Firm Found Only 94 of 640 Monthly Reports Were Ever Opened by Anyone

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A company discovered it was generating 640 scheduled reports monthly across four tools when a vendor quote, priced per report, prompted a first-ever count. Over a quarter, only 94 of those reports were actually opened by a human, while some were delivered to distribution lists containing former employees. Two analysts spent significant weekly hours maintaining the reporting estate, and around 40 reports were sending sensitive salary or customer data to groups no longer authorised to receive it. The team sent a renewal-style notice requiring recipients to confirm what they still needed, with silence treated as cancellation, resulting in 420 reports being stopped and only 19 complaints. All surviving reports now have a named owner, a recorded purpose, and an expiry date, and the eventual platform migration cost a third of the original quote by excluding redundant reports.

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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