Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Why hire a professional report writer?
If you’ve ever done or witnessed the following in your company perhaps you should consider bringing in an expert:
1. Compiling (often manually into Excel) data from a number of reports to yield the report that’s really needed. Do you realise you could have that report written especially for you?
2. Managers writing their own reports – is that the best use of their time?
3. Employees attempting to write reports; often with no understanding of database concepts, structured query language, table joins (especially outer joins) or the reporting tool itself. Managers are basing decisions on such a foundation. That’s really scary!
4. Running a company blind i.e. not having any meta-level reports at all.
My company has no effective management reports. What do I do?
There’s no shame in acknowledging that your company lacks certain management reports. Knowing that is the first step in addressing the problem.
1. To begin with, highlight the areas of your business for which you need reports – e.g. finance, sales, warehousing, distribution etc.
2. Then define each report. Be as specific as possible in terms of content. Be realistic; ensure your systems capture the data that will compose the report (I can assist if you’re unsure).
3. Prioritise. Which report is the most pressing? Which, while nice to have, can wait?
4. Contact me to discuss your requirements. I prefer doing business face-to-face so we’ll arrange to meet. An on-site visit is an ideal time to meet key personnel with whom I’ll need to liaise when (or if) the project starts. Quite who I’d need to meet rather depends on the nature of the report/project. In the majority of cases it’ll be the person who looks after your database (or his/her representative) and the person for whom the report is to be written (or his/her representative). We’ll discuss the nature of the project, whether the work is to be conducted on or off site, likely timescales and costs.
What steps do you take to ensure the confidentiality of my company’s data?
The issue of confidentiality is taken extremely seriously. Not only would I be willing to sign an appropriate Non-Disclosure Agreement (and have done so for a number of clients) but any data supplied for the purpose of report development will be destroyed on completion of the project. Furthermore all workings out, printouts, test results and any other sensitive customer information is shredded (to DIN level 4) before being discarded. CDs and DVDs containing sensitive customer information are also shredded.
