Reporting & Analytics should be part of your strategy map

Reporting is typically something that financial departments seem to be fond of. Sometimes I wonder if creating bloated spreadsheets with loads of different timing metrics are a hobby for them. They love jotting down absolute and relative numbers, because everything seems important to them. Does your financial report often have columns with sales or costs for a specific month, the amount of the previous month, the amount of the same month previous year and with percental differences to show relativity?

Unfortunately, creating a jungle of figures does not represent management information nor does it stand for analysis. Any organization, big or small, has set sail to a destination. In order to arrive at that destination someone needs to steer into the right direction. The information you provide to management should help in steering.

It should not come as a surprise that management will not come up to your desk and tell you how the report needs to look like, how the strategy works nor what the indicators are. The strategy of an organisation can be tested and monitored using a tool like the Balanced Scorecard as designed by Kaplan & Norton.