As we work our way through the rest of this book, always keep in mind that our goal is to provide our end users with accurate and reliable ways to mine the data found in our reporting systems. If we cannot maintain accuracy and reliability, then our end users will quickly seek out another report developer who can meet their needs!

Creating accurate and reliable reports requires the ability to properly identify the end user and corporate requirements. The ability to identify the requirements for a report or reporting tool is a valuable skill to have in today's business environment. But, this skill doesn't come easily! Instead, developers and consultants must constantly ask challenging questions of end users and the corporate infrastructure to select the most effective reporting tool for the circumstances.

Not surprisingly, the process of creating a report is not often as easy as creating a data connection to a database and throwing data up onto a computer screen or a PDF file. But, in order to make it easy, we've provided you with information to set you along the way towards identifying the requirements for your report.

As we begin to cover specific reporting tools for Microsoft Dynamics GP, keep the trends and challenges we've discussed in this chapter in the back of your mind. Continue to ask yourself how each reporting tool can help you meet the challenges that we've presented in this chapter.

In the next chapter, we will begin by looking at some tips and tricks to locating our data in the Microsoft Dynamics GP system. Then, we will look at certain tools that can help us in finding the specific data we need to begin writing our reports.