The Company

An established firm of London city centre surveyors who managed rent collection and building utilities for corporate investors.

The problem

In common with many large businesses different types of computer systems were in use in all parts of the business which had different operating systems. This gave rise to data being saved in different formats.

We now use the term digital data because we have a common standard so that all data can be written and saved in a common format.

In this case, our initial challenge was to retrieve data from a Unix based operating system and convert it into a format that could be read by a PC or a Apple computer.

The Solution

Our first solution was to write a small application that resided on a PC that read files from Unix data source and converted them into PC format and saved them to the PC. We had created our own digital data!

The Result

By breaking the problem down into different sections we were solving the problem bit by bit. The first success was getting the data into the correct shape.

The second part of the story reveals how we examined the data to producing correct reports on each property.

The Benefits

Data could be delivered quicker without waiting for computer department staff to convert the data for us every month.

A bottleneck every month in waiting for computer staff was done away with.

Firms are seeking to be more efficient by reporting earlier.

All of the features and more found in this bespoke solution are available in our month end reporting tool ConsolReports which totally automates Dashboard reporting and analysis for businesses.