Project Reporting Challenges in Company X’s Americas Region
Kontola, Tuomas (2015)
Kontola, Tuomas
HAAGA-HELIA ammattikorkeakoulu
2015
All rights reserved
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201502252575
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201502252575
Tiivistelmä
The aim of this bachelor’s thesis was to research how project reporting is executed in Company X’s Americas region and how the results of the reporting process end up to the directors responsible for the whole region’s project management. Moreover, the objective was to observe the current challenges in the region’s project reporting and suggest improvements for the future needs. This study especially focused on the project reporting process and the actual contents of reports are outside the scope of this study.
The theoretical framework introduces management reporting and project management in detail. The purpose is to provide an understanding of what projects are, how they are managed and reported to the project management.
The study uses a qualitative research method approach and a case study method for research data collection. The study was conducted in autumn 2014 and the empirical data were collected in two parts through four thematic interviews, and by researching the case company’s internal and external material. Three interviews were held in October 2014 in Company X Canada at the Burlington office and one in November 2014 at the company’s headquarters in Espoo, Finland.
The key findings of the study indicate that Company X’s Americas region’s project reporting is currently in a developmental phase. The findings showed that the interviewees in the Americas region observed challenges in the project report preparing process. Challenges were mainly technical as the actual filling of the project data to the project reports raised concerns as the preparing process was illustrated too manually and time-consuming. The interview in Finland declared that project reports have to be prepared mostly manually because the quality of the added project data in the SAP system is not good enough and all the needed data is not necessary available, which makes the automation process difficult. Due to this, Company X has recently started a delivery excellence program in Espoo, of which one purpose is to globally harmonize and automate the company’s project reporting in the future.
The researcher sees the approach taken by Company X to be too much focused on fixing the need for manual filling of project reports and more emphasis should be put into the quality of project data. Automating the project report filling process does not remove the underlying cause related to the varying data input practices around the region. Unreliability of the project data and financial figures in project reports diminishes the benefits of analysing the project reports.
The theoretical framework introduces management reporting and project management in detail. The purpose is to provide an understanding of what projects are, how they are managed and reported to the project management.
The study uses a qualitative research method approach and a case study method for research data collection. The study was conducted in autumn 2014 and the empirical data were collected in two parts through four thematic interviews, and by researching the case company’s internal and external material. Three interviews were held in October 2014 in Company X Canada at the Burlington office and one in November 2014 at the company’s headquarters in Espoo, Finland.
The key findings of the study indicate that Company X’s Americas region’s project reporting is currently in a developmental phase. The findings showed that the interviewees in the Americas region observed challenges in the project report preparing process. Challenges were mainly technical as the actual filling of the project data to the project reports raised concerns as the preparing process was illustrated too manually and time-consuming. The interview in Finland declared that project reports have to be prepared mostly manually because the quality of the added project data in the SAP system is not good enough and all the needed data is not necessary available, which makes the automation process difficult. Due to this, Company X has recently started a delivery excellence program in Espoo, of which one purpose is to globally harmonize and automate the company’s project reporting in the future.
The researcher sees the approach taken by Company X to be too much focused on fixing the need for manual filling of project reports and more emphasis should be put into the quality of project data. Automating the project report filling process does not remove the underlying cause related to the varying data input practices around the region. Unreliability of the project data and financial figures in project reports diminishes the benefits of analysing the project reports.