IT Survey: Key Findings on Reporting Needs

 

How are IT business professionals managing their reporting needs?

According to a recent survey conducted by the SMA Research Team, here are some key findings:

Key Finding #1: As an organization’s size grows, there was an increase in the amount of reporting noted as being needed daily and quarterly.

Key Finding #2: Flexible Management of report distribution and/or creation (where end-users receive some pre-configured reports and can customize views) was the most employed requirement and strategy by Enterprises, regardless of size. 

Key Finding #3: Business Analysts in Mid-Sized Enterprises are more likely to employ a Flexible Management approach while the growing, Large Enterprises favor Centralized Management (reports created by one team and then distributed). Small Enterprises still have many end-users responsible for authoring their own reports.

How does your company compare? Do you have access to all the information and reports you need to be proactive and meet your business goals?

More on reporting.

IT Survey: Ad-hoc and Summarized Dashboards – Very Important

 

Results from our survey show that IT professionals ranked Ad-hoc
and Summarized Dashboards very high in importance for their reporting needs.

When respondents were asked to rank a set of features in order of importance to them and their associate report users, ad-hoc reporting was highest, followed by dashboards to summarize key metrics.

• Over 60% of all users want Ad-hoc “On-the-Fly” report creation.
  The number of responses indicating the importance of ad-hoc reporting grew with the size of the organization — 62% in Small, 80% in Mid-Size, and 83% in Large Enterprise.
• 84% of Large Enterprise users want more dashboards to get an “at a glance” view of data to make faster decisions.
  Similar to Ad-hoc reporting, the number of responses indicating the importance of dashboards grew with the size of the responding organization — 51% in Small and 60% in Mid-Size.
• Web-based or client-based application ranked as least important to users.

Take our quick poll to the right: “How happy are you with your current Reporting capabilities?”

Check out two reporting solutions that offer Ad-hoc reporting and dashboards: SMART for HEAT and SMA Reporting Edge for IT.

What’s the #1 Question on HEAT 9.5?

 

The #1 question we are getting from our clients about HEAT 9.5 and HEAT Self Service 9.5 is:

“Can you please help me understand the new features of HSS and Call Logging?”

SMA offers a “What’s New in HEAT 9.5 & HSS 9.5″ free webinar during which we explain and demo these enhancements. (Check out the next one.)

In the webinar we discuss and demo the HEAT 9.5 enhancements for Email , UI, and the HEAT Messaging Center.

We also show new or enhanced HEAT Self Service 9.5 features like Full Form Rule Support, Multiple Call Group Support, Journal Filtering, HEAT Board Subscriptions, and Executing AutoTasks.

Check out our website for more info on the enhancements and how SMA can help with the upgrades.

You may be wondering, what’s the #2 question about HEAT 9.5 and HSS 9.5? The second most popular question is:

“How do I know if HEAT 9.5 and HSS 9.5 are are compatible with our Operating System, Database platform?”

Luckily, FrontRange Solutions has developed a compatibility matrix.  If you have questions about the compatibility of your system, you can contact SMA (info@smasystems.com) and we can help you with that.

What’s YOUR question about HEAT 9.5 and HSS 9.5?
We’d like to open up this blog to your questions!

What’s on the Minds of IT Professionals? Reporting Preferences

 

The SMA Research Team wanted to know what IT professionals were thinking about their current reporting capabilities.  Since we’re not psychics, we asked them!

Our survey of small, medium and large companies showed that most users are already and continue to prefer viewing reports through Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Adobe PDF.

Nearly 100% of all users see email delivery of reports as a top preference.

Check out two reporting solutions that offer the email delivery capability: SMART for HEAT and SMA Reporting Edge for IT

Wikipedia and Dashboards?

 

I was curious, what does Wikipedia have to say about Dashboards?

Actually, a lot.  Here’s just a bit of it:

“In management information systems, a dashboard is an executive information system user interface that (similar to an automobile’s dashboard) is designed to be easy to read……. Specialized dashboards may track all corporate functions.”

So I got to thinking, how can different departments use dashboards and how can they be of help?  Here are a few examples, courtesy of SAP BusinessObjects:

• Sales and Marketing
  Understand the profitability of customer segments
• Operations
  Improve inventory management
• Manufacturing
  Implement supplier performance scorecarding
• Human Resources
  Identify factors that drive retention of best employees
• Finance
  Understand the drivers of key financial metrics and facilitate financial reporting and analysis
• IT Management
  Analyze metrics key to customer satisfaction and manage Service Level Agreements

For more examples, click to view sample dashboards or check out the Wikipedia – dashboards listing for yourself.

IT Higher Education – How Do Your Issues Compare?

According to the Educause 2009 Survey, these were the
Top 10 IT Issues for Higher Education: 

• Funding IT
• Administrative/ERP Information Systems
• Security
• Infrastructure/Cyber Infrastructure
• Teaching and Learning with Technology
• Identity/Access Management
• Governance, Organization, and Leadership
• Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity
• Agility, Adaptability, and Responsiveness
• Learning Management Systems

How do the issues at your college or university compare?

If you want to make some improvements, you might want to start with one or two of your IT issues that are easy for you to get your arms around. Measure and assess your baseline metrics (where you are now), set goals for where you want to be (KPIs), and create specific steps for how you are going to achieve them (action plans).

Check out SMA’s white paper on how to assess IT Gaps.

What You Don’t Know Can’t Hurt You, Right?

 

What do you know about the software your end-users have installed?

One of the most hidden and unexpected costs in your organization can come from NOT KNOWING enough about the thousands of already installed software applications.

Have you checked your software lately? Many of our clients use Discovery to help them monitor and enforce their company’s “acceptable usage” policies. 

They also use Discovery to cut the waste from their IT budgets and plan for future hardware and software needs. For example, they track what applications are being used, how often and by what users, to help reduce licensing maintenance and increase efficiency regarding new software (and hardware) purchases.

Have 2 minutes? Take a Tour of Discovery.