Note 64: Report Distribution and Access

Posted: 09 January 2010

Independent of their content, reports have common issues relating to their size, timeliness, distribution, retention and access. Each of these issues only grows over time since reports are seldom stopped, new problems will be identified, customer numbers (hopefully) increase, and products and services proliferate. Billers must find reporting solutions appropriate to their size, industry and cost structure that can support and grow with their needs.

Size

Audit reports as a 'group' tend to be large, and increase in proportion to both the number of transactions performed and the number of customers. For larger billers, exception reports can also be large. The size of 'reports' affects the processing performed at all points in their lifecycle. Larger reports take longer to extract from databases, execute report-specific calculations, occupy more storage when generated (and if archived), take longer to print and, if transmitted, distribute.

Each report may be small and simple when taken in isolation, but, taken together, reports can consume a large amount of storage, computer resources, time and money. Reports must also be considered in light of schedules that generate fresh reports each day, week, and / or month.

Timeliness

A report's content and intended use determines when its data becomes out of date. Since reports are historical and reflect a point-in-time, a report once generated degrades in its usefulness as the customer and transaction details it describes change. Each report's retention and usefulness will drive its individual archive and access requirements.

The needs of some report recipients will be more urgent than others. For example, the identification of possible fraud will require prompt delivery, whilst a profitability analysis can be distributed with a short delay.

Exception reports are used to highlight specific events for review and possible response. These reports usually have a short useful period and need to be actioned promptly. Batched processing can make it difficult to obtain reports more frequently than daily because data cannot be 'highlighted' until it has been processed into the billing system. Billing systems that operate in real-time may support reports generated throughout the day, though to be useful staff must be available to action the reports once delivered.

By their nature, audit reports have longer useful periods and can tolerate short delays in their distribution. Financial reports need to be generated 'within days' of the calendar end-of-month, and may be retained as an audit record for years.

Adhoc reports are the least likely to be retained since they often satisfy a transitory, short-term information need. The 'use by' date of their information will depend on the specific circumstances that initiated their generation.

Distribution

A report's need for distribution depends on what its users use it for. Audit reports are usually larger with their users interested in specific sections that cannot be determined ahead of time. Audit reports of financial transactions may have little need for distribution, substituting access to the centralised report data for access at the user's location. Interface files will be distributed according to the technology, format and timetables included in their interface definitions.

Exception reports are more likely to need prompt and complex distribution to ensure information is delivered to where it can be actioned. Prompt access ensures that the report's content is still accurate and any actions timely. These reports can be sent to specific printers at the review team's location, and/or made available online, so that actionable details are available as soon as they are generated. If required, additional copies may be sourced from a central repository.

Adhoc reports are short term and are more likely to be obtained by interested staff from a central repository. Depending on the distribution system used, the effort (cost) of distribution, rather than self-service, is likely to outweigh the benefits.

Reports may contain information used by a team in one location, or they may contain information for multiple teams (e.g. per region, branch, state, product). Reports used by a single team can be sent in their entirety to one location. Reports used by multiple teams must be disaggregated into subsets relevant to each location. This reduces the quantity of report data that is distributed, printed and reviewed, and ensures the details received are relevant. The same disaggregation may be performed when reports are reviewed online by their various users.

Access

Economies of scale often reduce a business' costs. Where a standard technology solution can be implemented across a business, the costs associated with report access, storage, archiving and retrieval will be reduced. A limited choice of access methods can address most staff and regulatory needs. These choices include:

Access with no distribution: Reports are located centrally where users can access the reports they require. Report sections can be extracted and printed locally.
Access with distribution: Reports are distributed (and printed or available online) on a scheduled basis to fixed locations, but recipients and other users can access the reports from a central repository.
Distribution by physical media: Reports held centrally are distributed on physical media such as CD or DVD. Reports, especially larger reports, can be sent to customers without using quantities of paper. Interface files may be exchanged in a similar manner.

Centralised storage ensures that storage costs are minimised (economies of scale), common retention policies are implemented, and authorised users can obtain reports without needing to work through the local gatekeepers of disparate systems.

Internet and intranet based solutions have broadened the available options for accessing and distributing reports. Report information can be retrieved from a central repository using:

Email: Reports are generated and emailed to intended recipients. Reports can be varied by recipient, and include standard formats such as PDF, HTML, XML and/or CSV. Extensive distribution can be performed using email, including information sent outside the corporate boundary (possibly compressed and encrypted). Distribution changes can be performed centrally and reflected in the next reporting cycle. Report users can print the reports locally (if desired), or view them electronically. Size restrictions on an email's attachments may limit the reports that can be distributed in this way, but this can be addressed using hybrid solutions that download files from internet / intranet / extranet webpages.
Webpages: Generated reports are made available from a centralised internet / intranet portal. Authorised staff access the portal and download their reports using a web browser. Users may download files that contain the reports (as per email), or view them (in HTML) directly. Large report files may be distributed by sending a report's URL by email, with staff using it to download the report to their location.

Information security becomes more difficult as reports become digital/electronic. Emailed and downloaded reports can be emailed onward to additional recipients. This problem is a matter of degree and ease since reports and business information have always been open to copying and distribution - only the technologies have changed.

Data Warehouses

Statically defined reports provide billers with the information they require, but do not support any further analysis. If a biller's staff observe an interesting trend, they cannot investigate it without considerable effort and reference back to the original billing databases.

Data warehouses are specialised data repositories that hold an 'offline' copy of the biller's customer and transaction data in a format that supports analysis (rather than transaction processing). Billing systems are designed to perform small transactions quickly (e.g. select the billing address of customer A). Data warehouses are designed to support complicated queries efficiently across large data volumes (e.g. select the billing addresses of customers who purchased product C on a public holiday).

Data warehouses allow billers to investigate customer and transaction details using the data's different dimensions (determinants). Additional data attributes can also be applied. For example, a transaction date can be further identified as a Monday, public holiday, in summer, and during the school holidays. These additional attributes allow reports and biller investigations to be performed using a wider range of criteria than available in static reports.

Data warehouse repositories are the end result of specialised processing that extracts customer and transaction data from a biller's different systems, transforms it into standard layouts and loads it ready for analysis. A biller with multiple billing systems can consolidate their reporting information into one location and analyse customers across all their products and services. Analysis can be used to identify correlations, trends and, in more sophisticated use, begin to identify predictive indicators of future customer actions (e.g. churn, termination, bad debt, fraud).

Tags: Billing, Reports, Size, Distribution, Access, Timeliness