Reporting - An unsung key element of almost every domain

'To be or not to be!'

A person always go through dilemma when he/she has to take any decision. They keep soliloquy until they come to final point, or in most case, can never come to any point! This is really tough and tense situation to be in it, specially when you have to make any decision on the behalf of lot of other people. On that time, if you have information (or we can say data in meaningful pattern) in front of you, that makes life little easier. Because you do have something to depend on, which is proven and based on that you are going to predict future. But if you have only data, not in any predefined form, then again, those will not help you that much, as it supposed to be. You can say ‘Reporting’ is that form, which arrange those data in such manner, that it provides quite a lot things without any extra efforts.

Report never predicts future. What it does that it encapsulate all aspect of business in such a way that when looking those details, management of organisation can get true details of business. And with the help of that, they can take certain decision considering future scenario. It is a fact that weight-age of taking decision is much more than actual work (though it doesn't mean that performing or accomplishing work have no weight-age). Because many time it happens that performing a work takes very less time rather than taking decision. Like to defuse bomb you may need to remove only one wire, but to select right wire takes good enough time. Same can apply into business. Like for any company, to manufacture a product or service may not have that much hard, as to decide which product to manufacture or which service to deliver. And many different kind of reporting helps them to take that decision.

Reporting and decision making are very much inter-depended. We can say it's a cycle, which starts from reviewing a report. For an organisation, before taking any decision, they are doing very minute analysis of reports, which then kick starts the cycle. Then after taking decision, all resources are mobilized to achieve that goal, and at the end of it, all data being gathered and used to prepare reports. And again those reports being analysed to make further move.

Report can have many Characteristics like time-line, security aspect and others. Such things depends of understanding of person and their positions. People like us are still don't know what is actually happening in Area 51 or who was behind assassination of Kennedy, despite having reports for them! Same things can be applied in any organisation, specially for financial reports. Based on job positions, there has to be some limitation that which data needs to be hide from which person. Like also system should allow person to view only their details related of salary, and not others. While there are certain reports which has to come in general domain, under public scanner, like balance sheet of public limited company or Chilcot report.

As far as ERP goes, in many case we have  figured out that weight-age on report development is reasonably low than development in other features of system. Yes, those are quite important as far as requirement goes. But then it's project manager's role to manage balance between those and when those feature gets completed, manager needs to think that how they can use related data of those and combine it with any existing (or new) report to raise the value of current report, and make it more enrich. Otherwise those will be raw data without contributing anything in decision making process.  

To keep your customers satisfied, it’s important to know them. And although good marketing research will give you great insight into what they want, having actual customer feedback is the the best way to ensure you're using the right strategy. Surveys allow you to get your customer's specific point of view and opinions - that is, if you can get them to actually complete the survey. And writing a survey that customers will take the time to fill in is a hard task.

Like as mentioned above, it's also a major decision one needs to take that whether company or organisation needs to implement an ERP system or not. And after moving forward into that, it becomes more important that they keep track on their costing ratio with its development, alongside with time as well. Because in most cases, to achieve their requirement, company only concentrate on development. And at the end, they find out that costing of it went too far from what expected! And then they gets frustrated and takes a decision not to use it at all. Which then leads to more frustration. 

General aspect should be like whatever phase of development gets completed, organisation needs to concern with project manager and make analysis that whatever data will be collected from that, where they can adjust those to get maximum and right picture of it. Because development in large ERP system is such a thing that seldom ends! So they need to start using completed phase and start analyzing related data. Because than only they can decide that what should be next phase to move ahead.

In past, there are many radical decisions have been taken, which has become history now. Whether it's of Henry Ford's decision to double their worker's salary, or Apple's bringing back Steve Jobs. We have to admit that in their related organisations, there came such situation, which led them to take those decisions. And obviously, they must have studied reports, which help them to understand the situation. On that time, there might be a chance that they may not have number of verity in reports, but one thing is for sure that reports were existed. 

After all it's all about learning from past, staying in present, and predict the future.