Analytics touch every application within your system, working in parallel with your workflows. A strong analytics program integrates reporting content directly into users’ day-to-day activities, presenting them the right data at the right time. With so much data available in Epic, it is easy for end users and even your reporting team to get bogged down. Here are a few process focused optimisations to help ensure your analytics program is running smoothly.
Optimise the report request process
One of the most important governance processes for your team is the report request process. The process can easily go from a reasonable worklist to an unachievable backlog if not optimised and closely monitored. Taking the time to figure out where the bottlenecks are in your process and working with key operational groups to determine their current reporting needs can save your team countless hours of going through requests.
Best Practices:
- The process should be transparent to end users
- Business Intelligence Developers / Reporting Analysts should be partnering with operations throughout the request process
- Requests should all funnel to a single queue
- Once a new piece of content is published, ensure all necessary documentation is updated
Clean up your reporting content library
You have so much incredible analytics content, so why not make it easier for folks to get what they are looking for? An easy way to do that is to clean up out of date and unused content. Retiring unused reports and dashboards keeps your library clean and provides end-users a better chance of finding the content they want, which then decreases duplicate report requests. You can utilise report and dashboard usage to determine what content can be reviewed for retirement with your end users.
Update your Analytics Training
Now that you've cleaned up your content library and made the request process easier and more transparent, let's make sure users know what content is available to them and that they know how to find it. Push out quick start guides and additional analytics tip sheets through different avenues. You should also update your reporting content guides to remove any content you retired and add content that corresponds to report requests from that area.
Do you have a lot of users who would benefit from SlicerDicer or other self-service tools? Is there a group that is submitting a lot of report requests that need their own specialised reporting training? Do you have webinars or office hours for folks to ask questions or learn about new analytics content? Be creative in your training! Your analytics training should evolve with your organisation's analytics program and vision.
Conclusion
Analytics teams can easily get stuck working on a mountain of backlogged report and data requests instead of working on projects to optimise your reporting. Ensuring end users know what content is available to them, how to use that content, and how to effectively submit a request for new content can drastically decrease the number of duplicate or unnecessary requests that need to be reviewed allowing your team to focus on items that match your analytics vision.
