Now that you have been given a brief overview of what has been covered thus far, we now turn our attention to reviewing our reporting tools in light of the challenges that we covered in the first chapter. You should remember from Chapter 1, Meeting the Reporting Challenge, that each challenge contains diametrically opposing conditions. For example, as we consider the intended audience of our report, we must decide if our report should meet the needs of the day-to-day operations personnel or if it should be designed for external stakeholders who may be interested in a larger time range than a day. In comparing two reporting tools side by side, we may discover that one reporting tool perfectly meets the set of requirements imposed by our day-to-day operations personnel; however, the other tool is more suited for external stakeholders. We will find that other tools fit more towards the middle of these two extreme conditions.

Our...