Ad Hoc Reporting

What is Ad Hoc Reporting?

Ad hoc is Latin for “when necessary or needed”. That means Ad Hoc reports are generated as needed to answer business questions. Ad Hoc reporting is a one-time-use report and is a model of business intelligence (BI) in which reports are made by nontechnical users.

Ad hoc reporting is different from structured reporting in many ways. Structured reports use a large volume of data and are produced using a formalized reporting template. Ad hoc reports rely on smaller amounts of data making it easier to report on a specific data point answering a specific business question.