Report estate rationalization for cities and counties

Most municipal reporting catalogs are far larger than the set of reports anyone actually uses. We inventory the whole estate, prove which reports run and which do not, and hand you a prioritized keep, consolidate, or retire plan. Fixed fee, roughly two weeks, purely diagnostic.

Why report catalogs get out of hand

Report estates grow by accretion. A custom report is written for a question someone had in 2016, a vendor upgrade copies the whole tree to a new folder, a migration copies it again, and staff who knew which copy mattered move on. Nothing in the system tells you what is safe to stop maintaining, so everything gets carried forward — and every future upgrade, conversion, or platform change is priced against the full catalog instead of the reports you truly depend on.

A large share of the catalog is already self-labeled "archived", "backup", "old", or "do not use" — and nobody can say which of those are safe to delete.
Almost nothing has been modified in years. Reports were bulk-migrated once and left alone.
The same report exists in two or three parallel folder trees, left behind by database renames, upgrades, or a hosted migration.
Staff run a handful of reports daily and no one knows what the rest of the catalog is for.
Turnover took the institutional memory with it, and the catalog is now the only documentation.

How the engagement runs

1. Catalog pull

We read your report server catalog through its supported API — every item, path, type, owner, and modified date. Read-only, no changes to your environment, and no report content leaves your control unless you ask for it.

2. Usage evidence

We pull the report server execution log so every recommendation rests on measured runs rather than a guess. This is the step that turns "this looks unused" into "this has not run in 18 months."

3. Classification and de-duplication

Reports are grouped into families — general ledger, payroll, utility billing, accounts payable, budget, licensing — then collapsed to distinct names so duplicate trees and near-identical variants show up as one item each.

4. Findings and plan

You get the inventory, the evidence, and a prioritized plan your finance, IT, and department leads can act on — including which consolidations pay back fastest and what your genuine legacy-format exposure actually is.

What you receive

Complete report inventory — every report, dataset, folder, and data source in the catalog, exported to a spreadsheet you keep.
Active vs. archived classification with the evidence behind each call, plus last-modified age bands.
Duplicate-tree map — which reports exist in more than one location, and which copy is the live one.
Run-frequency evidence pulled from the report server execution log: what actually ran, how often, and by whom.
Distinct-report count — the real number of reports you maintain, after near-duplicates are collapsed.
Consolidation shortlist — clusters where one parameterized report can replace several near-identical ones.
True legacy-format exposure — a counted split of SSRS vs. Crystal vs. other, so remediation is sized on evidence.
Prioritized keep / consolidate / retire plan with effort and impact for each recommendation.

What this engagement does not include

This is a diagnostic engagement. It tells you where you stand and what to do next. Build work is scoped separately once you have decided what is worth building.

Rebuilding, converting, or re-platforming reports
Deleting or decommissioning anything in your environment
Dashboards, portals, or sample rebuilt reports

Size the real problem before you buy a conversion

Legacy report formats reach end of support on a vendor's schedule, and the usual response is to quote a conversion across the entire catalog. That number is almost always wrong in both directions. Part of the estate has usually been migrated to a current format already, so it needs no conversion at all — and a large share of what remains is duplicated, archived, or unused, so it should be retired rather than converted. We count what is genuinely at risk before anyone signs a per-report conversion price.

Access we need from you

Read access to the report server catalog — either a service account or a working browser session with a staff member.
Read access to the report server execution log, so run frequency is measured rather than assumed. If that access is not available, we will tell you what it would take to get it and what the findings lose without it.
A 30-minute kickoff with whoever owns finance reporting, plus one closing review.

Frequently asked questions

What is report estate rationalization?

It is a diagnostic review of every report on your report server: what exists, what is duplicated, what actually runs, and what can be retired. The output is a full inventory plus a prioritized keep, consolidate, or retire plan — not rebuilt reports.

How do you prove a report is unused instead of guessing?

We pull the report server execution log, which records each report run with a timestamp and user. That converts "this looks unused" into a measured statement such as "this report has not run in 18 months." Where that access is unavailable, we say so plainly and flag which conclusions are weaker as a result.

How many reports does a typical city actually maintain?

Far fewer than the catalog implies. It is common for roughly half of a municipal catalog to be self-labeled archived or backup copies, and for the remaining active reports to collapse to a much smaller set of distinct reports once duplicate folder trees and near-identical variants are merged.

Do we need this before a Crystal Reports conversion?

Yes — this is the step that sizes the conversion honestly. Many municipal estates have already been migrated to SSRS, so a catalog-wide conversion quote can overstate the work by a wide margin, while other reports should be retired rather than converted. We count genuine legacy-format exposure before anyone signs a per-report price.

What does a report estate rationalization cost?

A fixed fee of $4,500, delivered in roughly two weeks. It is purely diagnostic: no reports are rebuilt, converted, or deleted inside that fee. Any remediation work is scoped and priced separately after you have seen the findings.

Which report platforms do you cover?

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) catalogs behind Tyler Munis, EnerGov (EPL), and related municipal systems, including vendor-hosted report servers, plus Crystal Reports inventories and the spreadsheet reports that grow up alongside them.

Find out how many reports you actually run

Tell us which report server you are on. We will confirm the access needed and scope the engagement.