Scope & investment · Anonymised case study
Making a reporting pilot testable before committing to integrations
What can a reporting pilot prove before committing to automated integration?
The situation
A reporting initiative had a useful business objective, but uncertain integrations were making scope, effort and pricing difficult to establish.
My contribution
I proposed starting with the operational reports the business already used. We could bring representative files into an initial workflow, examine what useful information could be produced, and identify which integrations would actually justify investment.
My reasoning
I was deliberately accepting a manual step at the beginning. Automating data movement only becomes valuable when we understand the information, its quality and the decisions it needs to support. A bounded manual process could help answer those questions before committing to a larger technical programme.
The commercial scope
I also challenged the commercial scope: the initial commitment needed to correspond to defined use cases and capacity, with additional work prompting a fresh discussion.
What changed
The team agreed the starting approach and a request for representative data. Delivery, adoption and financial benefit were still to be demonstrated.