A few days ago I posted about “Green IT” and reporting methods and considerations to utilize less “paper”.  My post today regarding reporting is simply this — I posit that it is reporting which provides the greatest value of any business IT system.  Given this position I further venture to say that in this economic climate there will be an ever increasing demand for reporting which previously was neither desired, requested or dreamed of!  Just within my limited client base I have seen an increased interest in looking at new ways to report the wealth of information contained within client systems.

In addition, I have also seen that in some cases to get the information now being asked for will require additional input – (being of course that if data isn’t available it cannot be reported ).  This presents an interesting mix of work, application maintenance and report building – just what the doctor ordered for an otherwise “slow” time.

Through my years in IT and application development I have experienced many times the frustration of users regarding the presentation of their “data” in meaningful ways, or worse yet, their frustration knowing that data useful to them is simply “inaccessible” – “locked up” within the database somewhere.  During times such as these management becomes more interested in the “finer points” of their operations – “What does this cost us? … How about that? …Can we look at …?”.  During the busier times there seems to be a fear of having “too much” information, and surely “information overload” is easy to accomplish!  But in these tight times the value of specific pin-pointed reporting cannot be overlooked. 

Perhaps this is an appropriate time to be looking at what we can do in reporting to help our companies to succeed during this economic downturn.  Wherever possible it seems appropriate that we application developers “suggest” reporting that will add value.  Heck, it might also mean some job security

This probably isn’t the time, however, to suggest starting on implementing a new BI system, although wouldn’t that be nice?

Seriously though, my reasoning is simple – and that is my belief that we as developers can and should do everything we can to ensure an appropriate use of resources – and in those resources I would include not only the obvious paper, but also disk space  (since inefficient disk usage may result in the need for added disks, and thus more energy used). 

Saving paper is certainly the easiest way to design for green, and we as developers have the opportunity to affect paper usage in a dramatic way – those steps may include:

• Offering on-screen views in lieu of paper
• Offering ability to print to a document such as PDF
• Designing reports using minimal header and footer margins
• Working with users to ensure ALL data printed is used
• Working with different font sizes to reduce paper needs
• Reviewing sub-total lines, are they used or just there because…?
• Reviewing page breaks – Are ALL page breaks required?

Additional Notes:

• Printing to PDF documents is great, but … here is an area where disk usage should be considered and an appropriate way to maintain (delete) out-dated or no longer needed “printouts”
• Margins in general require review with a critical eye.  Header and footer areas should contain only information useful to the users.  Use one liners wherever feasible.
• If a report will be going only to a laser printer, pages required for printing a report can sometimes be significantly reduced by going from two-lines per record to a single line per record – all with the same information only by changing to landscape mode
• A proper mix of font sizes can also significantly reduce paper use, while at the same time ooften producing a much more readable report!
• I have found many an opportunity to eliminate sub-total lines which has resulted in great paper savings
• Page break review might be a situation such as providing an alternative to printing the report with a page break at each customer change – or not.  Providing an option rather than forcing the page break can make a hugh difference.  Make the default to the “green” choice of no page-break.

How many pages have you saved today?