STRATEGIC VALUE CREATION USING MICROSOFT REPORTING SERVICES

STRATEGIC VALUE CREATION USING MICROSOFT REPORTING SERVICES

1. Executive Summary

Human resource information is significant in this day and age where the importance of internal customers, their retention, motivation and productivity has never been more critical to the success of the IT industry. The prime focus is to highlight the "Technological Innovations and Directions" adopted for the development and Implementation of an in house product /tool.

2. Introduction

This paper presents the vision for a single interface/management reporting tool to enable visibility of strategic HR information. The idea behind this exercise is to discuss the HR tool that enables stakeholders to view strategic level HR information.

3. Solution Proposition

The prime focus here is to highlight the "Technological Innovations and Directions" adopted for the Development and Implementation of an in house product /tool. The product in this scenario so developed is the "HR Dashboard" with "Microsoft Reporting services" as the tool.

HR Dashboard is a single source management reporting tool used by Strategists of Hexaware Technologies Ltd. to analyze critical HR information. It provides for analysis of all HR metrics with respect to the current HR practices and processes and graphical reports. HR Dashboard allows the senior management to streamline HR processes while enabling them to identify the weakness and strength areas of the organization from a people management perspective

The purpose of this project was to provide for a single interface/management reporting tool to enable visibility of strategic HR information. This HR Dashboard will allow drill down analysis of various HR metrics which are relevant to the organization. The idea behind this exercise is to enable stakeholders to view strategic level HR information.

This concept was a technological innovation and first of its kind developed exclusively in house. This could have been developed via other means and tools, but after several evaluation of possibilities, the most effective and efficient and closest to the desired objective was by utilizing Microsoft Reporting Services.

4. Problem Definition Restatement

The earlier attempt at HR Dashboard was on Peoplesoft HRMS which due to technological limitations was not user friendly in terms of adapt-ability and flexibility of reports. Analytical data in PSHRMS requires extensive coding. Also, graphical reports cannot be generated in PSHRMS with the same view ability and user friendliness. The HR Dashboard used PSHRMS data as an interface while coding to generate analytical information was done outside of PSHRMS and graphical reporting was made available using a second tool and interface.

The limitations posed by PSHRMS were eliminated with the use of Microsoft Reporting Services. Underlying HR Dashboard is the successful implementation of MS SQL Server Reporting Services tool for the generation of graphical reports and integrating the same with .NET code that allows us to view the reports through an easy to use GUI. The idea of using MS SQL Server Reporting Services tool to extensively generate graphical reports has been undertaken for the first time in any delivery unit and successfully so. The key reasons for choosing MS SQL Server Reporting Services tool are attributed to the following.

The cost as compared to a third party reporting tool: this comes bundled with the MS SQL Server, the license for which is already available with us

The Visual Studio .Net integration that provides the developers with the familiar IDE to develop and test reports; similar report specific IDE is not available in PeopleSoft

The ease of customization and dynamic generation of reports. The reports generated are embedded into the user pages of a web based application through the use of Report Viewer, a custom control that comes as a part of the MS SQL Server Reporting Services package. The Report Viewer facilitates taking in user inputs and supports exporting of the reports to a wide range of formats.

The reporting services tool helped in developing HR Dashboard as visioned, by providing a quick and easy analysis of the critical HR statistics that can be generated across various HR dimensions like location, grade, unit/department, jobstream wise and further filtered dynamically on the basis of parameters like date/year, location, department/unit thus providing a thorough drill down analysis of the statistics through a user friendly and graphical interface.


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