Push the Button Reports

By Bozidar Kralj, on September 22nd, 2010

Push the Button Experts and Reports

It is interesting to analyze perception of business intelligence users. “Prepare me push the button formatted report” and magic crystal ball will generate fancy report. Rest of the time will be lost on coffee breaks. Hello, it is hard to maintain reports. Mapping, formatting, data quality, integration reliability, delivery on time, security are only some processes to be considered before generating report. Off course pre report maintenance is always pushed to somebody else. Product code mapping and maintenance is usually dirtiest work to do among named jobs.

Push the button is another term for automated reporting. Neglected fact is that reports usually mean quantitative restoring of complex business and process logic. By each day business logic is more and more complex because processes are multiplied and are getting very interrelated, influencing each other. They are getting more interrelated because of market development, competition pressure, sophisticated technologies, software and etc.
Push the button request is reasonable for top management level since they are not directly involved in using management information systems. But it is weird request for expert users and even more weird for ordinary business intelligence users.

Business Intelligence users do not percept they will loose job if everything is pushed away from them. Highly automated reports with target to achieve push the button reporting for standard users means big investment. At the end why would investor invest lot of money that somebody else would have more easier job to do, automatic reports? Such push the button expert are really needed any more and what is their business value ad?