Project Reporting

PCF have been helping customers around the world create high quality project reports for 30 years. Take advantage of our experience and discover how we can help you generate meaningful management information from the data locked inside your existing business systems - we have listed some typical issues below:

• Why using Excel to produce Management Reports is a bad idea!

  Almost every business we have ever encountered is using Excel to produce some of its reports. While this makes sense for simple reports totalling data extracted from other systems, companies commonly use spreadsheets to create earned value and performance reports, often incorporating graphics of varying degrees of complexity.

  While this may appear on the surface to be a cost effective solution, there are many obvious and not so obvious risks associated with this approach. These are outlined in much more detail in our presentation Accurate Management Reports on time, every time - why your project deserves more than Excel delivered at Project Controls Expo 2012. You can download a copy of the presentation from the link in the Resource panel to the right of the page.

• What are the options for creating reports from Primavera?

  Both Primavera P6 PPM and EPPM ship with a library of text reports which can be scheduled to run as a batch. You can also develop custom reports and print out graphics such as Gantt Charts or resource histograms from the appropriate on screen view, although there is only a limited degree of control over the layout and formatting the resource reports.

  Primavera P6 EPPM also offers an additional library of reports designed to operate within Oracle BI Publisher via a Restricted Usage Licence (RUL) for BI Publisher. These can be triggered on demand from within the web client or scheduled to run periodically, with their results available for view within the web client. If you need to make any changes (however small) to these reports then you will have to upgrade to a Full Usage Licence (FUL) of BI Publisher.

  There is a large amount of data displayed within P6 that is calculated on the fly and not stored in the project management database (PPMDB or EPPMDB). As a result Oracle introduced the concept of a reporting database external to the project management database. This is optimised for reporting purposes and contains extra fields storing the calculated values. In versions prior to R8.1 the creation and updating of the reporting database required an administrator to set up several additional databases and configure standalone scripts to carry out the ETL (extract, transform, load) operations. From P6 EPPM R8.1 onwards the reporting database schema forms part of the standard EPPMDB database, and the scheduled publishing of data is administered from within the product.

  Once the publishing of data to the reporting database has been configured, any external reporting tool (e.g. PCF's QEI Management Reporting or Crystal Reports) can be used to extract data from it.

  Further BI functionality is available via Primavera Analytics, an add-on product for Primavera P6 EPPM which consists of a star schema data warehouse and a set of prebuilt reports and queries that run within Oracle Business Intelligence products. The data warehouse is fed from the EPPM reporting database and can be also connected to other BI applications.

• What are the options for creating reports from Microsoft Project?

  Microsoft offer a variety of reporting solutions for Microsoft Project; the desktop product ships with the ability to generate a wide number of standard tabular and graphical reports, while Project Server adds the ability to make use of SQL Server Reporting Services and the dashboard/BI capabilities of SharePoint. As with Primavera, there is also the option of using other reporting tools such as Crystal Reports or QEI Management Reporting to generate non-standard report formats or reports of higher presentation quality.

• How do I create comprehensive earned value reports from Primavera or Microsoft Project?

  Both Primavera and Microsoft Project offer the ability to create basic earned value reports. If you need greater control over the layout, formatting and calculation of values, plus the ability to generate EV and performance data for every WBS/OBS element with a full buildup of history, then you should be talking to us to learn more about the features of QEI Managament Reporting.

• I have projects managed with different software packages - how I can get consistent reports from all of them?

  If you are faced with the task of collating project data from multiple systems/sources and looking for a way to display it in a common set of report formats, take a look at QEI Management Reporting. By building up report templates, filters and colouring rules combined with a standard database template you can rapidly generate sets of high quality identically formatted reports.

• My company collects actual hours and costs above activity level - how can I create EV reports?

  This is a common situation, and one that certainly causes serious problems in P6. In QEI Management Reporting WBS elements are treated as "parent activities" and can have resources assigned to them, thus allowing the recording of actual resource consumption while progress is recorded at activity level. Once the resource data is consolidated up through the WBS or alternate structures like an OBS then earned value reports can be generated from the level at which the actuals are collected all the way up to the project level.

  We can also reorganise the P6 tasks during the interface operation so that within QEI they roll up via a Cost Breakdown Structure rather than the original P6 WBS, if that is required.

• My company uses a custom project report that I can't produce from my software

  Over the years we have seen a great many business-specific reports and in almost every case we have been able to generate something identical or very similar from QEI Management Reporting. If you can supply us with an example report and some project data we would be happy to create a proof of concept for you.

• How can I automate the production of project reports and reduce the workload on my PMO?

  QEI Management Reporting contains a powerful scripting language that includes the ability to connect to other data sources and exchange data between them. We have many years' experience of developing solutions that combine project data with costs collected from ERP or other systems to create suites of project reports, available on demand or triggered on a regular basis.

In addition to developing reporting solutions based on QEI Management Reporting, we can design reports to suit your requirements for both P6 Professional - using the built in Report Designer - and P6 Enterprise, using the Report Designer built into Oracle BI Publisher.

If you are interested in any of the above then please contact our sales team and arrange a no obligation meeting
to discuss your requirements and needs.