Are you getting value from your reporting tool?

 Reporting/visualization tools have come a long way in the last decade. This is also reflected in their costs. Unlike a lot of specific use tools, the value of reporting tools is variable, dependent entirely upon the value the organization can extract.


In a lot of organisations the attitudes of Visualizations tools have not kept pace with the capabilities. These tools have made genuine strides towards becoming complete analytical suites. Some of the new capabilities that have been added are-


  1. Massive data processing capabilities. The massive drop in cost of computing has aided these tools to add data processing capabilities. While a decade ago, one would be expected to preprocess the data before loading, nowadays you can easily load millions or even billions of rows of data into a reporting tool (like Tableau) and still do analysis without delay. Each of the major players have been developing proprietary cube like technologies to enable this. 

This expands the horizon of analysis in terms of volume and variety of data to be analysed. This can often mean the difference between a narrow view and a holistic insight.

  1. Statistical abilities. The world of analysis has been shifting towards statistical analysis rather than simple number comparisons. While a number of the reporting tools have an impressive list of statistical functions native to them, they are also providing integration to R and Python. This means that one doesn’t need to write long codes to derive insights, they can now do it from the comfort of their self service dashboards, through dropdowns and selections.

This means that from primary analysis, to KPI dashboarding to statistical analysis can be an integrated experience. The traditional concepts like executive dashboards can be made much more informative for the savvy users.

  1. Enhanced ETL capabilities. The traditional BI had developed with separate silos of Data engineers responsible for the ETL and the reporting team responsible for business logic and visualizations. However, these tools have been working to expand the capabilities. A good example of this is Tableau prep, which adds significant ETL capabilities to a traditional visualization tool. 

  2. Enhanced visualisation options through addons. The visualizations that most reporting tools come with are enough for day to day requirements. However with larger consumption of data there is an accompanied increase in demand for effective storytelling. This is where the out of box visualizations often fall short. To extend these capabilities, there are a number of paid, free or SDK add ons. They can push the limits of possibility of reporting to entirely new heights. 

  3. Integration. In a normal office data is often transferred from one place to another for implementation of use cases that are not direct. This is a low value added task for any person. Reporting tools have extensively developed capabilities like export to MS Office products, data write backs and alerting systems. These can make the life of an end user very easy.


The above mentioned use cases are only some of the ways in which more value can be extracted out of existing reporting infrastructure. With advances in capability of these tools, they are trying to regain some of the ground lost to non conventional analysis tools, while bringing to front the traditional values like ease of use, storytelling, and single version of truth. An organisation keeping pace with these developments has much value to extract out of existing infrastructure.

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