Perhaps I had heard before about different types of reports, but I remember when first hearing/reading from John Van Weeren about types of reporting it felt a little bit like a revelation to me. Here, for example, is John’s “The Information for Everyone Initiative: A Datatel Position Paper” from datatel.com. I remember being introduced to four reporting types: Operational, Ad-hoc, Analytic, and Strategic. Each has its place, and is important within the enterprise.
This concept is also useful in the context of considering your institution/organization’s reporting tools, and which reporting types they could cover. For example, Microsoft Access could easily handle operational and ad-hoc, Excel could handle those as well as analytic. So those considerations could lead into the question, Are there holes in your organization’s coverage of Reporting?
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