Your most valuable asset is time. Every hour spent wrestling with reports is an hour not spent on strategic initiatives that could transform your business. Your reporting should evolve as your company grows, supporting — not hindering — your ability to make quick, informed decisions.
In an attempt to do just that, many mid-market companies pour good time and money into reporting tools that only end up collecting digital dust. Maybe the reports don’t quite hit the mark, or people stopped trusting the numbers. Either way, it’s a frustrating waste of resources that leaves your team stuck in the weeds instead of focused on growth.
Four Signs You Need to Your Business Needs to Update Its Reporting
There are some key indicators that your reporting needs a refresh. If you’ve noticed one, several, or even all of these, learn how you can evolve your approach to better serve your organization’s ever-changing needs.
1. Is Your Team Creating Reporting Workarounds?
Notice your team bypassing the official reporting system? When employees start creating their own spreadsheets or pulling data directly from source systems, it’s a clear signal that your current reporting structure isn’t meeting their needs or empowering them to deliver the information you need.
DIY workarounds often lack documentation or a repeatable process. That doesn’t only create inefficiencies, it also introduces more risk of errors and inconsistencies in your data.
2. Are Reports Not Telling the Full Story?
Even if your team is following the correct reporting process, your reports are not giving you the specific insights you need to make decisions. You’ve even attempted to customize them, but they still feel incomplete or inflexible. When you find yourself consistently needing to supplement system reports with manual data gathering, it’s time to reassess.
3. Is Trust in Your Data Eroding?
Nothing undermines a reporting system faster than lost confidence. If you’re hearing comments like “these numbers don’t look right” or “I need to double-check this,” you’ve got a problem. Once you, your team, or your stakeholders lose trust in your data, rebuilding it becomes crucial – and that often means revamping your reporting approach.
4. Is Leadership Spending Too Much Time on Data (and Not Enough on Strategy)?
When your executive team is spending hours each week compiling and analyzing data manually, your reporting system isn’t doing its job. Your time is too valuable to waste on tasks that should be automated and streamlined.
Each of these warning signs tell you when your reporting isn’t working, internally. However, it’s equally important to anticipate common business changes and milestones that trigger the need for reporting updates, too.
Common Business Needs That Impact Reporting
You’ll face new challenges that require different insights at every stage of growth. What worked when you were a $10 million company won’t often cut it at $50 million, and the reports that served you well last year might be holding you back today.
Your old metrics might suddenly become irrelevant when you’re growing rapidly or entering new markets. Maybe you started by tracking raw sales numbers, but now you need customer acquisition costs and lifetime value metrics. Or perhaps you’ve shifted from a growth-at-all-costs model to focusing on profitability, requiring entirely new KPIs.
There are several areas where changes can (and should) affect the way you approach reporting. Understanding these evolving business needs is crucial, but knowing how to adapt your reporting system to address them is equally important.
Your goal isn’t to create more reports — it’s to ensure you have the right insights at the right time to make informed decisions.
Company Change and Growth
As your company grows, you’ll need more than top-line metrics. Depending on your industry, you might need:
- Department-specific dashboards
- Regional performance comparisons
- Product line profitability breakdowns
- Multi-currency reporting
- Consolidated views across multiple business units
Competitive Landscape Changes
When market conditions shift, you often need new types of competitive intelligence. This might mean tracking:
- Market share metrics
- Pricing comparisons
- Customer churn patterns
- Industry-specific benchmarks
Regulatory Requirements
New compliance requirements or industry standards might demand additional reporting capabilities. You’ll need your system to adapt to:
- New accounting standards
- Industry-specific regulations
- ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) metrics
- Enhanced audit trails
Technology Integration Challenges
As you adopt new systems and tools, your reporting needs to keep pace:
- Integration with new software platforms
- Mobile accessibility requirements
- Real-time data needs vs. periodic reporting
- Automated data collection from multiple sources
Making the Shift: How to Evolve Your Reporting
Again, adding more reports to a system that already comes short isn’t a solution. When your reporting is incapable of adapting to deliver the insights you need, it’s time for a change. Here’s how to get started.
- Start by measuring the actual usage of your current reports. Which ones are being accessed regularly? Which ones are ignored? Use the checklist below to get you started.
- Gather feedback from your teams about what information they need to make decisions, not just what they’re currently getting.
- Focus on updating your highest-value reporting needs first — the ones that will free up the most time for strategic thinking and decision-making. This approach helps you make the biggest impact while effectively managing resources.
- Engage a Managed Data Analytics service like ours that builds custom dashboards, automates reporting, and makes sure that your data is delivering real value.
Your Data is Dynamic. Your Reporting Should Be Too.
By staying alert to these warning signs and being proactive in iterating your data when your business experiences change, you can take your reporting from a daily frustration into a strategic advantage.
Ready to spend your time acting on insights instead of hunting for them? We can help.