The benefits of cloud-based reporting and analytics

Over the past decade, cloud-based solutions have become more and more a part of our everyday lives. Email providers such as Outlook (part of Office 365) and Gmail make it fast and simple to manage email accounts without having to deal with the hassle of configuring and managing all of the servers and infrastructure that go along with it. As businesses continue to embrace cloud technology, even complex business applications such as ERP and CRM systems like Microsoft Dynamics 365 and NetSuite have become more prevalent as companies shift from focusing less on servers and more on solutions.

Most reporting and analytics tools have, historically, been on-premise, so the business needed to manage all of the infrastructure and purchase perpetual licenses as more users begin to use the products. This ends up being yet another burden on the IT team and can cause issues when the business needs to scale up. As technology becomes more pervasive in the modern business space and working remotely becomes more common in today’s economic environment, the need to log on to a VPN, launch remote desktop sessions, or navigate through the complexity of the company’s internal infrastructure just to access reports becomes much less attractive to the average business user.

Many modern reporting and analytics solutions, such as Solver (formerly BI360), have made the move to the cloud in order to offer their clients solutions that match the needs of their ever-evolving businesses. Users can access reports and dashboards from anywhere, be it from their local PC or from their phone, and have the ability to get instant insights into what is going on in the business. In addition, tools such as Solver make it fast and easy to leverage tools like Power BI to quickly put together meaningful dashboards and visualization and then publish and share those throughout the organization. Reports can be scheduled to run and be distributed automatically, from any web browser, and business users can quickly log in and run reports that have been shared with them with little technical know-how.

In addition, all of this is made possible without the need to burden the IT team with yet more servers and business applications to know how to manage and maintain. The monthly subscription covers all of the costs of the servers, web hosting, and resources required to run and distribute these reports throughout the business. Updates happen automatically, behind the scenes, so both the IT team and the users can be confident that the latest security vulnerabilities are constantly being patched and that a power outage in the main office doesn’t mean that people no longer have access to the reports and data that they need to run their business.

Ultimately, embracing a cloud solution for reporting and analytics, enables the business to focus on the business, not the infrastructure required to run it, and ensures that the tools that the business users employ to make sense of their data have the flexibility to grow and scale as they continue to grow into the future.

Solver enables world-class decisions with a leading web-based CPM suite made up of budgeting, reporting, dashboards, and data warehousing, delivered through a web portal. Solver is reinventing CPM with its next generation solution. Solver empowers business users with modern features including innovative use of Excel in the model design process. If you’re interested in learning more, our team is excited to hear about your organizational needs and goals.