AD HOC REPORTS IN EXCEL
Giving users the Ad Hoc reporting flexibility businesses need to compete
FluenceXL (formerly XLCubed) gives users unrivalled reporting flexibility in a familiar environment. It connects Excel to corporate data and provides analytical and reporting capabilities impossible to achieve in standalone Excel. Users become highly productive quickly, as they can leverage and extend existing skills rather than start from scratch in a completely new environment.
WHAT IS AD HOC REPORTING?
The need for ad-hoc reports and self-serve analytics
Alongside standardised report packs, all businesses have a need for ad-hoc reporting – reports required sporadically and ‘as the need arises’. The classic model of business users asking IT for ad-hoc reports simply no longer works. Speed of delivery is key, and users need self-service tools to create their own ad-hoc reports and analyses quickly and easily to compete.
Addressing pivot table issues
Many users have met the requirement to some degree by saving data extracts to Excel, and using a myriad of formulae and pivot tables to get the data they need in the format they want. While this is undoubtedly self-serve, it’s time-consuming and potentially error-prone.
In other cases IT have provided end users with data discovery tools to meet the need, but the initiative has failed due to poor user adoption. This can be for two primary reasons:
Complexity
The tools can be perceived as ‘too complex’ – the initial learning curve is too high, and users revert to their existing process.
Inflexible
The tools are limited in working with and presenting tabular data, letting users add their own calculations, and for slice and dice analytics, and users feel they don’t deliver what is needed.
CREATE AD HOC REPORTS IN EXCEL
Empower your users with intuitive ad-hoc reporting and analytics
FluenceXL delivers ad-hoc reporting through an extended Excel environment, which means that users can build on their existing skills rather than start afresh in an unfamiliar toolset. FluenceXL connects Excel directly to corporate data, respecting existing security and retaining the ‘one version of the truth’ concept. Excel is just the presentation layer, but a significantly enhanced one.
Excel users benefit from a wide range of reporting smarts including intuitive user calculations, flexible data selectors, report linking, and interactive charting. FluenceXL also addresses many of the pivot-table pain points which users struggle with daily. The end result is strong user adoption, and unrivalled flexibility in self-serve ad-hoc reporting and analysis.
Data
Connect to your data, wherever it's held. FluenceXL offers a wide range of connectors, meaning you always stay up to date.
Excel Integration
Data aware, user-defined calculations using standard Excel formulae. Integrate Excel ranges into a report to create custom searches and member selections.
Interactive Charting
A wide range of advanced interactive and animated charting
Slice & Dice Analysis
Explore data with simple member drilling and drag & drop hierarchies as well as advanced sorting and ranking options.
CORE REPORTING PROCESS
When ad-hoc reports become core business reports
While some ad-hoc reports are used only for a relatively short period, others have an ongoing value to the business and become a part of core reporting processes. Standardized reports within a business require more control, and potentially scalable ways to share them across a broader audience.
Any report developed in FluenceXL Excel can be published to the FluenceXL Web portal for governed, widespread sharing with Web and Mobile users. The published reports retain the data-connection and inherit database security. They are fully version controlled, and the report publisher has full control over the level of interactivity provided within the web version of the report.
It’s a model which allows business user created ad-hoc reports, developed in Excel but connecting to centralized data, become a governed part of corporate reporting and can speed the delivery process hugely.
XLCUBED Web Edition