease: Tailor reports to meet your unique business needs without getting tangled in technicalities.

Share insights effortlessly: Collaborate and share reports across your organization in just a few clicks, fostering a data-driven culture.

Drill down to details: Go beyond the surface-level data with the ability to explore data at a granular level, uncovering the 'why' behind the 'what'.

• Reporting focuses on presenting data in summarized, easy-to-understand visualizations and communicating insights through dashboards and static reports. BI does this, but also involves functions like data integration, predictive modeling, advanced analytics etc.
• Reporting is mainly consumed passively by viewers. BI enables interactive analysis for users to dive deeper into data on their own through things like visual data discovery, ad-hoc analysis and what-if scenarios.
• Static reporting delivers snapshots of business data. BI combines historical data with analysis techniques like data mining, statistical analysis, machine learning to uncover patterns and future projections.
• Pre-defined reports have fixed layouts focused on tracking historical KPIs. BI allows flexible, user-defined reporting to explore many perspectives.
• Reporting tools help visualize data from warehouses and databases. BI also offers capabilities to integrate, clean, transform and enrich data for reliability.

1. Descriptive Reports: These reports answer the question ‘what happened’ for businesses over a certain period. They include data analysis of sales figures, financial statements, and other performance metrics.
2. Diagnostic Reports: Diagnostic reports go beyond the 'what' to explore the 'why'. They analyze data to uncover business decisions behind performance trends, such as why sales dipped in a particular quarter.
3. Predictive Reports: Predictive reports use historical data to forecast ‘what could happen’. They help businesses anticipate market movements, customer behavior, and potential opportunities or risks.

User-Friendliness: Choose a tool that is intuitive and easy for all users, regardless of their technical expertise.

Data Integrations: Ensure the tool has a range of connectors for a variety data sources, including your ERP system. If one of your business peers using the same ERP has integrated smoothly with the tool, ask about their user experience.

Customization: Look for the ability to customize reports to fit your specific business needs and KPIs. Again, ensure customizations can be performed by everyone - not just the data experts.

Real-Time Analysis: Select a tool that collates data as close to real-time as possible for up-to-date decision-making.

1. Collaboration Features: Collaboration capabilities are key for sharing insights and making collective decisions.
2. Scalability: The tool should grow with your business, handling increased data volume and complexity over time. Query whether the provider has FP&A capabilities such as Financial Statement, Budgets & Forecasts and Rebates software.
3. Support and Training: Adequate support and training resources are essential for maximizing your chosen BI reporting and analytics platform's value. Ensure they have dedicated support teams located in offices globally.