Proactively Automate Reports to Increase Data Accuracy and Decrease Costs

Leaders in every organization depend on data to make decisions. Data is usually available to them through reports in various forms – spreadsheets, business intelligence dashboards, and others. As an analyst and developer, almost 50% of business intelligence dashboards I have developed have served the purpose of automating daily, weekly, or monthly reports. Inspite of the proliferation of business intelligence tools, manual reports continue to exist. In addition to consuming valuable workhours, there are other repercussions to manual report generation.  First, there is a tendency to batch-process data-entry work resulting in reports not being available in a timely fashion.  Second, there is the possibility of errors being introduced into data, due to batch-processing and due to basic human tendency to make mistakes.  Third, when employees are tasked with collecting and entering data, the fear of making an error causes high stress.  Fourthly, the monotonous nature of data entry work causes fatigue, frustration, dissatisfaction and disengagement. Fifthly, data entry work under-utilizes people’s talents. Employees prefer to do work that utilizes their intellect instead of monotonously entering hundreds or thousands of rows of data. In this presentation, a three-step process is presented to proactively automate reports, in any organization. The first step is to measure the problem; the second step is to assess and prioritize the inventory of reports and the third step is to plan and distribute reports for automation. Measures for prioritization and templates for application are presented.