Reporting FAQs
- What does ‘reporting’ mean? What sort of reports will I be able to see?
- I heard Discoverer will probably no longer be needed – is that right?
- What approach is the Great Service Programme taking to manage the risks we face- especially our external reporting including the REF return?
Reporting is the ability to easily get the required information from the application in the required format.
We are currently collating reporting requirements from across the organisation. The new system will have pre-built reports that should satisfy business needs.
We will also be looking at supporting current Power BI reports and multi-source reports.
Discoverer is a reporting tool used with ICIS the current Finance, HR and Projects system. A lot of areas, use other reporting tools available within ICIS or use PowerBI instead, but still used for some reporting. Discoverer is old and won't need be used with the new system as the it comes with much better reporting tools and dashboards that we will use instead.However, we will need to be able to report on the historic data that is in ICIS - the intention is to archive this with an archival tool with pre-built reports. So Discoverer will no longer be usable or needed.
We carry out regular risk reviews across the programme to keep abreast of potential risks and make sure that we mitigate for them and use our reporting and governance to escalate any risks early. Part of the challenge is ensuring we know what is going on across the university and we are working hard to raise our profile through engagement so we can pick up on any potential dependencies such as REF return. With regards to REF specifically, the benefit of having a team drawn from departments, Research Office and central teams across Imperial, is that we have been directly approached by the group leading on this work and will continue to maintain a relationship with the REF group as this programme progresses to align and support this important work. We are pleased to have Process Outcome Designers on the programme from across the university who have lived experience of how people currently use our system and what is needed moving forward.