The complete list of reporting software - Part 1

Often organizations find it difficult to execute a software selection. Choosing and selecting a reporting software can be a complicated task sometimes. In this article and the following one I will give you a list of reporting software applications. I hope that this will help you find the best suited reporting software for your company’s needs.
A trend is starting to develop amongst Business Intelligence vendors and developers and that is the open source trend. To open source a piece of software usually means that the market for that type of software is saturated. Even if I don’t entirely agree with that statement, it appears that some vendors think that the reporting software market has reached a point where some of the software applications should become open source. Next I‘ll enclose a list of the open source reporting softwares:

Open source reporting software:

• Eclipse BIRT Project

BIRT Project stands for Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools Project. It is an open source software that provides reporting and BI capabilities for rich clients. It also provides some web applications, most of them based on Java and Java EE. The BIRT Project is using a wide range of reporting software within a single application, ranging from operational reporting to OLAP. It has two main components: a reports designer and a runtime component for generating reports. The BIRT project also includes a charting engine that is both fully integrated into the report designer and can be used as a standalone to integrate charts into an application.
BIRT Report designs are persisted as XML and can access a number of different data sources including SQL databases, JDO datastores, JFire Scripting Objects, POJOs, XML and Web Services.

• GNU Enterprise

GNU is a set of tools. It contains tools such as data-aware user interface, a reporting system and an application server. GNUe supports multi language interfaces, non-ASCII character sets and is compatible with most popular database systems.
GNUe is also a set of packages written using the tools that can be used to implement a full Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Packages include:
-human resources
-accounting
-customer relationship management
-project management
-supply chain
-e-commerce

• JasperReports

This is a reporting tool that can write to a variety of targets like PDF, HTML, Excel, RTF, ODT, Comma-separated values or XML files. It can be used in Java applications, including Java EE or web applications to generate content.
Many prominent Java IDEs provide instructions for users wishing to integrate JasperReports into a project.
-NetBeans

• iReport - a visual designer for JasperReports

-Eclipse

• Jaspersoft Studio - a re-write of iReport by the same team who originally developed iReport, backed by Jaspersoft
• JasperWave Report Designer - free Eclipse-based visual editor for JasperReports report engine

-IBM Websphere Studio Application Developer

• Pentaho

Pentaho or Pentaho BI Suite, contains several software targets applications combined in a suite. Reporting, dashboard, data-mining, workflow and ETL capabilities are combined in a single software application.
Pentaho uses a subscription model. Pentaho, under subscription model, provides support, services, and product enhancements for an annual subscription. As a commercial open source company, Pentaho "leads and sponsors" the open source projects that are core to its suite, giving it direct influence over software development.
Pentaho community version is licensed under Mozilla Public License version 1.1. Pentaho Enterprise versions are available under a commercial license. There are three variants of enterprise versions: Basic, Professional and Enterprise.

There are several reporting tools that I would like to “play” with. Tools that I would like  to be available open source. But now I won’t give any examples because in the next articles I will present you with a list of reporting software applications for commercial use. Some of them are free, but their source code is not available, so they are not exactly open source.

Proactive Business Intelligence!

We all know that Business Intelligence is present in every company at some level. The future of every company depends on the the quality of the adopted BI strategies. Business Intelligence is a term which sums up tools, processes and people that help the process of decision making. But this is only generally speaking. The real BI is different from company to company and because of its continuous development it got to a point where a decision making process is formed from many more other smaller decision making processes. The bigger the company is, the bigger the process is, thus the more decisions are taken by lower level and department management.

As you can see in the above figure, the time frame for the data to get into a reporting software is about 6-12 months.

Traditional BI has helped companies make decisions using historical analysis for a long time, but the data was stored at a level that there is no operational data to base decision. However, lately, the attention shifted more towards operational data. This is the key for reducing the reaction time, thus the need for a more proactive Business Intelligence solution appeared.
Strategic Business Intelligence or Reactive BI, as it is commonly known, is a time consuming process. The data is analyzed and reports are being created on a weekly or monthly basis. Sometimes, reports are created on a yearly basis. This is an excellent method when large sets of data are being analyzed, especially when the company is targeting a market with a large audience.This type of BI is usually used by senior management or higher level management and decision makers.
But this type of long-term analysis can also have its downfalls: because of the duration of the whole process, reactive BI can fall short of achieving deadlines. And the data latency increases the closer you get to the database or data warehouse. Also, a long management chain will extend the duration of the decision making process. To avoid this type of situations, proactive BI is the solution.
Even if the idea of real time Business Intelligence is impossible at this moment, the idea of real time intelligence at an operational level has started to develop more and more, especially when it comes to big companies and corporations. And because of the advances in technology and data processing tools, this new and revolutionary idea has started to expand to smaller companies as well.
The main objective of proactive business intelligence is to identify potential problems and issues so that front-line operators or department managers can solve them before reaching the client. Also, a shorter hierarchic chain means a shorter reaction time.
Proactive BI is also known as operational BI. Even if it’s hard to tell where the strategic BI ends and where the operational BI begins, at least in theory, at a department level we have already crossed the line towards a more operational business intelligence.
Using BI tools for monitoring and analyzing trends and behavior changes on smaller groups will give the opportunity of identifying problems at a smaller level. Using a reporting software to create reports when the numbers jump over the parameters that have been set may have results in real time, which could help the management to take better decisions.
Let’s take as an example a toys manufacturer. Even if during holiday seasons a lot more toys are being sold than in a regular day, the demand still has to be monitored. So if a reporting software is used to deliver daily reports concerning production and demand, the departments know what toys to make and when to manufacture them. This way they know that they have to increase or decrease the productivity of certain products even before the demand drops or spikes.
Proactive Business Intelligence can even be used for decision making at smaller levels. Empowering people at a department level with decision making is the only way to have a real time reaction to the reports. After all, a reporting software is worth nothing if it takes a long time to help you make a decision. A report that has to be passed through many hands before it reaches a decision-making authority is equally worthless.
I have been saying this for a long time and I will keep saying it: Business Intelligence has started to spread and develop a lot more during the last years. We can now see that it’s beginning to enclose its ramifications in all the departments of a company. Hiring the staff, purchasing the reporting software, expanding the business, these are all decision which must be considered from a BI point of view. And as much as we try to understand BI at a smaller level we will see that a proactive intelligence is needed for a business to stand.

The Future of Business Intelligence!

Business analysts are forecasting that Business Intelligence will develop into a main function which will aid the accomplishment of many organizations. But my question is: Isn’t BI already a main function in the accomplishment of an organization? All the major companies are already using Business Intelligence and more and more medium and small size companies are starting to implement its processes every day. This is happening because more and more business managers are realising that Business intelligence and its tools are imperative for increasing productivity and the quality of work and with that, the profit will grow as well. These companies are beginning to see the rewards of spatial information analysis and reporting through BI Tools. All these lead to smarter, more efficient decision-making. Using data warehouses, companies can store a huge amount of information about their clients. Using the data from the DW, taking it through several analysis applications and then through a reporting software, companies can get precious information that would improve the decision making process and the odds of success. These information can include attaining customers, refining the company’s operations, handling income more efficiently, minimizing hazards, predicting prospective problems and maximizing the profit.
Due to a continuous altering of the customer's lifestyle, companies nowadays need to track their customers’ daily activities and needs. We can take as an example the development of the location’s intelligence - which is a great decisional factor in customer targeting. Technical innovations also became a serious issue on any company’s agenda.
Companies these days use BI tools to collect, organize and analyze data about customers or future consumers via all sorts of smartphone and tablet applications. Customers are using their phones for search queries more often nowadays. These queries are stored in databases where all this valuable data can then be analyzed and transformed into useful information which companies can use in their predictions. In addition, marketing and advertising methods have been developed in order to attain an edge in targeted markets. This has triggered a decline in marketing cost, which in return has produced more effective and productive marketing methods.
As a result, an international market has been created, with no geographical boundaries. By the year 2015, it is estimated that one billion men and women will access social media communities, and most of them will use an area based software. Marketers have always put great value on the ability of talking straight to their clients, focusing on the customer’s needs and demands. This strategy has provided a competitive edge by detecting the clients’ expectations and predicting potential trends. Therefore, they were able to implement even more powerful business techniques, which provided superior opportunities to reach financial accomplishment. Also, the companies are now able to anticipate potential issues before taking place. 
  There are elements of majority of people’s life, like social, cloud and cellular computing which will allow companies to control this technology. These techniques and tools can be used to attain prospective clients. Incorporating promotional offers, advertising, playing the consumer loyalty card, assessing the level of purchase into applications is a great way to benefit from the customers’ love for technology. These techniques, combined with the use of real time BI tools to attain instant reports about the customer’s needs and expectations, might be essential to achieve success in today’s dynamic business environment.
Social computing allows a better insight over the customers’ needs and trends through a close exchange of informations. For example: a customer encountered a problem with his computer. Typically, he logs on the social network of a popular computer parts supplier and writes his problem down. The company will help him solve his problem, but in the same time it will be able to recognize the customers’ purchase pattern and also make him an offer for the spare parts that he might need.
Cloud computing. There are lots of things that can be said about cloud computing, but there are two main ways in which a company can use this tool. The first of its uses it’s all about the needs of the consumer - it provides a way of identifying the customers’ trends. The second common use it’s about the company’s ability to access applications and storage space remotely through a Internet connection. Companies can use it for data storage and they could access it from anywhere in the world. This way they can analyze and use the resulted informations in real time, without being confined to the company’s headquarters, where the main server is. They could implement reporting software applications and reports and send them in all kinds of formats.
Cellular computing (or mobile computing, as it’s called today) grants a company the ability to analyze a client's needs and demands. People nowadays use smartphones and tablets on a daily basis. Analyzing their queries, companies can identify the trends and implement the best possible marketing techniques.

In the end, businesses who can’t keep up with this burst of technology innovations will be at a severe disadvantage. As for Business Intelligence, its processes and tools are advancing every day. And this technology and tools have become crucial for any company which is planning to turn out a profit. As I already said, big business and enterprises already use BI and the small and medium sized ones will have to adapt as well.