Reporting, rationalized.
From 15,000 reports to a single source of truth. A usage-driven rationalization that cut report sprawl by more than 90%, aligned the business on one set of KPIs, and rebuilt trust in the numbers so data actually got used again.
Report sprawl, and an atrophied muscle
A decade-old Cognos platform had turned into report sprawl: more than 15,000 weekly and monthly operations and finance reports, heavily customized, with little quality control or KPI management. Different teams owned near-duplicate reports and built downstream processes on their own datasets, so nothing tied out. Trust in the numbers eroded, retrieval got expensive, and the analytics muscle atrophied. When data is sprawling and hard to trust, people simply stop using it.
Market and corporate leadership measured outcomes differently and pulled in different directions. The organization did not need more reports. It needed a shared, trusted view of the business.
Inventory, classify, rebuild, govern
Count what is actually used
Pull real server logs, not opinions, to see execution frequency, unique views, and the true active-consumer list for every report.
Four dispositions, one rule set
Every report is scored on usage and overlap, then sorted to Retire, Consolidate, Modernize, or Retain, on evidence rather than politics.
One aligned KPI set
At a global workforce solutions firm, roughly 50 KPIs across sales, operations, delivery, and finance, cascaded from brand to market and delivered weekly in Tableau.
Governance that holds
Naming conventions, creation policy, and periodic access reviews so the sprawl does not simply grow back.
The rationalization method
1Catalog every asset
Extract metadata, data sources, and dependencies across every BI platform, spreadsheet, and reporting tool, and map each report to a business owner, creator, and process group.
2Pull hard usage
Pull server logs to capture actual execution frequency, unique views, and active consumer lists over the past 6 to 12 months. Evidence, not opinion.
3Assess relevance and overlap
Interview stakeholders to separate reports that drive active decisions from legacy habit, and compare underlying metrics, filters, and dimensions to flag redundant or near-identical reports.
4Assign a disposition
Sort every report into one of four actions: Retire (no usage or duplicated), Consolidate (merge overlapping KPIs into one dashboard), Modernize (high value, needs an upgrade), or Retain (unique, high-frequency, business-critical).
5Build target state, validate parity
Rebuild consolidated semantic models and clean official dashboards on the primary platform, and validate new outputs against legacy for exact metric alignment before cutting access.
6Govern to stay clean
Enforce strict creation policies, naming conventions, and periodic access reviews so the reporting clutter does not grow back.
Retire, consolidate, modernize, retain
Every report plotted by real usage against uniqueness and value, and auto-sorted into one of four dispositions. Filter by function and click any report for its usage, overlap, and recommended action. An interactive reconstruction.
Under 1,000 reports, and trust restored
Rationalization cut the Cognos footprint from more than 15,000 reports to under 1,000, anchored by roughly 50 aligned KPIs delivered weekly in Tableau to market and brand leadership. Business performance improved across several KPIs, including gross profit, and North America became the model for data-driven performance management. I ran a similar Workday-focused effort at a Fortune 25 health insurer, reducing about 1,400 reports to around 500.
Whether you’re modernizing people analytics, deploying AI responsibly at scale, or sharpening product and market strategy, I’d be glad to talk.
The portfolio and reports shown here are an illustrative reconstruction using synthetic data. This work was completed while employed at a global workforce solutions firm and a Fortune 25 health insurer; the production reporting environments remain the property of those companies.