Reporting Mechanism is one of the most important parts of business operations.  How do you manage the business?  How do you evaluate the performance of the business?  No matter what you do in the business, you will always end up with a piece of paper with some information on it.  This information, whether operational or financial, is the fundamental basis for your decisions.  This piece of paper is called a report.

Reporting mechanism is generally very inefficient.  Why?  First of all, no software in the world is made to fit any business.  Look at your business, for example.  Can you say that all reporting you ever needed came right out of the box with your software?  The answer is most likely - no.  Do you use spreadsheets?  If you do, where do you get the data entered in the spreadsheet?  Chances are this data is sitting somewhere in the other system, but it could not be extracted.  It is one of the most common reasons why spreadsheets are employed.  However, if reporting mechanism is optimized, you get the information directly from your system in the way you want to see it, by using various tools.  This will save you tens of thousands of dollars in labor costs.

If you are a larger company that employs multiple systems, comprise many profit and cost centers, have multiple companies rolling up to a consolidated entity, and have a ton of transactions - your best bet is to upgrade the reporting mechanism to Business Intelligence.  Those packages may be costly, but they will definitely pay for themselves over a few years.