Do you need a SSRS Developer for your company?
There are lots of considerations when thinking about the type of SSRS Developer you want to produce your custom SQL Server Reporting Services reports. In this article, Reporting Guru discusses various aspects of SSRS Development and getting the custom reports you need.
Hire Full time or Use As Needed?
Most of the time companies have a subset of reports needed or a general report architecture put in place. After that initial hump, there is no need to pay someone 40 hours per week. An average SSRS Developer salary is $92,000 per year. That isn’t including benefits and taxes. A company like Reporting Guru can come in and knock out your reporting needs for a fraction of that. Then you can just use as needed without the extra FTE overhead. For example, we just had a client that had various DBase data sources and needed one central report system. We setup the system with a central SQL database and built the initial reports they needed. Now they just use us periodically to modify reports or build a new report. They saved a lot of money by not hiring a full time resource.
SSRS Developer Questions and Tips
The report building process is iterative and takes a lot of great communication. Whatever developer you use, you need someone who can communicate very well. Outsourcing report development outside of the U.S. just doesn’t work. Here are some general question
- Get specifications on paper. A picture or even a napkin is worth a thousand words. Use Excel, PDF, Word, scanned document…etc, but have the end user put something on paper as a starting point. Then you can meet or ask questions based upon that. This eliminates guessing and decreases development time.
- What format is the final report going to be in? An 8.5 x 11 PDF for printing? Export to Excel? Mobile device? View on the web only? How important is the formatting? Do you just need to see the data or is this a report that needs to be pretty as you are giving to a client? These questions are EXTREMELY important.
- What is the data source? A relational database such as SQL Server, MySQL, or Oracle? Or is a file based system? Will there need to be special drivers to get to the data?
- Are there existing custom reports in place? Maybe you can start with one of the existing custom reports to start development on the new reports. Putting some type of report template in place that you can start all reports from is extremely helpful.
- Communication is key!! There needs to be some type of Project Management system in place to capture all communication around each report. Reporting Guru’s system is great for reports as each Report is a Task with Notes under that Task.
Check out this video in which Aaron Browne gives an overview of SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS):
Reporting Guru has SSRS Developers that can write your custom reports as needed. We do not charge minimums and do not have a retainer. To discuss your SSRS Developer needs or business requirements, give us a call at 1-800-921-4759, fill out our contact form, or email us at info@ReportingGuru.com