How Community Data Solutions reduced reporting turnaround times from weeks to hours for non-profits across Australia

Challenge

Increasing report requests led to developer bottlenecks and delayed delivery

Community Data Solutions is a specialist technology company in the community services sector that develops purpose-built platforms for service delivery, outcome tracking, and reporting. It serves Australian nonprofit organizations that provide essential services, including domestic violence aid, family support, and financial counseling, using government funding.

Reporting is vital for these organizations to demonstrate service outcomes and showcase to boards and government bodies that funds are being used effectively. However, the company’s former reporting platform required constant developer intervention, which created a significant gap. 

While professional services teams using Community Data Solutions' tools understood clients' needs, they lacked the technical means to generate reports independently. Additionally, every report needed to be manually compiled and deployed, which contributed to communication delays, slow update cycles, and an overreliance on engineering. 

Many of the nonprofits that use Community Data Solutions' platforms face strict funding deadlines. This made the inability to provide rapid turnarounds into a major operational hurdle.

“The turnaround to update the report was becoming challenging because our customers often need the report from today to tomorrow in order to meet a deadline,” explained Aviv Efrat, Product Development Manager at Community Data Solutions

Community Data Solutions needed a scalable alternative to reduce this technical dependency and empower customer-facing teams with self-service capabilities.

Solution

Enhancing reporting speed and flexibility through Jaspersoft

Community Data Solutions needed a solution that could:

• Support multi-tenant environments

• Provide strong security controls

• Integrate with APIs

• Enable self-service reporting for customers

Because many nonprofit customers operate with limited budgets, the company also needed a reporting solution that could deliver strong functionality without dramatically increasing costs.

The team evaluated several reporting platforms, including Jaspersoft and Tableau. They ultimately chose Jaspersoft for its API integrations, self-service reporting, and affordable price, among many other factors. 

“We found that Jaspersoft offered the features we were looking for, and the pricing was right.”

Today, Community Data Solutions uses Jaspersoft to power reporting for more than 300 customers across Australia. The company deeply integrated Jaspersoft into its application environment via APIs, enabling nonprofit teams to access reports directly within their workflows. Larger customers can also log directly into the Jaspersoft environment to independently build reports, export data, and make changes. 

Reducing dependency on developers

Before using Jaspersoft, one of Community Data Solutions' most significant challenges was the heavy reliance on developers to build and update reports. This internal dependency slowed down delivery times and created communication gaps between technical teams and customers.

Community Data Solutions' professional services team worked directly with nonprofit customers and understood reporting requirements better than anyone else. However, while reporting is a critical part of the company's value proposition, the teams lacked the tools to create reports themselves. 

Jaspersoft resolved these issues by allowing the company to shift reporting responsibilities away from developers and into the hands of customer-facing teams. This was important because community services nonprofits depended on timely reports to manage operations, satisfy funding requirements, and make decisions quickly.

“The ability to shift the reporting load from developers to professional services. That was a huge success.”

With Jaspersoft, professional services teams could work directly with customers to generate reports in real time. Customers could often get answers during the same meeting rather than waiting days or weeks for developer resources.

“Sometimes you engage with the customer. They're telling you about a business problem and you say, ‘Have you got 15, 20 minutes?’ ... ‘Let’s open Jasper and let’s do it together.’”

The shift also elevated operational efficiency across the business. Developers could focus on core product development instead of handling reporting requests, and professional services teams became more responsive to customers' needs.

Community Data Solutions' development team is primarily focused on ensuring the Jaspersoft application is secured, regularly upgraded without impacting existing reports, and customer solutions reporting tools are updated each time the data model is modified.

Delivering faster reporting turnaround times

Before Jaspersoft, Community Data Solutions spent weeks completing individual reporting requests due to the manual development and deployment processes required. This frustrated customers who often needed reports quickly to meet deadlines, which is especially important in the fast-paced community services sector.

Jaspersoft helped dramatically reduce turnaround times by simplifying report creation and giving professional services teams direct access to reporting tools.

“It used to take two weeks to a month to deliver a report. The process is now reduced to days, if not hours.”

Faster turnaround times had a direct, positive impact on customer satisfaction. Instead of relying on long technical handoffs, customers could now work directly with reporting specialists who understood their operational challenges.

Community Data Solutions also introduced real-time data access through Jaspersoft. This gave nonprofit customers fresher information and faster visibility into service delivery and operational performance.

Expanding self-service reporting capabilities

Community Data Solutions also sought to give larger nonprofits more control over their own reporting. While some organizations preferred the provided reporting workflows, many nonprofits had analysts or technically skilled staff who wanted the flexibility to create reports independently. Jaspersoft’s ad hoc reporting tools allowed those customers to log in to the environment, modify reports, export data, and analyze information themselves.

“The ability for bigger customers to do self-reporting. I think that was fantastic.”

This flexibility helped nonprofits answer operational questions faster without relying on support teams for every request. Now, customers can analyze workloads, track outcomes, and generate reports for management teams and funding bodies whenever needed.

Customers also significantly benefited from the new export functionality. Teams can now easily export reports into formats such as PDF and Microsoft Word, making it easier for them to share information internally and externally. The company also built a large library of reusable reports that customers can access quickly, reducing the need for custom development work.