Information Reporting Systems: The Good, The Bad And The Buzzwords
There was a time when these needs could be satisfied only by a lot of manual labor - poring over foot-thick green bar reports, highlighting and paper clipping, then jotting things down on legal pads. Or you might have called your software vendor and requested some custom report programming, then waited six months or so.
Those days are long gone. Even if you got your software at the local office supply store, chances are it allows you to export your data to a spreadsheet format, where you can have your way with it. Your ability to crank out custom reports and colorful pie charts grows dramatically when you can use anything better than shrink-wrapped software. Somewhere you probably have a menu selection or icon labeled data export, data query, report writer, report generator, data warehouse or data miner. If buzzword fever has struck, it may be labeled "executive information system" or, my all-time favorite, "business intelligence." You may even have the use of a third party data utility like Crystal Reports or BusinessObjects.