Back to reporting

Reporting & decisions

What is actually happening in the operation?

A good overall number can hide a problem in one region. I built reporting that let teams look at delivery, costs and capacity together.

What was getting in the way

Teams and senior leaders needed to understand delivery, recruitment, quality, costs and capacity. Having the numbers in a report was only part of it; they also needed to know where to look and what to do with them.

What I contributed

I built database-connected reports and got Apache Superset adopted in the business. I also worked with Power BI, Redshift and Athena, and coached colleagues on reporting and interpretation.

How I approached it

  1. Ask what someone needs to decide before adding another chart.
  2. Bring delivery, cost and capacity into the same view.
  3. Let people look at a country or region as well as the overall total.
  4. Explain what might be worth investigating.
  5. Use the reports to check what happened after a change.

What changed

Teams and senior leadership used the reporting for recruitment, quality, delivery, payroll, forecasts, assignment costs and capacity.

I coached colleagues on creating reports, interpreting data and assessing whether a change was worth the effort.

Try it yourself

Have a go.

Change the period or region to see how coverage, cost and available capacity compare.

Decision desk

Example data
Coverage96.4%
Cost / assignment$58
On-time / covered97.4%
Capacity − demand+130

Coverage, closer up

95% illustrative target
Coverage by region in OctoberNorth: 98.9 percent. East: 97.1 percent. South: 90.6 percent. West: 98.4 percent. Illustrative target: 95 percent.North98.9%East97.1%South90.6%West98.4%0%100%
What would I look at next?

South needs a closer look.

Coverage is below the illustrative 95% threshold. Cost per assignment is elevated and local capacity is below demand.

Investigate demand and local capacity before changing the allocation plan. A cheaper assignment is not useful if it cannot be covered.

Look at the numbers underneath
Fictional operational records for the selected view
RegionPlannedCoveredOn timeCost ($)Capacity
North54053452924,564620
East48046645427,028495
South52047144339,093485
West64063062130,240710

Coverage = covered / planned. On-time = on-time / covered. Capacity is expressed in assignments.