Understanding Dashboard Reporting Software

Dashboard reporting software is software, typically from the business intelligence arena, that is used for building, publishing and interacting with corporate KPI dashboards. Dashboard report software provides businesses with a platform that can be used to establish and publish metric based reporting that allows the organization to gauge actual performance against pre-established metrics. Through dashboard reporting software, a business can make faster decisions and more accurate decisions by relying on factual data rather than on intuition. Dashboard reporting software has been extremely popular over the past ten years, especially with larger organizations.

Types of Dashboard Reporting Software

There are many types of dashboard reporting software, from systems that are server-based that rely on a combination of server horse power and a client software to display the dashboard, to client only dashboard reporting software that provides alternative means of creating and using reports to spreadsheet products like Excel. A new form of technology that has become popular in the past few years is 100% server-based dashboard reporting software that puts all the number crunching power on a server and utilizes a web browser to deliver the results. Regardless of the type, dashboard reporting software has given businesses of all size a new tool to help make better and faster decisions.

Client-Server Based Dashboard Reporting Software

Client-Server based dashboard reporting software relies on a dual component framework to create and deliver dashboards. This form of dashboard reporting software uses the server to attach to source data bases and to provide general system administration and data delivery, while using locally installed applications for chart creation and for dashboard building. These client-server based dashboard reporting software systems were very popular in the early days of dashboard reporting software but have begun to fall out of favor due to their high costs and highly complex management frameworks.

Client-Only Based Dashboard Reporting Software

Client-based dashboard reporting software is a relatively new and small field, populated by solutions designed to augment or replace tools like Microsoft Excel. Client-based dashboard reporting software is typically targeted towards smaller businesses that are seeking the broader data visualization capabilities of dashboard reporting software but that don't have the financial capability to invest in high end dashboard reporting software that is more common in enterprise organizations.

HTML-Based Dashboard Reporting Software

A new entry in the dashboard reporting software business is technology based on HTML and AJAX technology. This new class of dashboard reporting software places 100% of the intelligence on the server and relies on a purely HTML and AJAX delivery methodology to deliver the applications and the content. A key benefit of this type of dashboard reporting software is that it makes for much faster deployment times and much lower costs of ownership than traditional systems.