Reporting is one of the areas where companies spend the most hours for the least effect. Not because the numbers do not matter, but because the way they are gathered and shared is rarely designed around how people actually make decisions. Here are five signs that is the case with you.
1. The report is produced at a fixed time, but read whenever someone gets to it
If the Monday report is typically opened on Wednesday, it is two days old by the time it is used. Then the question is whether it needs to be weekly at all — or whether it should be daily and shorter.
2. One person gathers the numbers, and everyone waits for them
That is the most common bottleneck. As soon as the report depends on one particular person pulling data from three systems and putting it together, it is both fragile and slow.
Automate the gathering
It is rarely the numbers that are hard — it is collecting them from three places.
Pin the definitions down
Agree what revenue means before building something that displays it.
Give access rather than exports
When someone can see the number themselves, half the requests disappear.
3. Management asks for numbers instead of being able to see them
Every time someone writes "could you just pull the figures for...", it is a sign the figures should have been available without asking.
4. The report contains everything, so nobody can see what matters
Twelve charts on one page means none of them gets read. A good report shows what has changed, and keeps the rest for those who want to dig.
5. Nobody remembers why a particular column is there
It happens in every report more than a year old. Someone asked for a number once, it got added, and now it is maintained out of habit. Once a year someone should ask of each part of the report: who uses this, and for what?