Harvest Real-time Reporting and Information software provides a web based reporting system that facilitates the automation of scheduled and immediate reporting by dispersed entities (units, agencies, etc) to parent entities (HQ) and above in a chosen organisation. Entities throughout the organisation maintain current status of designated capabilities and capability elements to provide a view of their preparedness to undertake assigned tasks. Entity levels are not limited (can extend to lowest or highest  levels).

Harvest software enables a change to traditional reporting paradigms from “deliberately create a scheduled report each nominated period (normally MS Word or Excel)” to “maintain current information, and automatically submit the required report”. Harvest automates the report submission process, allows visibility of organisational units current status, and removes the need for email submission of reports. Reports from child entities are automatically aggregated at the parent level.

Example Application

Harvest has been tailored for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Combat Support Group (CSG) to automate weekly and immediate reporting of unit preparedness against defined levels of capability (DLOC).

For RAAF CSG, Harvest promotes a change of paradigm from a manual system of raising weekly reports at the designated time (an impost on limited staff) to an automated system whereby current status of the entity is maintained continually, and then is submitted as the weekly report with associated comments. In addition to reporting against capability status, issues in relation to any capability can be raised by entities. Issues become part of the data set that compiles the weekly report. To create the weekly report, Harvest takes a snap-shot of current status data, and imports that data set into the weekly report format. Thus, as current status is maintained on a continual basis, submission of the weekly report is simply a process of “create, submit”. An important feature of the Harvest system is to reduce the practical burden on staff to provide weekly and daily reports.

(Slideshow of Harvest Example Application)

Process Synopsis: Firstly the unit, wing and CSCC (Combat Support Coordination Centre) level entities maintain current status of nominated reporting elements or capabilities. Secondly, unit HQ or BCP level entities create the weekly report (snap-shot of current status), then submit the report. At any time the Wing level entity is able to view subordinate reports prior to or after submission, or to view the current status of units under command. Thirdly, the Wing level entity creates it’s own report for submission to the CSCC. The Wing report is an automated aggregation of subordinate unit reports. At the CSCC level, the CSCC weekly report is an aggregation of Wing level and HQCSG reports. At any point the reporting hierarchy allows parent entities to drill down to and view the detail of subordinate entities.

Immediate Reporting: Harvest enables immediate reporting against changes to status of prescribed capabilities and capability elements. A number of capability elements, and the status thereof, have been designated by CSG for immediate reporting should a change to the status of that capability be made (eg fuel status, airfield status, expeditionary capabilities, etc). In that event, Harvest generates an immediate notification (Alert) to all parent entities and to the initiating entity itself. Immediate alerts and any issues raised in respect of a capability are held in the database to create a history against the capability and thus the entity.

Harvest is supported by a relational SQL 2005 database. As such, all reporting elements, comments and data are held in the Db for retrieval, analysis, query and ad hoc reporting.