With the advent of modern computer workflows, most businesses are collecting tons of “information” about their operations. Research, however, shows that most of this information fails to deliver any real value to the business because it is not being transformed into “knowledge.”

Taking data from simple “information” to “knowledge” requires analytics, or the application of some understanding of the data to highlight issues, trends, and changes in the data that are relevant to business decisions. This is one of the primary roles filled by reporting solutions. Reporting solutions- via the reports they generate- encapsulate the rules required to understand business information and turn it in to knowledge.

Businesses that don’t engage in this process are literally leaving money on the table and failing to maximize the effectiveness of their business. In a recent InformationWeek article on the state of business intelligence- another encompassing term for “reporting solutions”- the magazine reveals that some companies are even using reporting to help drive business success by exposing to employees reports tied to incentive pay.  The reports aggregate key business  performance metrics and employees can easily track their impact on business performance through well designed and easy to access reports, driving them to record performance.

Failure to adopt a reporting solution means that your business is not only losing money due to missed opportunity, but you’re also wasting money expending more effort than you should creating and recreating reports for different users in different environments.