Learning business survival skills

IT has become an essential part of our lives and of the way we do business. At home, we use computers, phones and tablets to keep in touch with friends and family. At work, we use the same gadgets to arrange and hold business meetings, to manage the company and keep in touch with business partners.But what happens when we are left without them? Will our long forgotten instincts kick in? Or will we have to wander blindly through the economy?

 Learning business survival skills will help you and your company in times of need. It will help you become a better manager and make you stronger as a team player. Re-learning how to work without technology may take time, but it’s time you have to be willing to spare - if you want to be a good business owner.

If your company is small, you use just a few electronic gizmos. As the business grows, the need for technology grows exponentially. In both cases, having a good knowledge about business survival skills can save you time and money. Also it helps to have a contingency plan and a fast decision making process.

I’ve compiled a list of areas where I think the problems could be centered. I’m also providing you with some ideas on how to develop business survival skills and how to use them.

• Financial problems: One important aspect is to understand how the money are made in your business. Can you reduce the trail of paperwork and the time consumed? Also, think about the technology used when payments are being made. Can you bypass it? Make a list of strategies that will allow you to keep track of the money transfers.
• Products: Think about the ways in which your products or services reach the customer. Do you need technology to do it? If so, is there a backup plan in case you will no longer have access to electronic equipment? Compile a list of data using one of the business reporting tools on the web.
• Sales: Is your company dependent on Internet for sales? If so, have you thought about taking your business offline? There are many benefits of having a shop or a showroom in one of the nearby cities. It will probably cost you more than a website, but in the end you will see sales soaring.
• Another financial problem: keeping every information stored electronically. Most of us are thinking about keeping every information about the company on reports servers, either to save paper or just to save space. But what if one day you will not be able to access the online data pool? Make a plan to have printed documents available, just in case.

My last advice to you is to always keep your business survival skills up to date. Think about new ways in which you can keep your company safe and you will not regret it.

The new business reporting tool in town - NextReports

Reporting tools play a very important role in the development of a company. This is because all the important information that arrives from the lower branches and departments has to be synthesized in order to be passed along to the management team.Transforming raw data in easy to read and take-in information has never been an easy task: until now.

With the business intelligence software market growing day by day, managers have hundreds of reporting tools to choose from. Today I want to write about one of the products that caught my eye the other month. It’s called NextReports and I think it’s one of the most well thought reporting tools on the market.

It actually offers two separate tools for free and one at a small price.They can be combined or used separately, depending on the size of the pool of data that your company has. One is specifically tailored to fit your every report designing needs, another one is the engine, the part that helps you create, manage and schedule your reports and the last one is a special server.

Now let’s analyse them piece by piece.

First is NextReports designer. You can use the provided templates, you can customize them and even create reports templates from scratch. You can use it in connection with other platforms such as Oracle, MySql or Derby and get excellent results. And being free of charge, you can download it, test it and see if it works for your company. If not, you can always change your mind.

The NextReports engine is a bit hard to explain to the non java speaking users, but I will try. The main purpose for this software is to display reports inside websites or internal business apps. It uses a Java based library to push the reports you’ve created earlier wherever you like. It’s also free of charge - so you are one click away from having the reports your customers need on your website.

Last but not least, the NextReports server. This is the only product from NextReports that has a price tag, but no worries, it’s not as expensive as most reporting software out there are. This software will help you schedule periodical reports, send them via FTP or mail and by using the Dashboard (a very smart looking user interface) you will be able to get alerts, set alarms and even set and cancel scheduled reports.

I think it’s a great tool to use for any company, big or small. I have yet to find another tool as promising as this one and I promise you it will not let you down.

Business communication: choosing between business letters and business reports

In any business communication is crucial to conveying information. There are multiple channels trough which information can be passed on, but the most important ones are the business letter and the business report. It’s very important to know when to use one and when to use the other, because sometimes we need to keep our communication partners in the loop and sometimes they are on a need to know basis. Choosing between letters and reports can be a hard managerial decision, but that is way I’ve decided to give you some pointers in the matter.
A business letter can be used to communicate information, but in a short form - a summary. It usually has a specific recipient and it’s not meant to be seen by others or published. On the other hand, the business report it’s made out of large quantities of information and it can be used inside or outside of a company. Most of the times, it is addressed to a general audience and not to someone in particular. A business report can also be printed and because it has a template-based format, it can maintain the same format every time it is edited.

Still, business letters and reports share some common elements. Both have to be written very clear and to the point so that the reader can understand the subject. Both can have the propose of informing or persuading the receiver and both can be transmitted trough various means: printed, emailed, and so on.

When deciding which of the two you’ll need to use, these factors may be taken into account:

1. The Content - It really depends on how much information you want to pass on and what type of information it is. If you want to include graphics, tables or diagrams, it’s better to go with the business reports. If you want to send a summary of your business reporting to your partners or other branches of your company, a simple letter with a list included might do the trick.

2. The Target - Depending on who your audience is, you can simplify the information and  sent a business letter that will include easy to read phrases.But if you want to communicate specific data to a group of experts in your field, than a report is clearly needed.

3. The Length - Another important factor can be the length of the information you want to send. A business letter can normally extend to 2 or 3 pages. A business report is usually extensive and could contain footnotes and references that add a good number of pages.

Also, you can analyze this subject from another point of view: business reports can become an extension to the business letter. That is way it’s crucial to make a difference between the two communication styles and to be able to adapt the tone and type of writing to each.

One last detail to take into account is the financial state of the company. Smaller companies may not afford to use special designed reporting tools and will stick to free tools available online. This will reflect in the eyes of your business partners as it states the true value or rank of your company, so be very very careful what you want to share and how you will do it.

How to use Big Data to your company’s advantage

Big Data is all about technology and innovation. High speed networks, data sets, data marts, databases, data warehouses and softwares are all very important – these are the technologies and the technical innovations that make it all possible. Lots of companies are squandering all their investment in Big Data. They are trying to make Big Data a technology-driven vacuum.
Managers often ask themselves “Who owns Big Data?” and from the point of view of the IT department, this question is a bit foolish. We already settled the fact that Big Data is mostly about technology and innovations and that all the tools like databases, networks and software applications are what makes it possible. But this doesn’t mean that we should make it a technology-driven vacuum. Here is why we shouldn’t squander with it.
The means to an end:
Yes, the technology that surrounds Big Data is truly amazing and innovative, but in the end, it’s just the means to an end. I say this because I realize that all this technology and technical innovation is just a system of tools in the data driven decision making process. This technology is offering us the ability to process huge amounts of data in real time for decision making purposes. But this is a technical process which is not solving any business problems unless it gets insights from the analyzed data or if your company is getting valuable actionable insights.
The IT staff definitely plays a critical role in the process of analyzing and sorting Big Data. And since its nature is to give real time insights, it demands a high level of support – support from the IT staff and technologists. That’s why when it comes to Big Data, it is like we discovered the oil, but we haven’t built the cars yet.  
There are still very few people who are equipped to understand the data and the statistical machines that are used to produce actionable insights at an intimate level. This is why we cannot use all the available data to gain insights. Companies are trying to implement Big Data at an enterprise level, so every department could make use of the data, but I believe that this is a wrong approach, at least for the moment. Watching from outside, it looks like all the departments are fighting for “ownerships” and this, my friends, is a wrong tactic. Instead of doing so, all the departments should “go along with the Big Data party” and work together under the supervision of those with technical competence and flexibility. The IT department usually has a talents for Big Data project management.
Gathering and hoarding:
Business Intelligence and Data sets have been around for 50 years, since the computer was invented. (Or very soon after). Business Intelligence has been used to  analyze and interpret data, while data sets, data warehouses and databases were used for storage. Data was stored in databases and business intelligence used tools like reporting tool, spreadsheets and dashboards to analyze this data.
The problem came when the process of gathering the data has become something more like hoarding of data. And BI has started to disappoint with its inability to access and analyze all the data. A reporting tool works only with structured data, but the amounts of data were (and still are) so huge, that it became hard to store it and structure it at the same time. The technology around Big Data makes it easy to gather a wide range of information, but software applications like reporting tools were not fast enough to analyze it.
Don’t get me wrong: a reporting tool is still a useful tool in any company. It can be used to analyze the structured data and to create reports over that data, but for Big Data a different type of tools was required. So Business Analytics stepped out with tools provided by BI developers, tools like OLAP and data-mining. It still is very hard to store all that unstructured data, but it is even harder to analyze it. But technology is continuously developing and we hope that it can keep up with all the data that is being gathered. 
Rules:
In order for a business to be successful, it needs cross functional teams. These are teams made out of members of every department who work together and have the same purpose. Oftentimes, companies don’t pay attention to a matter like this, which is problematic. Each department has its own way of working, its own tasks and its own rules and when they try to work together, they bump heads. This is why a “cross-functional teams” relationship is required. Having teams with members from every department and data analytics experts can play a key role in the Big Data initiative. It can also contribute to the success of a company.
A complementary attitude is what a company needs – a complementary technique between Business Intelligence with its reporting tools for past insights and Analytics as predictive insights - and a complementary technique at departmental level.

Reporting tools – a comparison – part 2

Nowadays, there are many reporting tools available for free or in the form of an open source document. Companies have a wide array of business intelligence tools to choose from. However, most of these applications do not provide hard core corporate features such as multiple user support, integration with existing security mechanisms, ad hoc visual reporting tools or scheduling facilities.  The Part 2 of our comparison will examine some of the most popular contenders for enterprise deployment.

The criteria will include:

• Ease of use:  the need for training should be minimal and the interface should be pleasurable to use
• Ease of deployment:  business users should need only a standard web browser to access the tool
• Security:  the application should work with established security mechanisms (e.g., LDAP)
• Distribution:  it should be easy for users to have reports emailed to themselves and to others
• Scheduling:  end users should be able to schedule future report runs (e.g., first Monday of each month)
• Multiple formats:  users like to have options when exporting report data (e.g., XLS, PDF, CSV)
• Availability:  users want the reporting system available 24x7 (i.e., clusterability, scalability)
• Ease of administration:  it should be straightforward to set up and maintain the solution
• Viability:  the tool should have a well-structured and thriving community with a reasonable license.

In the Part 1 of our comparison we have talked about another 2 promising candidates: OpenReports and Next Reports. Make sure to check out our previous article.

But now let’s get down to business with our other two candidates:

1.  Pentaho
2. JasperReports

Pentaho

One of the two primary enterprise-ready open source reporting tools with significant commercial backing, Pentaho focuses on data integration and workflow automation.

The Pentaho Business Intelligence suite includes reporting (a report designer and viewer), analysis (OLAP), dashboards (portal, metrics, alerts) and data mining (relationship and trend discovery)

In terms of features, Pentaho offers what seems to be the "standard" set of open source reporting features, such as a visual report designer and editor, a web-based interface for business users to see, run, and export reports with and several reporting formats, including HTML, PDF, XLS, and CSV. The administrative functions include scheduling reports to run at certain times and the ability to email reports to a number of users.

Pentaho also offers a web-based ad hoc reporting wizard that lets technically-inclined business users point, click, drag, and drop their way to nice looking on-the-fly reports. The conditional report distribution allows users to email reports when certain conditions are met (E.g. sales are 25% below the set limit). There is also a task bar notification that notifies Windows users when a new report is ready to view.

The commercial version of the package, called Pentaho Professional, includes these additional features:

Single Sign-On (SSO) support;

LDAP and Microsoft Active Directory (MSAD) integration;

Clustering support;

Report versioning;

Audit trail collection.

However, in terms of usability, the web interface is the area in which Pentaho has the most room for improvement.  It is certainly powerful with report retrieval, parameter passing, drill-through charts, text linking, and administrative capabilities.  Unfortunately, it's not always intuitive.  Due to the partial integration of JBoss Portal, it often feels like the user has to jump between two entirely different user interfaces.  That makes it difficult for first-time users to understand where to look for certain features, how to navigate through common screens, and how to get back to places they have already been.

The visual report designer and editor is good, but a little bit quirky.  As with its competition, it will take some time to get used to the occasional strange behavior and bake the workarounds into the standard workflow.

In general, Pentaho's web interface is usable with some training and familiarization, but it leaves a lot to be desired.

Jasper Reports

Jasper Reports was created as an open source project by Teodor Danciu in 2001.  Its feature set revolves around reporting and analysis with an overall emphasis on ease of use.

The Jasper Business Intelligence suite includes: JasperReports (a report designer and viewer), JasperServer (it includes a scheduler, as well as ad hoc queries), JasperAnalysis (OLAP) and JasperETL (data integration).

In terms of technology, Jasper has a Java foundation that is based on Tomcat, Spring, and Hibernate.  It supports the standard Acegi open source package to facilitate integration with existing authentication and authorization mechanisms.  As such, it can work in a single sign-on environment with other enterprise systems.

Jasper has the "standard" set of open source reporting features, such as a visual report designer and editor, a web-based interface for business users to see, run, and export reports. You can also chose from several reporting formats, including HTML, PDF, XLS, and CSV and there are a number of administrative functions available, such as scheduling reports to run at certain times and the ability to email reports to a number of users.

Jasper's web interface is not perfect, but it's very good relative to its competition.  Most of it is a modern web 2.0 application with a clean and appealing look and feel.  It provides easy report retrieval, parameter passing, drill-through charts, text linking, and administrative capabilities.  It also allows users to export their reports in a multitude of formats, including XML and Flash in addition to the standard set (HTML, PDF, XLS, and CSV).  Jasper makes it easy for business users to schedule their own reports to run at certain times, such as the first Monday of each month.

The commercial version of the package, called JasperReport Professional, includes these additional features: end-user ad hoc querying and reporting and easy end-user created dashboards and mashups.

For developers creating reports, the Jasper report designer can be used in either stand-alone mode or as a NetBeans plug-in.  As with other open source report designers, there are quirks that need to be worked around until they become habit. For example, the hibernate queries are powerful, but they can lead to performance issues unless special care is paid to optimization.

Final thoughts:

Open source reporting tools have made great strides in the last two years and they will no doubt continue to get stronger every day.  Competition continues to drive the business intelligence developers very hard.  Our competitor’s capabilities have evolved over the years and they will continue to do so. And when it comes to the business intelligence client, whether it’s about greater data integration abilities or a better user interface, be sure to pick the reporting tool according to your business’s needs.

Reporting tools – a comparison – part 1

Business intelligence reporting tools have been around for a number of years.  They provide functionality ranging from developer-only libraries that help organize relational data to visual report designers for IT professionals to web-based ad hoc querying applications targeted at business users.  But only during the past two years have some of these packages matured and evolved to a point where an enterprise can reasonably select one as a significant piece of technology to be deployed throughout the organization.

 

Today we are going to compare some of the most popular reporting tools based on a set of criteria which will include:

 

• Ease of use:  the need for training should be minimal and the interface should be pleasurable to use
• Ease of deployment:  business users should need only a standard web browser to access the tool
• Security:  the application should work with established security mechanisms (e.g., LDAP)
• Distribution:  it should be easy for users to have reports emailed to themselves and to others
• Scheduling:  end users should be able to schedule future report runs (e.g., first Monday of each month)
• Multiple formats:  users like to have options when exporting report data (e.g., XLS, PDF, CSV)
• Availability:  users want the reporting system available 24x7 (i.e., clusterability, scalability)
• Ease of administration:  it should be straightforward to set up and maintain the solution
• Viability:  the tool should have a well-structured and thriving community with a reasonable license.

 

And the candidates are:

1. OpenReports
2. Next Reports
3. Pentaho
4. JasperReports

OpenReports

Not to be confused with OpenReport, OpenReports (oreports.com) provides enterprise wrappings around a number of reporting engines that include:  BIRT, JasperReports, JFreeReport/Pentaho, and jXLS.  It offers a web-based interface with support for scheduling, security integration, and administration.  

The primary benefit of OpenReports is that it allows users to mix and match reporting engines.  In this fashion, different groups within an enterprise are able to use different report design tools yet share the same server platform.

OpenReports is licensed under the GPL, version 2.  It is based on enterprise Java technology, supports OLAP functionality, and offers many report formats that include HTML, PDF, CSV, XLS, RTF, and image.  
It allows reports to be scheduled and sent to users via email.  It also has both SOAP- and REST-based API's.

 

The Professional version of OpenReports adds the following features:  user dashboards that can display multiple reports, charts, or graphs simultaneously; drilldown charts; and report usage statistics.  The list price for this version is approximately $500 per server.


NextReports

Another interesting approach to business intelligence comes from a fairly small vendor - and that is NextReports. NextReports is offering their customers three distinct tools: NextReports Designer, NextReports Engine and NextReports Server.

 

NextReports Designer is an application able to design in-grid reports using a connection to some of the most popular databases like Oracle, MySql, MSSQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird and Derby. It has an intuitive interface that makes report creation a quick and easy task.

Using NextReports Designer you can design or create your own SQL, create reports from stored procedures and export data to various formats. And these are just the top of the iceberg. By employing unique features, like in-spreadsheet design, Next Reports Designer aims to speed up reporting tasks.

 

NextReports Engine is a lightweight Java platform development library which can be used to run NextReports inside your application. This library is very easy to use: the reports can be integrated with just a few lines of code. And what’s even better is the fact that business developers, value added resellers and ISVs can embed the Reporting Engine into their applications free of charge.

NextReports Server allows scheduling NextReports and Jasper Reports and automatically delivering them via e-mail, FTP, SSH, etc, in all sorts of formats like HTML, EXCEL, PDF, RTF, CSV, TSV, TXT or XML. Featuring a fast and efficient web interface, NextReports Server makes use of advanced Web 2.0/Ajax technologies to provide speed and ease of use normally experienced in desktop applications. NextReports Server shows your charts, table reports and alarm reports in real time inside dashboards.

 

What is interesting in their approach is that they are offering the reporting software applications for free and the only one which requires a fee is NextReports Server. And it is quite cheap considering its usability.

 

To be continued

 

I have just realized that this articole is going to be longer than I have previously anticipated. So I will draw the line here. But stay in touch for the second part of our comparison. We will cover the reporting capabilities of the Jasper Reports system and the Pentaho business intelligence suite.

The complete list of reporting software - Part 4

This is the final part of the complete list of reporting software. It’s been a long way down the list, but now it’s done. There are lots of characteristics that you might find important when choosing a reporting software and based on those characteristics, you must choose the right reporting software for you and for your company. I have compiled this list in order to help you with that decision. I also wrote a few things about each reporting tool so you might have a better understanding over them.
Enjoy Part 4 of the complete list of reporting software:

• OBIEE

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus, also termed OBIEE Plus, is Oracle Corporation's set of business intelligence tools consisting of former Siebel Systems business intelligence and Hyperion Solutions business intelligence offerings.
Components:
Oracle BI server
Oracle BI Admin Tool
Oracle BI Answers
Oracle BI Marketing
Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards
Oracle BI Delivers
Oracle BI Disconnected Analytics
Oracle BI Publisher
Oracle BI Briefing Books
Oracle BI Office Plug-In
Oracle Hyperion Financial Reporting
Hyperion Interactive Reporting
Hyperion SQR Production Reporting
Hyperion Web Analysis

• Oracle Discoverer

Oracle Discoverer is a tool-set for ad-hoc querying, reporting, data analysis, and web-publishing for the Oracle Database environment. Oracle Corporation markets it as a business intelligence product. It was originally a stand-alone product, however it has become a component of the Oracle Fusion Middleware suite, and renamed Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer.
Components
The Discoverer product comprises:
Discoverer Administrator
Discoverer Catalog
Discoverer Desktop
Discoverer End-User layer
Discoverer Plus
Discoverer Portlet Provider
Discoverer Portlets
Discoverer Viewer

• Oracle Reports

Oracle Reports is a tool for developing reports against data stored in an Oracle database. Oracle Reports consists of Oracle Reports Developer (a component of the Oracle Developer Suite) and Oracle Application Server Reports Services (a component of the Oracle Application Server).
The report output can be delivered directly to a printer or saved in the following formats: HTML, RTF, PDF, XML, Microsoft Excel

• Oracle XML Publisher

Oracle XML Publisher (XMLP) is Oracle Corporation's latest reporting technology. It was originally developed to solve the reporting problems faced by Oracle Applications. When XML Publisher became part of the Oracle BI Enterprise Edition Suite it was re-branded as Oracle BI Publisher.

• SAS, as part of the BI Server suite

SAS (Statistical Analysis System) is an integrated system of software products, which enables programmers to perform:
- retrieval, data management, and data mining
- report writing and graphics
- statistical analysis
- business planning, forecasting, and decision support
- operations research and project management
- quality improvement
- applications development
- data warehousing (extract, transform, load)
- platform independent and remote computing

• SQL Server Reporting Services

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is a server-based report generation software system from Microsoft. Administered via a web interface, it can be used to prepare and deliver a variety of interactive and printed reports. SSRS competes with Crystal Reports (see above) and other business intelligence tools.

• Stimulsoft Reports

Stimulsoft Reports is an application used to design and generate reports from a wide range of data sources.
Stimulsoft Reports product line includes the following products:
- Stimulsoft Reports.Net,
- Stimulsoft Reports.Web,
- Stimulsoft Reports.Web for MVC,
- Stimulsoft Reports.Wpf,
- Stimulsoft Reports.Silverlight,
- Stimulsoft Reports Designer.Web,
- Stimulsoft Reports Designer.Silverlight,
- Stimulsoft Reports.Ultimate is a kit of products mentioned above.

• Tableau

Tableau Software offers three main products: Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server and Tableau Reader. Tableau's products have been incorporated into product suites of multiple independent software vendors, including Oracle for its Oracle Essbase Visual Explorer product

• Telerik Reporting

Telerik Reporting is a .NET reporting software for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. The product is developed and sold by the .NET solutions provider Telerik.
Features:
- Interactive reports (drill-through, hyperlinks, bookmarks)
- Embedding reports in Silverlight, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows and ASP.NET applications
- WYSIWYG Design Surface
- Export to PDF, Excel, RTF, CSV, MHTML, and all graphic formats supported by GDI+ (JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, etc.)
- Convert reports from XtraReports, Crystal Reports and Active Reports.

• Windward Reports

Windward is a suite of enterprise-level reporting software, document generation software, and business intelligence software for business teams. Windward software is used for stand-alone reporting, custom reporting applications, and as the basis for OEM, VAR and other integrated data presentation needs.

• Zoho Reports (as part of the Zoho Office Suite)

An online business intelligence and reporting application in the suite. It can "create charts, pivots, summary and other wide-range of reports through a powerful drag & drop interface"

And that was the last one of the reporting softwares that I wanted to present to you. I hope that this list will be of good help to everyone who is searching for a reporting tool. Each company has certain requirements from a specific software, this is why you should consider them all before taking a decision. Choosing a reporting tool or a business tool is not an easy thing, so you should go through all the 4 articles and then make an informed decision. Good luck!