Leaving printed reports behind: new tools for sharing information and gaining insight

Reporting has been around since the advent of data and unfortunately, it hasn’t evolved much since. For decades, reporting capabilities have been limited to the myriad documents that are inevitably left on the printer, mixed in with a recipe for tonight’s dinner. For all its importance and frequent usage, reporting is seemingly forgotten about when updating existing technology, but no longer – it’s time for an upgrade. That’s not to say printing has lost its use, simply that it’s time to evolve how we generate and consume the data that is paramount to virtually all business functions.

As a vital tool for viewing and sharing information, it is essential that reporting grows with that information. Through Archer, our clients have not only enjoyed enhanced reporting but also completely new formats previously under-utilized. Our offering of a robust library of internal, on-screen reporting alongside external, client facing reporting tools provide our clients a wide variety of management, operational, and client-driven reports.

Archer is breaking the mold in how data is consumed with our intuitive suite of dashboards and on screen reporting tools. These dashboards illustrate actionable business intelligence including up-to-the moment trade settlement status and illustrative views of performance, portfolio drift, assets under management, and account growth – all at the click of a mouse. The dashboards are rendered straight through Archer, so there’s no question about the accuracy and integrity of your data. Highly customizable and modular, our dashboards create a unique and user friendly experience. Want to see trade volume by security? No problem. Want it for the whole year? You’ve got it. How about by client type, portfolio manager, investment style, or model? It’s all there and much, much more.

We have previously made the point that reporting is really just another way of sharing data. Along that line, we’re proud to announce another addition to Archer’s growing lineup of reporting tools – the Data Mart. Not to be confused with a data warehouse, a Data Mart is an access layer of the data warehouse – often seen as small slices of the big picture. The Data Mart provides focused segments of firm-specific data and meta data, granting users the capability to parse their data on their own terms. An easy way to think about it is if we imagine a grocery store, which can sometimes be daunting when you’re only looking for a few items in particular. In this case, Managers can connect to the data through direct SQL queries, or through APIs. The information provided by the Data Mart can be used for developing in-house reports, data visualizations using third party business intelligence tools, feeding CRM applications, portfolio analytics tools and other data analysis related tasks.

Just because reporting has been around for a long time doesn’t mean it isn’t still evolving. With new ways of accessing information, illustrating it through interactive graphs, and effortlessly delivering reports as virtual documents, Archer has helped managers evolve along with needs and demands. With the time and effort saved by using the right reporting tools, you may finally be able to use the recipe that’s waiting to be picked up from the printer.