Join us in exploring the world of modern development, evolving technologies, and the art of future-proof software
Summary: Is financial reporting a time-consuming task? Do you spend hours (or days) gathering financial data, organizing it in spreadsheets, creating reports, and distributing everything to other business leaders? Or, would you like better visibility into your financial data? Check out this demo, and see how easy financial reporting can be.
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Financial reporting demo: Get instant visibility into your businessRead More »
Summary: ERP systems rarely provide a perfect fit for your company’s unique reporting needs. The problem is, you’re stuck in something of a “Catch-22.” If you don’t customize the system, it won’t perfectly fit your needs. If you do customize it, you’re locked into that system. In this article, you’ll learn how other businesses are creating custom reporting over their ERP systems, without locking themselves down.
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Learn how other companies deliver custom ERP reportingRead More »
Summary: The process of taking data out of an enterprise system and turning it into meaningful management information is a challenge for many businesses. It usually requires Excel, and hours of manual work. Would you like to automate that process, and eliminate the clunky Excel reporting once and for all? Learn how one company fixed this very problem.
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How to automate reporting (and say goodbye to Excel)Read More »
Summary: Enterprise data is set to explode over the next 5 years. To truly capitalize on this data, companies need web reporting software that lets them easily convert data into meaningful management information. But, with all of the available reporting options, what should you look for?
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Web reporting tools: 6 essential report types you can’t live withoutRead More »
Summary: As business data explodes at a surprising pace, many companies still struggle with reporting. They create reports that confuse or overwhelm their executives–hampering their ability to make decisions. What do your executives think about their reports? Do you make any of these reporting mistakes?
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7 ways to build reports that your executives hateRead More »
Summary: Enterprise data is set to grow by 650 percent over the next 5 years. To truly capitalize on this data, companies need web reporting software that lets them easily convert data into meaningful management information. But, with all of the available reporting options, what should you look for?
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Today, let’s explain an important type of web report that could be a useful addition to any company’s reporting repertoire: the ranking report (also known as “the top N report”). What is it, why is it important, and how does it help your company? Let me explain.
The ranking (or top N) report creates variable rankings, across multiple dimensions, while specifying various selection criteria at run-time. In short, it lets you rank any aspect of your data from best to worst, or vice-versa. It lets users choose from a number of different criteria at run-time, and then instantly run a top/bottom ranking report complete with a graph.
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I’m happy to announce that m-Power’s reporting and Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities just received a major boost! We just released an update that includes much improved graphing and charting capabilities, and I think you’ll love it.
Now, you’ll still find all of the charting features you’ve come to expect out of m-Power, like chart drill-downs, tooltips, mobile charting capabilities, etc… We didn’t remove any existing features. We did, however, add some new capabilities that will help you create better web applications with m-Power. For instance, m-Power users can now:
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What’s the only thing worse than running a business without good reporting software in place? Running a business with bad reporting software in place.
The problems caused by bad reporting software can range from small inconveniences to major financial losses. For instance, bad reporting software can lead to:
How so? Take–for example–the most commonly used reporting tool: Spreadsheets. Why are spreadsheets a dangerous reporting option? Two reasons: They’re inefficient and dangerous:
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The dangers of choosing the wrong reporting softwareRead More »
Did you know that a full 90% of the data in the world has been generated over the past two years? We’re creating more data than ever before, and this trend is only growing. The only problem: Many businesses still aren’t sure how to capitalize on all of this data.
Oftentimes, the data is inaccessible to the very people who need it most. Salespeople have no way of easily viewing their sales data. Marketing managers can’t easily create the reports they need to view prospect data. As a result, all of that data goes to waste.
The fact is, as businesses generate more data than ever before, self-service reporting becomes increasingly important. You must give your employees a way to pull that data out of your systems and turn it into meaningful management information–without going through the IT department.
Unfortunately, this is still a problem in many companies. They still force end users to go through the process of requesting reports from the IT department, and then waiting around until they’re delivered. While all too common, this process often causes 3 big problems:
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I’m excited to announce that we’re bringing improved graphs and charts to m-Power! They’ll be available to m-Power users in the coming weeks, but if you’d like to get a glimpse of what’s in store, head on over to Crazybikes.
While you’ll find the new graphs and charts across many of the applications over on Crazybikes, you’ll see the widest variety on the User-Defined Dashboard demo. Try adding a few different charts, graphs, or gauges to the dashboard to get a glimpse of what the new m-Power charting will look like.
A few weeks back, we examined the question, “How can you buy business software that you won’t regret later?” While that article is loaded with great advice for software purchasing, the points are all very general.
What if you need a specific type of software, like reporting, Business Intelligence, or a development platform? While the points in that article still apply, how do you know what essential features to look for in each type of software?
Today, let’s answer that question from the reporting side of things. What features must you look for in an enterprise reporting solution? While your needs will (of course) vary depending on your company, all enterprise-class reporting solutions must include certain essential features. Buy software missing any of these features, and you’ll soon regret that purchase.
What are these features?
We’ve put together a handy little reporting checklist that lists and explains which features you must look for in any reporting solution. You can find it here: mrc’s 15-point reporting checklist.
When your boss (or any other executive in your company) asks for a web report, what do you create? Do you create a standard web report that displays the necessary data, includes some interactive charts and graphs, and lets the user drill down to more details?
Those are all nice features, but they’re fairly standard. What can you do to make that report really stand out? What can you do to make your boss say, “Wow!”?
I have some ideas that might help you. If you want to create reports that really stand out, they should… …
5 uncommon reporting features that will impress your bossRead More »
How would you like to walk into your boss’s office today and say, “I know a way to improve productivity by 50%.” Of course you would! Who wouldn’t?
Of course, that only works if you actually know a way to improve productivity by 50%. Sound impossible? It’s not that hard…you just have to know where to look.
So, where do you look? For starters, let me share one prime area that’s ripe for productivity improvements: In many businesses, productivity bottlenecks revolve around data. Even in the year 2013, we’re just not that efficient with our data. Every day, businesses waste time entering, collecting, sorting, filtering, combining, and manipulating data. The fact is, many businesses could vastly improve productivity if they only addressed some of these data inefficiencies.
If you want to dramatically improve productivity in your company, here’s a good place to start: I’ve listed 4 of the most common productivity bottlenecks caused by data. How many of these do you see in your company? …
4 common productivity bottlenecks (and how you can fix them)Read More »
Do you ever come to the end of a busy day and feel like you didn’t actually accomplish anything? Although you worked hard all day, you feel like you have nothing to show from all of that work?
Chances are, you got caught handling minor, yet essential tasks that kept you from tackling more important projects. Maybe you spent the day supporting untrained users, running end user reports, or trying to fix yet another problem with your company’s old, patched-up legacy software.
Tasks like these have a few things in common: They are necessary, yet time-consuming tasks that could (and should) be avoided. More importantly, they keep you from working on essential projects that could ultimately improve the company’s bottom line.
In other words: They keep you busy, but not productive.
How can you avoid these “productivity killers” and instead focus on essential tasks during the work day? First, you must identify which tasks fall within this category, and then you must figure out how to avoid them. So, what are some of the most common productivity killers? While it varies across companies, here’s a list of 5 productivity killers that commonly plague IT departments: …
Are you struggling to manage your data? Is reporting a complicated job? If so, I have a story you’ll want to read. It’s about a business that was comprised of 15 different companies representing 8 different industries spread out over 50 locations across the United States. Sound complicated? It was. As you might imagine, managing the steady stream of data was time consuming and difficult.
What did they do? They found a flexible reporting option that brought all of their data together, turning their complex data management into a simple task. To learn how they did it, you can read the whole story right here.
Some people request them from the IT department. Others lock themselves in their offices for a day or two and go crazy with spreadsheets. Others delegate the task. Whatever the method, everyone has a process for creating business reports.
But, what if your process wastes time? What if the hours you spend running reports or analyzing data are unnecessary?
Here’s a good test: Does it take longer than 5 minutes? If so, you’re wasting time. Within a matter of seconds, you should be able to see any piece of data you wish to see. For example, applications like this interactive report or this web pivot table report give you a high level view of data, but let you “slice-and-dice” it however you want. …
Just the other day, someone asked me this question: “What is business intelligence?” It got me thinking…I frequently write about business intelligence (BI) and why it’s important, but I’ve never really defined the term. In this post, I’d like to take a step back and give you the what, why, who, where, when, and how of business intelligence. Sound good? Okay, let’s get started…
What is business intelligence?
Most companies collect and store data covering all areas of their business. This data sits in a database and is really pretty useless in this format. What do I mean by that? If you looked at data in a database, it wouldn’t make any sense and would most definitely overwhelm you. This is where business intelligence comes into play. Business intelligence is the process of taking that (overwhelming) data in your database and presenting it in an understandable, accessible, and useful fashion. …
