We all have a love/hate relationship with Management reports. Most of the time they are overwhelmingly full of data that half the time isn’t even valuable. We all know that everyone wants to see data, but we need to understand how they want to see it, and how we can make it meaningful.
Here’s some best practices for creating a Management Report
- Determine strategic goals: Start with the end in mind- determine they why behind the report and then determining what you report will become a lot easier.
- Make sure the KPIs fit the audience: Think about it, would a Help Desk Manager need to see the same stats as a Sales Manager?
- Include customer feedback: Are you measuring CSAT? If it fits the audience, add it in. If I was a Help Desk Manager, I would want to see my team(s) CSAT.
- Make your report tell a story: show current and trending information
- Make it visually appealing: Make sure all the data is presented in an organized manner. This is also a good time to determine if there is too much on the report. We don’t want to have to dig through pages of charts/graphs/tables.
Implementing some, if not all, of these best practices will help ease the pain of having to create a Management Report that will be valuable and easy for the recipients to process.