With things moving too fast in modern business environments, it may be hard to predict the next 5 or 10 steps. That’s when ad hoc reports come in handy.
“As the situation requires” – that’s the meaning of ‘ad-hoc’ in Latin. So, ad hoc reporting is any type of report that the user puts together themselves, as and when they need it, instead of using a predefined template. It’s a one-time report created for a specific purpose that helps the user to provide answers to important business questions immediately. It’s the creation of an autonomous report that omits the need to wait for standard analysis.
An ad hoc report may be a one-off query, a completely new report, or dashboard feature that the user can use whenever they need it, or a customized version of analytics the user has run before.
The point of ad hoc reporting is to build our own report the way we need it, depending on the situation. It works alongside recurring data reports and presents a crucial part of the growth and sustainability of any brand, business, or organization by providing a level of insight which offers an extra layer of success and substance to the data-driven decision-making process.
Your business intelligence provider shouldn’t offer just parameterized reporting but true ad-hoc reporting as well, in order to avoid getting stuck. Parameterized reporting is a form of dashboard or report that is created every day, based on set parameters. However, a savvy marketing manager will probably come up with more questions after seeing the parameterized, daily report. In that case, you’ll need to create a new report specifically for that situation, called an ad-hoc report.
Today, ad hoc reporting is a vital process for improving performance, operations, and decision making in data-centric business. However, it’s crucial that you know how to create ad hoc reports in the right way. Creating them in the wrong way can do more harm than good for your business or organization.
Here’s what true ad hoc reporting shouldn’t be:
It’s the discovery and subsequent action you take after examining, exploring, and drawing real conclusions from an ad hoc report.
Usually, this analysis is more visual than the typical static report and includes discovering, presenting, and auctioning information for a smaller, targeted audience. It allows the user to decide which data sources to pull from and the way that data will be presented. Ad hoc analysis offers entirely customized analytics. It ensures true self-service reporting and better efficiency.
After answering “what is ad hoc reporting?” “what it should be like?” and “what is ad hoc data analysis?” it’s time to look at the benefits of using these types of data reports. Here are some of the most significant benefits of ad-hoc reporting and ad-hoc analysis:
What is ad hoc reporting? It’s creating a unique report for a specific business purpose ASAP. It’s different than parameterized reporting, which delivers reports on a daily basis. However, you should know how to properly create it because doing it wrong can cause more harm than good for your business.
Published on Oct 29, 2019