Reporting is a very important tool for formulating and managing corporate strategy. It helps not only strategic management, but also operational planning.

The way reporting is used in a company has a substantial impact on that company’s competitiveness and performance. In our work, we often find that:

• reporting of certain key areas of the company is completely missing
• reporting is realised manually, for example in a spreadsheet processor, which leads to excessive time consumption, a high error rate and high labour intensity when implementing changes and development
• a potential wealth of company data is not used
• the database is not integrated – data are not prepared in a form suitable for reporting 
• reporting is not centralised – when creating reports, each department uses its own processes and tools; there is no uniform, company-wide definition of performance indicators
   

Best practices for creating reporting solution

Data comprise a critical factor in the success of any business-intelligence solution. At the beginning of projects involving reporting, it is necessary to determine the data sources from which data can be drawn for calculating performance indicators and for filling out the content of defined reports. Reporting assesses the quality of work performed during the building of a database, creation of ETL, metadata management and business analyses. Practical experience from projects of building reporting architecture shows that it is necessary to dedicate 80% of the allotted time to analysis, preparation and transformation of data into an analytical resource (data warehouse, data mart). The quality of the data significantly influences the quality of decisions that are taken on the basis of such data. Inefficiencies caused by data resulting in poor decision-making have the consequence that reporting applications do not lead to returns on investments in their implementation.

What must be considered during implementation of reporting projects?

• thoroughness of the analysis of business requirements, precise definition of performance indicators
• design of a data model for the data warehouse
• the system’s response to users’ requests, performance of the BI infrastructure
• quality of data transformation procedures and data error rate, quality of test data
• requests for changes in reporting, changes in source systems
• management of access rights, knowledge of users
• consistent development, testing and production environments
   

How to get started with Profinit?

Our offer of services begins with determination of reporting content, i.e. identification of indicators suitable for management. We start with a rigorous analysis of the information that the company’s top management needs for decision-making, supplemented with best practices of general and sector models of metrics (systems of indicators suitable for management). Further cooperation with us can involve specification and development of reports and testing thereof, including performance tests.  We also ensure for our customers support of the reporting solution’s operation.