Your reporting problem is not always a reporting problem.

The uncomfortable part

Late reports usually look like a missing tool. Most of the time the cause is somewhere else.

• The same metric has more than one definition.

  Invoiced revenue or collected? Returns deducted or not? When every department calculates with its own definition, the meeting is spent on which number is right instead of on the decision.

• The data sources don't talk to each other.

  When ERP, CRM, the e-commerce platform and Excel files sit apart, every report means merging by hand. That costs time and carries a new risk of error every time.

• Plenty of reports, few decisions.

  If the reporting setup produces pages of tables but never says which number should trigger which decision, the problem is focus, not speed. An unnecessary report produced faster is still unnecessary.

I will tell you early which of these applies. If it turns out you don't need a dashboard, I will tell you that too.

▶ When you should not hire me for this

If any of these is true for you, let's not start this engagement:

• You have one source and a few reports.

  A well-built spreadsheet or your software's own reports may be enough. Building infrastructure would be an unnecessary cost.

• The problem is the decision process, not the data.

  If the numbers are right but nobody acts on them, that is a management issue. A better dashboard won't fix it.

• You need someone to produce reports permanently.

  That is an analyst hire. I build the setup and hand it over; I don't produce reports on an ongoing basis.

• Access to the source systems can't be given.

  Nothing can be automated without access to the data. Access has to be settled up front.

▶ Questions and answers