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Outsourced Enterprise Reporting Saves Time and Money As corporations create massive data warehouses that will store more information in the next few years than has been recorded in all of man’s history, the problem becomes turning the data into information. Software vendors have come to the rescue with many user friendly reporting tools and the training industry is eager to supply courseware on using them. But who’s job is report writing anyway? If it is not your job and IT is not staffed to support you, consider outsourcing it. From my view there are two skill sets that are needed in order to turn data into knowledge or useful accurate reports. One is your functional expert that knows how the data is collected and the business purpose of the analysis or reports needed. The second is a programmer analyst or data analyst who can understand the requirements and is knowledgeable regarding the data storage architecture of the corporation. This would include the sources of information going into the data repository from systems like billing, CRM, manufacturing systems, channel partners and more. This technical person also needs to understand things like job scheduling, database technology, enterprise reporting systems, and query languages in addition to reporting software tools capabilities. Can this type of programmer analyst work remotely? Sure, as long as they are available during your work day time zone it’s not a problem for them to be remote and collaborate with you on requirements. If a company decides to outsource reporting, the vendor should report through IT even if they interface directly with functional users. This way IT can sets the quality assurance and governance standards for the outsourcing vendor and the functional business unit can set the priorities. Companies that attempt to decentralize reporting into various departments outside of IT find that they are often generating multiple redundant reports and queries. They also find end of the period reporting cycles can become congested with multiple users running jobs at the same time that are pulling data from the same repository. Job scheduling prevents that. Having your IT department coordinate reporting is critical to reducing end of period strains on hardware and network resource. A dedicated low cost offshore programmer that is familiar with your data will produce better quality reports faster than using a non-IT staff member. It is usually not economical to have a non-IT professional do reporting no mater how easy the vendor tells you the tool is. We have all heard the sales pitch "with this tool you don’t have to know where the data is". I beg to differ, you need to know things like where your data streams are coming from, how often they are updated, and what they are keyed on to mention just a few things you need to consider when creating a query or report. Sourcing professional services to help with data mining and reporting is often the most economical approach and enables the in-house IT staff to focus on keeping the systems running. It also segregates the dollars allocated to data analysis and reporting needs for better control. Service levels from IT departments don’t always meet the needs for corporate reporting request. Mission critical implementation can consume your IT budget leaving little for the time intensive task of meeting with users and developing iterations of reports. It often seems like a minor task to your highly paid IT professionals but to the end user it is often the end product everything else is supporting. Even the cost of business logic training for a programmer is cheaper, and if done right produces a tangible permanent return on investment called documentation. Some companies decide to task functional experts with managing their own reports instead of paying for extra IT professional services to support them. Every day a senior business professional at your company spends working on a Crystal Report would pay for 2-4 weeks of service from a professional developer in Brazil, the location I am most familiar with. Let’s say that developer is a professional programmer familiar with SQL, Oracle procedures, Java, as well as Crystal Reports or Brio. It will almost always be easier to teach the programmer analyst enough about your business logic so that they understand your requirements, than to teach a business professional in Marketing or Finance for instance, enough about SQL and Crystal to efficiently code anything more than a simple report. Outsourcing enterprise reporting can be used to create a library of documentation on calculations, formulas, data definitions, and business logic. Surely this does not apply to your company but, many businesses have departmental silos of information that are not share, or important un-documented tribal knowledge that is passed down in one-on-one training to those who need to know. Sourcing business intelligence (BI) functions like report modification and coding can help solve this problem. An alternative to outsourcing reporting is to train the business professional to use tools like Crystal Reports or Cognos to do their own reporting. The internet is full of training companies that teach Crystal Reports coding for example to programmers and non-programmers. Most programmers will not need much training. Non-programmers will need a lot more training than the average two day class can provide and often lack the required foundation for the training. A list of training classes might look like this one: Crystal Reports Design XI Introduction Crystal Reports Design XI Advanced Crystal Reports Design (8.5 - 9.0 - 10.0) Introduction Crystal Reports Design (8.5 - 9.0 - 10.0) Advanced Crystal Reports Database Linking and Optimization Crystal Reports Executive Level Charting Crystal Reports Parameters and Subreports Crystal Reports Functions and Formulas How many of these classes are needed? What foundation do you need before you even start training? It is not what you learned but what you don’t know that causes the problems. Financial Analyst, Controllers, or Marketing Managers would be better off spending their time developing strategies based on the information on reports than learning to mine data and turning it into reports. Two days of their time spent in a Crystal Reports class would be better spent teaching a developer about the business logic used to define metrics on the reports or documenting it. Many business professional that I have seen put in this position learn enough to dump the data into MS Excel and then create desktop reporting sub-systems that are below the radar and un-supportable by IT. Using low cost offshore support to mine data and code reports does have a startup cost in training. We send project team members from Brazil to a client site in Washington D.C. periodically for training on business logic and to get familiar with the technical and non-technical employees that they are supporting. The travel expenses of airfare, housing, food and local transportation for bringing a project lead from Brazil for a month in Washington adds about $10k to the project cost but it is a "must do" to get the full benefit out of your offshore team. Having an outsourced business intelligence (BI) support team working in the same work day time zone is a real advantage to our clients. Mining data and creating business reports requires a dynamic interchange of information and idea. Once the developer and functional business expert become a team, corporate data is released much faster into the realm of corporate knowledge. Outsourced BI developers are best used as assistants that you assign long-term goals and short-term duties as if they were sitting across from you in the office. They should be a part of your daily business process, just remote. They can give the end users that priority service for every request, something that most companies IT Departments are not staffed to do. Just as they build a closer relationship with end users they need a close relationship with the IT Department so that corporate quality assurance and coding standards are followed. As programming becomes a global commodity, instead of training your business professionals to code reports or tasking expensive IT staff professionals to do it, consider outsourcing a low cost IT professional in a work day friendly time zone to support them. After all, isn't tasking a marketing manager or accountant to code reports a lot like having a building architect laying brick? |
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