Progent's Application Experts Team

Report Writers for Management Analytics
Management reports allow people in any role within a company to make better business decisions by offering meaningful and up-to-date views of business information. Reporting software allows you to automate procedures unique to your business environment to give you control of financial reporting, consolidations, budgeting, and analysis. Microsoft, SAP, and other vendors offer a broad selection of general-purpose and product-specific software tools for generating reports. For example, options for creating management reports for Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains) accounting software include Crystal Reports, FRx, Report Writer, SQL Server Reporting Services, Management Reporter for Microsoft Dynamics ERP, or Analysis Cubes for Excel, just to name a few.

Progent's management reporting experts are familiar with the most widely used reporting software and can help you maintain, enhance, and troubleshoot your current reporting environment, show you how to create and distribute new reports that automatically incorporate information from multiple sources, assist you to migrate reports from a legacy reporting platform to a current one, and provide custom online training tailored to your specific requirements.

Progent can provide expert consulting, custom software development, and training for popular reporting solutions including:

• Crystal Reports
• Microsoft FRx
• Management Reporter for Microsoft Dynamics ERP
• Microsoft Office Access
• SQL Server Reporting Services Consulting

Crystal Reports Consulting
Crystal Reports, published by SAP, has a large customer base due in part to the fact that it was bundled by Microsoft with older versions of Visual Studio. Crystal Reports is a standalone report writing tool able to convert data into interactive web pages and professional-looking reports in Microsoft Office applications. Crystal Reports allows developers to design reports that can utilize data from almost any source including relational databases, OLAP cubes, spreadsheets, log files, or applications. Support for .NET Winform and .NET Webform viewers enables on-the-fly sorting, filtering, and reformatting, which allows reports generated with Crystal Reports to function as powerful, interactive end-user applications. Crystal Reports can export data to a wide range of formats that include Microsoft Excel, CSV, Microsoft Word, PDF, XML with optional XSLT transform, html, ODBC, Lotus cc:Mail, Lotus Domino, and Lotus Notes. Crystal Reports can also be used with many environments for application integration such as Visual Studio, Microsoft .NET and Java API , Microsoft SharePoint Integration, IBM WebSphere and Oracle WebLogic Portals, and SAP BusinessObjects Live Office Software.

Combined with SAP's Crystal Dashboard Design (formerly Xcelsius Engage) software, Crystal Reports allows you to create the platform's distinctive "dashboards" that can include sliders and gauges for "what-if" scenarios and users to drill-down from summary information to detailed data points. Progent's Crystal Reports experts can help you plan and implement a secure and dependable network infrastructure for Crystal Reports that can include SQL Server, Crystal Reports Server, and Visual Studio; design automated report generation and distribution processes that support all desired data sources and output formats; establish and implement security policies that allow reports to be shared safely and conveniently; provide custom programming where required; troubleshoot all aspects of report generation and distribution; upgrade older reports to take advantage of new versions of Crystal Reports, new data sources, and new output formats; and provide comprehensive training to management, IT support personnel, and users.

Microsoft FRx Support Services
Microsoft FRx is a mature financial performance reporting application that was introduced two decades ago as a DOS application and later integrated with Great Plains accounting software and other popular general ledger platforms. Microsoft currently licenses FRx with Microsoft Dynamics ERP products which include Dynamics AX, Dynamics GP, Dynamics NAV, and Dynamics SL. Microsoft is currently in the process of replacing FRx with Microsoft Management Reporter, but FRx meanwhile enjoys a substantial base of users familiar with its spreadsheet-like interface made up of the basic building blocks of row format, column layouts, and reporting trees. FRx lets you automate the generation and secure distribution of custom reports such as Balance Sheets, Income Statements, Statement of Cash Flows, budget versus actual reports, or any other financial report that includes information from the general ledger module of a supported Microsoft Dynamics application. FRx reports can include features such as multiple source roll-up for summary data plus a DrillDown Viewer for transaction details. Reports can be automatically printed, e-mailed, published to your web in XBRL formats, or exported to other formats including PivotTable views in Excel or OLAP cubes.

Popular add-on modules for FRx include FRx Report Designer for allowing desktop users to create and view financial reports; FRx Report Launcher for viewing pre-built reports, FRx DrillDown Viewer for summary-to-detail viewing, and FRx Report Server for automating the production and distribution of reports. Progent's FRx experts can help you manage, expand, customize, and troubleshoot your FRx-based reporting solution or enhance your network infrastructure to improve the security and accessibility of FRx for local, remote, and mobile users. Progent can also help you assess the business benefits of alternative management reporting platforms and help you migrate non-disruptively to a new platform. Progent can also provide management and end-user training for FRx and custom software development for Microsoft Dynamics ERP products.

Management Reporter for Microsoft Dynamics ERP
Microsoft Management Reporter replaces FRx as the next generation reporting software for Microsoft Dynamics ERP products. Like FRx, Management Reporter is directly integrated with the general ledger of Microsoft Dynamics GP, AX, SL, and NAV, facilitating the creation, publication, and administration of financial statements such as P&L statements, balance sheets, and cash flow reports. Management Reporter uses many of the same concepts, if not the exact names, as FRx including specification sets, report definitions, rows, columns, trees, and drill down views. Key enhancements with Management Reporter include 64 bit operation for greater performance and capacity, replacement of Microsoft Access with SQL Server for improved stability, Undo/Redo capability, centralized storage for the Report Library for viewing and grouping reports, and support for dimension-based data for simplified report design and easier maintenance. Microsoft offers conversion tools for migrating to Management Reporter from FRx 6.7.

Progent's Microsoft Dynamics experts can help you evaluate the advantages of Microsoft Management Reporter for your business and can assist you in planning, executing, and validating a migration to Management Reporter from an FRx reporting environment. Progent can help you create or troubleshoot reports, plan a report distribution and administration strategy, enhance the security and compliance of your Management Reporter solution, and provide online training for individuals or groups. Progent can also help you set up 64-bit servers and workstations to take full advantage of the power of Management Reporter.

Microsoft Office Access Consulting
Microsoft Office Access is the dominant mass-market relational database management system (RDBMS) and can be used to create custom reports quickly by acting as a front end to information stored in other databases such as SQL Server or Oracle or applications like Excel or Outlook. Progent's developers can use Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to help you create new Access reports, enhance old ones, or connect your reports to new data sources. Progent can also troubleshoot existing management reports generated by Access, design more efficient ways to secure and distribute Access-based reports, or migrate your existing reporting environment to more powerful management reporting platforms. Progent can also provide online line training for using Access for rapid development of custom reports.

SQL Server Reporting Services
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), introduced by Microsoft in 2004 and now in its fifth generation, has become Microsoft's flagship product for management reporting and analytics. SSRS is included with SQL Server and allows you to design reports via current versions of Microsoft Visual Studio using either the standard Report Builder or the advanced Business Intelligence Development Studio.

Progent can also provide SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services consulting and SQL Server 2012 SSRS expertise to simplify report authoring, administration, and delivery. Progent can show you how SSRS allows you to design business reports that draw from a broad variety of data sources such as relational or XML-based. Progent can help you access SQL Server Reports from a web connection, from Office Word and Excel 2007 and 2010, or on an Office SharePoint site. Progent can also help you take advantage of sophisticated data mining technologies of SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services and Data Mining Add-ins for Office 2007 and Office 2010 to make business information available at the desktop.

Progent can help you set up the server, communications and security infrastructure necessary to support a state-of-the-art reporting solution. Progent can also provide clients with an expert who can help you design and implement a reporting system that matches your business goals. Reporting specialists can be especially helpful in integrating information from multiple data sources including Access, Excel, XML, OLAP, SQL and a broad range of accounting and enterprise management software.

Contact Progent for Expertise with Microsoft's Management Reporting Solutions
If you are looking for a Crystal Reports, FRx, Microsoft Management Reporter, Office Access, or SQL Server Reporting Services consulting specialist, call Progent at 800-993-9400 or send email to development-help@progent.com.