Reports with BSC Designer
Intro
There are many ways for performance values in BSC Designer’s project to be visualized. Most of them were described in the article “How to visualize data with BSC Designer: diagrams and charts”. Specific diagrams and charts are good for executive managers and sometimes specialists but what about people like shareholders and investors who need to be reported about company’s progress rate? Reports might also be needed for company’s members to inform higher level managers. Reports for indicators and categories could also be used as detail information source to be analyzed and monitored.
BSC Designer software offers a wide range of report types. It could be several kinds of html reports differing by its detail presentation and data sources; also information might be exported into MS Excel and MS Power Point. With help of the program’s report functions it could be so easy to ctreate understandable materials to make presentations and reports.
HTML Reports
HTML is a good format to present both text and image information in one file. Also HTML files could be easily sent via email. All this makes HTML one of the most popular formats for reporting.
This article will describe the following kind of HTML reports functions allowed in BSC Designer:
- Export to HTML function;
- Report for selected item function.
Note!
Make sure you are experimenting on scorecard with various values for various time points. It is recommended to perform “Fill with random values” function before studying how to make reports. You may read more about this function in the article “How to manage data sources with BSC Designer”. When the project is filled with values no errors will appear while reporting and it is better for understanding the logic of reports as well.
Export to HTML function
Exporting to HTML function creates a document describing the whole project’s values. According to the type of HTML report this document could also include charts and diagrams, details for indicators and other properties and visualization tools.
To perform this function click on “Reports” button in the top menu and select “Export to HTML” sign. The new dialog window will appear asking to select report’s settings. Let’s see what exact parameters HTML report might have.
Report’s settings dialong window
Select report period field
“Period” field allows selecting time period (before the selected date) that needs to be reported. It could be last week, last month and last year. But also it could be a custom period selected by user in “From” field.
Report Types
There are three HTML report types in BSC Designer differing by details usage:
- “Mini” report contains an organized text charts presenting such parameters as Name, Start value, End value, Dynamic and few more for every element of Balanced Scorecard project;
- “Standard” report shows everything what “Mini” version has in it, but also it presents time graphs showing dynamics for every item in the tree;
- “Advanced” report equals “Standard” version plus chart showing exact values of an item for every date within selected period of time.
How to save and view report
After all settings had been selected click on “Generate” button and select file’s path and name. It is recommended to use names written in English in order to prevent any errors. After the file is saved it might be opened using any web browser or sent to anyone via email. Pay attention to send web page’s source folder along with *.html file itself for all media to be viewed.
An example for Advanced HTML report (part of it)
Report for selected item function
HTML reports could present not only overall project but one of the items selected in a tree. Any indicator or sub category could be selected and reported. In order to make report for the selected item click on “Report” button of the top menu and choose “Report for selected item” sign. After that the same dialog window as for “Export to HTML” function will appear. Select time period and the type of report and save the file. The feature of “Report for selected item” function is that all child items in the tree for the selected one are presented as well. For example HTML report for category will include every indicators and sub categories (with its indicators) it has inside. Logically “Export to HTML” function is a particular case of “Report for selected item” function with Balanced Scorecard (the whole project) item selected in the tree.
Report for one of the categories (Financial Perspective)
Other report types
There are also other types of reports available in BSC Designer software product. More articles aimed to describe the following program’s functions referring to reports are coming soon:
- Overview report function;
- Dashboard report function;
- Dashboard report for selected item function;
- Export to MS Excel function;
- Export to MS Power Point function;
- Strategy map Report function.
