Reporting & Analytics Focus Groups: Sifting through the pros and cons

The Reporting & Analytics team has shared lots of updates in the blog and with the FST governance groups (see past blog pieces here), and by now you've probably heard of the Reporting & Analytics focus group that has been meeting to review and provide feedback on reports.

Just to recap, the primary charge of the focus group is:

• to  make sure Workday Financials reports meet user requirements
• to share user perspectives with the Reporting & Analytics team
• to understand the differences that can be expected between UBI and Workday

We caught up with Linda Leshowitz, who, in addition to being involved with the focus groups, is also a UBI trainer and a member of the FST training team, and encouraged her to expand on what the focus group's activities mean for users at large.

Leshowitz says the team's priority is to get the basic transactional reports required in Workday Financials in a state where they're useful and add value.  

The cross-section of users in the focus group means that perspectives are wide, yet the group's overall size is small enough to maintain good dialogue. 

"At this point, we've had UBI for over five years, and people have become very accustomed to it.  They want to make sure what they can do in UBI can be done in Workday Financials -- or at least something similar to it," says Leshowitz.

Leshowitz echoes what Reporting & Analytics Team Lead Mark Anderson has mentioned before in governance groups, that when users compare reporting in UBI and Workday, there are some big differences, and both platforms have their strengths and weaknesses.

Workday, Leshowitz points out, offers real-time data in one system, with one place where you can do your tasks, approvals, and reports.  Within Workday, users also have the ability to drill down into specific items to get details regarding a transaction, something that can't be done in UBI.  On the other hand, UBI is a business intelligence platform, a highly customizable one at that. 

 "The things you need are going to be available to you in Workday," says Leshowitz, "we all just need to recognize that it won't look exactly the same or be accessed the same."

"The focus group has met only three times," she continues, "and already I think it's been an excellent group, candid with feedback, open-minded, and sharing with us the information we need to understand what's going to make the reports useful for them."