Why pixel-perfect reporting matters

Today's diverse business world requires all kinds of reports to provide a record, demonstrate progress, or analyze an incident. Every company has its own applications, branding, templates, data requirements, and other mission-critical needs, so it's important to have a reporting and embedded analytics platform that align with your operational needs.

Pixel-perfect reporting is a way to present actionable information exactly the way you designed it, down to the pixel. Taking a closer look, we'll examine some key capabilities and applications of pixel-perfect reporting, and why so few business intelligence (BI) tools offer this level of preciseness. Then we'll look at how Jaspersoft does pixel-perfect reporting better — and why it's mission-critical for organizations across so many industries.

Pixel-perfect reporting: capabilities and applications

Many companies claim to offer pixel-perfect reporting, but their environment only provides drag-and-drop formatting and generalized functionalities. True pixel-perfect reporting should go beyond inserting tables, logos, or headers but should be complete with the deep-dive capabilities needed to glean insights from each report. Such capabilities include:

• Control elements with the table
• Filter, sort, and group data
• Write and execute scriptlets (Java code sequences that execute with each report)
• Define macros to automate repetitive tasks
• Call subreports to yield more granular findings

The ultimate purpose of pixel-perfect reporting is to make an organization's reports a clear, dependable tool for information analysis and data-driven decision-making. That takes more than drag-and-drop templates and generic formatting features; it takes an embedded reporting tool that provides full control over every reporting component.

Applications of pixel-perfect reporting

Wherever companies have highly customized, complicated reports, they can benefit from the flexibility and customization of pixel-perfect reporting. Some of the most common examples are:

• Bank statements and tax documents in the financial sector
• Invoices across many industries, including e-commerce
• Production reports in the manufacturing and logistics industries
• Compliance reports where oversight of data operations is carefully monitored
• Laboratory findings within the healthcare sector
• Labels for products shipped around the world

From healthcare and manufacturing to e-commerce and cybersecurity, any industry that can benefit from highly configurable, print-ready reports that deliver actionable insights can harness the power of pixel-perfect reporting.

BI and pixel-perfect reporting

Business intelligence (BI) goes hand-in-hand with reporting and embedded analytics. It seeks to collect, process, store, and present business data from across an organization to optimize operations, provide a competitive advantage, and improve communications by leveraging data visualization technologies.

Unfortunately, BI platforms rarely deliver the customization and flexibility needed to design any report, document, or form a business might require. Not only do most BI tools possess limited functionalities, allowing only for basic drag-and-drop insertion into limited areas, but they also limit users to a relatively small subset of pagination schema and formats.

There are several reasons for these limitations. First, while there are a few major players that offer feature-rich BI platforms, there are even fewer whose primary focus is on delivering precise, pixel-perfect reports. Embedded reporting tools are a nuanced subset of a broader field of BI, and building them is highly effort-intensive. Because of that, several companies offer embedded reporting as an add-on, but few make it their specialty.

Another reason is simply investment. Because BI reporting is often viewed as an afterthought, the platforms that do offer embedded reporting typically invest the bulk of their budget in other areas of development, like augmented analytics or self-service business intelligence. They may give little thought to pixel-perfect reporting, which further limits their innovation potential in this critical area.

Between these factors, only a few companies have the expertise to offer the kind of functionalities that make pixel-perfect reporting possible. Without pixel-perfect reporting, a company will find it more challenging to customize its reporting to meet its requirements and deliver reports with a cohesive brand identity.

How to choose an embedded reporting solution

With so many unique reporting requirements, organizations must choose a tool that will help them create the reports they need. There are many factors to consider when selecting a solution that best fits your operations, including:

• Functionality: It takes a combination of advanced capabilities to create a comprehensive reporting platform. A quality reporting tool should enable self-service reporting and give developers control over every single component of the layout — down to the pixel.
• Compatibility: An embedded reporting tool should be able to send your pixel-perfect reports in any format to any client, across any system. Powerful APIs give developers a direct line to all of a reporting platform's functionality, making it easy to embed reporting and analytics into any application environment.
• Interoperability: A quality embedded reporting solution should allow developers to build reports from any kind of database, including XML, JSON, RestAPI, apps, and more. It is also important to integrate with any platform and deploy embedded reporting in any architecture so that teams can adapt to changing workflows and emerging needs.
• Scalability: With data multiplying at an exponential rate, embedded reporting tools must have the capacity to scale elastically to meet peak demand and grow alongside company needs.

How Jaspersoft does pixel-perfect reporting better

Jaspersoft specializes in embedded reporting tools and makes pixel-perfect reporting a priority. Unlike BI platforms that offer embedded reporting solutions as a secondary component of their broader systems, Jaspersoft has spent over two decades perfecting our platform so you can deliver the data visualizations and analytics your customers want, from high volumes of pixel-perfect reports to self-service ad hoc reports and more. Here are a few ways it shows:

• Innovation: Our customizable components and reporting microservices place us at the cutting edge, and our engineers work continuously to take our embedded reporting tool to the next level.
• Functionality: Ad hoc reporting tools allow you to drill down into specific data points for more granular insights or drill up to understand your findings at the macro level. Advanced hyperlink capabilities called "dashlets" also let you dynamically link hyperlink values as parameters to interact with and change the view of other dashlets, providing greater interactivity within your reports.
• Compatibility: Our platform is designed to let you connect to any data source and can be deployed anywhere, any way. Such flexibility lets your team find the answers they need without being inhibited by other tools.

From manufacturers to financiers, companies across all industries have benefited from Jaspersoft's pixel-perfect reporting expertise. You can read more about our customer's stories here and learn how Jaspersoft provides the right mix of customizability, ease of use, and reliability for this freight and logistics company.

Let pixel-perfect reporting elevate your business processes

Every organization has unique reporting needs. Jaspersoft provides the customization and pixel-perfect precision to meet those requirements with ease. The result is easier report generation and delivery for developers, a more seamless analytics experience for product managers, and sharper insights for pixel-perfect report end users.

Jaspersoft's embedded reporting solutions are designed to deliver the control and flexibility needed to pull off pixel-perfect reporting every time. Contact us today if you'd like to see how our services translate into better business for your company.