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Reporting Ideas:

Does This Reporting Strategy
Make Any Sense to You?

Help-wanted ads like the one below reveal a clear corporate strategy about business
reporting. It's an information strategy that few companies can afford today.

by Charley Kyd
January, 2009

I recently read this help-wanted message at LinkedIn.com:

The reporting system is a critical information resource for every company. Good reports reveal problems and opportunities that bad reports hide. Good reports give managers quick insight; bad reports waste managers' time.

It's only a slight over-statement to say that the only things that managers know about their company they learned by reading their reports.

But the help-wanted message tells us that a company is looking for a "Report Writer" who...

• Doesn't need any knowledge of the company's industry.
  
• Doesn't need any training in the profession (finance, economics, marketing, statistics, etc.) that will use the reports.
  
• Doesn't need any understanding about the company itself, or its problems, products, plans, or limitations.

In fact, the only thing this company needs from their "Report Writer" is skill in using the tools that generate the report.

That's like hiring screenwriters for German movies by interviewing Americans who type fast. It's like hiring a mechanic from Rome to work as a cab driver in London.

At best, that "Report Writer" will prepare online "reports" that offer graphically intensive ways to query the corporate database. They'll be a pretty version of the many binders of printouts that we used when I was a young accountant working at Hewlett-Packard. Those reports might even summarize the entire database, presenting key numbers in several really cute, 3D, multi-color speedometer gauges.

But they WON'T deliver business INTELLIGENCE to the organization!

Instead, if managers want intelligent information about their company, they need to rely more on the brains of the Excel users who already work for them. Those smart, hard-working people already understand the nature of the information that their managers need.

When those knowledge workers prepare reports, they need fewer instructions from their manager; they can ask intelligent questions; they can research related topics to answer questions the manager hadn't thought to ask; they can suggest additional sources of data that the manager didn't know was available. In short, they can use their brains to help the manager succeed.

What most Excel users don't understand is how to present their information clearly. Most Excel reports, unfortunately, offer less insight than tax tables.

That's what Excel dashboard reporting is all about. Here are two short articles that address these ideas from slightly different points of view:

• When Should Large Companies Use 'Real' Dashboards And Excel Dashboard Reports?
• Which Offers More Business Insight? Dashboards? Or Normal Excel Reports?

Today's mail also included the following note from a customer in Russia. Although his English isn't perfect, he clearly describes the problem that most Excel users have with their reporting.

My only quibble with this note is that "beautiful" is an oversimplification. Instead, I would say that Excel reports need to be quick and easy for managers to read. Giving managers attractive reports helps to achieve that goal, but other elements are just as important. I touch on this distinction in both articles, Which Business Dashboards Are Best? and Which Offers More Business Insight?.

The Excel Dashboard Digest home page provides information about ways to improve the quality of your Excel reports. Doing so will help your company make better use of smart Excel users -- like you -- who already work there.