Wiise: Cloud ERP Built on Business Central for ANZ with new capability

You asked for better reporting features in Wiise – you got it

Wiise customers have always mentioned the hindering capabilities of Wiise Reporting Functionality in Business Central. Wiise, over the last couple of months, has been working on the reporting feature to address and improve on the issues with the underlying platform.  

One of the most regularly complained about feature in Wiise by the customers and partners is that the reporting in Business Central is not user-friendly and its frustrating for them to navigate. 

• There’s no central page that lists all available reports in the system 

• There’s no way to ‘favourite’ or save reports you regularly run for quick access 

• There’s no way to retain, share, or save a set of filters specific to your company’s needs that you can use the next time you run a report 

• Each time you want to run a report, you’d need to navigate from the main dashboard or role centre, find the report you'd like to run, manually enter the filters and then run the report. You’re then automatically redirected back to the beginning - the role centre 

• If you wanted to make a simple change to one filter, for example running a report for a different month, or even run another report, you’d need to navigate your way from the role centre and find that report again 

All this creates a barrier when all you want to do is quickly run a report, retrieve the information you need, and focus on running your business.  

You asked us to focus on navigation and content

Wiise went ahead and collated all the feedback from their customers and partners. They noticed that the issues could easily be categorised in two buckets. 

The first bucket was navigation. This included the difficulty of finding a report you wanted to run. And the ability to run these reports quickly and efficiently. 

The second bucket was about content. The report output was either insufficient or gave you irrelevant information. 

​Developing a proof of concept

To start with, Wiise wanted to address issues with navigation. They dug into the system further and realised that there were over 300 reports in Microsoft Business Central. Moreover, these reports were scattered around the system in different modules. 

To help the consolidation process, they gathered all the reports and starting exploring a way to consolidate them effectively on a single page. That then led to the idea of creating a way to mark your 'favourite' reports you regularly run, so you wouldn’t have to find those reports amongst over 300 others.  

The mockup also included a way to run a report while keeping the list of reports in the background. So if you wanted to change the filters or run another report, you could easily select it, as opposed to going back to the role centre.  

Once Wiise mocked up the proof of concept to address the first bucket of issues with reports, they shared it with the technical consultants at Wiise to find out what they can feasibly develop. With some further adjustments, they were ready to share the ideas with customers and partners.  

So they scheduled video calls with a small group of customers and partners to showcase how Wiise was addressing the reporting issues based on their comments and feedback. They then took the feedback from the sessions on-board and developed what would become phase 1 of the Wiise reporting features.

What’s included in the phase 1 release

Phase 1 consists of a new page, which displays all condensed reports in Wiise, sorted by the module they sit in. It has been released in the March 2020 monthly update of Wiise and will set the framework for future phases of reporting feature enhancements. 

Phase 1 also includes a way to ‘favourite’ reports and a way to reorder and categorise your 'favourite' reports section. You can also run a report and then return to the list. This means you can run another report without having to start back at the role centre.  

What’s in store for the future? 

Wiise aims to further address the navigation and content issues in Wiise for future enhancements. These will build on top of the March developments. Here's what the updates include:  

• The ability to duplicate and rename a 'favourite' report 

• The ability to retain/save reporting filters for quick use 

• The ability to view custom reports on a single page. These are reports you've built specifically for your company, like Account Schedules and/ Third Party Reports through extensions 

• We’re also developing a Wiise Reporting pack for commonly run reports. This will aim to improve the output and content of the reports to provide insightful and relevant information 

​The right information at your fingertips 

Precise and efficient reporting is a common denominator for successful companies. Therefore the continued enhancement and development of reporting features in Wiise is vital.  

Wiise will continue to seek feedback from their customers and partners to make sure future Wiise product developments address your biggest pain points.  

If you have any feedback or questions, please feel free to email us on enquiries@cloudfactory.co or simply contact us by clicking below.