Creating a report can be a daunting process, especially when it could be shared across multiple departments and or with Senior Managers or C-level executives. So it’s important to make sure you take into account the below questions before you create a report. This will ensure that you can set up a robust and insightful report for your audience.
A few key questions you need to ask yourself to create a best in-class report:
Are there any other reports already available that you can leverage?
Often there exist reports within an organisation that you might not know about, ask around to see if there are any past reports which you can leverage, or if there is someone else who already uses a similar report that you require. This will save you a lot of time when you create your new report. It will give you a good start point to work from.
Who is going to be viewing the report?
Depending on what level of seniority the report will be going to (a C-level Executive, Senior Management, or everyday user) will determine what information you require in the report. Everyday users will need more detailed information than a C-level executive. C-level executives have very little time in their day and the last thing they need is to try and interpret hundreds of lines in a report. Instead, they would require a summary report, clear and succinct in a visually appealing format to get the key data points across quickly.
What information needs to be included to create a report?
Once you know who will receive the report, you then need to identify what information will be included in the report. You will need to get the input of the person receiving the report to identify what data points are most important to them (and as a result, what decisions they will make based on the report). Tip: before you create the report, set up a draft version of what the report will look like and send it out to get feedback. Doing this will save you a lot of time in making any changes to the report structure after you have already created it.
Do you need to create a dynamic or custom report?
A dynamic report means that your report is refreshable with little or no manual intervention. A Custom report means that you need to manually make changes to your report with every refresh. The trade-off is being able to identify the cost of creating a timely dynamic report vs the benefit received to have this information sooner and error-free.
How often does your report need to be refreshed?
The more dynamic your report is, the quicker and easier it will be to refresh it regularly. If the report will be used to make once-off business-critical decisions, you probably won’t need to refresh the report very often. If the report aims to monitor stock levels or production efficiency, it’s important to build the report dynamically and have it refreshed on a cyclical basis. It all depends on the decisions that you are going to make and how often you can make these decisions, based on the information in the report.
Other questions to consider when you create a report:
- How is the data going to be gathered/collected?
- Do you need to make database enhancements to store/collect the data?
- Do you need to quality check the data before you start working on it?
- How will you ensure that the quality check encompasses the whole report?
- Will individual users be able to adjust the report?
Other questions to consider after setting up the report:
- Who will have access to the report (data security)?
- When will the report be distributed to the recipients?
- What format will the report be shared in (Excel, PDF, PPT, etc.)?
- Who decides on any changes or maintenance that could be needed?
- How are the changes going to be documented?
- How often are changes going to be made (restrict frequency of changes)?
We hope you have found this article useful and that at least one of these questions will help you create a better report for your business. Please get in touch if you would like to learn more about how we can assist you with your business reporting requirements.