Crystal Reports is, in my opinion, the best reporting software in the market today. It’s been a real success story for us hear at Bechtle…2008 has seen a 600% increase in sales! I’d like to think this was all down to me and the sales guys and while we’ve certainly been instrumental, there has definitely been increased interest from customers in reporting software.
We all have SO much data these days and many of us (me included) have the feeling that if we could just get a handle on it, find it, organise it, process it and filter it-it would make a dramatic impact on how we do business. Say you’re a sales company and your systems contain information on who bought what, when they bought it, what else they bought, where they’re based and what industry they’re in for all 25,000 customers. If you could compile all that data, filter it, de-dupe it and match it you could make some really great targeted campaigns…but doing all that, quickly and easily can be nigh on impossible.
Yes, most systems these days have some kind of reporting tools but more often than not these feel tacked on in post production, almost an afterthought and they never quite let you run the reports you need. This is where Crystal Reports comes in..it can connect to almost any data source:
Native, ODBC, OLE DB, and JDBC connectivity to relational, OLAP, web services, XML, legacy, and enterprise data sources, and new salesforce.com driver.
The Parameter Panel means parameter values can be set without refreshing data. Parameters used are displayed on the panel so that report consumers can easily see them, make changes, and have the new values applied directly to the saved data.
On-Report sorting, filtering & re-formatting allow users to change and explore the information without having to re-query the database.
Built in Barcode Supportmeans you can easily convert fields to Code39 barcodes without coding or extra steps.
Also, from a licensing point of view there is just one version of Crystal Reports 2008 making it easier to maange your licensing.
Free fully functional 30 day trials can be download from:
http://www.businessobjects.com/product/freetrials.asp
and of course, visit www.bechtle.co.uk or contact software@bechtle.co.uk for more info 
