1. A method comprising: executing a customer relationship management (CRM) software application on a computer, wherein the CRM software application includes customized settings and local field names, and further wherein the CRM software application includes a CRM database that stores CRM data; receiving a report generation request within the CRM software application; in response to the request, examining, with a reporting module installed within the CRM software application, a schema and data structures of the CRM database and customized settings including local field names within the CRM application, wherein the reporting module installed within the CRM software application includes one or more report toolkits; displaying a list of report templates with the reporting module installed within the CRM software application that are pre-defined by the one or more report toolkits of the reporting module installed within the CRM software application; receiving a selection of one of the report templates with the reporting module installed within the CRM software application; presenting a set of user-selectable database fields with the reporting module installed within the CRM software application as a function of the selected report template; receiving, from the user with the reporting module installed within the CRM software application, a selection of one or more of the user-selectable database fields; generating, with the reporting module installed within the CRM software application, a database query as a function of the user-selectable database fields that were selected by the user; invoking a spreadsheet application from the reporting module installed within the CRM software application using an application programming interface (API) of the spreadsheet application to automatically generate an electronic worksheet viewable by the spreadsheet software application, wherein the automatically generating the electronic worksheet comprises directing the spreadsheet application with the reporting module installed within the CRM software application to create a new workbook having the electronic worksheet; further invoking the spreadsheet application from the reporting module installed within the CRM software application using the API to automatically generate a pivot table within the electronic worksheet according to the database query, wherein the pivot table contains the CRM data from the CRM database, and wherein invoking the spreadsheet application includes communicating report parameters from the reporting module installed within the CRM software application to the spreadsheet software application based on the schema and data structures of the CRM database and the customized settings including the local field names within the CRM software application; presenting the pivot table to a user with the spreadsheet application in accordance with the report parameters received from the reporting module installed within the CRM software application; receiving within the spreadsheet application a selection from the user of the selected CRM data contained within the pivot table; and in response to the selection, automatically creating a second worksheet that displays the CRM data as a number of rows in columnar format according to fields within the CRM database, wherein each row represents a single CRM record stored within the CRM database.