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The decision
The reporting environment relied heavily on Excel, Tableau Reader, and Tableau Online, creating manual work, licensing costs, scalability limitations, and inconsistent access to enterprise reporting. I developed a formal business case to evaluate a more scalable direction.
My analysis
- Evaluated SSRS alongside the existing environment and alternatives including Tableau, Power BI, and SQL Server.
- Assessed financial, operational, technical, and scalability considerations.
- Built a quantitative cost-benefit model covering implementation labor, licensing savings, and labor savings.
- Documented assumptions, risks, milestones, resource requirements, performance measures, and a SWOT analysis.
- Presented the analysis and recommendations to leadership.
Projected net first-year savings in the business case, based on the documented assumptions at the time.
Outcome
The evaluation ultimately helped inform the decision not to implement SSRS as the future-state reporting platform and instead move toward Power BI as the organization's next BI solution.
Why it matters
This project demonstrates that my contribution is not limited to building analytics after a platform decision has been made. I can also evaluate technology options, quantify tradeoffs, build a business case, and present a recommendation that helps leadership decide what direction to take.