Talk About Narrative Reporting

When proposing a reporting solution, we seldom account for the complexity of the narrative portion involved. Hyperion tools are sophisticated enough to produce numbers, but working with text data isn’t always easy. Clients are advised to manually insert the text portions of needed reports. Vast amounts of analysis yield numeric and graphic data in a company, but data lone can’t tell a story.

This article–4 Reasons to Refresh Your Narrative Reporting Practices–draws attention to four main reasons why narrative reporting has become such a challenge. It correctly points out the disconnect in the current process, which creates a need for subject matter experts to manage centralized commentary on content.

The inability to collaborate, track ownership, and monitor the progress of narrative content has led to error-prone reporting. The author also makes a case for why it is important for companies to get Narrative Reports right, outlining possible financial implications.

One answer to seamless Narrative Reporting is Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud (EPRCS). It is a purpose-built solution in the Cloud for management and narrative reporting. It helps teams combine data with the narrative in a single, secure, collaborative cloud environment. Users can access the system through any device, and start social conversations within the application to collaborate with their colleagues. Because it’s cloud-based, users can access the system from any device.

Narrative reporting doesn’t have to be a headache. There is a link in the article to a white paper by Oracle–‘Reinvent Narrative Reporting with Oracle Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud‘ that sheds further light on EPRCS as a solution for Narrative Reporting.