Establishing the data collection framework for your project

The most crucial part of reporting is obviously to collect the right information in the first place. As part of the toolset I provided you at the beginning of this book, you understand that asking the right questions is important. This is true for your reporting system too. The questions you ask should focus on the key performance indicators that are specific to your business. Basically, you need to write down all of the reports that you need, and then find out if the system provides this information by default. UDFs should be added to address non-default information requirements. Therefore, the data collection framework follows this process:

Report delivery based on information requirements

With all of the required information available in the system, the reports can be grouped together. For example, I grouped the reports based on the delivery frequency and the target audience for the report:

Each report serves a specific information need in accordance with the established business metrics represented by key performance indicators in the reports. This sounds complicated, but it is simple when categorizing the reports based on the list above and identifying the key values that are important to run your business.