SDMS V Staff Development and SDMS V HRPersonnel for Windows: already provide a large range of standard reports covering most of the day to day operations of the training and personnel departments. Each of these standard reports can be customised by selecting the range of data reported on – dates, type of staff, type of training etc. In addition, the fixed outputs can be modified before printing in the Report Viewer and Editor, provides word processing functionality within the reports module. Many reports can also be exported to Ms Excel for further manipulation and presentation of the data.
But reporting has been further extended within the SDMS Product Range by offering SDMS V Report Writer: Crystal Reports™ for ad hoc report writing on data held in SDMS software. With Crystal Reports™ users can access the data, design, write and distribute their own reports, in their style when they want in a format they need. This easy to use Report Writer enables the Training and Personnel practitioner, as well as the IT professional, to design and produce high quality reports.
The need for immediate access to high quality and “rich information” reporting under the control of the user is growing rapidly throughout all types of organisations. The demand for data that can be accessed from any source at any time within minutes is also becoming critical. Delays in getting the report you need cost money and sometimes more!
Understanding the Data and Relationships
Why we all wish we could point and click and get the information we want, all report writing technologies require the user to be familiar with “the data structures” in the application they are writing a report on. To save time in learning these SDMS V Report Writer: Crystal Reports includes not just a copy of Crystal Reports with connectivity to the SDMS databases but also printed copies of the SDMS data structures, a user guide on “user Crystal with SDMS “ and importantly telephone support to help you write the reports you need! Over several years of experience this “value added” approach to the supply of Crystal Reports has proven popular with SDMS Users.
Turning Data into Information
Research into many kinds of organisations demonstrates unambiguously that the problem is not that they don’t have the data - in whatever area we look such as personel, sales or service delivery - but that the data is not available in forms and at times required to turn data into information. SDMS V Report Writer: Crystal Reports™ will help your organisation overcome this deficit! You know that the data is in SDMS Software and you also know that there is a standard report which gives you most of the information you need but the senior managers have asked for a report in a particular format ,subtotalled in a particular way: “What are the salary costs of staff sickness and absences within the finance department in the first quarter of this year broken down by gender?” And with SDMS V Report Writer this can be written by you, when you want.
Crystal Clear
Crystal Reports™ Writer provides SDMS users with the power and sophistication of “Business Intelligence” technology, increasing the flexibility of data manipulation and allowing both simple and complex reports to be professionally produced. The ability of managers within the Staff Development and Personnel functions to provide information at any time and in any form required, is greatly improved with Crystal Reports™ Writer for SDMS Software. Users can produce a range of ad-hoc, impressively designed reports, conditional and sub reports, columnar, form style, multiple section and drill down reports. Simple lists, form letters, pre-printed forms or labels can also be produced.
Guide
There is a step by step guide that takes you through the design process from start to finish. You can add graphs illustrating key data to make your reports more informative. The integrated graphing capability of Crystal Reports™ provides over 80 customisable styles which enable you to group sub totals as well as details and formula fields. SDMS users can maximise the impact of a report by including a range of fonts, bitmaps, boxes, lines and even embed objects from other applications.
Having written the report you need, Crystal Reports™ allows you to distribute it!
Reports can be distributed in a variety of ways including: e-mail, the World Wide Web, and with the new HTML export option, you can publish reports to a web server to be viewed by any Web browser on your internal Intranet. All report data can be exported to Lotus® 123, Excel™, Word for Windows™, WordPerfect™ and as ASCII text.Easy to Use for Non Technical staff
With its clear user interface and extensive help Crystal Reports™ Writer is simple and easy to use software tools which will help you greatly enhance the business benefits already supplied through your use of SDMS V Staff Development or SDMS V HRPersonnel for Windows. Given the limited technical resources and their high cost, SDMS V Report Writer gives power to write their own reports to the end user without recourse to scarce IT or programming skills. An SDMS User who has recently purchased the report writer option and has undergone a single days training has said “The ability it gives me to do what I want means I couldn’t do without it”.
SDMS V Report Writer Training Courses
SDMS Ltd offers a one or two days training course in using SDMS V Report Writer: Crystal Reports. The course provides not only basic skills in report writing in general and Crystal specifically, but also in the data models, table structures and data dictionary for SDMS software. Importantly participants are asked to bring sample reports they want to write and the course is built around these – with post course follow up to help delegates complete the reports if necessary.
