Improving the Reporting Practice in Project Delivery of Offshoring Projects
Loponen, Mika (2015)
Loponen, Mika
Metropolia Ammattikorkeakoulu
2015
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201505158244
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201505158244
Tiivistelmä
This thesis investigates reporting practice in the case company and proposes improvements on it. The case company uses offshore for project operations and recently use of offshoring has been increased significantly. Due to growth in offshore operations some reporting practices has not been developed accordingly.
The research method of this thesis was action research due to its cyclical and qualitative nature, which was considered to serve best the needs of this study. The research design includes five steps, where the business problem identification, the current state analysis and the conceptual framework combines an input for building and finalizing the proposal.
As a result of the current state analysis, three main challenges were identified in order to form conceptual framework, and further on, to build the proposal for the case company. The challenges were categorized into three logical questions related to the more general problems of reporting for further examination in the literature. The categorized questions were: a) what to report, b) how and when to report, and c) by what means to report.
The outcome of this thesis is the improvement proposal on reporting practices in the project delivery of the case company. The proposal identifies three problematic areas in reporting practice in the case company and suggests the improvement proposal, including the action plan, on each of them.
The suggested improvements on the current reporting practice includes: First, the new weekly report template for offshore reporting. This report template serves the project team as well as the customer. The report template creates the conditions for more formal and uniform reporting between onsite and offshore and saves time as part of the data can be reused further on when reporting the status to other reporting lines. Second, the improvement suggestions to the project accounting tool in order to ease the use of the tool, to confirm the accuracy of data provided by the tool and to align data from the tool with the current health check report of the case company. Third, to improve the current financial report by adding few additional data fields into the report in order to ease use of the report and save time.
The outcome of this thesis helps the case company to clarify their reporting practices. The case company may benefit from the results of this thesis by more uniform, more accurate and time saving reporting practice.
The research method of this thesis was action research due to its cyclical and qualitative nature, which was considered to serve best the needs of this study. The research design includes five steps, where the business problem identification, the current state analysis and the conceptual framework combines an input for building and finalizing the proposal.
As a result of the current state analysis, three main challenges were identified in order to form conceptual framework, and further on, to build the proposal for the case company. The challenges were categorized into three logical questions related to the more general problems of reporting for further examination in the literature. The categorized questions were: a) what to report, b) how and when to report, and c) by what means to report.
The outcome of this thesis is the improvement proposal on reporting practices in the project delivery of the case company. The proposal identifies three problematic areas in reporting practice in the case company and suggests the improvement proposal, including the action plan, on each of them.
The suggested improvements on the current reporting practice includes: First, the new weekly report template for offshore reporting. This report template serves the project team as well as the customer. The report template creates the conditions for more formal and uniform reporting between onsite and offshore and saves time as part of the data can be reused further on when reporting the status to other reporting lines. Second, the improvement suggestions to the project accounting tool in order to ease the use of the tool, to confirm the accuracy of data provided by the tool and to align data from the tool with the current health check report of the case company. Third, to improve the current financial report by adding few additional data fields into the report in order to ease use of the report and save time.
The outcome of this thesis helps the case company to clarify their reporting practices. The case company may benefit from the results of this thesis by more uniform, more accurate and time saving reporting practice.