Case Study #3Continuous process improvement, Computer technologies and infrastructureSituationThe software used by the dental offices for which we consult was limited by reports that did not meet our clients' needs. For instance the system reports production totals for each dentist in a very specific way that turns out to be unusable for our clients. The software associates a particular dentist with each patient, and then attributes all production for that patient to that particular associated dentist, whether or not the dentist actually did the production or not. This method works fine in a very small office especially where there is only one dentist. But, all of our clients had many dentists working and they needed production reports that were calculated based on the dentist that did the particular procedure. Our clients also needed a custom aging report. The system's aging report only ages to 90 days. This is not good enough for the accounting departments in large hospitals and in large health clinics. HindranceA programming staff still must develop unique, complex reports and reporting tools. Programming is time consuming and expensive. ActionsOriginally, each report was defined in MS Access and prepared according to the specification of the client. As the need for reporting specialized reporting has increased and it remained very expensive and complex to define each report separately in MS Access or Crystal report, we embarked on a new method of creating reports. We are working with a programmer on an open source reporting tool. This tool is now one year old and in production at several of our clients. It makes reporting much faster as it drops reports to Excel directly and is becoming more capable of summarizing them itself. The software as it matures should allow key people that need reports to manipulate and summarize large dumps of data themselves, without needing complex knowledge of SQL or programming. The software is called Ruport and Google is now officially supporting its development in the "Summer of Code" program. Google has awarded a $4,000.00 stipend to our chief programmer on this project. ResultsOur clients have reports that are accurate and within the specifications that they outlined. Also, as work on Ruport evolves we are able to generate very specialized reports more quickly which lowers the cost of providing this service. This should begin to save our clients a lot of money as currently each custom report costs between $250 and $2,500. Ruport will also eliminate or substantially reduce recurring costs when reports need to be tweaked from period to period with minor changes that take time by a programming staff. EvaluationSometimes you just have to develop new software to meet new business demands. As the time of programming staff is squeezed, it is becoming clear that reporting needs to be made simpler for managerial staff to make their own reports, even when the reports they might need are complex. |
Case StudiesCase Study #1Problem Analysis and Strategic Solutions, Continuous Process Improvement Case Study #2Continuous Process Improvement, Computer Technologies and Infrastructure Case Study #3Continuous Process Improvement, Computer Technologies and Infrastructure Case Study #4Problem Analysis and Strategic Solutions, Computer Technologies and Infrastructure Case Study #5Disaster Recovery System Case Study #6Application Development |
