Data Reporting: Types, Benefits, and Examples
Data Reporting: Types, Benefits, and Examples
Why businesses benefit from data reporting
Importance and benefits of data reporting
Types of Data Reports
How to write effective data reports
Data reporting examples & use cases
Data reporting best practices
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Data Reporting: Types, Benefits, and Examples
What is Data Reporting?
Through data reporting, you can collect, organize, and present data in a structured, accessible format. This systematic process involves converting raw data into actionable information that provides valuable insights. These insights can then inform decision-making, leading to better results.
Data reporting is not to be confused with data collection. Data collection is the process of gathering information. Data reporting takes it a step further by interpreting the data, identifying trends, and offering context. Its purpose is to help decision-makers within an organization draw conclusions and take action based on the insights they receive.
For example, a sales leader may use data reporting to help them predict upcoming sales. Raw sales data may contain individual transactions, but the decision-maker can analyze seasonal trends, past performance, and popular product categories to draw conclusions through data reporting.
Why businesses benefit from data reporting
Data reporting can serve as a competitive advantage for your organization, no matter the industry.. It allows you to parse vast amounts of information from disparate sources and make more strategic decisions. The following are some of the biggest benefits data reporting offers businesses:
- Clarity and focus: The challenge today is no longer having too little information but having too much of it to manually interpret. Data reporting can help by distilling massive amounts of complex information into clear, understandable insights.You can draw conclusions and simplifies decision-making to ensure companies focus on the most important takeaways.
- Informed decisions: Instead of relying on guesswork, you can lean on factual, evidence-based information. For example, executives can use financial reporting instead of reviewing raw financial data to effectively plan for future investments. As a result, stakeholders can make smart, confident decisions based on data.
- Strategic alignment: As stakeholders get clarity around informed decision-making, they achieve greater strategic alignment. Data reporting provides a shared understanding of the topic at hand. As a result, teams can collaborate more effectively and achieve their shared objectives.
Compliance and accountability: Industries such as healthcare, finance, and manufacturing rely heavily on accurate data reporting to comply with regulatory requirements. Regulatory bodies often require regular reporting to ensure organizations meet industry standards and legal obligations. Data reporting can provide the required level of detail in an accessible format.
Importance and benefits of data reporting
Every organization collects data on some level. However, much of that will be underutilized, ignored, or forgotten without a structured approach to reporting. With a strong data reporting framework, businesses can unlock the potential of their data. The key is to organize it in a way that supports decision-making and drives performance.
Here are some of the advantages of building structured data reporting into your business:
- Resource optimization: Data reporting is essential for analyzing performance data. Businesses can identify where resources are being underutilized or misallocated. Operational reports can provide insights into staffing patterns and peak times of shoppers for a brick-and-mortar store. The store’s stakeholders can optimize staffing levels to ensure enough coverage during peak times.
- Goal monitoring: Likewise, data reports are useful for tracking progress toward goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). Organizations can see where they’re succeeding and need to improve sales targets, patient engagement scores, or production milestones. By regularly reviewing these reports, teams can adjust, refine tactics, and meet their goals.
- Market adaptability: Your business must regularly adapt to changing customer trends and market conditions. With real-time data reporting, you can nimbly adjust strategies. This information is key to pivoting quickly and meeting demand or other expectations.
- Greater efficiency: Businesses can drive operational efficiency by identifying inefficiencies and bottlenecks. Manufacturing companies can track machine performance data to plan proactive maintenance, which helps avoid unplanned downtime and expensive repairs. Data reporting holds the insights needed to reduce costs and improve results.
- Risk management: One key aspect of effective risk management is pinpointing risks before they have a chance to escalate. Proactive data reporting can help. Organizations are able to detect any early warning signs of problems and take corrective action as needed. This allows for an anticipatory approach to risk management instead of reacting to crises as they arise.
- Improved collaboration: Just as data often exists in silos, departments within businesses often operate in silos. Centralized data reporting allows for greater transparency and alignment. When each department has access to the same data, they can collaborate effectively to achieve shared goals.
- Enhanced customer satisfaction: Data reporting can be used to uncover insights into products, services, and customer interactions. Customer feedback and satisfaction reports are useful sources of insights that can inform data-driven improvements. A company selling Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products may use data reporting to analyze complaints about a feature. This information can be used to prioritize fixes, mitigating any impact on customer satisfaction.
Overall, data reporting is not just a tool for tracking numbers. It is an essential business practice that converts raw, disparate data into valuable business intelligence. Its key benefits include greater clarity, informed decision-making, and strategic alignment across departments. Structured data reporting allows you to improve resource allocation, monitor KPI progress, and pivot on demand.
Types of Data Reports
Not all data reports are the same. Each serves a unique purpose. They can be used to address the needs of specific goals, industries, and stakeholders.
Below, you’ll find the most commonly used type of data reports and use cases as examples:
- Operational reports: Operational data reports share information about daily business operations, track progress, and measure performance. They are often used to uncover issues and improve workflows. For example, a logistics company could use operational reports to track package delivery times across regions. These reports could be used to identify any delays and related inefficiencies in its processes. As a result, the logistics company could optimize delivery routes and reduce transit times.
- Financial reports: Financial reports are often used to assess a business’s financial health. They provide valuable information about revenues, expenses, profit, losses, etc. As for a use case, a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) could use a financial data report to share a breakdown of expenses, revenues, and forecasts to other executives and investors.
- Marketing reports: Likewise, marketing reports evaluate the performance of marketing strategies and campaigns. Common metrics include conversion rates, social media engagement rates, click-through rates, and return on investment (ROI). For example, a marketing team can track the performance of a paid ad campaign on LinkedIn for a B2B audience. They may track the results of different calls to action (CTAs) to determine which is most effective at delivering the desired result.
- Sales reports: Sales reports help you monitor sales pipelines, revenue, and customer acquisition efforts. A SaaS company could track subscription growth through sales reports on a monthly basis. This information would allow them to determine if sales efforts are converting to new customers.
- Compliance reports: Compliance reports are key to tracking progress toward meeting regulatory and legal requirements. For example, a pharmaceutical company can submit compliance reports to a regulatory body such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These reports may contain documentation of clinical trial results and adherence to safety protocols.
- Research reports: On the business side, research reports are quite common in scientific and market research fields. These reports use the compiled and analyzed data to generate findings. One example is a market research report on consumer trends in sustainable products. This report could contain data from surveys and focus groups to analyze consumer behavior and preferences around sustainable products.
- Informational reports: This type of report is a bit different from other data reports in that they present facts and futures without conclusions or recommended courses of action. Instead, these reports keep stakeholders informed on routine metrics. One such example would be a daily sales summary shared with sales leadership containing daily revenue figures, the number of units sold, and a breakdown of performance by region or sales representative.
- Analytical reports: This type of report interprets data, uncovers trends, and provides insights to guide informed decision-making. For example, an analytical report could contain market analysis on consumer buying behavior. A food product company launching a plant-based protein bar could use this information to determine how best to market to its target audience.
- Investigative reports: An investigative report is used to explore a specific issue. It can help uncover causes or determine solutions to the problem at hand. For example, an investigative report would benefit a compliance investigation by uncovering the root cause of a regulatory violation.
- Recommendation reports: These reports provide actionable strategies based on data. A manufacturing company may commission a recommendation report to modernize its operations. The report could propose undergoing a digital transformation project to update and automate processes.
- KPI Reports: KPI reports track performance against specific business goals. They may be presented as a visual dashboard. A sales manager could use a KPI report to track team performance against established monthly targets.
How to write effective data reports
To ensure you’re practicing data reporting rather than data collecting, you need to be able to tell a story through your data to drive actionable insights. The step-by-step guide below will help you write effective, high-quality data reports.
- Know your purpose: our report should have a clear objective. Go into the report with an understanding of what decision the report will ultimately support. Maybe it’s improving resource allocation, converting more leads, or assessing your business’s financial health. Knowing the report’s purpose on the front end will ensure the information is focused and relevant. You’ll have a clearer understanding of what data to include and how to present it. Data reports without a defined purpose are vague and hard to follow, with little long-term impact.
- Know your audience: It’s just as important to know your audience. If your target audience is made up of executives, you may want to present your data report in the form of a high-level summary with key takeaways. For a technical team, drill down into the data analysis and include charts and raw numbers. Knowing your audience is critical to determining the tone, level of detail, and format to use.
- Collect and verify data: The very foundation of your report is reliable, accurate data. Only use sources of clean, trustworthy data. To ensure credibility, you may need to cross-check multiple data sources, verify figures, and root out any errors. Any irregularities or inaccuracies that make their way into the report will undermine its credibility and negatively impact the decisions made from the report.
- Organize information logically: The most effective reports are easy to navigate, understand, and reference. Consider the structure you’ll use and break information into sections. The sections will depend on the type of data report you use, but you may want to include an introduction, data insights, findings, and recommendations if applicable.
- Visualize your data: Numbers are impactful, but visual aids are key to creating a story and adding rich context. You can improve understanding of and engagement with your data report by visualizing the data through graphs, charts, and dashboards. These visualizations will help your audience understand patterns, trends, and metrics.
- Make multiple drafts: Even the most experienced creator of data reports will rely on drafts. Instead of expecting to compile all the information perfectly in one go, plan to refine your efforts over time through drafts. You may want to start with an outline and then build a draft. Finally, you can refine the draft based on stakeholder feedback.
- Go back to your purpose and audience: Reflect on your purpose and audience as you finalize your draft. Make sure you’ve communicated key points and satisfied your target objective. All conclusions should be supported by the data you include.
Data reporting examples & use cases
Data reporting is essential to nearly every industry. For example, in ecommerce, a clothing brand can lean on a sales data report to track performance. This report could contain insights about which products are best-sellers. Inventory levels can then be adjusted to ensure customer satisfaction and demand are met. In healthcare, clinics increasingly rely on data reports to track patient satisfaction. By compiling information from patient surveys, administrators and providers can leverage this feedback to adjust care practices and service delivery.
Investment firms use data reports to monitor clients’ portfolio performance. This information allows them to provide strategic advice, identify trends in returns, and mitigate risk accordingly. In the tech space, software performance reports are essential for tracking system uptime and bug incidents. IT teams can identify issues and plan fixes or other enhancements.
Data reporting best practices
As you build your own data reports, lean on these best practices for the most optimal results:
- Put data quality and accuracy first: Above all else, the accuracy and reliability of your data matters most. Always use reliable data sources to build your report. You may consider using data cleansing tools to ensure consistency and accuracy. This best practice is essential to ensuring that informed decisions are made from your report.
- Visualize data effectively: The right data visualization techniques will help transform your report into a story from which your audience can draw real conclusions. Some common visualizations used to simplify complex datasets are graphs, pie charts, and bar charts. They help you avoid overwhelming your audience with data points; you can help connect the points for your audience while allowing them to make their own inferences.
- Ensure security and privacy: Safeguard data by implementing encryption protocols. Set up access controls to prevent unauthorized access or data breaches. Also, consider applicable data protection regulations like GDPR.
Data reporting can drive operational and financial success for businesses in the manufacturing, tech, healthcare, and retail sectors (just to name a few). Converting raw figures into a data-based narrative allows businesses to make more strategic decisions. Understanding your data report’s purpose, audience, and appropriate format is essential to unlocking its greatest potential for your business.
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