Streamlining The Reporting Process Part 1

From Burden to Beacon

For the typical web analyst, report creation and delivery is a necessary, but very time-consuming process.  Often, it limits your ability to move forward with higher-value activities and initiatives.  If creating reports is taking more and more of your time and keeping you from tackling more urgent issues, then this newsletter is for you.  In Part One of the series, we will describe the Report Tree, a technique we use to help clients take control of the reporting process in their organization.  In Part Two, coming up next month, we will examine specific situations in which Report Trees can be used to bring structure and efficiency to the reporting process.

Report Trees, The Path to Inner Peace

Put simply, Report Trees are a set of reports that help business stakeholders diagnose changes in their KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).  By defining these reports early and helping stakeholders understand how to use them, the number of ad-hoc reporting requests and the amount of time spent on creating reports for business users can be significantly reduced.

Here’s a simple example.  A KPI for a business stakeholder might be the number of whitepaper downloads per month.  This KPI tells the stakeholders what happened, but it doesn’t tell them why downloads increased or decreased.  Invariably, the stakeholder wants to understand why the number of downloads changed.  To do this, they will most likely rely on their team to produce the reports, conduct the analysis, and generate a suitable explanation for the changes.  Examples of the reports might include:

• The top 25 downloads
• Downloads by geography
• Downloads by topic/content
• Number of downloads per visit

Illustration: The Reporting Tree

 

By using the reports listed about to construct an effective Report Tree for that KPI, the web analytics team can empower stakeholders to perform their own analysis and to develop their own recommendations.  Once that is implemented, the analytics team only needs to step in and support the business user when anomalies or unusual events occur.

Roadblocks on the Path to Inner Peace

As the web analytics team builds and extends the use of KPIs across the organization, inevitably new challenges emerge.  These challenges usually come in two flavors, both of which impact your work load and your ability to focus on tasks that add value to your organization.

• Problem One:  Initial KPI Development.  When defining KPIs for the first time, stakeholders may get caught up in the details, requesting reports that they need to understand why their business changed (often called diagnostic metrics), instead of the KPIs that drive the business (business driver metrics).  The goal here is help the stakeholders understand the hierarchy of KPIs and reports – and how each serves a different role.  Additionally, discussions of Report Trees mitigate the common problem of generating se much information (and KPIs) that business users can’t draw any conclusions from it.
• Problem Two:  Ongoing Report Requests.  Once the KPIs are established and stakeholders try to diagnose changes, web analysts may experience an increase in ad hoc report requests.  Again, the challenge for web analysts is finding a way to satisfy stakeholders without spending all of their time generating more reports.  

Solution:  Stratigent has found that Report Trees can be used in your everyday business life to solve both of these problems.  When deployed properly, Report Trees streamline the report creation process, reduce the workload on the web analytics team, and empower business users to adopt the continuous improvement process that is critical for building a data-driven culture.  Simultaneously, web analysts are able to focus on strategic business issues, rather than low-value tasks such as report creation and distribution. 

The end result is a streamlined reporting process and a happy stakeholder.  For the web analyst, defining and building these reports upfront eliminates a number of problems down the road.

Moving along Stratigent’s Strategic Roadmap

How do Report Trees fit into the big picture?  First, let’s understand where reporting fits into the Strategic Roadmap.  The Strategic Roadmap is Stratigent’s 4-phase process for enabling clients to use their web metrics data to build a sustainable competitive advantage in web analytics and marketing.  In Phase II and Phase III of the Strategic Roadmap, establishing KPIs and building effective dashboards are two of the most important initiatives, and when executed correctly, serve as an important mechanism for creating value.  KPIs and dashboards benefit your organization by:

• Establishing goals and validating business objectives
• Creating effective dashboards for presenting the information to key stakeholders
• Broadening the adoption of web analytics across the organization
• Supporting the continuous improvement process – vital for moving companies along the Stratigent Strategic Roadmap

Prior to the development of KPIs, the web analyst can expect mostly ad-hoc report requests and no real reporting or analysis process.  If you find yourself in this situation, we recommend that you spend time with key stakeholders to define a set of KPIs and design a set of dashboards.

Once KPIs are established, stakeholders across the organization have increased access to more relevant data which, in turn, will generate questions and report requests.  This is the time when Report Trees take on increased importance and are necessary for maintaining a manageable and streamlined reporting process.

In short, Report Trees are step one in helping your organization’s stakeholders diagnose changes in their KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). This, in turn, can reduce the burden of report creation and ensure the successful deployment of KPIs and the Continuous Improvement Process across the organization. 

Stay tuned for part two of this series coming up next month, in which Kevin will provide specific situations when Report Trees can be used to bring structure and efficiency to the reporting process. View Streamlining the Reporting Process Part 2.

 

Josh Manion

Chief Executive Officer

Stratigent, LLC

 

For more information please contact 877-427-8900 or email info@stratigent.com.