BI reports are a snapshot of your success. They condense massive amounts of performance data into a clear and digestible format. In doing so, they highlight the key indicators and most important takeaways. Simply stated, BI reports keep decision makers focused on what matters most. At least they are supposed to.
Almost every company with BI produces reports of some kind. A recent survey showed that reporting is one of the top five applications for BI in 2018. However, problems arise when the reports themselves are underwhelming. They are intended to guide decision making and inform key judgments. Instead, they create confusion, uncertainty, and even chaos.
Instead of focusing on what characterizes a bad BI report, we will focus on a good one. Certain best practices lead to better reports, and specific features make those reports a lot more valuable. If you want to generate BI reports with real impact, use these techniques:
- Understand Your Reporting Requirements – It’s not enough to say that BI reports are necessary and valuable. They need to exist for a specific purpose that is clearly defined. Before running any report, identify its goal, scope, and intended audience. You may even want to talk to this audience to learn what they except from the report. Remember, the best reports are the ones that serve the needs of the end user.
- Select KPIs and Metrics – The scope of reporting is the best and worst thing about it. You can report on almost anything, yet your goal is to answer specific questions and solve explicit problems. Decide what KPIs and metrics related to those goals. Then build your BI reports around the facts and figures that matter most.
- Rely on Visualizations – Numbers are hard to read, especially when they are surrounded by other numbers. Instead of relying on spreadsheets, turn your KPIs into visualizations. They could be simple charts and graphs or sophisticated data maps. Expressing the information visually helps put it into context while making reports easier to consume and remember.
- Design Your Layout – Everything on the page is important, but our brains don’t see it that way. We naturally tend to perceive information in the top left quadrant as important. In the bottom right quadrant, it’s perceived as unimportant. Keep this simple insight in mind when deciding how to layout your BI reports.
- Accentuate the Important – Don’t rely on readers to identify the most important information. Instead, bring it to their attention using highlighting, underlining, or emphasizing. Using color and other highly-visual elements is a great way to attract attention away from the irrelevant and towards the important.
- Organize for Understanding – Lots of metrics only make sense in context. Keep this in mind when deciding how to group and organize various elements. It typically makes sense to put related metrics in proximity. A pro tip is to organize them hierarchically with the most important information at the top and displayed in color.
- Get Approval First – Hopefully you have a tool that makes BI reporting easy. For example, ThoughtSpot offers business intelligence reporting that instantly creates data visualizations when answer ad hoc questions. With tools like this, it’s hassle-free to change and revise reports before distributing them. You can get reports reviewed in advance, then make whatever changes the users want before the final report is complete. In the best case, the end users themselves can make the changes.
There is no such thing as a perfect BI report. Everyone looks different, and that is exactly the point. Business decision-making is too complex and consequential for there to be a catch-all solution. Every company has to find out what works for them in terms of reporting. Therefore, the best asset is a reporting tool that is flexible, fast, and user-friendly. It doesn’t force you into rigid reporting. Instead, it gives your data a voice to tell the whole story in vivid detail.
