Technology is one of the factors driving modern business intelligence and the way analysts are able to access data and create actionable reports for management and stakeholders in the enterprise. It is enabled the creation of the ad hoc report builder, which businesses can use to define data access policy, create data dashboards and SQL charts, and access multiple data sources. Ad hoc is Latin that means ‘for this situation’, and when a report builder has that feature, it can empower business analysts to work on different business intelligence requests, like generating charts and data reports, even without relying on their IT team.
Ad hoc reporting tools have proven to be useful for making informed decisions based on time-sensitive tasks that require quick and accurate creation of charts and reports, and data analysis. They allow business analysts to build or write SQL queries and generate dashboards, which can be shared with other stakeholders immediately. As for the IT team, it only needs to provide the required secure access to the data. A comprehensive ad hoc report builder works for both business analysts and IT.
A full ad hoc reporting solution promotes self-service to boost productivity and enable independence among business users and IT teams. It contains other tools that will further boost the capabilities and productivity of business intelligence users, too. Once the users are able to access data through the ad hoc report builder, they can access the data source and start writing SQL queries using the platform’s editor, or create queries via the query builder, even with limited knowledge in SQL, as it eliminates their need to write a line of code. From the editor, they can already view the data and table browser for database management.
Powerful dashboards enable data analysis and visualization from the ad hoc report builder. After generating reports, users can easily share them and collaborate with other business users. The reporting process is automated and can be scheduled to run at regular intervals, then the results will be sent by email in a preferred format, like HTML, Excel, or PDF.
