Lists, Reports and Dynamic analyzers

Always have been said an ERP implementation project has 4 main hot issues: FIREs (Forms, Interfaces, Reports and Extensions). And I will like to go a bit further on reports issue.

As the technology has improved and new platforms have been developed new and much more sofisticated reports can be done. The users know it, and they want to have more detailed and feature full reports.

Nowadays, and from a consultant point of view, reports should be classified properly:
1- List: A list of activity or master data. Including some columns. An being able to filter by any column on the list. Not difficult to achieve.
For example: A list of all the invoices ordered by invoice date and including business partner, invoice date, base amount, tax amount and total amount.
2- Report: Detailed information, properly structured, ready to make a decision. Information filtered by dates, customers, products, organizations, etc. and also totalized per period and business partner. Not as easy as a list.
For example: A report which shows all the cash forecast depending on may pending payments and receivables.
3- Dynamic analyzers: It is not enough having the data well structured on the report. The users wants to be able to play with the data the report toke out of the system. They want to build an scenarios with data provided through all the activity, and be able to change some parameters before they make the decisión.
For example: A Dynamic analyzer where the systems puts an actual forecast, in which the user can change some parameters (credits the user may extend, or payments the user would pay later, etc.) and automatically the new forecast is build.

Thus, it is important to take into account what the user is expecting when asks for a report.

P.D: For the first two report types, Jasper is a good solution. For the third, I am investigating POI. I let you know something about, soon!