Lawrence TaxsonSenior Program Executive| USGVienna, Va, United States
Can any of you recommend a cheap or freeware solution for business intelligence reporting? The company I am at does not have the money for MicroStrategy or Business Objects. The current need is to provide a system that allows management to view data in a variety of different ways. Basically, they want to see their full set of data and then have the ability to slice and dice data whichever way they see fit.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Larry
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Holly MartinBusiness Analysis Practice Lead| CDWVernon Hills, Il, United States
Personally I always start with Excel pivot tables. I've been amazed at the amount of functionality that's been built into Excel for reporting & analysis. And there are also lots of cheap plug-ins out there (like XLCubed) which allow the user to stay with the tool they know and understand, and get a little extra bells an whistles. Excel can connect to almost any database or flat file via an ODBC connection.
Only after playing around with pivot tables and testing prototypes with the users, do I move on to something more sophisticated. Most database vendors (Oracle, Microsoft, IBM) have basic reporting tools already loaded on their servers. If Excel doesn't work, that's what I would explore. Find out what database platform they are working on, and find out what basic reporting tool that vendor offers.
When users ask for "slice-and-dice" I always start with what reports they have and where that data is coming from, hook into it using Excel, and go from there. Having worked with many BI tools for over 7 years now, if I have an opportunity to steer my user to Excel first, I'll take that opportunity every time. Saving Changes...
