Reporting and OLAP software, particularly versions that include more analytical capabilities, can be a useful in learning what happened historically. Even relatively unsophisticated analytical techniques that enable the user to the distribution in his or her data can yield useful insights. The analytical value of reports can also be significantly enhanced by automating the detection of exceptions and presenting summaries of those items. Analytical reporting includes complex tables, descriptive statistics and OLAP cubes. Complex tables display a lot of information in a single view which is ideal for paper reports.
Descriptive statistics provide a wide variety of summary statistics about the data in the report.
Examples of descriptive statistics include mean, median, mode, standard deviation, variance, percentiles, etc. Like complex tables, descriptive statistics are often included in paper reports. A new report must be created for each variation of that view. OLAP enables you to quickly examine data from several different views. Using OLAP, you can quickly and easily answer questions about what has happened in your business, and maybe even find some new information.