Analysis and reporting of performance of service providers

A computer-based method for automatically generating a report of information comparing performance of a first provider of services with performance of at least one other provider of the services, the method comprising:

• storing raw data representing information about the services provided by the first provider and the other provider in a database,
• extracting from the database a set of comparison data containing similar types of raw data for the first provider and the other provider,
• storing rules for selecting which of the comparison data to use in comparing the performances of the service providers, and
• automatically applying the rules to the comparison data to select the information to be presented in the generated report.

A computer-based method of generating a report of an analysis of stored data comprising

• allowing a user to select which of a group of sections to include in the report, each section corresponding to a particular portion of the data,
• automatically retrieving the portions of the stored data corresponding to the selected sections, and thereafter
• automatically performing the analysis on the retrieved data,
• automatically generating results of the analysis for each selected section,
• automatically generating printable narrative text and non-text graphics representations of the results for each selected section, and
• automatically combining the printable narrative text and non-text graphics representations of the selected sections to form an integrated report ready for printing.