Management Reporting Solutions
- Excel (VBA)
- JasperReports
- SSRS & Power BI
- Qlikview
JasperReports
I have developed and deployed JasperReports as a reporting solution over many years, where it has been a cost effective solution (using the community version) that has provided the operational and management reporting for several of the companies where I have worked.
It has the advantage of being able to deliver output via a web portal, and allows sophisticated parameterised reports to be run and allowed the user to output the data in multiple formats including PDF and excel.
Solutions that I have delivered with it have used DB2, MS-SQL, MySQL and Postgres for the data sources.
It also supports use of the REST API to deliver solution's when embedded in existing Web Applictions, which was used in conjunction with a lifting gear certification portal.
Excel (VBA)
I have delivered management level reporting nbased on legacy systems using excel as the delivery mechanism with VBA to manipulate the information, though in many cases either JasperReports or SSRS is now a better solution.
SSRS & Power BI
I was involved replacing legacy excel based reports with more flexible solutions using SSRS build on SQL Server reportings serverices 2016.
I started investigating the uses of Microsoft Power BI as a possible solution for the data analysis and visuyalisation for a MS Dynamics AX project and undertook an introductory course Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Power BI from Microsoft on EDX. I then used an existing CRM project to build a series of models using Power BI to demonstrate the capabilities and evaluate the use of iPads as delivery medium.
Qlikview
I was also involved in a project where we utilised Qlikview as a potential solution for management reporting. Qlikview was a very powerful solution but the premise behind its use in this particular scenario was flawed and the solution was never taken up to the extent that it could have been. However as an learning exercise it was valuable.