Are you compiling and disseminating data from your research findings with paper reporting mechanisms? All of those hours spent on such projects might be better utilized with online reporting.
Some companies still print out and distribute hundreds of copies of quarterly reports to regional managers, and expect those managers to relay the information and its wisdom to their hundreds or thousands of employees. By the time the analysis and insights are read by the employees, they are often months old and no longer accurately reflect price changes, strategy revisions or other variable differences.
In essence, employees remain under-informed and not up-to-date on many of the details that affect them.
Other organizations spend numerous hours running custom reports for department heads often leaving little time for researchers to conduct advanced statistical analyses and provide the overview, insights and conclusions that drive intelligent decision-making.
Online reporting lets you take the data you work with and interpret it, giving you the insights you need to make smart business recommendations. With far-reaching access to both historical data and current metrics, internal users can easily be informed almost immediately after data collection.
Online reporting gives internal users the ability to play with the data themselves so they can answer their own questions about performance or ‘what if’ scenarios. They can take one metric and investigate what’s holding it at a certain level. Or how it compares to others. They can conduct their own research without involving entire research departments. And managers are able to do what they do best: focus on the bigger picture.
The drawback to online reporting is that it does require you to train your managers so that they learn how to appropriately use the results they get. They may need to be trained in a new software interface, a necessary task that can be frustrating to everyone involved. And, with online reporting, you do have to deal with data security issues.
But you’ll find that online reporting is more than worth the small investment in these things.
#HappyDashboarding!
