The Challenge
Our client was looking for cost savings opportunities by consolidating individual software systems into the Microsoft suite of products. As part of that process, they made a decision to move from SAP Crystal Reports to Microsoft SQL Server Report Builder (SSRS). The client identified 395 business reports that needed to be updated, tested and deployed. These reports are critical to daily operations covering areas such as agreements, portfolio management, regulatory and settlements.
Challenges associated with the conversion included:
- The reports had been developed over a long period of time, by different developers and included a substantial number of customizations with limited commonalities.
- Crystal allows developers a great deal of flexibility for report layout and configuration, creating challenges when mapping into SSRS.
- Some of the reports were not working correctly in production.
The Solution
The Sullexis team worked closely with the client to organize the reports into packages that tied to the responsible business team, complexity, and likely rework. As reports were converted into SSRS, developers identified and recommended changes to make the existing reports easier to use. The team coordinated closely with the client when reports needed to be redesigned to fix existing issues, improve readability, component reuse, and maintainability.
The Result
Sullexis was able to deploy the reports for use on schedule and on budget. During that project, the client added additional reports to the scope as a result of the team’s performance. This brought the final report count to 450. The business was able to seamlessly transition from the old reports to the new without impact on their daily operation. New reports from additional data sources are currently being identified to add to the SSRS report repository as part of their larger business strategy. Further benefits:
- The migration to SSRS provides improved scalability and maintenance by leveraging the client’s existing Microsoft platform.
- The client immediately saw quicker response times as loads were now managed across multiple SSRS servers.
- The client reduced its licensing and maintenance costs by retiring the old reporting tool.
- New enhancements and support for the reports has been dramatically improved.
