The report you need is always one ticket away
Every growing company eventually hits the same wall: the data is all there, but getting an answer out of it takes days. A plant head wants to know which SKUs had the most returns last quarter. A sales lead wants open orders by region. A CFO wants this month's dispatches against last month's.
The ERP has a standard report that is almost right. The BI dashboard was built for a different question. So the request goes to the one person who knows the database, joins a queue, and comes back as a spreadsheet three days later, by which time the next question has already arrived.
The problem is not missing data. It is that the only way to ask the data a question is to write queries in SQL, or to know someone who does.
What Taproot is
Taproot is an AI reporting agent from Heliotrope that lets anyone in your company ask questions of your business database in plain English and get back the answer as a table or a chart, in seconds.
You type top 10 customers by order value this quarter
or monthly dispatches by plant for 2026
. Taproot works out what you mean, writes the query, runs it against your database and draws the result. No SQL, no ticket, no waiting on the one person who knows where everything lives.
The name is deliberate. A taproot is the main root that grows straight down and draws from deep underground. Taproot does the same for your data: it reaches into the system you already run and brings the answer to the surface.
How it works
Taproot turns a question into an answer in four steps:
- Connect. Your database is connected to Taproot with read-only access. Nothing is copied or moved.
- Understand. Taproot reads the structure of your database, its tables, fields and how they relate, and builds a semantic layer on top of it.
- Ask. You type a question in plain English. Taproot uses the semantic layer to work out which tables and fields you mean, and generates the query.
- See. The query runs against your database and the result comes back as a table or chart you can read, share and refine with a follow-up question.
The semantic layer is the secret
Raw database schemas are rarely friendly. A column called CUST_CD_02 might be your customer code; a table called TRN_HDR might hold every invoice you have ever raised. Most reporting pain starts right here, in the gap between how the system names things and how your team talks about them.
Taproot's semantic layer closes that gap. The AI auto-defines each field in business terms, and your admins can edit those definitions and add aliases. Tell Taproot that dispatch
, shipment
and outbound
all mean the same thing, and every user's question gets answered the same way. The layer is your company's vocabulary, written down once and used every time.
| Field | Business label | Expose |
|---|---|---|
| cust_nm | Customer name | ✓ Approved |
| cust_ltv_amt | Lifetime value | ✓ Approved |
| bill_ctry_cd | Billing country | ✓ Approved |
| stat_cd | Status | ✓ Approved |
| crdt_lmt | Credit limit | Owners and admins only |
| ph_no | Phone | Hidden |
Built so your data stays yours
The first question any IT head asks about an AI tool is: what does the AI see? With Taproot, the answer is short.
- The AI never reads your records. It works from the structure of your database and the semantic layer, not the rows inside it. It writes the query; your database runs it.
- Read-only by design. Taproot connects with read-only access. It can fetch answers, but it cannot change, delete or write a single record.
- Every query is visible. You can see the exact SQL behind every answer, so your team can check how a number was reached instead of taking it on faith.
That combination matters for companies that have spent decades building up their data. You get the speed of AI without handing your business data to it.
Who Taproot is for
Taproot is for any company that needs reports and wants to analyse its data, whatever its size or industry. If your business data lives in a database and getting answers out of it takes longer than it should, Taproot is built for you.
- Business owners and leadership who want answers today, not a report next week.
- Operations, sales and finance teams who ask the same kinds of questions every day and are tired of waiting in a queue.
- IT and data teams, often a team of one or two, who want to stop being the company's report-writing service.
It works alongside your ERP and BI, not instead of them
Taproot is not here to replace your ERP or your dashboards. Your ERP still runs the business, and your standard reports and BI dashboards still cover the questions you ask every month.
Taproot covers everything else: the one-off question in a meeting, the follow-up nobody built a dashboard for, the number someone needs before lunch. It fills the gap between the reports you have and the answers you need.
Ask your first question today
Taproot is live. To get started, get in touch with us. We talk through your data and what you need, connect your database to Taproot with read-only access, and start you on a free plan. Self-serve sign-up is on the way.
Book a demo at heliotropeai.com, or write to us at hello@heliotropeai.com if you would like a walkthrough.
Taproot is the first agent from Heliotrope. We build AI agents that make legacy business software AI-native.