Your Reports are Getting Tossed Over the Fence

Previously, you learned how Excel is not always excel-lent, especially in business intelligence.

There is often a vast disconnect between those who need information and those who provide reports. When users don’t have access to the data they need, they often find themselves begging developers for spreadsheets. Those developers know how to pull information, but they don’t understand why they are pulling it. They aren’t privy to the specific needs and functions of every department, so they often lack a sense of urgency when it comes to compiling requested data.

They simply pull what they think is important as they have time and “toss if over the fence” when they’re done. The result? Untimely and unusable reporting. Old, legacy systems facilitate the great divide between developers and other departments. End users don’t understand how complicated and time consuming it can be for developers to create reports, and developers don’t understand why they are being asked to pull certain data.

User-friendly BI dashboards can help break down these barriers. Users are able to easily access the precise data that they need in real time. They no longer have to wait for developers to toss their reports over the fence, all the while keeping their fingers crossed that they will actually be able to use the data they receive.

In this next chapter, you will realize that the age of your data matters after all.