- What sort of reports are supplied as standard?

MRI has over 250 standard reports throughout the system, so with our all-encompassing composite selection, this provides the user with thousands of standard reports. MRI delivers solutions to all aspects of the property industry, thus as standard we deliver detailed investor, developer and property management reports. MRI offers unrivalled investment analysis and management reporting.

- What do you do to make it easy for customers to generate one off reports?

MRI’s Plato module has been designed with the user in mind. This is a “drag and drop” reporting tool, which allows any field within MRI to be used within a report. The flexibility of the MRI system means that all core fields and user-defined fields are available for reporting purposes. Plato was introduced over a year ago and has been an instant success. The usability of Plato is its biggest benefit: users only need 3 hours training to be a skilled user.

- What report writing tools does your system support or integrate with?

In addition to Plato, MRI also offer a module called Report Design. This module allows the user to change any standard report or literally create a report from scratch. The power of Report Design enables the user to implant graphs and detailed calculation cells, in order to design the most complex of reports.

Since MRI is able to offer these 2 reporting modules, both of which which are built in-house, we do not find that we have to integrate with other reporting tools.

Both Plato and Report Design are able to offer the user more functionality than “off the shelf” reporting tools, and the client is safe in the knowledge that changes to the program will not effect the operation of their system. By using a third party reporting solution it is difficult to control development of the product and easily integrate it into the product. The use of MRI’s own reporting tools eliminates such issues.

- How do your users integrate data with information from other reporting systems?

Since MRI has an open data structure on Microsoft SQL Server, we are able to integrate with any reporting product that is compatible with SQL Server (via ODBC, OLEDB, etc) whereby data for reports can be retrieved.

Extracting data from other property systems into MRI depends on the nature of the data and how it is stored. If the third party system exports its data as text files, spreadsheets or, preferably in PISCES format, the third party data can be imported into MRI via a number of methods, and then reported upon from there.

- What do you do to enable customers to change the style and format of reports?

There are numerous ways this can be done within MRI. Any financial report can be given its own “financial format”, which enables different users to view the same figures but in the format of their choice. Our composite selection criteria enables each report to be shown from every conceivable angle. MRI’s ViewPoint module allows the portfolio to be “sliced and diced” to provide detailed analysis of your portfolio from any desired perspective. In addition to this, our report writer tools enable the user to defined the look and feel of each report in the style of their choosing.

- What differentiates your system or service from the competition?

MRI feel that with our comprehensive standard report writing tools and extensive standard reports, we are already are unrivalled in this field. We know that reporting is key to the success of our clients and this is why we lead the industry with our report writing tools. The flexibility and usability of these tools allows the user to develop reports without compromise. With this in mind, they are not dictated to by the software house and are allowed to control their own destiny. MRI has a dedicated team whose role it is to purely to develop reports, and this team is always available to assist our client base in their own development. For each new client that selects MRI, without any client personalisation, we generally have a 95% reporting fit to their business, in any sector of the property industry.

- How do you see reporting capabilities develop in the future?

Organisations increasingly require reporting tools with a high degree of flexibility, to allow them to constantly develop and enhance their property reports, in order to evolve with their business. A reporting solution with a high degree of usability enables the user to constantly develop reports, and thus control their own destiny, without being dictated to by the software house.

The globalisation of the property industry also means that international organisations, looking to implement a solution globally, will have the requirement for reports to be generated in local languages and regional characters sets (e.g. Russian, Greek, etc).

- What are the challenges that businesses face in making effective use of report writing tools.

When looking at reporting capabilities, organisations must ensure that their chosen system is flexible enough to offer the full range of reporting capabilities that are required to meet their business need, whether this be detailed investment analysis or property management reports. A comprehensive report writer will offer the ability to create detailed reports on any aspect of the property data, and as such the reporting will become key to their business processes.

Training must also be considered – does the organisation need to invest in extensive user-training before the reporting tool can be used effectively? Is there an offering which enables relatively novice users to quickly and easily create reports which can assist in their individual job roles?

If an organisation is looking to implement a system globally, do they have the capability to produce reports in local languages?