Ability to create some read-only views that combines data from multiple tables? Not a full blown reporting engine but a simple master/child view will do for now.
Perhaps the answer is to create an option where an Admin can create some Filters and expose these as main menu items. For example using your Northwind sample, an option to list all orders placed in the last 30 days. Its very easy to capture a filter to show only this data but it would be neat if we could also make this a main menu entry so users who only care about this one thing can go there real quick!