By Reed Meyer, VP Professional Services
Ever wonder who reads the reports that you generate every week?
Ever wonder what would happen if you didn’t send them?
Sometimes you are surprised when the report is not sent, on who pings you with the question of where is the report? Sometimes it is a peer who you’ve forgotten was even on the distribution list. If you don’t send it and no one notices or inquires, that is a pretty good indication that no one is relying on the information to make decisions to drive the organization.
The benefit of report automation is that it frees up analyst time to focus on other things. The dark side of report automation includes that the reports usually come with few, if any, insights, and that they become routine and ignored. Often reports that “show up in our inbox” as we requested go unopened week to week disappearing below higher priorities
Here are some tips on how to go from simply delivering reports to delivering insights that people actually will pay attention to. In the process, you’ll be very likely improve your value to the organization.
- First, think about exception-based reporting as a basis for automation. By establishing statistical thresholds and limits to the numbers of the reports, inbox content can be limited only to those times when someone needs to pay attention, rather than the repetitive, uniform delivery schedule. Even false positives, if limited in number, can trigger people to open and review the report more often than the automated weekly or daily delivery.
- Second, the best use of report automation is to send the report to you first, and then to allow enough time for you to digest the information and extract any insights or conduct further research.
- Third, the key with any report or dashboard is to tell a story with the data. Call attention to those things that people should review or be made aware of. Use a monochrome or simple color scheme throughout with the exception of the trend, graph, or data that you wish to highlight. For that, use a bold eye catching color so that when the report is opened, the reader is drawn directly to what is important. Remember to highlight both positive and negative changes.
From there, develop the story. Anticipate the questions the audience should immediately ask of the data that you highlighted. What does that mean? What was the cause? What is the magnitude of the impact? Is this a trend or one time occurrence? What additional data or investigation is warranted? Who else can provide color commentary or insights? What actions should be taken or decisions made from the analysis? Gather those answers and have them ready when you send the data.
Keep in mind that not every change warrants a full investigation. For smaller changes, do what you can quickly, but don’t waste more resources investigating than the change is worth. For larger changes, spend the time to tell the story proactively and you’ll be super star.
