23
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CHAPTER 2
Seven Keys to Successful
Reporting Projects
F
inding the balance between the functional components of an analytics implementation, like
process design, key performance indicator (KPI) development, development, look and feel,
and the technical items, like tool selection and complex feature development, is a daunting task.
You typically must evaluate the trade-offs associated with spending time in one area vs. another.
This chapter will focus on providing you with the key tasks and tools necessary to lay an effec-
tive groundwork for any analytics implementation, large or small.
The Seven Keys Approach
Our approach to BI is based on three fundamental beliefs:
• All successful BI projects start with an understanding of the key metrics that drive the
business and work through a proven design and implementation approach.
• Cost-effective BI projects focus on leveraging only the components of the BI platform
necessary to deliver the key metrics in an accurate and timely manner. There is no one-
size-fits-all solution when selecting the right components of the BI platform. A large part
of defining the technical solution has to be driven by selecting the right tool for the skill
level and preferences of the user community.
• Integrity of the business processes and underlying data will ultimately define the success
or failure of any created reports, dashboards, and scorecards.
With these beliefs in mind, we recognize that successful business intelligence initiatives
will require different tools from the Microsoft BI platform for different organizations, but we
use a set of seven common key tasks that allow our clients to select the right technologies and
to make the appropriate implementation choices to achieve their desired outcomes.
Key 1: Developing Executive Sponsorship
The first key of a successful business intelligence project begins at the top. Ensuring that the
management team and key managers are aligned with the goals of the project will allow these
individuals to take a more active role in designing and implementing an analytics solution.

should ensure that the organization seeks outside help where needed but owns the overall
implementation.
Key 2: Identifying Organizational Key
Performance Indicators
The second key step to effectively leverage the Microsoft BI tools is to identify the key organiza-
tional metrics that drive business performance; such metrics are called key performance
indicators (KPIs). This may sound obvious, but it’s critical to have a clear business-oriented
target when selecting the appropriate components of the platform to use. In addition, it’s
important to not only identify the metrics that stakeholders find interesting but to focus on
identifying and clearly defining the metrics that serve as leading indicators for where the business
is headed for each key stakeholder group.
This process can be as simple as creating a list of the important metrics and may result in
the identification of 10 to 20 key metrics for each stakeholder group and 10 to 20 key metrics for
the executive team and board. Once the list is generated, each metric can be evaluated against
a number of criteria, including these:
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SEVEN KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL REPORTING PROJECTS
25
• Is the data that it takes to evaluate this KPI trustworthy and readily available?
• Is the metric well defined, and will it make sense to those who evaluate it?
• Does the identified metric align with the goals of the organization?
Figure 2-1 provides a high-level example of what makes a good metric. Significantly more
information on developing KPIs can be found in Chapter 3.
Figure 2-1. Ideal KPIs
Key 3: Delivering Structured, Ad Hoc Reports
Once you have secured executive sponsorship and reviewed and developed the KPIs that are
pertinent to the business, it is appropriate to move into the evaluation and solution design
process. Keep in mind that, in phase one at least, you should deliver only the most necessary

• Do Excel pivot tables and graphs achieve my goals?
• Can I develop and understand my KPIs using SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)?
• How should the reports and dashboards I develop be made available to users?
Assessing Power User and I.T. Skill Sets
One reason to think about the complexity of the solutions you might implement is that, ultimately,
people have to use and apply those solutions. A sure road to failure is to pick a solution that is
too complex for the users in question. So consider these questions:
• Do I have data or reporting analysts as part of the business units consuming the reports?
• With what technologies are my IT and development staff members comfortable working?
Leveraging functional expertise as needed is important. However, you should ultimately
own your analytics implementation. This notion of ownership is also true when it comes to
building and supporting the tools developed. Like most business applications, if reports aren’t
consistently tweaked and updated, the information they present will become stale and hold
less value for the organization. Table 3-1 provides a high-level overview of the development
and administration capabilities needed to work with many of the available Microsoft tools.
At every stage in the functional deployment process, these technology items should be
considered. Working through these items makes straightforward tasks of evaluating the Microsoft
BI platform and targeting the appropriate tools to get business users on their way to making
better-informed decisions aligned with their KPIs.
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Reviewing the Appropriate Microsoft BI Tools for Various
User Roles
From a technology perspective, evaluating tools relative to those needing to use them is likely
the most important factor in selecting which components belong in phase one. Specifically,
when provided with tools that don’t meet their daily or reporting needs, business users may
begin to utilize data and tools that are not part of the organization-wide strategy for business

SSRS provides built-in access to
OLAP cubes and authoring for SQL
Server data sets.
SQL Server Analysis
Services (SSAS)
Cubes are developed via the
Microsoft BI studio (Visual Studio)
using MDX.
Cubes can consume SQL queries or
access SQL tables directly.
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