Enterprise Reporting is the platform which Microsoft has selected to support its CIS capabilities. It was brought into the Microsoft group via the acquisition of Great Plains.

Enterprise Reporting enables multi-national organizations to collect, consolidate, analyze and report on financial and other data from all of their subsidiaries or reporting units, rapidly and accurately. Accessible via the Web, Enterprise Reporting offers unparalleled reporting and analysis capabilities, independent of physical locations.

Functionalities

Enterprise Reporting from Microsoft opens new perspectives for integrated financial information systems for

• Management information
• Financial consolidation and reporting
• Budgeting, planning and forecasting
• Data collection and transformation

Key Benefits

Enterprise Reporting includes advanced multi-dimensional consolidation, elimination and multi-currency capabilities. Providing an efficient system for collecting and reporting information from across the organization, Enterprise Reporting delivers solid control at the center with a high degree of flexibility to mold the reporting processes around each organization's business practices.

• Customization: Enterprise Reporting is able to map your business exactly, and to change as you change.
• Central/local adaptability: No matter what local reporting requirements you have, the system adapts, without affecting the central model you need.
• Dimension-handling & tree structures: The underlying logic structure provides a virtually unlimited number of options.
• Acquisition planning: Use the system to see what effect a planned acquisition will have on your financial structure.
• Acquisition assimilation: When a new entity comes on board, you can quickly and easily include them in the reporting model.

Technical Features

Enterprise Reporting is equally suitable for small groups, as well as the very largest. Because of its scalable architecture, it can be easily and quickly implemented, and equally easily expanded. Current customers range from groups with 5 subsidiaries to some of the world's largest organizations with more than 3,000 reporting units.

• Crystallization point for Data Warehousing
• Fully integrated in SQL 2005 and Analysis Services
• Import Server
• WEB Integration for Reporting Events
• Report Server · Starting point for Analysis and BI
• OLAP Integration

Current versions of Enterprise Reporting run on Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003.

Costs/TCO

Enterprise Reporting keeps your costs on a low level at a minimal total cost of ownership (TCO):

• Involvement of customer internal resources for low maintenance cost
• Fast and efficient training sessions for low set up costs
• Mainstream tools and standard user interfaces for low license costs
• Over-all transparency of application increases general understanding
• Outstanding supporting documentations
• Runs on most existent MS-platforms