Infor CloudSuite offers a wide range of reporting tools—but every organization has its own reporting goals, timelines, and data challenges, and success depends on understanding where native tools fall short and how to fill those gaps with the right strategies.
Check out the RPI the panel discussion to hear our seasoned consultants discuss reporting tools and tactics for Infor users. Moderated by Lisa Callahan, and featuring Beau Hunt, Gulzar Kasam, and Matt Slazak, this session explores how organizations can navigate reporting limitations and build tailored, functional solutions across Finance, HCM, WFM, and more.
You’ll hear the panel’s take on:
- Choosing the right reporting tools, from Infor-native to third-party options
- Common reporting challenges and how to solve them
- How reporting needs shift across functional areas
- Security protocols for data and custom reports
- Why training and client enablement are critical for reporting success
Whether you’re facing reporting gaps or simply looking to get more visibility into core areas of your business, this panel will offer practical insight and examples from the field to help guide your approach.
Transcript
Lisa Callahan
Thank you for joining us. We’re going to be talking about reporting today — our approach to reporting and all the different tools we have available that we can bring into the client’s toolbox to get them the data they need. I’ll say hello: my name is Lisa Callahan. I’ve been here for about two and a half years, and I’m the analytics person, so I do a lot with analytics, charts, graphs, and getting data out of the system. That’s me.
Matt Slazak
Hi, my name is Matthew Slazak. I’m a principal HCM consultant here at RPI. I’ve been here for about eight or nine years now — I don’t even know anymore. Before that I was independent for a while, and I spent 16 years at a local cancer research hospital in Buffalo, New York, working in HRIS and doing a lot of reporting there.
Gulzar Kasam
My name is Gulzar Kasam. I’m a principal consultant with WFM. I’ve been with this application — Infor WFM — for the last seven years. During this time, I’ve specialized in using WFM-provided reporting tools, including Birst Reporting and WFM Query Designer. I look forward to this webinar today to learn more about the other products.
Beau Hunt
My name is Beau Hunt. I’ve been in the Infor Lawson space for about 20 years now — about nine of those with RPI, so about the same as you, Matt. My focus since I’ve been with RPI has really been around reporting and analytics across the different Lawson suites.
Lisa Callahan
Thank you all for the intros. The first thing I wanted to dive into is the reporting tools that are available. One of the questions I run into is: is there one solution that fits all? My answer, of course, is no. So what are the different options clients have? Can we use their tools if they have them? Do we recommend certain tools for operational reporting versus analytical reporting? So if you all can speak to your areas and the reporting tools you can offer clients.
Beau Hunt
At a high level, it’s a lot harder these days with reporting. Before, we had direct database access and you could really bring whatever tool you wanted. Our Lawson clients predominantly did a lot of their reporting in Crystal Reports and LBI. These days we don’t really have one solution for reporting — we need to think about what the reporting need is. Is it operational? Is it analytical? Is data latency going to be a problem? That’s when we start to look at whether list views are going to be your best bet, or — if it’s a financial report — we might be looking at Infor FSM and the custom App Studio report or GL Report Designer, which is getting a little easier to use now. Or of course we have Birst, and the different WFM tools have their own reporting solutions as well. So in some ways it’s all over the place, but you can follow a logical path to find the right tool.
Lisa Callahan
As a follow-up to that: as RPI, when we implement different customers, is there a way we recommend certain tools, or is it more like going to the client site to see what they have and what works for them? It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. So what is our approach as far as when reporting comes in — is it at the beginning, is it at the end? What should a client worry about, Matt?
Matt Slazak
There’s been a tendency for a very long time where reporting is kind of an afterthought. What we try to focus on as a company and as a team is shifting that paradigm and bringing it more up front. One of our foundational principles is that we like to start with the end in mind. If we know this data is going to be consumed for regulatory reporting, for example, we know we have to focus on that, make sure we’re serving up that information, and make sure it’s able to be consumed by whatever tool it happens to be.
To your point, there are a lot more options available. In the past, especially on the HCM side, we’d go into a client and ask, “What do you do for reporting? What do you need for reporting?” And a lot of times it was, “Well, we just pull a list when we need it.” But now there’s a lot more strategic value in pulling reports and getting ahead of the data. We can go in and look at regulatory reporting, operational reporting, that list view capability — it’s been expanded a lot, so we can use a lot more real-time data if we need to. And with list views, there are even columnar reports; there are a lot more options available. So we start with the needs you have right now, and we also bring to the table what we’ve seen other people do — some nice nuggets of information or reports we’ve built for others. We like to say, “Have you thought about this? Could this add some strategic value? If you just had this number on a dashboard somewhere, would that be helpful?”
Lisa Callahan
I also want to talk about something you touched on before — operational versus analytical reporting. That’s something that took me a little while to figure out the difference. So I want to explain when to use operational reporting as opposed to analytical reporting, and what the tools are for each. Gulzar, do you want to go ahead?
Gulzar Kasam
In the WFM space, the operational report database is instantaneously replicated, so that data is accessible almost in real time. If you execute it today, you’ll get today’s current data. Analytics, by contrast, is sometimes a day old, because that’s mainly for executives or bigger-picture views. Operational is as detailed and as current as possible — today’s data. So frontline workers, frontline supervisors, or managers will mainly use operational reports, versus analytics being more of a broader picture. In the WFM space, we have tools available for operational reporting — mainly we’re using Cognos for that — and for analytics we’re using Birst.
Lisa Callahan
And so — I know we at RPI currently have a couple of products. We have WFM, course management, and GHR, or I guess now it’s H—
Matt Slazak
Talent — whatever you want to call it. The latest is Infor Human Capital, or Infor Human Resources. I think it changed literally about a month ago.
Lisa Callahan
Okay. Yes, there’s that one. Then of course we have FSM — and I think it’s still FSM. So every one of those products comes with an analytics package, which, as you mentioned, is the charts and graphs and higher-level views. And they all have operational reporting. I know WFM is in a little bit of a different space than that. So I wanted to talk about the fact that all of us are in different spaces, but the reporting structure is kind of a higher level, I guess. No matter what space our clients or customers are in, the reporting structure is essentially the same. So I want to touch on that a bit.
Let’s talk about the challenges in reporting. To me, one of the bigger challenges — which we’ve already discussed — is that if the client has Crystal Reports, Tableau, or SQL, that’s what they want to use. Sometimes Infor CloudSuite is not conducive to that. We have tools available — we can write APIs and those sorts of things — and if they want to use their software, we can make it work. We’ve had some clients where we’ve used Crystal and done their reporting that way. So my question is: if a client really wants to use a specific tool they have, how would we handle that?
Beau Hunt
We’ve got some options now with getting data out of the data lake. We can use JDBC drivers and similar tools to allow things like Crystal Reports to access data that’s out there. One thing you always have to consider is data latency — are we populating that with replication sets on a schedule? But we do have data streaming coming, which will make it more near real time. So the answer is, we want to understand what the business need is from all sides. Again, is it operational, is it analytical? Then we can figure out the best solution. But yes, we can use the tools they already have expertise in.
Matt Slazak
One thing to bring up with that as well: just because they’ve got it and this is what they’ve been using forever, we do try to challenge people to ask, “Do you really need this? Or do you need it the same way?” Especially when we’re looking at things like a migration from V10 to talent management — we’re changing the foundation of the system, and not all the fields are going to be the same. Or even doing an upgrade from a single-tenant to a multi-tenant environment, there’s a transformation of some data that can occur if you want it to, and some that will just happen. So you have to be ready for that.
Questioning the answer becomes a really good exercise for all of us — making sure they need the data they’re seeing, and that the data really means what they think it means. The number of times any of us go into a client and ask, “What do you need?” or “What does this report mean to you?” — you’re going to get five different answers from five different people. So it’s good to question that as we go through the process.
Beau Hunt
Technology changes, but one of the things that all the platforms we work with have in common is that the analytics module is all powered by Birst. So investing in learning Birst is a good thing for clients to do at this point, because there are a lot of powerful things you can do. The other nice thing with everything being in Birst is that we can combine data sets. I know that’s one thing we’ve done recently — Lisa, you worked on getting some data from WFM over into the HRT model.
Gulzar Kasam
So the data becomes accessible from different sources into one place.
Lisa Callahan
Right. And that’s one thing I was going to mention — once you’re in cloud reporting, there are certain things you have access to and certain things you don’t. So finding creative ways to port data from one place to another becomes something we need to work on.
I also wanted to address one common challenge in reporting — this notion of “out of the box.” To me, those words don’t go together. There’s no out-of-the-box reporting. I think that’s a common misconception among clients and people in general. When Infor designs their reports and delivered content, they do it at a really high level. So it’s going to kind of fit everybody, but it’s not going to actually fit anybody. So I wanted to talk about out-of-the-box reporting — and, like I said, there’s analytics versus operational.
How difficult is it — to your point — during an implementation, if we’re in the room at the beginning and they have a list of a hundred reports? Usually they’ll just say, “Here, I want these reports,” and we need to go through and ask, “Do you need it? Who uses it?” That takes the “out of the box” out of it. The smaller the list we have, the more we can customize it to fit them. So I want to start with you, Gulzar — with Cognos, how do you handle your out-of-the-box requests? What’s the effort involved?
Gulzar Kasam
Infor WFM comes with 40-plus core reports. We go over all the reports available in core, and then we ask clients, “Is this sufficient for you?” Maybe their compliance requirements or their employees’ requirements are different — and usually that’s the case. So they’ll say, “Can we add this column to the core report?” and then we edit only that portion. There’s metadata available, so you don’t really need to be too technical to create or edit those reports. You can just add the prompts and you’re ready to go.
Then there are some complex reporting needs that require complex SQL to fetch the data. The beauty of the metadata that’s available is that the security is built in, so that takes care of a lot of things for you. So yes, there’s no one-solution-fits-all, but there are core reports available where, with little tweaks here and there, you can make it your own version that fits your needs and requirements.
Matt Slazak
The number of times you’ll go client to client and something as simple as — I’m a core HR person, I’ve been working in HR for way too long now — but something as simple as, “Show me your turnover report.” Turnover seems like a basic concept. There are some things that are delivered, like a pre-built turnover cube in GHR that’s been there forever, and they’ve supplemented it in talent analytics now — it’s a lot better over there now, I think. But that fundamental question of what turnover is differs client by client.
Gulzar Kasam
That’s right. Same thing with us and a productivity report — it depends on what you define as productivity. You know the business well, and we know the reporting well. So let’s combine that knowledge and make something that’s your own custom report. It is a custom report, but not too much effort is sometimes required.
Beau Hunt
For the most part, it’s the 80-20 rule. You get about 80% of what you need, and then you have 20% of adding fields or making adjustments to logic because they calculate something a little differently.
Matt Slazak
Right. The only exception to that comes down to a regulatory report. On the HR side, we’ll end up with a lot of those — your EEO-1s, your EEO-4s. These are standard templates that are delivered and that we have to send back to the federal government or state reporting agencies for unemployment and things like that. So those are a little more predefined. But even with that, to your point, we’re still going in and tweaking a little bit, saying, “Okay, this field is the one you really have to key off of.” I’m still delivering it in that same format — an EEO-1 is an EEO-1 no matter how you slice it — but we have to make sure things are mapped to the right places.
Lisa Callahan
I want to touch on the customizations we can do for the client. One of the big concerns is: okay, so I’ve customized this report, I’ve added a field or changed something — what happens when Infor does their monthly updates? Am I going to lose everything I have? What are the ways that we as a company can safeguard our clients so they don’t lose the things they’ve created?
Beau Hunt
The reality is everybody looks at it as “we’re in the cloud.” Well, with BI and analytics, yes, we are in the cloud, but clients have their own instances. In Birst they have their own spaces, and in BI it’s their own separate database. So the reality is, when CUs come out, it doesn’t overwrite their custom content. At the same time, we also enable our clients on how to do proper backups and automate some of those processes as well.
Lisa Callahan
I’m assuming the same is true for a custom list view — if there’s an update, it’s a similar thing where if you have a customized item, it’s going to be safe, or it’s in a certain folder we tell them to use. Is it similar?
Matt Slazak
Yes. For a lot of the list view reporting we do right out of the application, they’re pretty well insulated — they’re not going to go anywhere. A CU will roll through and it’s not going to delete that data; you’re still going to have that list view. That’s not to say there might not be a change inside there — maybe they’ve changed the business class or added a couple of new fields. But if you’ve got a list view report out there, by definition that’s already a configured list.
So you’re not going to lose the data that’s in there. The data behind the scenes is still in the business classes — you’re just presenting it on this list view. Even if they add a new field, you’re not using that; you’re using a view of that business class already. So the exercise there becomes: if you know they’ve added something — if you see in a CU release note that something new is coming out — you might have to actively go out and get that field if you think it’s going to be valuable. But you’re not going to lose the thing.
Gulzar Kasam
Similar approach for WFM as well. We have a custom folder in the content, and if you put anything in the custom folder, it’s not going to go anywhere. I think that’s the best practice for any client — move your report into the custom folder, and that’s it. Then you’re set.
Lisa Callahan
Which is good, because the clients I’ve talked to — and I’m sure you all have as well — are afraid to do anything new because they’ve been burned before with other products. So I think that also speaks to the fact that reporting should be involved at the beginning, to safeguard all the things that happen. That way, at the end, they’re not running to call us, panicking for yesterday’s reports, where we have to say, “Well, if you’d done this in the beginning…” So I think our approach makes sense for how we’re doing things.
I also want to talk about securing data. There are different roles and different groups as far as data goes. There’s the source system — WFM, HCM, and FSM — and then you have the reporting tools. So I wanted to talk about data-level security as well as report-level security. Can we talk about how the data is secured, and is that something out of the box? Are there custom roles that need to be built, or does it all just flow through? How does that work?
Beau Hunt
All the analytical solutions — maybe we’ll start with Birst — have functional roles that define what report-level security you have. So when I go to a dashboard, I’m presented with different functional areas. If I’m in FSM, I have receivables, AP, purchasing — and depending on the roles I’ve been assigned, I’ll have access to those different areas. So that’s your report and catalog security, and that’s similar across the board, whether we’re talking about CSF analytics, HRT analytics, or workforce analytics.
The other thing we have — and this varies by solution, because security means different things in different modules — is built-in data-level security. That mimics the security build you have in WFM or in GHR. The only real data-level security you have out of the box on the FSM side is that if you’re doing dimension-level security in GL, you can roll that in on any of the finance dimensions. But it’s typically turned off out of the box on the FSM side, whereas of course GHR and WFM are much more sensitive.
Gulzar Kasam
Similar to what he said — one thing I’d like to add is that if you’re using the Infor-provided metadata in Cognos, then it’s all good; the instance security is built in. But when you’re writing SQL, you have to make sure whoever is the report writer for SQL reports adds the appropriate filters for who is allowed to see the data. So that’s something the report writer has to ensure when they write the report — that the query is optimized and secure, so the data isn’t viewable by people who aren’t authorized.
Matt Slazak
And even on the list view side within GHR and talent management, it’s going to follow the person’s existing security. So if they’ve got generalist-level security, they’ll only be able to see the generalist org units they’re allowed to see. But the key — and where people have tripped up a little — is that Landmark security is permissive and pervasive. So if you have permissions to see a field over in another area, and it’s on the report, you’re going to see that field because you inherited that access from another role. That’s the one thing people have to be conscious of.
On the flip side, you could have a field on a report — and we’ve received feedback from clients saying, “Well, I don’t see this field, but this person over here, like Beau, sees it fine.” Beau has more security, but you’ll still see that column — it’s just that you won’t see the data behind it. The column isn’t filtered out; the data is. So it does work together with the overall security model.
Lisa Callahan
Usually the people probably panic and think the report is broken, and you’re like, “No, no, calm down.” I can definitely appreciate that. Okay, so the last thing I want to talk about is training. Once we go through implementation and the whole project, and they have all the reports and they’re really happy — and then we go, “Okay, we’re done, goodbye” — is that where we end? Or do we have training packages? How do we say goodbye to the client? What are our ideas as far as empowering them?
Matt Slazak
Overall, our philosophy is always: if you don’t know how to run your own system, we haven’t done our job. We’re not going to just throw software at you and run out the door saying “good luck.” We want you to understand and own the software you’ve got. It’s your data — you want to be able to live with this on a daily basis. So we’re going to do everything we can to enable you to understand how to administer it and how to use it going forward. We’ve also done some boot-camp-style trainings for folks.
Beau Hunt
Typically, if you’re doing a project with RPI, one of the things I’ve always appreciated is that we don’t do trainings in stale environments. Whenever possible, we do training with a client’s live data in a test environment — data that they’re familiar with. Especially when you’re doing reporting, there’s nothing worse than trying to learn a reporting tool when you have no background on what the data is. So we always try to do it with their data and use real-world examples of things we built with them through the project, because that’s going to be important, and they’re going to be supporting it when we walk away.
Gulzar Kasam
Training is an important part of every implementation. If the tool isn’t known to them, they won’t use it — and if it’s not used, then we haven’t done our job correctly. Training them on the tools we use to implement their reports empowers them to go and build more if they want to, or edit them if they need to. So I think that’s a very important part of any implementation I’ve worked with so far. We do provide standalone trainings and boot camps, as mentioned, but I also think that while we’re creating the reports for them, the conversations we have to make sure the requirements are met — and that their learning happens — are an important part of our implementation.
Lisa Callahan
Right, I agree. That was all I had to talk about. Is there anything you all thought of during our discussion that you wanted to bring up or touch on some more?
Matt Slazak
I would say the one constant, especially in the multi-tenant world, is change. It’s always changing. New CUs are coming out all the time — not just the major releases in April and October, but even the monthly ones. You might see a little tweak in there, especially — going back to HCM regulatory reporting — starting in October, we’re going to start getting these big annual updates coming through, and we have to be ready for them. So stay up on release notes. There are always new things coming out. Landmark and GHR in general recently rolled out their own pre-built package — there’s a report catalog of list view reports that didn’t used to exist at all, and they’re adding to it all the time. So it’s always good to keep exploring and stay curious about the data and see what else is coming out. Look at the release notes. It’s not the old days where we’d just get an update and have no idea what happened — we can actually see what’s coming out now. So that’d be one thought.
Lisa Callahan
That’s right. And since you mentioned the release notes and keeping abreast of things, I want to mention that there’s a very active user community for all the products — for FSM, for ATM, for WFM, for Birst. On the Infor website you can just go in — and I actually use that tool a lot. I ask questions, I ask newbie questions, I ask high-level questions, and that’s where I get a lot of my answers. So one thing that’s great about Infor is that they have a large community of others. So when we do say goodbye, or see you later, to our clients, we can give them the tools — including digital training — and we can also tell them, “This is a community. You’ll see me on there. You can ask me a question, you can email me, you can email anybody.” I think that’s a fantastic thing Infor does, so I wanted to bring that up as well.
If there’s nothing else, I want to say thank you all for joining us. And if you do have any questions, you can email questions@rpic.com.
