5 Simple Steps to Generating Great Reports

One day, your director comes to your desk, and drops a stack of requirements on your table and tells you that you have 2 weeks to generate a report on the sales and marketing trends that your company has been generating for the past 12 months. And you began to wonder, where do I start? How should I display the report? What does the management want to see/gather from those reports?

 Here are some steps you can take to ensure that you are generating the correct reports for the management, and relevant users.

Step One: Understanding the Needs of the Management

I cannot emphasize it more. It is so so crucial to be able to see things from your management's perspective. Just imagine you are flying in a plane over the landscape of mountains and forests, usually, you won't be interested in the individual small details down on the ground, you'll find yourselves mesmerized by the incredible view as a whole. And that is normally what the management will want to see in the reports.

They are usually much more concerned about the overalls, rather than the specifics. They want to know what is the Total Sales, for each month, each quarter, or even each year. And it goes the same for their marketing reports. They need the "big picture" view, so they can make a better decision on the budget required for the next year.

Step Two: There is usually more than 1 Perspective

What do I mean by that? It's simple. Just like there are always 2 sides to a coin, different departments, different levels of employees will tend to see the report differently. And according to the requirements stated by your superior, sometimes, they might require you to generate reports for individuals/groups of people from different seniority and department.

If you are from the Advertising Department, I'm pretty sure you won't be concerned about the sales figures generated from the Sales Team. What you will be more interested in is how many people viewed your TV advertisement last month? How many people bought the magazine that your company has rolled out last month? How many people responded to the roadshow event that you have publicized about last month?

Design the reports specifically and clearly for the different levels of people in your organization.

Step Three: Start with the Big Picture

One thing I have learnt in my years of developing BI Dashboards for companies, it is always much easier to first development reports as the Master Administrator will see it. Generate every single possible report according to the requirements first.

Be sure to categorize your reports according to the different departments that will be having access to it at the end of the day. This will be really important when you need to develop the Access Control Management later on. Simply, it means User Permissions.

Step Four: Pictures Speaks A Thousand Words

Never never ever make the same mistake that many people did when they first started learning to create reports. They tend to generate lots of information and data and only display just the data. Or, sometimes, they display more data than charts.

Having done reports in ASP.NET, the "web-styled", I like to call it, I've come to realized that people understand the reports so much better simply by reading the charts. And 60% of the time, they don't even bother about the data that has been generated from the tables.

The days of Data Mining are almost over, although I still have to give due credit to them, it is something challenging work. And Data Mining will still continue to play a crucial role in Reports Generation. However, my point is, Data Mining is no longer the end solution. Being able to display those data mined in a meaningful way that the management and CEOs can understand is much more crucial.

Remember, if there is anything you need to note from this: Always use charts! Lots of it! But also include relevant data below each chart type, just in case. This is to always cater for those 40% of users will still like reading the generated data.

Step Five: Gather Feedback, Review, & Improve

One thing I've also learnt from my experience. Nothing is ever final, and there will never be a perfect report. Over the years, business operations may changes, rules get altered, and business objectives change every year. With that in mind, know that it is good to constantly follow up and gather feedback from your management and CEO, and always asking them to feedback to you.

As their needs change, so will the reports and charts. Embrace change. In my experience as a web developer for almost a decade, BI Dashboards and Reports are the most constantly changing projects. Much more than websites. Some websites, once developed, can stay the same for up to 3 years (minus minor graphical adjustments and changes). Reports are constantly changing every year, half yearly, 3 months, or even every month.

That's all the 5 steps I can share with all of you. Follow these 5 steps and you will be on your way to generating amazing reports and charts for your organization and business. If you are a corporate business or organization and you are looking for somewhere to outsource your data mining operations or BI services, you can email me at sherman.chen@live.com.

Windows 8 + WPF + Silverlight

With Windows 8 out on preview for the past couple of months, it brings great and exciting news for all WPF as well as Silverlight developers. Reason being that Windows 8 carries a strong Metro-stype environment, , which means that 60-70% of Windows users around the world will soon need Metro-styled applications running on their PCs and laptops.

On top of that, what this means to the developers is that there will be a huge huge demand for WPF and Silverlight Developers. It is going to be like the WPF and Silverlight Developer's Candy land! At the current point, we are 6 months away from 2013, which will also be seeing the launch of Windows 8 on many new laptops. That is 6 months away. To be frank, I believe 6 months is the time we need to get ourselves prepared.

Yes, though websites can never be replaced, soon, people are going to switch to Silverlight applications that run out-of-browser. It'll be like having apps on iPhone, or on your Android device. You play, shop, read news and browse for things using an application rather than having to use a browser every time.

Is your application or software, or website ready for 2013? Is your company 2013-ready?

Welcome!

I'm starting the first official blog post here, to welcome everyone to Dashboards(fx), well, that's the freelance idea that I am finally turning into a business concept and consultation service. It's not yet a trend in Singapore to see many Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation developers around, basically because there hasn't been a strong demand yet.

First and foremost, I have been a web developer for almost the past decade, and through these years, I have seen a lot that has been going on, and to be very honest, there are already so many web development firms out there. There is no point to go into competition with them. I started having the idea of development something alongside web development, but much more nitched, and also, will bringing more revenue and profits. Well, like all businesses, there are no guarantees. So, we don't expect instant success. Well, I hope to be like Mark from Facebook, or Microsoft's Bill Gates, but let's face it, if it has been this easy, I will not have been struggling for so many years.

I used to think that by going into business of web development, and working hard, will help me to get investors, but honestly, that is not how things should work. I should be formulating an idea that will help me to get the entire marketing share, or the majority of it, and I want to be the pioneer of something in Singapore.

And I began learning about Silverlight Development lately, especially after working on a BI Dashboard project for a global company called Chrysler. It sparked the inspiration and idea for me to work on something different from Web. Silverlight and WPF has the power of both using the web, but also being on the desktop, and they have the power of rendering 3D graphics, animations and behaviors that normal desktop applications cannot have.

But I also have to be careful of predators, I know I am not the only one out there who has mastered silverlight applications, I am sure there are probably others much smarter and more skillful than me. I do not want them to steal my ideas. But I hope instead, I can rally them to come together and work with me.

So yes, this is where I am going to start my small little consultation business. Maybe it might not seem like much at this point, which is true, but to me, inside my mind, my vision is huge, and I can see how these Business Dashboards are going to penetrate every single office of the Fortune 500 companies in Singapore!