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Case Studies
Reporting Solution Improves Efficiency and Enhances Reporting Capabilities
Project at a Glance |
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RDA defined and implemented a business intelligence solution that automates a complex manual reporting process and provides a rich reporting environment for stakeholders and senior management. Now critical staff can focus on important business objectives and tasks rather than data manipulation. The solution provides improved business analytic capability and eliminates the need for IT involvement in the reporting process. |
About Our Client
RDA's client is a global provider of professional staffing services, with specialty divisions in information technology, engineering, accounting and financial services. This project is for the division of the company that provides IT staffing.
Background
In order to produce their weekly management operations report, staff at this company ran through several manual processes to extract data from various data sources, cut and paste the information into Access and Excel, manipulate the data and format it to generate the executives' report.
The potential for error was high, given the number of manual processes required to generate the report. Another challenge was that power users frequently requested new reports. Our client desired to set up an environment that allowed these users to be more self-sufficient in developing their own ad hoc reports while at the same time automating the report generation process.
Solution Detail
RDA helped our client develop a solution for their weekly management operations report by defining and implementing a business intelligence solution that automates the complex manual process and provides a rich reporting environment for stakeholders and senior management.
RDA performed the following activities:
- Conducted a gap analysis phase to flesh out the report specifications, data sources, queries and business rules for both the power users and operations report. The RDA report specialist worked with the business subject matter expert (SME) and client system analysts to develop report specifications based on the business needs and to deliver architectural guidance as requested.
- Documented requirements and created the design for a data mart that supports both the weekly management operations report and the ad hoc reporting requirements of the power users.
- Implemented the data mart and developed an automated process to generate the weekly management operations report.
- Provided knowledge transfer so that client staff can maintain the solution going forward.
Benefits
Project results and benefits:
- Eliminated an onerous manual reporting process, allowing critical staff to focus on important business objectives and tasks rather than data manipulation.
- Provided a data mart which allowed for the efficient collection of historical operational data, providing the capability for management to engage in trending reports.
- Provided an environment for power users to perform their own ad-hoc reporting, thus allowing improved business analytic capability as well as eliminating the need for IT involvement.
Technically Speaking
The technical implementation relied upon the following Microsoft Business Intelligence components:
- SQL Server 2005 for hosting the data mart.
- SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) for data extraction orchestration, transformation and loading processing.
- SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) for business reporting.
