Self Service Analytics and Reporting

For many businesses the challenge is getting the right information to the right people, at the right time– information workers, with a wide range of skills and expertise, who need access to business data may be distributed throughout the organisation and beyond.

Reporting Services extends the Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) platform to reach the information worker who needs access to business data. Reports can be delivered in a variety of formats, with a range of interactivity and printing options. Complex analyses can reach a broad audience through the distribution of reports as a data source for downstream business intelligence. An integrated component of the Microsoft business intelligence platform Reporting Services provides:

Enterprise reporting.

Enterprises can use Reporting Services for their operational reporting or business intelligence applications. Using Reporting Services, corporate IT staff can design a variety of reports and deploy them to individuals throughout the enterprise, using a combination of e-mail distribution and publishing on a corporate portal.

Ad Hoc reporting

Reporting Services includes Report Builder, a new ad hoc reporting tool that enables business users to create their own reports and explore corporate data. Report Builder incorporates a user-friendly business query model that enables users to build reports without deep technical understanding of the underlying data sources.

Web-based reporting for partners/customers.

Organisations can deploy interactive web-based reports to deliver information to customers or partners over extranets of the Internet. Reporting Services isolates report consumers from the complexity of the underlying data sources, while providing personalisation and interactivity.