Six Hundred Reports Left Our Systems Each Month and Ninety Were Read

Six hundred and forty scheduled reports were produced each month by four different tools, delivered either via email or placed on a shared drive according to a long-established timetable. Prior to agreeing to the costly transition to a new platform, the organization determined the fate of these reports. Out of a quarter's worth of reports, ninety-four were actually opened by someone.

However, many were distributed to outdated mailing lists, some of which had no active members. Additionally, two such lists contained no longer employed individuals. Reports accumulate due to the low cost of requesting one and the difficulty in cancelling, as it demands admitting to no longer needing something once requested. In the eleven years of this system, no one has ever requested the removal of a report.

Despite this, two analysts spent a significant portion of their week maintaining the estate, including repositioning extracts post-system upgrades, correcting formatting, and troubleshooting failures early in the morning when no one would be checking the output. Each report serves as a data extract, leaving a system with associated controls and landing in a mailbox or folder with different controls.

Around forty of these reports contained sensitive information like salaries or customer details, sent to groups that no longer had a valid reason for receiving it. After soliciting input from each recipient, four hundred and twenty reports were discontinued. Nineteen of these produced complaints, all of which were promptly reinstated and later proven to be genuinely useful.

The remaining reports now have designated owners, expiration dates within a year, and recorded reasons for existence. The organization tracked usage and reported it back to owners. Regulatory output remains tagged separately and exempt, as a few necessary but unread reports must still be produced. After the eventual purchase of the new platform, which cost a third of the initial quotation, the savings were achieved solely by identifying what was no longer necessary.