Data solutions that make cents

I'm sitting in a meeting with my current client and they are talking about reporting from Peoplesoft.   This is a story that repeats itself too often in the life of a company.   There was talk about tweaking the queries, hitting a snapshot, or limiting users access to the queries.  Lets let them report from the QA environment.   Is there a true solution in any of these "Solutions?"   I would call this client a mid sized company.  

Regardless of the size of your IT department, there could be a number of reasons why you don't make the right decisions concerning reporting.   You might have a "Yes Man" in the architect position of your company.   The architect might not feel, they have the "right" to question what they know the leadership wants to do.  One other reason is they might not be aware of the decisions being made in all areas of the company.  This architect might be pulled in too many directions and can not focus on the true problems.   I have worked for clients in the past that are supporting an application for every person in IT.   You may not have the resources to bring an architect in to your office.   Is your IT department "Silo'd" where every group is solely focused on their one area of concentration?   

Lets look at some true BI solutions to this issue.   Feed Peoplesoft into your ODS or Operational Data Store.   Setup a dashboard for general reporting and allow your power users to use a tool like Tableau to tap into advanced queries.  Your ODS is the correct place for this reporting.  Your DBA can monitor the performance of the database and indicate any bottlenecks or issues with queries running long, capping of CPU's or lack of space.   When you add infrastructure to this environment, it lifts up everyone.   More memory on your ODS benefits all reporting and not just HR reporting.  What a novel concept for the business to have a one stop shop for all reporting needs.    This is a solution with teeth.  This industry standard solution adds value to business and technology. 

Stop spending money on tweaking one off reports.  Stop telling the business to limit reporting.  Stop fixing the symptom and start fixing the problem with an Enterprise solution.