Business Intelligence: Reports Types

    Have you ever wondered how many types of reports are there? In Information Systems (IS) nomenclature I found the following different types of reports considered:

    Standard reports – reports that are coming with a software application/package, as opposed of custom reports, reports created on customers’ request.

    Ad-hoc reports – reports built usually to satisfy one-time requests, though they can easily evolve to a standard report.

    Graphic reports- reports providing graphical visualization of data with the help of charts

    Transactional reports (OLAP reports) – reports built in transactional systems, containing up-to-date data.

    Analytic reports (OLAP reports) – reports built in an OLAP environment, containing data desynchronized from the OLTP environment, the data being refreshed on a periodic basis.

    Predictive reports – reports relying on powerful DM models and predictive technique.

    Parameterized reports – reports whose output is based on a set of predefined parameters.

    Linked reports – reports that provide an access point to other reports.

    Snapshot reports – reports that contain data retrieved at a specific point of time.

    Cached reports – reports saved in order to improve the performance by reducing the number of requests to the database/report engine.

    Click-through reports – reports whose display is based on interactive data selection

    Drilldown reports – a set of reports on the same topic showing data at different levels of details, the navigation being made from higher to lower level of details.

    Drill-through reports – reports accessible through a hyperlink from the original report.

    Sub-reports – a report contained in the body of another report, allowing for example the display of parent/child or header/lines relations.

    Metric-based reports – reports supposed to encompass the various types of business metrics; they can be further categorized in:
Health Metrics – reports designed to show the health of a system in terms of its usage and the adherence to the processes defined.
Growth Metrics - reports designed to show the growth of a system in terms of data, transaction or amount volume.
KPI (Key Process Indicator) reports – reports designed to measure an organization progress towards set organizational goals.
LPI (Lean Process Indicator) reports – reports designed to reflect business’ progress toward Lean Management organizational goals.

    Dashboards – reports offering an eye-bird view of several key performance indicators.

    Another characterization of reports can be based on the functional department for which the report is created, thus we can speak of financial reports, operational reports, sourcing reports, (global) supply chain reports, marketing reports, maintenance reports, etc.

Note:
    The term of financial report might refer in special to financial statements.