How to get to Better Reporting

Though private industry has made great strides automating their processes over the last 20 years, the public sector is still struggling with the same well- trodden manual approaches.

Technology is only part of the reason that change has not occurred. The technology must fit your paradigm to be successfully implemented and leveraged, which requires people, process, and technology. People help make the change, which much be done through a set approach or process, and then the appropriate technology is needed to scale it.

Transforming can be achieved by taking small, manageable steps in key areas. Learn how you can organize and gain confidence in your data, create insights and analysis, and move to real-time reporting to shorten review cycles through three simple steps. Putting together these three steps and continuously iterating and working to improve will help to build a better team of financial analysts, data analysts, comptrollers, etc. so that their future role can be more about analyzing the data than validating it.

There are three steps you can take to gain confidence in your data:

1. Organize Data to make it more Useful. When you improve your data quality, it increases your confidence in that data so that you can have better conversations with key stakeholders to build a culture that embraces data for problem solving.
2. Ensure Data is Accessible and Ready to Analyze. Analyzing your data comes before reporting on that data. You can complete better analyses when you understand what leadership wants. You can make better reports when you understand the format that leadership wants the analyses and are able to tell a story using the data that helps advance the mission.
3. Invest in the Right Technology to Promote Usability. Investigate automation tools and embedded analytics, beginning with tools that are already at your disposal, so that you can create better reports. Build iteratively upon your improvements, streamlining your workflow, and embracing automation.

Want to learn more details on how you can use these three concepts to take action and begin change at your organization? Decision Lens has released a new white paper “How to Get to Better Reporting: Build Data Confidence, Gain Useful Insights, and Create a Story that Advances the Mission“, which offers more best practices and advice for integrating automated data into your processes. Read it here!