Software-as-a-service (SaaS) reporting tools are cloud-based enterprise reporting software for tracking all business metrics, including performance and operational data. Like other cloud software, SaaS solutions are infrastructure-agnostic and deploy quickly. It gives you a wider playing field — you can opt out anytime.
But, purchasing a software system for your business is still important, requiring diligent research and discussion. We’re here to help.
Compare Top Enterprise Reporting Software Leaders
SaaS tools started as instant data providers to employees in the field, like sales teams. As the cloud evolved, virtually anyone could adopt SaaS tools, irrespective of their industry domain.
With time, their lightweight design and reduced burden on company servers made them a popular choice, and businesses started seeking SaaS versions of on-premise solutions.
Key Points
What Are SaaS Reporting Tools?
SaaS reporting tools are cloud-based software for business intelligence and enterprise reporting that run on a third-party server through the internet. The twin benefits of the cloud and the web make them attractive mediums for gaining mobile insights.
SaaS is a standard software delivery model under the umbrella of cloud computing with infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS). Business Process Services (BPaaS) and Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) are other software offerings based in the cloud.
According to Fortune Business insights, the global SaaS market is expected to grow to $716.52 billion by 2028, at a CAGR of 27.5% during the 2021-2028 forecast period.
Live data connectivity, an API-first architecture and easy embeddability let you access data sources within your SaaS reporting platform. These include customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), performance management and human resources (HRIS) information systems.
You can track business-specific KPIs and build custom reports tailored to client needs. Many automated reporting tools have SaaS versions.
These reporting tools provide managed and ad hoc reporting and allow you to set event-based delivery triggers. Collaborating with others via a web-based platform puts you on par with teams working together in an office.
Self-service capabilities are a prominent feature of these platforms and a significant draw for enterprises seeking to reduce the time to insights. Though many tools come with cloud storage, a solution that lets you store your information on-premise might be worth considering if you seek greater control over your data.
>Vendors find adding new features and enhancing existing ones cost-effective as SaaS development tools are lightweight and low-cost. As an enterprise user, you get the latest features and upgrades at a fraction of the cost of an on-premise solution.
SaaS reporting systems can be BI, embedded, big data and business analytics tools.
Considering SaaS solutions within the same cloud vertical helps expand the scope of your search. If you’re in retail, look for platforms that offer retail reporting. You’ll get built-in interoperability with POS, customer service, supply chain, inventory and warehouse management systems.
Primary Benefits
SaaS reporting tools deploy with a few clicks and provide features similar to their on-premise versions. Software attributes may vary across domains, and opting for an industry-specific platform equips you with rich functionality without paying extra.
Adopt With Low Risk
On-premise software can have cumbersome delivery models and high upfront costs, making it difficult to back out later if the product fails to meet expectations. SaaS software is subscription-based, and you can opt out at any time.
It’s lightweight, though the lack of control over fixes and upgrades might be annoying. Go through the service level agreement (SLA) and clarify any concerns with the vendor at the onset.
Optimize Resources
A multi-tenant deployment is cost-effective — you save money while the vendor optimizes storage and computing, providing exclusive workspaces for separate clients. The latest features, patches and updates become available as soon as the vendor releases them.
Poor performance is a common concern with shared resources, though it can improve with a dedicated high-speed internet connection. A public network might not be the best option — performance can lag, and you risk losing data.
Get Value for Money
Subscription-based payment models are flexible, letting you start and stop using the software anytime — no dealing with rigid licensing fees, contracts and vendor lock-ins. Small businesses can acquire Saas reporting tools for a predictable monthly cost.
Keep Data Secure
With modern SaaS reporting tools, you get data protection features like encryption, permissions management, versioning and auditing. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a watertight security protocol, besides fingerprint scanning and facial recognition.
Despite the above measures, data security is a likely concern when considering SaaS reporting solutions. Storing sensitive data in more than one location — hard disks and on-premise data centers — is one way to combat downtime issues and data loss, though you’ll need a plan to keep the data in sync.
The best SaaS reporting solutions are compatible with the latest regulatory guidelines and equipped to deal with cybersecurity threats.
View Desired insights
Low-cost development tools for SaaS software make life easier as vendors can offer products at an affordable price, providing optional functionality with add-ons. You can avoid paying for features you don’t need.
Customization and formatting help you personalize reports without disrupting the tech stack or needing IT help. Since the solution is vendor-maintained, you only need good technical support to help troubleshoot issues and answer questions, and you’re good to go.
Best SaaS Reporting Tools
While every organization has unique reporting needs, learning about the best products in the market can help you narrow your requirements checklist.
Compare Top Enterprise Reporting Software Leaders
JasperReports
It’s an embeddable, open-source reporting platform with dynamic content generation capabilities. The JasperReports Library embeds within the JasperReports Server to build reports with Jaspersoft’s reporting wizard. The vendor offers ten file formats for sharing information with internal teams and clients.
You can select the output file format and destination when configuring automated reports.
Top Benefits
- Create Pixel-perfect Reports: Build presentation-ready visualizations using charts, graphs and crosstabs. Design pixel-perfect reports by pulling information from numerous sources.
- Build Applications: The vendor provides a developer-friendly Visualize.js framework to build web-embeddable dashboards.
- Gain Mobile insights: View reports and dashboards when out of the office with a native app for iPhone and Android devices. Using a vendor-provided software development kit (SDK), you can embed reports into other mobile applications.Only browser support is available for iPad.
- Keep Information Secure: Protect data with permissions management and define object-level access restrictions in dashboards and reports.
Primary Features
- JasperReports Server: It’s a suite of analytics products built off the JasperReports Library. The server provides end-to-end business intelligence with a common data repository, security and scheduling functionality. Multi-system integration and adding custom functionalities are possible.
- Big Data Connectivity: The platform uses native connectors to pull data from NoSQL sources like Cassandra and MongoDB. Hadoop connectivity is available.
- Build Custom Reports: Create interactive visualizations with images, shapes and static and dynamic text fields. Design nested presentations by embedding any number of reports within another report.
- Report Scheduler: Automate delivery schedules for one-time or regular sharing. Make reports available to the intended audience by embedding them into web applications and emails or printing them out.
- Robust Reporting Engine: Draw data from disparate sources to create and export visual-rich reports in various formats. Perform calculations quicker with fast data retrieval through in-memory processing.
Limitations
- The platform has a steep learning curve.
- Creating professional-looking reports is time-consuming.
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
Crystal Reports
The software integrates with Microsoft Office, Oracle, SQL Server and Excel. An embedded Designer helps source data and transform it to create reports. A Report Explorer, Workbench and Dependency Checker support exploring data and working with multiple reports.
Crystal Reports is a part of SAP Business One.
Add predefined objects to the report canvas by dragging them from the sidebar. Source
Top Benefits
- Design Optimized Web Reports: Deliver reports on the web at speed with page-on-demand access. Improve response times by reducing web traffic with placeholders for graphics and subreports. Its multithreaded reporting engine performs multiple operations simultaneously.
- Integrate with SAP Products: Build and distribute reports to online systems by integrating with SAP BusinessObjects, JD Edwards (JDE) System, Oracle e-Business Suite, PeopleSoft (PSFT) and Siebel. Configure data access in these applications using Crystal Reports and set up administrative tasks via the BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform.
- Gain the Advantage of SAP BusinessObjects: Integrate reports into custom applications using the Report Application Server (RAS). It collaborates with SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence services to provide security, scheduling, versioning, clustering, scalability and third-party authentication.
- Share Insights: View and publish business insights as Microsoft Word and Excel files and share them as email attachments. Advanced Web reporting lets team members view and update shared reports in their browsers.
Primary Features
- Report Creation Wizards: Build a new report using the Report Creation Wizard, use another report as a template or design one from scratch. Choose the wizard that matches your report type — standard, crosstab, mailing label and OLAP.
- Record Selection: The platform lets you restrict the number of records to include in a report using the Select Expert.
- Source Selection: Select sources and database fields from the Database Expert dialogue box. Choose and link tables from Excel spreadsheets, Oracle databases, SAP BusinessObjects and local file systems.
- SAP Toolbar: SAP Tools is a toolbar for logging into the SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW). It lets you build and save reports to BW and publish them to the BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform.
- Multithreaded Reporting Engine: Continue to work on priority tasks with multi-task processing in the background. The Report Engine minimizes the number of passes made through the data, speeding up processing and handling subreports and parameters efficiently.
Limitations
- Doesn’t provide enough documentation for debugging.
- The learning curve is steep.
- Setting up data connections is tedious and time-consuming.
- It’s slow when accessing large datasets.
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
MicroStrategy
It provides quick reporting with in-memory Intelligent Cubes and automated data discovery. Machine learning algorithms help you build predictive models. You can automate report delivery, securing information with role-specific permissions, object-level security and authentication protocols.
Federated analytics ensures you don’t have to give up any self-service BI solution — build reports by connecting with Tableau, Qlik Sense and Power BI.
Interactive options enable report formatting to show the desired datasets.
Top Benefits
- Build Reports: The vendor offers a Query Builder for power users and free-form SQL for developers. Prompt-driven query building and drag-and-drop ad hoc reporting in an intuitive Report Builder cater to business analysts. Pre-built templates speed up insights.
- Interact With Your Data: Drill down, pivot, sort data, add totals, resize rows and columns, and filter and highlight pertinent metrics. Change the data in a grid or graph using radio buttons and drop-down lists.
- Ask Natural Language Queries: Get insights and build dossiers by typing questions in everyday language with natural-language querying (NLQ). Integrating with Alexa or Google Home generates reports and visualizations through voice commands.
- Deploy Anywhere: Pick the deployment model that meets your needs — private or public cloud, on-premise or hybrid. Launch the platform within minutes with its pre-configured consoles for AWS and Azure.
- Avail a Free Trial: Sign up for a full-platform, 30-day free trial.
Primary Features
- Source Connectivity:Connect to over 100 cloud stores, enterprise directories, websites and web applications using built-in gateways and database drivers. Draw information from ERP, CRM and BI platforms. Extend connectivity by integrating with R, Python, D3 and GIS providers using SDKs.
- Data Preparation: Wrangle, parse and transform data via automatic profiling without exporting it to a spreadsheet. Save transformations for later use.
- Big Data Integration: Pull structured and unstructured information from Amazon, Google, Microsoft SQL Server, multidimensional expressions (MDX), NoSQL sources and Hadoop.
- Enterprise Report Scheduler: Schedule reports for automatic delivery to the recipients’ history list, a folder or a printer on their network, inboxes and mobile devices. Schedule regular and trigger-based reports.
- Alert Editor: Configure alert notifications when a report metric meets threshold conditions or reaches that value. The platform sends alerts to email addresses and mobile devices. The system automatically applies highlighting to the pertinent metrics before delivery.
Limitations
- Doesn’t provide affordable training modules.
- There’s a high licensing fee for the on-premise version.
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Service (SSRS)
It’s the Microsoft SQL Server’s reporting module, a Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform component. Besides SSRS, the SQL Server includes the analytics module — SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) — and the integration module — SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS).
Query intelligence boosts performance and scalability.
The Reporting Server relies on Microsoft Visual Studio for building reports.
Top Benefits
- Manage Reports: View and subscribe to reports and manage security settings and sources by directly interacting with the Report Server web service or the Report Manager. Have SQL reports delivered via email or file-sharing platforms.
- Export Reports: Download reports as Excel, PDF, CSV, XML and image files. Versions 2012 and later provide reports as Microsoft Word files and integrate with other report tools to output reports in additional formats.
- Get Instant Insights: Generate ad hoc reports from schema housed in the Report Server by choosing the relevant fields. Download the reports locally.
- Hit the Ground Running: Get readymade project templates with the BI Development Studio. Create data sources, views, report models and reports with the Report Server Project, Project Wizard and Model Project modules. The BI Development Studio provides an ecosystem for running the Report and Model Designers.
- Gain Mobile Insights: View reports on Microsoft Surface, Apple and Windows phones.
Primary Features
- Report Definition Language (RDL): It’s an XML schema of report definitions and contains the report layout and data retrieval information. Any protocol that supports XML works with RDL. It supports creating custom elements and is an interchange format for businesses and third parties.
- SSRS for Power BI: Build paginated, formatted reports in RDL format as part of the Power BI platform. Develop them for free locally and publish them to the Power BI Service, provided you can access the Premium Power BI workspace. Migrate SSRS reports to Power BI with the Power BI Report Builder.
- Business Intelligence Development Studio: It’s one of the authoring environments in SSRS for designing report models and reports. It’s based on Visual Studio and provides capabilities specific to BI solutions.
- Data Security: Keep your information safe with robust security features inherited from the SQL Server. Ledger for SQL Server maintains a record of all database changes, keeping it tamper-proof with blockchain technology.
- Intelligent Query Processing (IQP): Enhance performance with minimal effort — no need to refactor your code. Improves critical query processing when working at scale and is available in compatibility mode for when you upgrade.
Limitations
- The SQL Server BI Development Studio isn’t built for Itanium-based computers.
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT)
It’s an open-source Eclipse-based reporting platform that integrates with Java/Jave EE applications in business environments. Build graphically enriched, interactive reports with its Report Designer. It embeds into business interfaces and lets you customize the layout, data access and runtime script.
You can build reports from XML data sources like RSS news feeds.
Define styles and themes for designing reports with the BIRT Property Editor.
Top Benefits
- Design Apps: Eclipse Project Open Standard Business Platform (OSBP) combines low/no-code app development with model-driven platform building. OSBP’s BI and reporting module is based on BIRT, accessible via its Report Designer or a customizable domain-specific language (DSL).
- Blend Disparate Data: Uncover business opportunities by revealing hidden trends and patterns. Leave no data behind — combine information from various sources into one repository.
- Customize: Personalize embedded reports and visualizations to blend with the host system, thanks to its open-source code.
- Use Templates: Get templates for product catalogs, top-selling products, top N/top M% customers, annual sales by product lines and sales invoices.
- Reuse Report Components: Build report libraries to store visual and non-visual items, which you can reuse later.
Primary Features
- BIRT Designer: It’s a visual report-building tool with wizards, builders and editors and has a component-based model to enable reusing the report elements.
- Cheat Sheets: They’re views on the Eclipse workspace that walk you through the report-creation process based on your selected template.
- Layout Editor: It contains the palette, navigator, data explorer, property editor and Library Explorer View. BIRT allows reusing report objects, including tables, data sources and styles, which reside in library files.
- Report Previews: Preview the report in the Web Viewer or as a PDF. You can limit the results view to a single page instead of viewing the entire report or filter it on a report parameter or a dataset filter.
- APIs: Build, access and view reports using the Design Engine API (DE API), Report Engine API (RE API) and the Chart Engine API (CE API).
Limitations
- Doesn’t provide map integration.
- Doesn’t provide many pre-configured data types.
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
Next Steps
Keeping the above features in mind, define your business needs while taking a long, hard look at your organization. Sign up for our ready-to-go requirements checklist if you need help getting started.
Our nine-step lean selection methodology is designed to assist you in your search, from the requirements phase to signing on the dotted line. Our feature comparison matrix of the leading SaaS reporting tools will help you make an informed decision.
Check if the vendor deals with businesses like yours. Evaluate if you’ll feel comfortable working with them. Do they listen to you and understand your requirements and goals? Can they leverage your strengths and vulnerabilities?
Wrapping Up
Faster updates, flexible pricing and a smooth user experience make SaaS reporting tools a popular enterprise choice. Agility and scalability are among the top reasons enterprises opt for SaaS applications. But, there is potential for more.
It’s an exciting time for cloud solutions, and the sky is the limit.
Have you worked with SaaS reporting software? How was your experience? Let us know in the comments below.
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