Best Automated Reporting Tools
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PRODUCTS
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BUYER'S GUIDE
Buyer's Guide
By Ritinder Kaur, Market Analyst at SelectHub
It’s a cutthroat world, and companies constantly hustle to differentiate themselves. Business plans change at any moment, and strategies are made and unmade at the first sign of market trend changes. Automated reporting tools can be the proverbial lighthouse in a storm, providing enterprise reporting for critical decision support.
This buyer’s guide gives you the necessary information, resources and tips to start your software selection process. We discuss the most popular automated reporting tools to help fine tune your business requirements before approaching vendors.
Executive Summary
- Automated reporting involves using pre-coded workflows to set up and leverage report generation that doesn’t require manual intervention.
- Financial services, sales and marketing, transportation and logistics, manufacturing, procurement, customer service and workforce management utilize automated reporting.
- Automated reporting solutions are code or low/no-code systems, including BI, dashboard and data visualization tools.
- Automation ensures timely report delivery, reduces manual errors and lessens the task load on already overburdened teams.
- Asking the right questions helps internally evaluate your team’s requirements and get clarity from vendors during discussions.
What Are Automated Reporting Tools?
An automated reporting system is an enterprise tool that generates organizational reports at preset intervals without needing you to update the information manually every time. Physically checking for data exceeding threshold values, refreshing it and combining results from multiple sources is no longer productive.
The demand for automating routine reporting tasks to support business intelligence is growing, though automated reporting platforms are often more than that. They can be reporting tools, BI systems, dashboard platforms and data visualization solutions.
Dynamic, live connectivity is a primary feature of modern reporting software to include the latest insight with consistent, continuous data refreshes. Set the automation in place by defining the parameters, output schedule, file format and destination, and you’re all set.
It also removes daily to and fro between departments, saving time. Manufacturing companies use automation to generate periodic reports for monitoring KPIs like production volume, the number of functional machines and the top machines by production. Imagine collecting this information manually.
Similarly, healthcare, human resources (HR), enterprise resource planning (ERP), construction, supply chain management and project management leverage automation for daily and period-over-period insight.
Automated reporting tools come in all shapes and sizes, including cloud-based and software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms.
- Code-based reporting tools give you complete control with the option to hand-pick features and add custom functionality. But, it’s time-consuming and costly to develop, test and debug these solutions. Additionally, adoption can lag if most users aren’t technically skilled.
- Big Data Analytics
- Business Analytics
- Business Intelligence
- Cloud BI
- Data Analytics
- Data Cleaning
- Data Discovery
- Data Integration
- Data Management
- Data Preparation
- Data Warehouse
- Ecommerce Analytics
- Embedded Analytics
- Enterprise Reporting
- ETL
- HR Analytics
- OLAP Tools
- Predictive Analytics
- Qualitative Data Analysis
- Self-Service BI Tools
- Low/no-code tools are easy to deploy and a breeze to use — you can drag and drop fields into the report editor and establish source connections with intuitive drop-down menus and selection options. But customization isn’t easy as the system hides the code at the backend.
- You can use BI tools for report automation. Check with your vendor if your existing BI platform supports it — if yes, you might be able to acquire a reporting add-on. Conversely, many automated reporting platforms are BI solutions, and you can get two for the price of one.
- The same is true for many dashboard tools which let you schedule automatic reports with a few clicks.
Primary Benefits
Automation is like an elixir that promises to make everything better. But can you convince management to take the leap of faith? Knowing how it can benefit your business is an excellent way to prepare for any questions they might have.
Optimize Resources
Modern automated reporting tools are easy to deploy, requiring little technical expertise. Automation is an excellent time-saver, and live source connectivity keeps the data fresh and contextual. Instead of generating reports, you can focus on improving business processes by analyzing performance and other key metrics.
Boosting productivity by weeding out inefficiencies becomes straightforward as automation sets you free. Time-saving functionalities like creating and reusing report templates with white labeling allow you to work with multiple clients without losing yourself in prepping layouts and formats.
By pre-configuring user permissions, you can avoid heartache by limiting information access to only authorized persons. Like other modern software, automated reporting solutions come equipped with data security and governance guardrails to prevent tampering and data loss.
Boost Productivity
Self-service functionality primarily contributes to data literacy, enabling department-level users and managers to automate reports, provided the administrator assigns them permissions. Accurate, up-to-date insight gives you the confidence to conduct meaningful discussions and propose new ideas and suggestions.
Setting up department-specific reports ensures you view only the relevant information to get to the facts faster. Report-sharing and collaboration are standard data software features that speed up response times. Commenting upon and discussing the results within dashboards retains relevant comments for future reference.
With built-in analytics, these tools prove to be cost-effective.
Gain Live Insight
With manual reporting, you constantly race to catch up with live data coming in — by the time you generate the report, the information becomes outdated. Enter up-to-date reports generated on cue — business processes are impactful only if you refine and polish them consistently.
Not everyone like surprises, especially when they’re unpleasant. Tracking your KPIs in real time prepares you for future opportunities and potential pitfalls, like implementing strategies that won’t work anymore. And if you suffer a setback, staying ahead of the curve can help you recover faster.
Automatic report generation is better with live data refreshes, and shareability takes it up several notches with easily accessible URLs and reports viewers. Predefining filters and permissions lets you show the desired results to selected users.
Diversify
Automation in your corner means more time to focus on your business.
Having one less thing to worry about gives you the bandwidth to branch out into diverse ventures, including new product launches. You can fine-tune your offerings by tapping market sentiment pre and post-launch with automated updates keeping you informed.
Product development status reports help you clearly define timelines for the product launch and deal with issues as they arise. Setting up automated reporting on competitor products can help you differentiate your offerings before they hit the market.
Reduce Manual Errors
Automation eliminates ambiguities and inconsistencies, ensuring you don’t miss any updates. Manual errors can multiply in downstream reports, impacting plans and operations and upsetting delivery timelines.
You don’t need to remember report delivery schedules — the system works like a well-oiled machine — and your schedule clears up significantly.
Key Features & Functionality
Here are the key features to look for when seeking an automated reporting solution.
Data Integration | The automated reporting tool should ingest simple and complex information from standard files, RDBMS, OLAP cubes, websites, social media, smart devices and machine sensors. Check with vendors if their product connects to these and more sources, letting you create new connections as more data sources become available. |
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Interactive Dashboards and Data Visualizations | Autonomous data exploration and analysis are necessary when considering an automated reporting tool. Though you can pre-configure automated reports to show desired metrics, data manipulation is essential to fine tune the results further. The best automated reporting tools let you point and select datasets, connectors, files and folders without coding. Can you link a dataset in one report to another report? Will downstream metrics update as the source report refreshes? Automation eases your burden only if report data refreshes in sync with the underlying database. |
Report Types and Templates | Dashboard and report templates can be a differentiating factor when comparing software before buying. Reporting needs differ by role — departmental reports are more focused than high-level reports for top management, but both are essential and need interactivity with data manipulation capabilities. |
Sharing and Collaboration | Reports should be shareable and downloadable, with easy access via email, embedding, messaging and chat platforms. Report versioning is an added plus. Embeddability is a must-have — switching applications to view reports is bad design. Brand personalization with custom themes, colors, logos and fonts helps establish your identity and gives a professional touch to reports. |
Notifications and Alerts | Automatic reporting makes alerts and notifications essential. Getting notified of report delivery to teams and clients helps you monitor the automated reporting system and react when something goes wrong. These should be flexibly configurable, with the flexibility to define threshold values and the persons to notify in case values exceed preset ones. |
Data Governance and Security | Compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) and other industry regulations is essential. The reporting solution should provide data encryption at rest and in motion with role-based permissions and authentication protocols. Activity logs and audit trails enhance accountability and prevent malicious intent. |
Software Comparison Strategy
A requirements analysis helps assess your organization’s reporting needs. List your must-have and nice-to-have features by creating a requirements checklist. Get a head start with our pre-populated requirements template.
Finalize the requirements in consultation with top management and teams using the solution. Convert them into questions and distribute them to potential vendors with a request for proposal (RFP).
Review vendor proposals, ranking their products on a scale of 1 to 100 based on how well they promise to address your requirements.
Our Jumpstart platform gives you a feature-by-feature analysis of leading automated reporting tools and a complete breakdown of the product scores.
Cost & Pricing Considerations
Product price is a deal-breaker when considering a significant investment. Factoring in the total cost of ownership (TCO) ahead of time helps avoid sticker shock later. Pricing will vary depending on the deployment model, user licenses, features and add-ons you choose, so factor them in while calculating the total cost.
Check the available pricing tiers and support options from the vendor’s website or contact them directly. Often, the product price includes basic support, but 24*7 technical assistance and dedicated services will cost you extra.
The Most Popular Automated Reporting Tools
Our analysts shortlisted the most popular automated reporting tools based on how well they address business needs. It should help you fine tune your ask list before approaching vendors.
JasperReports
The JasperReports Library is a reporting engine with a flexible, open-source architecture. Though it comes embedded within Jaspersoft Studio and the JasperReports Server, a standalone version also exists. Nested subreports are available — link to or directly use any report within other reports.
Internationalization lets you display reports in any language via Unicode and other native encodings. Its report scheduler wizard lets you set up jobs, report parameters and output options.
You can select the output file format and destination when configuring automated reports.
Crystal Reports
An offering from SAP, Crystal Reports provides flexible options to automate scheduled report sharing. Predefining a report delivery timeline ensures you don’t miss sharing business-critical insight. Additionally, it helps minimize repetitive queries against databases.
Versioning is available — the SAP Crystal Server retains all scheduled reports sent out, plus a recurring instance containing the scheduling details. The platform lets you define stored SQL procedures to auto-update databases, move files and send report bursts based on event triggers.
Add pre-defined objects to the report canvas by dragging them from the sidebar. Source
MicroStrategy
It offers fast reporting with Intelligent Cubes that reside in memory and are sharable among multiple reports, reducing query overload on underlying databases. It provides predictive analytics through automated data discovery with machine learning.
Role-based permissions and industry-standard authentication protocols secure data during automated report delivery.
Interactive options enable report formatting to show the desired datasets.
Questions To Ask
Though it’s tempting to jump into vendor outreach and discussions after readying the shortlist, it helps to pause and assess your business needs. Ask questions internally to confirm whether you’re on the right track with your requirements list.
- Do you need a dedicated platform or an add-on automated reporting module?
- Where does your existing reporting solution fall short?
- What is your budget?
- Who are the end users? What is their technical skill level?
- Which features are deal-breakers?
While finalizing the vendor shortlist, you may have concerns and queries about the product and vendor services. Making a list of questions to ask during vendor discussions will help you methodically convey your requirements.
- How long will deployment take?
- Does the software connect to your preferred data sources?
- Does it integrate with mobile devices? Is a mobile app available?
- Are email, chat and phone support available?
- Is training included?
To Conclude
Automated reporting tools are life savers, irrespective of the size of your organization. They reduce your task load by supporting delivery pipelines with on-time access to key metrics. The resources and software selection tips included here should help you select a solution that fits.
Our Managed Selection Services are with you every step of the way, from requirements gathering to signing on the dotted line.
Products found for Automated Reporting Tools
JReport
JReport by Logi Analytics (now discontinued) empowered companies to perform data analysis and generate reports directly from other business applications. It was scalable, customizable, fault-tolerant and worked seamlessly within other web interfaces. It integrated with any architecture and supported a range of embedding methods from the front and back ends.
Tableau
Tableau is a data visualization and analytics solution that assists enterprises in making data-driven business decisions. It blends information from a wide range of sources to deliver actionable, real-time insights. It allows exploration of data via intuitive means such as drag-and-drop filtering and natural language queries, irrespective of skill levels. With ample customization and security options, it offers control over data visualization, enabling creation of dashboards and stories that effectively convey business narratives. It can be purchased as part of the Tableau Creator package, which includes the desktop version, Prep and a Creator license of the server or online version.
Power BI
Microsoft Power BI is an analytics tool that assists in reporting, data mining and data visualization to provide business insights. Through Power BI's simple interface, businesses can connect to a variety of data sources and create their own dashboards and reports. Originally born from Excel as an add-on, Power BI has since grown to stand on its own. At a relatively low cost, Power BI fulfills the needs of organizations ranging from small business owners to enterprise operators. There are three versions: Desktop, which is available for free for individual use, an upgraded Pro plan offered on a monthly price-per-user SaaS subscription and a capacity-based Premium plan which provides enterprise-level insights with on-premise deployment and a dedicated cloud infrastructure.
BusinessObjects
BusinessObjects from SAP offers a variety of packages to fit businesses of all industries and sizes. It aims to reduce the cost of IT upkeep and increase responsiveness to business problems. It streamlines workloads and lets users share insights to make better business decisions.
Domo
Domo is a cloud-based business management suite that accelerates digital transformation for businesses of all sizes. It performs both micro and macro-level analysis to provide teams with in-depth insight into their business metrics as well as solve problems smarter and faster. It presents these analyses in interactive visualizations to make patterns obvious to users, facilitating the discovery of actionable insights. Through shared key performance indicators, users can overcome team silos and work together across departments.
Cognos Analytics
IBM Cognos Analytics is a self-service, web-based analytics platform which empowers users of all skill levels to explore data through reporting, data analytics, KPI monitoring, events and metrics. Reports give users the ability to not just visualize their insights, but also share them with colleagues. It integrates with Watson Analytics, which leverages IBM’s artificial intelligence and natural language processing to make insights more accessible to non-technical users. It has various components which give additional functionality, flexibility and agility when processing large sets of data.
BIRT
It’s an open-source project on Eclipse and is an acronym for Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools. It lets organizations extract and transform data for business analysis. Its Report Designer enables visual report-building within interactive dashboards. The runtime component executes the reports once ready. Embedded into a range of business interfaces, it enables custom design layout, data access and scripting to present report output over the web. It supports charts, crosstabs, using multiple data sources within the same report, re-using queries within reports and addition of custom code.
Oracle Reports
Oracle Reports is a component of the Oracle Fusion Middleware suite and offers businesses instant access to their data on all levels in a secure and scalable environment. The reports developer is a powerful WYSIWYG, or what-you-see-is-what-you-get, design tool that keeps report generation easy and intuitive.
SSRS
The SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Service) platform from Microsoft allows users to create, share, deploy and manage reports for their business. The server-based system offers customization functions and lets users prepare and deliver various types of documents, both printed and interactive. This software can connect to SQL databases and utilize the Microsoft Visual Studio interface to explore and prepare data. It allows non-technical users access to report building and data exploration techniques that improve data literacy.
JasperReports
JasperReports, at its core, is an embeddable, open-source Java-based reporting tool that can write to a variety of destinations. It can generate dynamic content suitable for embedded analytics. It includes the JasperReports Library, which is a reporting engine, and the JasperReports Server that provides advanced server capabilities, such as report scheduling and permissions-based access.Integrating into the larger Jaspersoft suite, to cater to businesses with sophisticated requirements, it supports front-end data visualization and reporting through Jaspersoft Studio.
Funnel
Integrate data from different platforms with the aid of connectors to facilitate robust analysis. Access real-time data to extract useful insights. Export data to multiple destinations for advanced analysis and visualization. Consolidating data at a centralized location ensures users gauge ROI across different marketing channels and campaigns. Understand KPIs with up-to-date dashboards and reports. Leverage standard rules to define naming conventions for dimensions and metrics.
Crystal Reports
SAP Crystal Reports is a feature-rich reporting tool that gleans business-critical insights through data exploration, visualization and custom reporting. Users drill-down to a high level of granularity to interact with and display data via visually rich reports and dashboards, enabling greater understanding of the metrics that count. Available as a SaaS model or hosted locally, it integrates with other SAP and third-party offerings, and third-party applications such as Microsoft Office to provide entry-level user access to data. Users leverage a universal semantic layer to query large data sets and to intuitively design ad-hoc and print-ready reports in a variety of export formats.
MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy is a data analytics platform that delivers actionable intelligence to organizations of all sizes. It allows users to customize data visualizations and build personalized real-time dashboards. It leverages data connectivity, machine learning and mobile access to offer users comprehensive control over their insights. Due to its ease of use and scalability, it stands out as a leader in the enterprise analytics field. Users can choose between cloud, on-premise or hybrid deployment according to their needs.
Microsoft Dynamics GP
Microsoft Dynamics GP is a versatile solution, well-suited for companies seeking to connect supply chain workflows with tasks such as financial management and human resources management. It offers a range of features, with the option to add on integrations with third-party offerings or implement advanced packages to further increase its functionality. It helps free up employee time to focus on other tasks through its automation of processes such as the generation of receivables, the creation of purchase orders and the direct deposit of employee pay to bank accounts. Available on-premise or in the cloud.
InsightSquared
InsightSquared is a sales analytics SaaS platform that builds a path for revenue operations professionals from sales data to sales intelligence, empowering them to make better decisions informed by insights. It helps businesses dig deep into their sales pipelines to thoroughly understand what drives results. With AI-powered forecasting, detailed reporting, complete sales funnel visibility and employee performance tracking, it enables enterprises to track their key metrics and sales growth with precision and strategize for the future with confidence.Suitable for companies of all sizes, it simplifies the sales process and helps businesses improve ROI and maximize their results. As each offering is customized to fit the client’s needs, pricing and functionality will vary based on the tier of plan and number of components selected.
GoodData
GoodData is a powerful, embeddable, customizable SaaS solution that combines, analyzes and visualizes the internal and external data of an organization to help businesses change the way they make decisions, with a focus on data-driven best practices. It lets users process data, analyze trends and create visualizations that present information in an easily-digestible format. Users can interpret these visualizations to draw insights and make intelligent business decisions.
Planful
Formerly Host Analytics, Planful is a financial planning and analysis cloud platform. It accelerates end-to-end FP A. Suitable for midsize to large-scale businesses, it helps by centralizing data and managing financial and operational processes. It helps users plan and manage reviews, approvals and submissions and generates workflow status reports to check the performance of every department. It helps analyze asset performance by using financial budgeting and forecasting techniques with its capital planning feature. It is a scalable solution that allows companies to check the effect of projects on the overall bottom line.
WebFOCUS
WebFOCUS is a data analytics solution from Information Builders that helps businesses transform their data into actionable insights. Its intuitive interface makes self-service intelligence accessible to users of all skill levels. Its capabilities include dashboards, scorecards, mobile access, guided ad hoc reporting, data integrations, dynamic report distribution and much more. As of 2020, the vendor has announced that it will be acquired by TIBCO.
Jet Reports
Jet Reports offers easy-to-use reporting services designed to integrate with ERP platforms, especially Microsoft Dynamics. It addresses data warehousing, reporting and analytics needs, allowing users of all data literacy levels to perform data exploration tasks to generate reports and glean insights from their data.
Infor Birst
Infor Birst is a cloud-based analytics software tool that aims to help users discover insights without the need for analyst input. It unifies IT-managed enterprise data with user-owned data, supporting the blending of both in a top-down and bottom-up manner. It uses consistent business metrics to structure raw data into organized sets and visualizations. It helps users identify patterns and better understand their organization’s KPIs. It offers a seamless, integrated UI that allows users to perform every step of the data analysis process in a single interface, enabling a smooth experience. It can be deployed either from the cloud or self-hosted on-premise. Users can purchase it in three available formats: per-user fee, by department or business unit or by end-customer in embedded scenarios.
Logi Symphony
Logi Symphony (formerly Logi Analytics) provides businesses with interactive data analytics and visualizations, offering advanced reporting and visualization features in a minimal-code environment. It offers self-service data analysis and data discovery; then connects and blends operational intelligence to prepare it; and finally lets users turn it into dashboards, reports and other visualizations.
ActiveReports
ActiveReports is a .NET reporting tool from GrapeCity that facilitates the creation of reports to display proprietary data in the form of documents or web-based formats. It is based on C# code and uses the Visual Studio interface, offering easy use by programmers. This reporting solution comes in a standard and professional edition and only operates on the Windows platform. It lets users export reports into a range of formats for collaboration and presentation.
ReportsNow
ReportsNow is a JD Edwards reporting solution that helps in real-time reporting of proprietary data for analysis. Pulling data from and integrating with JDE as well as non-JDE sources, it provides a host of intuitive functions to help create a wide range of business reports, allowing for automated scheduling and downloading of these reports. Through advanced reporting via Data Access Studio, enterprises can create and edit any kind of data. Its mobile BI stack enables cloud connectivity, making reports available on any device.
Stimulsoft Reports
Stimulsoft Reports is a suite of report and dashboard products in Java, PHP, .NET and other formats. It allows for enhanced development of multi-tier reports and interactive dashboards through an intuitive designer that can draw from internal and relational sources.It can be packaged or purchased individually depending on the user’s needs. It can be scaled through Stimulsoft Server to enable further functions like analytics and processing. It is deployable via the web or on Linux, Mac or Windows.
Panintelligence
Panintelligence is a self-service, easy-to-use solution for company-wide reporting. It can display multiple data sources side by side, and the data shown is always live and up-to-date.It is easy to implement, cloud-based and offers multi-tenancy, load balancing, data mining and predictive analytics. Dashboards make it easy for anyone to visualize and communicate complex data in real time. It’s embeddable, highly customizable and reporting is streamlined. User activity can be restricted and audited, with role-based security.
i-net Clear Reports
I-net Clear Reports is a Java-based enterprise reporting solution. With its free template designer and access to a template repository, it streamlines the process of compiling data into a presentable form. It is compatible with anything that can run Java and can pull from any Java Database Connectivity data source. It can be embedded or executed stand-alone in a browser. It can export files in a variety of formats, including PDF, SVG, XML and JPEG.
Windward Reporting and Document Automation
Windward Studios offers an embeddable reporting/docgen tool built around designing templates in Microsoft Office. The combination of Office and Windward's tags make the reporting process quick and easy by removing the work of hand-coding reporting templates. It’s designed to produce beautiful reports in a number of different formats, including PDF, DOCX, XLSX, HTML, PPTX and more. After embedding the Windward .NET or Java engine, users can merge data with their templates to generate reports documents. This includes, but isn’t limited to, SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, MySql, PostgreSQL, XML, JSON, OData, and more. A template can use multiple datasources in a single template.
SlamData
SlamData is an open source tool based on SQL that aims to make it easy for developers and non-developers to access MongoDB. This software is one of the fastest growing products in the NoSQL database space. This program brings high-quality source integration to the table, meaning that users can import from any source; no coding skills needed. This data can then be streamed to a variety of sources.
Upper Quadrant
Upper Quadrant is an analytics and data science platform that facilitates marketing automation, campaign management, budgeting and forecasting. Used specifically by race organizers for event registrations, subscriber outreach and eCommerce, it aggregates and standardizes data from people, brands, geographical locations, business units and disparate systems. It enables data management and performance metrics tracking through real-time dashboards and shareable reports. Race organizers can share run metrics with customers through automated emails delivered straight to their inboxes.
Call SelectHub for a free 15-minute selection analysis: 1-855-850-3850
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