AUTOMATION

If you or your staff spend more than a few hours each month producing reports, then it is worth considering automating the process. If you spend hours manipulating data and copying it into other applications, such as Word or Excel, an automated report would be an ideal solution.

Microsoft Excel is the analytical business tool of choice for many companies. However, as much of the data is held in other systems, such as accounting and sales databases. Creating meaningful reports can involve time consuming importing or re-keying of data between various applications. This is error-prone and requires a significant investment in time and resources.

Automating the reporting process can save time and money, producing consistent and accurate reports quickly. Using VBA any Microsoft office application can control another.

This integrated approach allows you to run a report from the end product application such as Word. Data can be extracted from various sources, collated and calculations made using Excel. Charts can then be automatically imported into Word and conditional text added depending on the results. Further text can be added after manual analysis of the results. This can all be done for the user form a click of a toolbar button or menu, in a matter of seconds and not hours. Even the printing and emailing of reports can be automated.

We have been asked to produce tools for running large multi-market, sub-sector reports, with literally hundreds of pages, efficiently. The automated reports can be run from simple wizard type processes familiar to any Microsoft user, reducing training and supervision costs.