Critical information, when you need it.
- Where's your data?
Is it spread out between word processing documents,
spreadsheets, and small database files on various desktops or servers?
- How easy is it to reconcile vendors, invoices and jobs?
- Are your best customers really your best customers?
Could they be spending more?
- Are you missing opportunities to better serve your customers?
- How easy is it for you to gather all the numbers and put it together
in some meaningful format that allows you to spot critical trends?
- Are you aware of potential new markets?
Transforming data into meaningful information that allows you to make the decisions critical to the
growth and success of your enterprise, that's business intelligence.
Business intelligence is the single best tool for generating a tangible return on investment from all this technology. It's also your competitive edge. Leverage it.
The first step is to consolidate the disparate sources of data in the enterprise. Quite a task, sometimes,
but there are powerful tools out there.
ITCS uses these tools to develop an integrated business intelligence framework that enables you to rapidly
turn data into the right decisions. Here are a few:
Microsoft SQL Reporting Services
SQL Server Reporting Services is a comprehensive, server-based solution that enables the creation, management, and delivery of both traditional, paper-oriented reports and interactive, Web-based reports. An integrated part of the Microsoft Business Intelligence framework, Reporting Services combines the data management capabilities of SQL Server and Microsoft Windows Server with familiar and powerful Microsoft Office System applications to deliver real-time information to support daily operations and drive decisions.
Report Manager
Report Manager is a Web-based report access and management tool that you access through Microsoft Internet Explorer. You can use Report Manager to administer a single report server instance from a remote location over an HTTP connection. You can also use Report Manager for its report viewer and navigation features.
Report Viewer
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 includes report design functionality and ReportViewer controls so that you can add full-featured reports to custom applications. Reports may contain tabular, aggregated, and multidimensional data. ReportViewer controls are provided so that you can process and display the report in your application. There are two versions of the control. The ReportViewer Web server control is used to host reports in ASP.NET projects. The Windows Forms control is
used to host reports in Windows application projects.
Reporting Services in Your App
SQL reporting services can be integrated into web-based applications using the ReportViewer Web server control to provide an interface for displaying reports that can be printed or exported in a number of formats -- PDF, Microsoft Excel, tab delimited ASCII text, TIFF. Reports are formatted to print exactly as they display using the standard printer setup and formatting options.
HTML Reports
When printing is not needed, traditional HTML pages can be used to render reports. The report viewr controls and HTML based reports are cross browser compatible.