Is your management information simplified, organised, consistent, easy to understand?
Management Reporting Understandability
It doesn’t have to be complicated
Are reports presented consistently, clearly and have a familiar look and feel?
Do you have organisation wide reporting standards that are championed?
If your whole suite of reporting is simplified and consistent it helps users to quickly understand the information, and it removes the frustration of having to understand differing layouts
Your report designers will need to spend less time thinking about the layout and free up time to find the insights and recipients can pick up a new report and understand it straight away
If all of your business calculations are consistent, you can trust comparatives that are presented to you
If you have a central location to define those business calculations, new starters can be briefed easily
We see many examples of misinterpretation, where senior management have glanced at a report and not easily spotted something
Who is at fault? Is it the manager for not taking time to read it carefully? Is it the report writer for not being consistent with other
report writers?
If you don’t have clear reporting standards across your organisation, this can lead to frustration in that the recipients cant
readily understand at a glance what the reports are telling them
Imagine having to look at a whole range of styles of reports all telling you them same thing?
In the worst cases this can lead to misinterpretation and cause bad decision making
Don’t underestimate the impact that having multiple spellings of a business location can have, or how different parts of the business
have different names for the same place
Questions to ask
People
Are your people trained on your communication standards?
Do your people challenge each other to keep high standards?
Do your people have a passion for structure, consistency and clarity?
Processes
Do you have published best practice or a review process?
Are new starters properly briefed on your standards?
Do you have a centralised set of rules for the calculation of business rules / logic?
How to get there
Start by looking at your most frequently reported metrics and document those
Compare some of your key reports to make sure they comply with the same rules
Appoint someone to be the champion of the standards and make it the responsibility of everyone
For a really good basis, take a look at the IBCS standards, which are full of carefully researched and tested rules
which you can begin to apply, or go on to become fully compliant
www.ibcs.com
Simplifying is a journey, you can start today.
The sooner you start the faster you see the benefits
This is very much a people driven thing and needs to be driven from the top
Improving the management reporting readability in your organisation can be like a breath of fresh air, take the initiative and set the standards. It can be hard work and requires thought and determined application, but it is so worth it
Start on your own, or if you need a helping hand and someone to help manage and set the direction lets have a conversation
You will be pleased you did
Or learn about our management information health check service, this helps you answer these questions and quickly get your management information up to speed
Management Information Health check
