With the functionality, affordability, and beauty of Microsoft’s reporting tools like Power BI and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), many companies are opting to migrate their existing reporting into the Microsoft stack. This effort, while exciting, can be daunting especially if you are looking down the proverbial barrel of dozens, if not hundreds of reports in need of re-creation. In these situations, it is tempting to scope the project by making exact replicas of every existing report in the new environment. In other words, copy and paste. While this approach is simple to pitch, it eliminates one key benefit of a reporting migration: analyzing your reporting inventory.
In most companies, there aren’t many opportunities to stop and take stock of the vast array of reports that are generated across departments. When an opportunity like a report migration project presents itself, use it as a chance to reaffirm why each report is needed and how it drives clarity, efficiency, and communication. A crucial component to understanding a report is not just rote comprehension of the content, but how end users interact with the report. There are implicit habits that each person has with a report. Understanding those habits provides a great deal of insight. A report migration project can use this information to not only recreate the reports, but also to make them better.
Analyzing your reporting inventory necessitates a series of conversations with managers, end users, and developers. During the course of these conversations, consider probing beyond which reports need to be recreated to get at how reports are used. Below are three questions along with common answers and suggested actions to help get this conversation started.
- How do you use this report?
- Broad, open-ended questions are your friend. Users will respond with information that is most important to them. Pay attention to what is emphasized. These elements are the report “must-haves”. Make note of inferences that will help identify reports in need of additional investigation.
- If the answer is “I never use this report,” seriously consider excluding it from the migration project. Oftentimes, a report created for one person who left the company years ago is no longer relevant, yet no one updated the report generation scripts. These reports should not be perpetuated.
- What do you focus on?
- This question encourages users to think about how often they look at the whole report. It is another way of getting them to identify the most important facets of the report but it also sheds light on any layout needs.
- You may discover that a report spanning five pages only has two rows of valuable information. Take out data that is never looked at.
- If you hear responses that deal with trends or comparisons, think about pulling that data into a visualization. People are inherently better at judging proportional differences and changes in a graph or chart rather than in a data table.
- User answers can tell you the order in which they digest the report. If their first piece of focus is on page 2 of the report, pull that data up to page 1. The report should be organized so that users’ eyes can flow continuously through the report, rather than jumping from page to page.
- This question encourages users to think about how often they look at the whole report. It is another way of getting them to identify the most important facets of the report but it also sheds light on any layout needs.
- Do you ever pull the data out of the report?
- This question helps assess the efficacy of the report. If significant user rework is needed to pull the insights out of the report, the report has problems. Think of each report like a move-in-ready house: If the owner needs to renovate immediately after buying the house, the house was not ready to begin with.
- Sometimes the user will copy data from the report and paste it into Microsoft Excel to perform additional calculations. Get those calculations from the end user and either incorporate them into the report or build the user a new report.
- Managers often need to consolidate metrics from several different reports as part of their departmental reporting or for board meetings. When you see evidence of repeated report scavenging, it’s time to build a status report or department dashboard. Eliminating that consolidation effort will save your company a tremendous amount of time, increasing productivity. Occasionally the existing report’s data is correct, but the report simply looks bad or isn’t consistent with the company’s brand image. In this case, the report migration should include a cosmetic update.
- This question helps assess the efficacy of the report. If significant user rework is needed to pull the insights out of the report, the report has problems. Think of each report like a move-in-ready house: If the owner needs to renovate immediately after buying the house, the house was not ready to begin with.
Even though these are three simple questions, they can help you get started in analyzing your reporting inventory. Each report in your inventory was created for a reason. It is your responsibility to understand why it was created and why it remains useful. In the coming weeks, I will be writing more blogs about how the Microsoft stack can help you solve some of the common problems that are revealed during these conversations. In the meantime, start asking questions and remember that SCS is always available to help.
