Data Analytics and Custom Reporting

There has been a trend for several years now for data consumers (for lack of a better term0 to develop their own reports. In years past, this was not always the way it worked. Reports, especially financial reports, were carefully crafted by the reporters and sent out to the consumers for consumption. Some forward looking companies have made data available in data tools (see Potash Corp's Investor Relations website, for example), which make it possible for consumers to retrieve data elements and then massage them into custom reports.

Generally, however, good tools for consumers have been hard to come by. But this is changing. Data analytics tools, specifically designed for data consumers without necessarily high end IT skills, have been coming onto the market, and changing the way consumers use their data. One writer recently characterized this movement as a move towards information democracy. Others have forecast a trend towards information democracy, indeed since the spread of low cost computing. But it has been slow in coming, until the tools started to become available, some of them open source and cloud based.

Examples of the new consumer oriented analytics include Qlik Tech and Tableau.

Information democracy will have a huge impact on the field of reporting to investors, something that has been slow to evolve and is still centered on tightly formatted reports. More openness of the data will be good for all involved.