The 5 Questions for Better Business Reports

As with most system implementations, there are several approaches for developing effective business reporting solutions. However, here is an approach that I like to use, as it provides a 'checklist' to develop the action items in a project to ensure that the reporting solution supports the business objectives of the project.

The 5 Key Questions for Better Information Delivery:

1. What are all of the 'as-is' and 'to-be' reports that the business wants? [END SOLUTION VIEW]
2. Which of these reports are in scope (and budget) of the project at hand? [SCOPE DEFINITION]
3. What INFORMATION does each of these reports provide? [MOVE MINDSET FROM REPORTING SOLUTIONS TO INFORMATION REQUIREMENTS]
4. What are the future data sources to support these information requirements? [INFORMATION MODEL]
5. How does the business want this information to be presented to users in the future? [INFORMATION DELIVERY]

These 5 questions should get you to developing an approach for getting to a Reporting Solution Design which will support the business information requirements which will be supported through the implementation of the new system.

How does this apply to your industry? Does this help to focus on why you are developing reports? Does this ensure that a system implementation will include reports that users can use?

The full article can be found at Egoli Solutions Publications website. The article was also published on Techlinks.

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SMALL BUSINESS VIEW

• What information do you need to run your business?
• Understand what data your business systems generate.
• Align this data with your information requirements
• Formalize the creation of this information for your use in a timely and accurate manner