How Understanding the 4 Drivers of Enterprise Reporting Can Unlock Greater Business Value

The richness, depth, and breadth of the data available to businesses today is almost inconceivable. The inevitable corollary is that enterprise reporting has become increasingly complex. Important data is easily missed, and analysis can be agonizingly slow. Robust enterprise reporting is mission critical because businesses require actionable insights to navigate changing times.

What’s Driving Reporting Complexity?

The nature of enterprise reporting has experienced dramatic change as a result of four powerful external drivers. These drivers are creating new challenges and therefore new demands on the types of information needed to successfully manage the business. 

1. Macroeconomic factors are putting pressure on businesses. Inflation and recession, governance and compliance, interest rates, margin pressure, and operational efficiencies … information and insights on these and other factors are necessary to maintain a company’s profitability, competitiveness, and ESG requirements. And because the market and economy are in a constant state of flux, such insights must be in real time in order to make and execute optimal decisions.
2. Geopolitical instability is the second driver of reporting complexity. From the continuing repercussions of Brexit to the war in Ukraine, tensions and conflicts around the world make themselves known in subtle and not-so-subtle ways within a business. Insights are needed for everything from assessing the risk associated with operating in certain countries to determining how and where data needs to reside to comply with regulations or privacy laws. 
3. Worldwide supply chain risk, including the interdependence and fragility of supply (which the pandemic brought to light), is another key driver of reporting complexity. Businesses rely heavily on enterprise reporting to identify areas of supply chain exposure and decide where to source materials, how often to order, what inventories to maintain, and where to set up supply chain redundancies to ensure business continuity.
4. Market consolidation is driving the need for improved reporting. For example, mergers and acquisitions reduce the number of competitors while simultaneously making it more difficult to hold ground in the marketplace because the remaining competitors are so massive. Plus, new digital-native entrants have largely changed the rules of the game, creating new business models that highly leverage data and insights. Timely information is critical to successfully compete in the evolving market landscape to deliver digital products and services. 

Together, these factors are driving an explosion of data. Research firm IDC estimates that there will be a 23% growth in data per year through 2027. So, not only is there a tremendous amount of data now that businesses need to keep abreast of, but the amount of data is going to become more and more massive, with no end in sight.

Achieving the Gold Standard for Enterprise Reporting

If robust enterprise reporting is becoming increasingly critical while the data businesses need to assess is becoming ever more complex, then one thing is clear: the act of unlocking insights must be simple and swift so that businesses can respond with agility amidst constant change. 

In practical terms, this requires the ability to: 

• Generate robust reports in real time to improve availability of critical business data
• Access data residing across all platforms, including the mainframe, to deliver a comprehensive and accurate perspective
• Leverage modern programming frameworks to empower the next generation of application developers 

Consider, for example, the needs of a business analyst. Business analysts want to easily maintain critical business reports using a variety of data sets. Their goal is to analyze business processes and make recommendations for improvement. Any delay in getting the insights they need can have a significant impact on their ability to deliver value to the business, whether in finance, accounting, operations, or elsewhere across the organization.

Additionally, the needs of the IT teams that support and manage the reporting platform need to be considered. For example, system programmers are charged with increasing productivity so that programs run as efficiently as possible and use the least amount of computing resources. Application developers, on the other hand, are tasked with maintaining code over time. The new generation of developers therefore values a reporting platform that enables them to utilize familiar and modern tools. 

Unlock Greater Data Insights Today 

Robust, real-time, intuitive enterprise reporting capabilities are available through Broadcom’s Easytrieve® Report Generator. Easytrieve provides a powerful information retrieval and data management system for mainframe, UNIX, Linux, and Windows environments. Around the world, leading organizations rely on Easytrieve for their mission-critical reporting, including seven of the top 10 US banks, three of the top five global telcos, and seven of the top 10 global auto companies. 

Best of all, current Easytrieve customers are eligible for a no-cost upgrade to transform their enterprise reporting capabilities and unlock actionable insights. Simply contact us for a 30-minute, no-cost consultation that will put you on the road to better decisions, greater efficiency, and optimized agility.