Which Business Numbers Are Actually Worth Tracking?
More reports don't necessarily mean better decisions. Learn how to identify the business numbers worth tracking and make them easier to access.
In this guideJump straight to what you need3 sections
Modern business software can produce an extraordinary amount of information.
There are charts for sales, reports for customer activity, summaries of completed work and dashboards showing figures that update throughout the day.
Yet having access to more numbers doesn't necessarily make running a business easier.
Sometimes it creates the opposite problem. Employees spend time preparing reports that nobody reads, while the information needed to make a decision remains difficult to find.
The challenge isn't simply collecting data.
It's deciding which information deserves attention.
Start with the decisions, not the charts
Imagine a hypothetical Wellington trades business wanting to understand whether its workload is becoming more manageable.
The owner could track dozens of figures: website visits, enquiries, quotes, completed jobs, average job duration, outstanding invoices and more.
But not every number is equally useful.
If the immediate concern is whether jobs are being completed on schedule, tracking website traffic probably won't answer the question.
The business may be better served by reviewing outstanding work, overdue jobs and how long different types of tasks remain open.
Another company might care more about enquiries awaiting a response or orders waiting to be dispatched.
The appropriate measures depend on what the business is trying to understand.
This is why designing a report should begin with a question.
What decision will the information support? Who needs to see it? How frequently does it need to be updated?
Without those answers, it's easy to create an impressive-looking dashboard that provides little practical value.
Reliable numbers matter more than attractive dashboards
Suppose a dashboard shows how many customer enquiries arrived during the month.
That sounds straightforward until you consider where enquiries come from.
Some arrive through the website, others by telephone and a few through direct email.
If only website enquiries are recorded automatically, the dashboard may give an incomplete picture.
The same problem appears when different applications use different definitions.
One system might count a job as completed when the technician finishes the work. Another might only mark it complete after invoicing.
Neither definition is necessarily wrong, but mixing them can produce confusing reports.
Before automating reporting, businesses need to understand where information originates and what each figure actually represents.
A smaller collection of trustworthy measures is generally more useful than a large collection of questionable ones.
Make reporting part of the normal working day
Once the important measures are clear, the next question is how to make them accessible without creating unnecessary administration.
Some businesses can use reporting features already included in their accounting, CRM or job management software.
Others may need to combine information from several applications.
Depending on the systems involved, an automated report could collect figures at regular intervals, while a dashboard might present selected information in one place.
A simple spreadsheet can also be perfectly adequate.
The objective is to make reporting easier to maintain and more useful to the people relying on it.
It's worth reviewing the measures occasionally, too. As a business changes, the questions it needs answered may change with it.
A report that was valuable last year might no longer deserve the same attention.
Good reporting doesn't mean watching every number. It means knowing which numbers help you understand what's happening and what to do next.
At Software Logic, I help New Zealand businesses explore automated reporting, dashboards and software integrations. If useful information is scattered across several systems, get in touch to discuss bringing it together.
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Have a question about your business? Talk to Liam.