Supporting reporting in project management

Purpose: The article presents the results of qualitative research related to answering the question: “How can reporting be supported when there is no access to professional BI tools?”. Design/methodology/approach: The answer to this question was set in the context of the BI layers proposed by Todd (todd 2017). This approach allowed one to determine, in each layer, operations performed on data that support reporting. The main research method was the participation observation made in the author’s involvement in the project management team. Findings: Supporting reporting in project management when there is no access to professional BI tools needs strong technical competences and great creativity by the project management team in using applications such as spreadsheets or database tools. The most helpful functionalities provided by spreadsheets are text and search functions and the data conversion wizard. The most useful functionality provided by database tools was intelligent calculations made by queries and automatic report design provided by MS Access. Originality/value: The paper presents an examination of the set of operations and IT tools needed in a business analysis made in project management in a situation where there is no access to professional BI tools.