Data Manipulation

Background

The client wished to see presented the entire printer landscape for his organisation. While they could retrieve reports from the various machines dispersed around the estate, each had different content with only a few common fields. This meant that the collation of data to create a fully holistic view was very time-consuming and open to error.

The problem

The client wanted to use a single Excel spreadsheet to contain their data from which they could drive charts, pivot tables and other reporting methods to help make informed business decisions, understand traits, and identify opportunities. The single workbook would remove the need for links to other workbooks that may contain sensitive data or are too large to share.

How we fixed this

We created a template the customer could use to drive the various charts and tables. We then mapped the key data from the various inputs and how that should be reported. Once we identified the key data, we looked at how we could retrieve it in the most efficient manner and how and where it should be analysed, before placing the normalised data on a worksheet with the appropriately named ranges for the charts and other sheets to use. As Skyline Automate can read PDF, Spreadsheets, Text (CSV/TXT), SQL and other data sources, we could quickly pull the relevant data and convert it to a suitable format for further operations. We also created a simple SQL DB into which we stored all the retrieved finalised data for history and archive, allowing for a slim portable workbook for the local manager.

Results

• The client had simple formatted data to run any report

• Data could be added from new equipment to the existing reporting structure

• Presentation Excel file contained only relevant and sanitised data

• Full history/archive of all previous data that can be used for validation and large trend analysis