Here’s a common dilemma: Managers create “rogue” reports that give them metrics they need, and aren’t easily available by the corporate reporting system. They are usually Excel reports that start small, but, over time, grow so big that they’re challenging to maintain. If managers reach out to the IT department for help, they rarely find a warm response.
FSI found just this situation when it was asked to help some managers in two divisions of JP Morgan Chase. They created several detailed reports in Excel that were updated on a weekly or monthly basis. The reports had several data sources, including corporate data (Oracle) and several external data exports as text files.
Staff had to update these reports with a dozen metrics down to the bank branch level. IT had already conducted a formal analysis and said it would be much too expensive to duplicate the reports in the enterprise reporting system.
FSI kept the reports as is, which were quite complex and elegant, and used VBA to automate the update process. The managers had pull down menus or buttons to easily update or manipulate the data.
The time for each update was reduced from a full FTE day to fifteen minutes.