Report Inventory and Rationalization
Report inventory and rationalization is the practice of listing every report, dashboard and working spreadsheet in a workforce function that carries a planning number, recording for each what it shows, who owns it, who reads it, how often it runs and which data subject areas feed it, and then deciding, report by report, whether it is kept, merged into another or retired once the function has a source of truth. It is the last move of the Source of Truth Design Workbook and a tab of it, and it is part of the Workforce Data Definitions Framework. It exists because a function that agrees definitions and sources but leaves its reports untouched has changed nothing the operation can see: the old reports keep computing the old numbers, and the discussion about which number is right continues.
The inventory is also where the quiet sources of truth are found. In most functions one or more personal spreadsheets, pulled directly from the operational systems by a planner, are the figures leadership actually acts on; they appear in no system catalogue and are discovered only by asking each seat what it opens on a Monday morning.
What a row holds
| Field | Holds | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| Report | The name people use for it | One row per distinct artifact; a monthly pack with eighty worksheets is one row with its worksheets listed, not eighty rows |
| Platform | Reporting layer, legacy dashboard, spreadsheet, system export, finance file | A category; no product name in anything published |
| Unit and owner seat | Which part of the function produces it and the seat that answers for it | A report nobody owns is a finding |
| Cadence and audience | How often it runs and who reads it | Daily floor reports, weekly outlooks, month-end books, client-facing packs |
| Metrics shown | The numbers on it, by register id where one exists | A metric with no register id is a candidate for the Dictionary |
| Subject areas | Which facts feed it: contacts, agent states, schedules, adherence, forecasts, headcount, cost | The join to the design: a report fed by a subject area the platform has not landed cannot be rebuilt yet |
| Conflicts with | Another report that shows the same metric with a different value | The reason the inventory exists |
| Decision | Keep · merge · retire · automate · land it | Taken once, recorded with the date and the seat |
| Grade | [M] [C] [E] [A] for the report's own numbers | Most inventories are [A] at first: the function has been told what the report shows |
The typical estate
A workforce function on a mixed estate typically carries the report families below.[1] The inventory names each family's instances and finds the duplicates.
| Family | Cadence | Fed by | What usually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Month-end operations pack | Monthly | Everything; often a chain of other reports | Fed by a prior report rather than by the source, so it inherits every upstream difference and adds a reconciliation of its own |
| Executive summary of the pack | Monthly | The pack | Carries its own metric glossary, which drifts from the register |
| Prior-day and intraday performance | Daily | Contacts, agent states, forecasts | One tab per queue or product, including partner-run ones; the only place partners are measured the same way as the function's own sites |
| Floor reports by supervisor and team | Daily | Adherence, contacts | Agent-level figures that disagree with the queue-level figures because the person and queue keys are not conformed |
| Forecast versus actual | Weekly | Forecasts, contacts | Compares against whichever forecast version was kept, which is often the latest and therefore flatters accuracy |
| Capacity and requirement workbooks | Weekly | Forecasts, requirement constants | Flat constants in cells; broken formulas nobody notices; one per planner |
| Scorecards (agent, leader, site, partner) | Monthly | Contacts, quality, adherence, surveys | Each level computes the same metric a little differently |
| Finance views of staffing | Monthly | Headcount, cost | Counts people differently from the roster and the human-resources system |
Rationalizing
Rationalization follows the source of truth, not the other way round. Once the Dictionary and Sources tabs say what each number means and where it comes from, every report that shows the number is rebuilt to read the register's source, and every report that shows a different number for the same name is a conflict to resolve, not a second opinion. The decisions, taken once per report and recorded:
- Keep a report whose numbers already read the register's sources, or that serves an audience no other report serves (a client-facing pack, a regulatory return).
- Merge reports that show the same metrics to overlapping audiences; the survivor reads the register's sources and the others point to it for a notice period, then stop.
- Retire a report whose number is now wrong by definition (a channel mix that can exceed one hundred percent because contacts are double-credited) or whose audience has gone.
- Automate a manual export or a hand-built report that the data platform can produce on schedule from the core tables; the manual step is the risk, not the report.
- Land it for a report that exists in a system but has never been delivered to the function; the inventory is often the first time anyone asks for it.
The measure of success is the one the function's leaders feel: a reduction in the discussion about which number is correct, and report builders who become analysts because the standard report builds itself.[2] The inventory is re-run at a set cadence, typically annually [A], because new reports appear as fast as old ones are retired.
Governance after rationalization
A new report, or a new metric on an existing one, enters through the same intake and change control as a new definition: it cites a register id or proposes one, names the source row it reads, and names the audience. A standing data governance group, meeting monthly or more often during a build [A], reviews proposed metrics against the Dictionary and refuses a new metric that duplicates an existing one under another name. Data stewards, one seat per subject area, answer for the rows they own. The governance process is the one described at Workforce Management Governance and Change Management; the change control is GP-606.[3]
Maturity Model Position
Four scales on this wiki use the word level; the launch page states which is which. On the data definitions maturity scale, level 2 has the inventory listed and graded; level 3 has every kept report reading the register's sources and the conflicts resolved; level 4 admits new reports only through intake and reviews the inventory on a cadence.
See Also
- Workforce Data Definitions Framework — the hub: the ledger, the definitions and the sources every model computes on
- Source of Truth Design Workbook — the workbook whose Reports tab this page specifies
- Source of Truth Register — the rows every kept report must read
- The Definitions Register — the ids every metric on a report must cite
- Business Intelligence and Reporting — the reporting layer the rationalized reports are built in
- Answer-First Reporting — how a kept report is laid out
- Workforce Management Governance and Change Management — the governance group and the intake
- Human Gates and Number Grades — the grade each report's numbers carry
References
- ↑ Cleveland, B. (2012). Call Center Management on Fast Forward, 3rd ed. ICMI Press. Chapter 15 (reporting and the "report of record").
- ↑ Few, S. (2013). Information Dashboard Design: Displaying Data for At-a-Glance Monitoring, 2nd ed. Analytics Press. Chapter 2 (the proliferation of dashboards and the single-source principle).
- ↑ DAMA International (2017). DAMA-DMBOK: Data Management Body of Knowledge, 2nd ed. Technics Publications. Chapter 3 (data governance: stewardship, councils and the intake of change).
