Business Insight Reports – Using them Effectively
Times Are Changing – The economic climate at present is about change: customer behaviour has changed, competitors have changed their pricing; and brand loyalty is being put aside for value instead. Today we find ourselves using a different set of marketing dynamics.
Below is described how Business Insight reports should be used to help effectively cope with the changes and identify the five benefits to any organisation from making such changes.
The Stages of Effective Business Insight – To help us cope with changing market dynamics there are number of stages involved and each one needs to use its own kind of Business Insight report.
1. Using a monitoring dashboard report it will help to identify the changes taking place in a business because of some external factor. 2. Using an Interactive Discovery report one can understand the causes that are making these changes take place. 3. A Detailed Planning report will not only help the business to adapt its current practices but also devise an effective marketing response. 4. Using an Operational Dashboard a business is able to implement the necessary changes where it is appropriate to do so.
Each stage mentioned above will involve various people at different levels within the organisation. Some will be required to make the strategical decisions whilst others will need to make tactical ones and then there are others who will plan and then carry out the operations on a daily basis.
The style and content of these reports at each stage must be tailored to make them relevant to their target audience.
Reports are like a Present – Business Insight reports are just like a present that they are created to be used by a certain audience and will be packaged and delivered to them in a way that they understand the information contained within.
There are many powerful analytical tools today like FastStats Discoverer that will be needed to create and drive these reports obtained from large marketing and/or transactional databases. The delivery mechanism, say FastStats Excelsior needs to offer access to the results remotely and also provide us with the ability to refresh or request other scenarios.
Through use of Excel in a reporting environment provides us with access to powerful flexible functions that manipulate and then display results. Because it is a familiar system and easily accessible it is the ideal mechanism to use for reporting.
Reports must be Relevant – In this section we look at the various types of different reports that are needed during the stages mentioned above. These reports can be used by various individuals within an organisation but it is dependent on whether they have a strategic, tactical or operational role within it.
It is crucial to identify the audience who will be receiving the report and so you need to understand what purpose the report has.
Reports containing granular detail will be necessary for planning specific communications; however the information will be too much for a senior executive to take in. Whilst glossy dashboards are ideal for monitoring in the boardroom however are not of much use where much more in-depth information is needed.
So again the style and content of the report needs to be tailored to meet the relevant audience’s needs.
Monitoring Dashboard Reports for Strategic Levels – The high level Monitoring Dashboard reports are designed for a strategic audience and provide an overview of the performance and KPI of a business. This will help an organisation to not only monitor activity but identify any changes. It allows one to compare customer behaviour this year against the same time last year or to assess the businesses financial performance in relation to its targets. Plus it allows us to identify changes that take place as soon as they happen.
Key features of a Monitoring Dashboard report are: 1. The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will be summarised at a high business level 2. It allows comparison against history and targets (for example for last month or last year) 3. The layout should be one that is fixed making it simple to use (for example a “Dashboard”) 4. There should be graphical or pictorial displays which highlight the message conveyed (i.e. traffic lights, charts, speedometer etc) 5. The main purpose of this report is to make the user aware of changes occurring
