Streamlining The Reporting Process Part 2

We will continue with a sequel to our prior newsletter and provide specific situations where Report Trees can be used to bring structure and efficiency to the reporting process.

As mentioned in Part 1 of this series, Report Trees are useful not only for business stakeholders but also for the web analytics team. In any type of organization, they provide the reporting to explain variances in KPIs and the information necessary to make continuous improvements to those KPIs. Armed with this information, answers to ad hoc requests come more easily and there is less of a burden placed on the web analytics team. Stakeholders are empowered to draw their own conclusions based on the results of the Report Tree, allowing for a quicker, more efficient reporting process.

Example 1: Using Report Trees in the Initial Development of KPIs

It is important to consider Report Trees at the beginning of the KPI definition process to help stakeholders understand the difference between KPIs and other types of metrics, commonly referred to as business drivers and diagnostic metrics. The business driver is a KPI that measures progress towards a goal while the diagnostics metrics and reports are necessary for driving action. For example, the number of leads from a site is a business driver. Fluctuations in leads generated indicate when tactical changes should be made. Diagnostic metrics and reports indicate where those changes should be made. When the boundaries between business drivers and diagnostic metrics/reports are blurred, it becomes more difficult for the stakeholders to focus on the data that really impacts their business. It is fairly common to see excessive analysis and little, if any, decision-making taking place when that happens.

Often times, stakeholders want both KPIs and reports (business drivers and diagnostic metrics) at the same time which can ultimately leads to a mix of KPIs and reports that fall short of meeting everyone’s needs and expectations. By defining a Report Tree in conjunction with each KPI, business stakeholders are assured that they will be provided the information that they are looking for while keeping a clear boundary between business drivers and diagnostics metrics.

Let’s say that the primary goal of a key stakeholder is to generate online leads. Downloading whitepapers and product data sheets is the primary source of leads on the website. In this case, the KPI (or business driver) is the number of downloads. The reporting necessary for driving improvements might include:

1. Total downloads by whitepaper
2. Top downloads by product
3. Top downloads by topic
4. Sales pipeline per whitepaper
5. Revenue per whitepaper
6. Top downloads by geography

Given this information, it is much easier to explain why the number of downloads changed. Establishing these Report Trees during the KPI definition process ensures continued support of the defined KPIs. In the next example, I’ll demonstrate how using Report Trees in an organization that already has a defined set of KPIs in place can be just as valuable.

Example 2: Using Report Trees to Reduce Ad-hoc Report Requests

Building Report Trees is a great tool for helping overworked web analytics teams and analysts to work with business stakeholders to create a standard set of reports – and to jump-start discussions about building and organizing KPIs for their area of responsibility.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) reporting is one area where we see web analysts struggling to keep pace with the seemingly endless stream of report requests made by stakeholders. Because there are so many variations and different types of reports possible, the web analytics team needs to document the ad hoc report requests, and together with the business stakeholders build a Report Tree around those KPIs. This can be a very productive exercise that is mutually beneficial for both parties. It also provides an opportunity for the stakeholder to reflect on their business goals and reporting needs and to work with the analytics team to streamline the reporting and analysis process. In turn, the web analytics team can reduce the amount of time spent on report generation and focus their attention on high-value activities.

Summary

The Report Tree has become a very successful technique for managing the volume of reports generated and requested by business stakeholders. Also, they serve an important role in the KPI definition process and drive valuable discussions about the business stakeholders business objectives, challenges and information needs. We hope that by using Report Trees, you can take control of, or at least minimize, the amount of time spent generating low-value ad-hoc reports for stakeholders in your organization while at the same time, helping stakeholders see the bigger picture and broader goals of their area of responsibility.