Business reporting or enterprise reporting refers to both "the public reporting of operating and financial data by a business enterprise," and "the regular provision of information to decision-makers within an organization to support them in their work." It is a fundamental part of the larger movement towards improved
business intelligence
Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical pr ...
and
knowledge management
Knowledge management (KM) is the collection of methods relating to creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieve organisational objectives by making ...
. Implementation often involves
extract, transform, and load (ETL) procedures in coordination with a
data warehouse
In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for reporting and data analysis and is considered a core component of business intelligence. DWs are central repositories of integra ...
and then using one or more
reporting tools. Reports can be distributed in print form, via
email
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...
or accessed via a corporate
intranet.
With the expansion of
information technology
Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system ...
there has been an increase in the production of unified reports which join different views of an organization in one place. This reporting process involves querying data sources with different
logical models to produce a
human-readable
A human-readable medium or human-readable format is any encoding of data or information that can be naturally read by humans.
In computing, ''human-readable'' data is often encoded as ASCII or Unicode text, rather than as binary data. In most ...
report. For example, a decision maker may need to query a
human resources
Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include ...
databases and a
capital improvements databases to show how efficiently space is being used across an entire corporation.
Reporting can also be used for verification and cross-checks. Audit teams like
FINRA and SEC adhere to reports for all business firms.
Standard Business Reporting
Standard Business Reporting is a group of international programs instigated by a number of governments to reduce the regulatory burden for business. The concept is to make business the centre when it comes to managing business-to-government repor ...
is a group of international programs instigated by a number of governments with the end of make business the center when it comes to managing business-to-government reporting obligations.
Business reports can be presented in many forms, including digital or physical representations. Digital reports can be
interactive
Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but m ...
and viewed through a standard web browser
or other software, or more statically represented as for example in a PDF file, or printed on paper. A
paginated
Pagination, also known as paging, is the process of dividing a document into discrete pages, either electronic pages or printed pages.
In reference to books produced without a computer, pagination can mean the consecutive page numbering to ind ...
report is a report which may be formatted to be more suitable for printing to paper or PDF, including specification of physical measurements which matches the paper, page splits and how data is split across multiple pages.
See also
*
Data reporting Data reporting is the process of collecting and submitting data which gives rise to accurate analyses of the facts on the ground; inaccurate data reporting can lead to vastly uninformed decision-making based on erroneous evidence. Different from da ...
*
Operational reporting
References
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Business intelligence