It’s My Data and I want it Now! – Ad-Hoc Reporting

You need to make an important purchasing decision based on your current inventory data but you find out there doesn’t seem to be report or anyway to access this data. What do you do? Do you have to put in a request to IT to create a new report? Do they instead send you an excel file that have to update every week with new information?

How do you cut IT out of the loop?

In today’s world of instant information and web based technologies you shouldn’t have to wait days or even weeks for your reports. It’s your data and you want it NOW!

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Why a Piece of Paper = End User Bliss

Paper has been around for over 5,000 years. It’s no wonder this has been the main data recording tool for companies. Business users feel comfortable with a medium they can design and match to their needs. However with the invention of automated business process management tools companies are struggling to re train and convert their users to new data recording processes and unfamiliar systems.

Question: What is the easiest way to get your employees to use a new data capturing system?

Answer:  Make the data capturing process just like filling out what they are used to, a piece of paper!

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Key Performance Indicators – Take It To the Next Level

 Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) are measurable indicators that allow a company to define, better manage progress and systematically meet their company goals.

KPI’s allow a company to measure their progress to their Critical Success Factors (CSF) and or business objective. These are goals that are higher level goals that are directly linked to the overall corporate strategy.  The goals are usually measurable, indicate results and quantifiable.

An example of CSF set by executives would be the need to increase customer response time to 2 days from the current 5 days. In addition they also want to increase the sales to existing customers by 5%.

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Posted by Daniel Yerelian in Optimization

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Control Information Chaos

Chaos is from the Greek word Khaos, meaning “gaping void”. To me it means a condition of great disorder and confusion. Chaos is what allows for a small change, like a butterfly flapping its wings, to be the cause of a huge change, like a hurricane on the other side of the planet. This same idea of chaos applies to data in information systems.

Let’s say, as an example, you are trying to use the data in your system to generate reports or even to integrate with an external system. If the end users can put in data without controls all sorts of trouble can happen. Your reports may end up showing an error instead of a proper answer, your integrations could crash another system, or even worse everything may seem ok but you will make decisions based on incorrect data. The cause could be as simple as someone writing “2..1” instead of “2.1”, or typing “the widget” instead of “widget”.

 

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