The custom data transform and reporting Solution
must meet your needs, otherwise you are not required to purchase it nor pay for the incurred development costs
We can be reached at RCDSimSol@Outlook.com
Your situation
It is important for you and your team to have rich and comprehensive operational and/or financial information that you can review and analyze on a timely basis, to identify potential issues and make better informed business decisions, more quickly.
The challenge is that different pieces of data come to you from one or more sources, such as fixed format reports or data extracts from internal systems, data compiled in spreadsheets, and even data obtained from external sources. Your team finds it difficult, and time consuming, to combine and blend this data together and/or reformat it to present the resulting information and related metrics in such a way that it can more easily be analyzed.
Our offer
We will develop a custom repeatable process, based on your needs, requirements and data, that will simplify both the combining and blending of data from different sources, and the production and update of a set of flexible reports that can be used for deeper analysis and additional insights, for publication and presentation, and for decision making.
This Simple Solution will be developed using the same office productivity toolset your company uses. The initial development will generally take from one to ten days of effort. The Solution will then be presented to you for review and consideration. If you feel it does not meet your needs or does not represent good value, there is no obligation for you to purchase it, nor to pay for any of the development costs.
If you decide to purchase the Solution, we will provide you with the ‘Data Transformation’ file(s), the Reports file(s), full documentation of the process, and training for you and/or one or more members of your team over up to three ‘cycles’, whether this is daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Your team will subsequently be able to revise any of the reports in the Reports file(s) or add new reports. Your team will also have the flexibility to modify the data transformations process, for example add new fields and/or new sources of data.
While the solutions we offer can benefit any organization in companies of any size, our focus is small to medium sized enterprises.
Data sources and Report metrics
There is essentially no limit to the type of data that can be transformed and reported. Some examples:
- Sales transactions data
- Service e.g. service request tracking data, service revenue transactions, costs, etc
- Client management data
- Insurance Policy and claims data
- Production and inventory data
- Human Resources employee data e.g. Start Date, Status, Grade, Role, Dept, Manager/Leader, Salary, etc
- Financial data
The data can come from one or multiple sources. The number of data records can be from below one hundred to millions.
The data can be as simple as a worksheet where records are entered directly or are loaded in on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Minimal transformations might be required in order to produce a set of flexible reports** for that information. This type of situation might take a day or less of development effort.
Or it can be a significantly more complex situation with operational and financial data from multiple sources in different formats, such as extracts or softcopy reports from internal systems, data compiled in spreadsheets, data from external sources, with all this data needing to be combined and blended to come up with a comprehensive dataset of information that is then used by a set of flexible reports. This type of situation might take up to ten days of development effort.
**Flexible reports are those where a user can perform any of the following action:
- Drill down one, many or all dimension/attribute values, partially or all the way to the lowest level of detail.
- Collapse to various dimension/attribute levels.
- Filter and sort dimensions/attributes, based on their values or on the values of one of the measures or metrics being reported.
- Add dimensions, attributes, measures and/or metrics to the report.
- Generate new metrics.
- Re-order the sequence and drill-down hierarchy of dimensions and attributes.
- Easily add new reports.
Examples of metrics that can be generated and included in the reports, in addition to all measures included in the source data:
- Quantities, counts, averages, ratios and percentages.
- Frequency and severity e.g. Insurance or warranty claims.
- Retention, re-order rates e.g. number of orders per period, average order size.
- Production and productivity e.g. Service request completion rates, ageing.
- Customer satisfaction and loyalty e.g. rating vs sales, Net Promoter Score.
- Period to period movement/changes e.g. staff adds, role/grade/salary changes, dept/manager changes.
- Variances e.g. Actuals vs Plan, Forecast, Last Year.
- Differences e.g. comparing and reconciling amounts between data sources at different dimension/attribute levels.
Comprehensive illustrations, including downloadable source data files and resulting Reports file, are available by clicking on the ‘ILLUSTRATIONS’ link at the top of the page.
How it works
The process will generally include the following steps:
- There will be an Introduction meeting, where your Need and objectives are clarified.
- You will subsequently provide ‘sample’ data extracts, in Excel, csv, text, or Google Sheets files. This can be real, masked, or faux data, as long as there is sufficient information to properly develop and test the data transforms and reports.
Note that a ‘data extract’ can be a soft copy text file of a formatted report generated from a source system/application, which could include titles, headers, sub-totals, etc. The transforms processes will strip these out and create a clean data file.
- We will review the data against the objectives, to determine feasibility and identify possible complications and roadblocks. If necessary, we will discuss with you any additional data that might be required, or adjustments to the objectives.
- We will determine, and agree with you, the toolset/features to use, based on your company’s standard office productivity toolset (MS Office or Google Workspace), the data complexity and volume, and your team’s knowledge level.
For MS Office in particular, there is the option of using ‘standard’ Excel only, ‘power’ Excel (which is more capable and efficient, and can handle more complex data and significantly higher volumes), or a combination of MS Access and MS Excel.
- We will proceed with development of the data transforms, and initial set of reports. During this step, we will likely reach out to you or a member of your team e.g. for any clarification of the source data, how identified data exceptions are to be treated, etc.
Depending on the complexity and length of the development, there may be interim checkpoint meetings.
- We will present you with a first draft of the Solution, discuss possible changes and additions and correct any misinterpretation of the data and/or requirements. For this meeting, we will provide you with a publication version of the Reports file that you and your team can further explore subsequent to the meeting.
- If necessary, there will be further development.
- We will then schedule a meeting to present you with the final draft of the Solution, along with pricing, for your review. We will provide you with an updated publication version of the Reports file.
In this meeting, we will also discuss the data load and transform processes that your team would manage and use.
- You can choose to perform an internal review, and can reach out to us for any clarification. You will then decide on whether to purchase the Solution or not. Should you decide not to proceed with the purchase, we will close the project. There are no payments required from you.
- Should you decide to purchase the Solution, we will finalize and document the Solution, hand it over to you, and provide training to you and/or members of your team.
- The intent is that one or more members of your team will be able to use, maintain as well as enhance the Solution on your own going forward. Enhancements could be as simple as revising and/or adding reports or adding graphs. It could also be modification of data loads, transforms and reports to incorporate new data sources and/or data fields.
Support will be available should issues arise, or to provide guidance and assistance on modifications and additions. There would be additional, time based, charges for this support.
Powered by GoDaddy