reports the data

How To Create Data Reports That Will Skyrocket Your Business Performance

Table of Contents

1) What Is a Data Report?

2) Data Reporting Importance

3) Data Reporting Basics

4) Data Reporting Best Practices

5) Data Reporting Mistakes To Avoid

6) Data Reports Examples and Templates

While they have always played a pivotal role in business success, the terms ‘data report’ or ‘business report’ haven’t exactly been synonymous with creativity or innovation. Data reporting and analysis are often seen as necessary evils created by analysts and consultants to offer functional operational insights. 

As such, the term usually conjures up images of static PDFs, old-school PowerPoint slides, and big tables. Usually created with past data without any room for generating real-time or predictive insights, static reports were deemed obsolete, consisting of numerous external and internal files, without proper information management processes at hand.

But it doesn’t have to be this way in the digital age. In fact, the business intelligence industry has evolved enormously over the past decade, and data analytics reports are riding the crest of this incredible technological wave.

The rise of innovative report tools means you can create report insights that people are compelled to read and that offer a wealth of business-boosting value. If you utilize business intelligence correctly, not only will you be able to connect your informational dots, but you will also be able to take control of your data across the company and improve your bottom line.

Here, we will consider the question, ‘what is a data report?’, explore how to generate one, and provide the best possible data reports examples, all created with modern software. Without further ado, let's get started!

What Is a Data Report?

A data report is an analytical tool used to extract past, present, and future performance insights to accelerate a company’s growth. It combines various sources of information and is usually used for operational and strategic decision-making.

As mentioned, these reports originally had features of static presentation of data, manually written or calculated, but with the introduction of modern processes such as dashboard reporting , they have developed into an invaluable resource to successfully manage your sales processes, marketing data, and even robust manufacturing analytics and numerous other organizational processes needed to stay on top of the pack.

Let’s explore the basics in more detail, and then we will look at data reporting examples that you can use for your own internal processes and more.

The Importance Of Data Reporting

In our current data-driven world, the importance of data reporting cannot be overstated. Organizations rely heavily on data to gain insights into their operations, understand market trends, and make informed decisions. In the reporting phase, you give meaning to your data by presenting it in a structured format so users can understand and use it to its potential.

At its core, data reporting serves as a bridge between raw data and actionable insights. It transforms vast amounts of information into digestible formats so stakeholders can assess performance, allocate resources, and drive decision-making. Without reporting, companies would struggle to navigate business challenges and complexities, relying instead on guesswork and intuition to guide their actions.

When done correctly, data reporting can offer the following benefits:

• Better decision-making : Effective reporting provides insights into trends, patterns, and performance metrics, enabling stakeholders to make informed decisions based on evidence. With a well-designed report and access to data at any time, decision-making power improves significantly.
• Objective performance evaluation : By analyzing data reports, organizations can evaluate the performance of individuals, teams, departments, or entire systems. This helps leaders find areas for improvement and recognize their strengths without letting personal feelings skew their judgment.
• Better resource allocation : Data analysis reports can help decision-makers proactively decide where resources are most needed and where they can be optimized for better outcomes. They can also identify potential waste areas, allowing them to curb losses and reduce budget strain.
• Improved risk management : Every organization faces risks, and reporting can help call attention to risks that might otherwise go unnoticed. Data helps uncover potential issues so leaders can take immediate action and reduce the likelihood of negative outcomes.
• Accountability and transparency : Data (and access to data) helps foster a culture of transparency and allows users to be more accountable for their performance and decisions. Empowering employees with data gives them clear metrics against which they can measure their performance and activities.
• Customer insights : Analyzing customer behaviors helps organizations understand customer behavior, preferences, and needs. These insights can lead to a better marketing approach and customer experience.
• Continuous improvement : Ongoing reporting creates a culture of continuous improvement, with data guiding your decisions rather than a set-in-stone strategy. Metrics and KPIs provide feedback on strategies, processes, and initiatives, allowing you to see what’s working and what needs to be changed to achieve better outcomes.
• New trends and opportunities : Data can reveal many things about your company and services that might otherwise go unnoticed, such as emerging trends and patterns. Spotting these trends early gives you the best advantage to get ahead of competitors.

Data Reporting Basics

We’ve explored the data report definition and its benefits. Now, we’re going to look at the fundamentals of data and effective reports, the building blocks of business intelligence success.

• Purpose: Data analytics is the art of curating and analyzing raw insights to transform metrics into actionable insights. Data analytics reports present metrics, analyses, conclusions, and recommendations in an accessible, digestible visual format so everyone can make informed, data-driven decisions.
• Data types: Business data reports cover a variety of topics and functions. As such, all types vary greatly in length, content, and format. It’s possible to present reporting data as an annual overview, monthly sales, accounting report , data requested by management exploring a specific issue, information requested by the government showing a company’s compliance with regulations, progress reports, feasibility studies, and more. The all-encompassing nature of data-centric reports means working with a mix of historical, predictive, and in-the-moment insights to paint a panoramic picture of your organization's functions, processes, and overall progress is possible.
• Accessibility: Historically, creating data-driven reports was time- and resource-intensive. Data pull requests were the exclusive duties of the IT department, with a significant amount of effort spent analyzing, formatting, and then presenting the data. Because this task was so resource-heavy, data analysis was an occasional luxury. Also, by the time the data was presented, it was generally out of date. The emergence of real-time cloud-based BI reporting tools has changed the game. Now a wider range of users can act as analysts, even performing advanced analytics. The right BI platform can blend multiple data sources into one analysis, enhancing insights and better-informed decision-making. These cloud-based tools allow organizations to collaborate on data, bringing various subject matter experts (SMEs) to the same table. Modern business dashboard tools allow a wider audience to comprehend and disseminate the findings. Users can also easily export these dashboards and data visualizations into visually stunning writeups that can be shared via multiple options, such as automating emails or providing a secure viewer area, even embedding data into your own application, for example.
• Flexibility: In addition to the fact that software offers a wealth of visually accessible KPI-driven insight , business intelligence dashboards are also completely customizable to suit individual goals or needs. Moreover, data dashboards are optimized for mobile devices, meaning users can access a wealth of business-boosting information from a central display, 24/7, without restrictions or limits. You can leverage business intelligence day or night from anywhere in the world.

Now that you understand the superior analytical capabilities of modern business data reporting, we’ll examine a mix of tips and ideas designed to help you build and create online data reports that will save time and costs while driving innovation across the company.

Your Chance: Want to test a modern data reporting software for free? We offer a 14-day free trial. Benefit from great data reports today!

Top 14 Data Reporting Best Practices & Tips

We’ve covered the basics, so now we’ll examine how to create these reports from a practical perspective. Our tips for documenting data will help you do so.

Depending on the type of report, each has its own set of rules and best practices. Below, we will mention the most popular ones, but our main focus is on best practices that will make your reporting more productive. Let’s get started.

1. Define The Type Of Data Report

What types of data reporting do you need to present? Having this definition in advance will help set parameters you can easily stick to. Here are the most common types of data reports:

1) Informational vs. analytical: First, determine if this report provides factual information. Informational reports are usually smaller in size, the writing structure is not strict, and the sole purpose is to inform about facts without adding any analysis. On the other hand, if it includes any analysis, demonstrates relationships, or provides recommendations, it is an analytical report .

2) Recommendation/justification report: This report presents an idea and makes suggestions to management or other decision-makers. As the name suggests, it provides recommendations for changes in internal procedures and justifies courses of action that aim to improve organizational success.

3) Investigative report: This type helps determine the risks involved with a specific course of action. It is based on documenting specific information objectively to present enough information to stakeholders, who will ultimately decide if further actions are needed. An example would be a report created for legal purposes.

4) Compliance report: Shows accountability by providing compliance information, for example, to a governing body. This is particularly important as accurate, well-presented compliance metrics will avoid costly mistakes or red tape issues.

5) Feasibility report: An exploratory report to determine whether an idea will work. Data-driven insights could save significant time and money by helping organizations avoid redundant processes or developments.

6) Research studies report: This presents in-depth research and insights on a specific issue or problem. Research is pivotal to growth and evolution, and having the visual insights to back up your decisions will set you apart from the pack.

7) Periodic report: Improves policies, products, or processes via consistent monitoring at fixed intervals, such as weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc. These types of reports help foster incremental growth and consistency across the board.

8) KPI report : Monitors and measures key performance indicators ( KPIs ) to assess if your operations deliver the expected results. The best dashboards for benchmarking progress in many internal and external areas.

9) Yardstick report: Weigh several potential solutions for a given situation, an invaluable tool to adapt to your specific goals, aims, needs, and situations. This is a solution-centric tool that every modern organization should embrace.

2. Know Your Target Audience

Knowing your audience will help determine which insights you present, the recommendations you make, and how you present the data. Your audience may be upper, middle, or line management, other departments, coworkers, clients, potential clients, the government, or another company in the same market.

Knowing your audience helps determine what information to include in the report. If a report is internally facing, branding, such as colors, font, and logo, isn’t as crucial. If it is a one-time live presentation, formatting for printing isn’t key. Determine in advance if your audience needs persuasion or education. If your audience is at the C-suite or board levels, you may want to present mostly high-level insights with specific call-outs and action items.

If the report is more exploratory in nature, you may want to include more granular information and options to interact with the data. Ramon Ray, tech evangelist and founder of Smart Hustle Magazine, wrote about presenting your data to a wide audience. He focused on keeping text simple, using visualizations whenever possible, including video and animation when appropriate, and making your presentations interactive. Knowing your audience before you start your analysis – and even more importantly before you put together the report – will keep everything data-focused and impactful.

3. Use Data From Various Sources  

Once you understand the questions you want to answer with your reports and your audience, you must determine the data sources you need. As data has become a regular part of organizations’ daily activities, the number of internal and external sources from which companies are extracting data has grown. When building your reports, it can get overwhelming to decide which information to use and how to ensure everything is clean and optimized. This can be done with the help of data connectors . 

Among some of the many BI features in the market today, datapine offers professional data connectors that allow you to connect flat files, social media data, APIs, CRM data, and several other sources with just a few clicks. And not just that, once your sources are connected, the tool automatically updates them for you. That way, you can always have up-to-date data ready to be analyzed. 

4. Have A Detailed Plan And Select Your KPIs

We will sound like a broken record here, but have a plan before you start your analysis. What information does the management need for its effective decision-making? What data and insights do your shareholders require? Understand the required data scope and think about how you will use that data.

Utilize as many data sources as possible, but don’t go data crazy and get bogged down in unnecessary information. Of course, you have to remain agile and may have to adapt the plan, but a robust plan is crucial. Remaining purpose-driven will focus your work, save you in the long run and improve your business outcomes.

When creating your plan, it is essential to select the right key performance indicators. You don’t need dozens of metrics that will answer all your organizational questions at once , but pick a few that will tell a comprehensive data story (more on that later), and enable you to take proper action (more on that later, too).

Depending on your department or industry, reports will vary as key success indicators also vary, but choose the ones that will help you put your data into proper context and always keep in mind the audience you’re addressing. Understanding your audience deeply and setting clear-cut strategic objectives will make the KPI selection process easier and more valuable.

Choose KPIs that align directly with your specific aims, and you will benefit from a cohesive mix of visual benchmarks that will help you track your progress accurately while spotting trends that will help you streamline your company for success. Remember to avoid vanity metrics that can mislead your visual efforts and choose only the indicators that will bring value to your strategic decisions. If you want to learn more about this, check out our insightful guide on KPIs vs. metrics .

5. Be Objective, When Possible

Business reporting describes the past, present, or possible future situation objectively and neutrally. Objective means the information states facts, not an opinion. Keep the opinions minimal. It helps to combine them in one section, possibly titled “Suggested Actions.” Also, using a passive voice in a report will help keep it formal and inoffensive. For example:

Active : The managers need to make changes in their management style.

Passive : Changes in management style need to be made.

If you’re too subjective or biased, you’re essentially moving away from your goal of uncovering factual information that will give you a competitive edge. Collect data from reliable sources, record your discoveries with pinpoint accuracy, and you will connect with objective information that will push your organization to the next level.

6. Be Visually Stunning

Numerous types of graphs and charts prove to be extremely powerful. Presenting analytics visually makes it easier for decision-makers to grasp difficult concepts or identify new patterns. Data presented visually are easier for humans to perceive and digest. Reports should include data visualizations over text whenever possible. Just make sure you are choosing the most appropriate data visualization to tell your data story and that you are following BI dashboard best practices. With the right data reporting tool, anyone can create meaningful visuals and share them with their team, customers, and other shareholders. All this can be accomplished without involving a data scientist.

Also, ensure your report remains visually stunning , no matter how it is shared and disseminated. Your platform should look good on a computer, tablet, PDF, or mobile screen. That’s why utilizing an analytics platform can be the most cost-effective solution, providing you with stunning visuals and interactivity. More on this in the next point.

7. Don’t Neglect the Design 

Once you’ve chosen the type of report you will use as well as the data visualizations that will be on it, you want to consider the design. How your data is organized will tell a lot about how it is perceived. For instance, you need to include metrics that will provide context to the data; this way, you will tell a story that is easy to understand. You also need to avoid overcrowding the report. If you want to add a lot of data to it, you can use tabs to split the information by theme or subject, making it easier for users to find information. 

When discussing design, you also need to consider colors. For starters, you can follow the company's color palette. Choose up to three colors and play with different gradients to draw people’s attention to specific areas of the report while avoiding colors that can distract the audience from what really matters: the data. 

Lastly, you need to consider the format in which the report will be shared and visualized. For example, for annual reports that will be printed and widely shared, extra focus should be spent on dashboard design principles .

8. Have Content Sharply Written

While the focus should be on visuals, some data report types also need text. In this case, use persuasive and even-toned business writing, including concise, active, and engaging language. Use bullet points versus long paragraphs. Use headers and provide legends and supplementary text for your visualizations. Also, you should always proofread!

To optimize your data analytics presentation and content, our guide to digital dashboard creation and best practices offers practical insights that will help you format your reports for success.

9. Make Sure the Report Is Actionable

Prescriptive, descriptive, and predictive analytics have become increasingly popular in recent years. Each brings new insights needed to make better business decisions and increase ROI – information from the past and future, as well as prescribing possible outcomes. That being said, make sure your analytical efforts have a conclusion. When necessary, provide recommendations.

Reports should be objective, but the best ones should also be actionable. Intended audiences should walk away with the next steps or greater insights. Doing so will enable a data-driven environment and foster more efficient collaboration.

To help make your data-centric reporting more actionable, you must ensure that your KPIs and insights work together to paint a comprehensive picture of a particular process, strategy, or function.

For instance, if you’re looking to analyze your customer service success, adding metrics relating to staff performance and consumer satisfaction will give you a balanced mix of information to help you take decisive action. Naturally, all of your metrics will offer invaluable standalone information, but if they all complement one another, you will accelerate your organization’s success in a number of key areas.

10. Keep It Simple And Don’t Be Misleading

While data should be objective, formatting, filtering, and manipulation can lead to misleading statistics . Make sure your presentation is consistent and reliable. Also, keep it simple. The boom of data visualization and reporting tools has led to the creation of visualizations that don’t tell a relevant data story.

You shouldn’t need 3-D glasses to read a report. Sometimes, a simple chart is all you need. You also don’t need to go nuts with colors and formats. You can easily overwhelm your audience this way. Choose a couple of colors that are easy on the eyes. Keep to one font that’s large and legible. Don’t go crazy with highlighted, bold, or italicized text. You don’t have to create a “piece of art” for your report to be visually stunning and impactful.

The key takeaway here is: Keep your eyes on the prize and always remember the goal or primary objective when developing your reports. Remembering your objectives while prioritizing making your dashboards universally accessible will ensure you keep your efforts simple, transparent, and accurate.

11. Don’t Forget to Tell a Complete Story

To successfully deliver data, you must consider your story's logic. The presentation should provide a clear narrative that will not confuse the recipient but enable him/her to derive the most important findings.

Consider creating an analytical presentation. That way, you will have your data on a single screen, and you can interact with numerous charts and graphs while your story stays focused and effective. By utilizing interactive visualizations, you have a strong backbone on how to write a data report and ensure that your audience is well-informed and digests data easily and quickly.

Human beings absorb and engage with narratives better than other formats. Telling a tale with your data will skyrocket your organization’s success, improve your chances of executive buy-in, and foster innovation.

Our definitive guide to dashboard presentation and storytelling will tell you all you need to know to get started.

12. Regularly Measure The Progress Of Specific Goals

When it comes to data reporting, creating a persuasive narrative is important. For maximum effectiveness, it’s also essential to check whether data report arrangements and designs are helping you work toward your specific organizational goals.

The best way to do this is to set time aside to drill down into specific pockets of information frequently. If you’ve set watertight benchmarks (taking your company’s current capabilities and industry standards into consideration), you will gain an actionable view of how you are progressing goal-wise.

For example, if you’re trying to improve customer loyalty through your email marketing efforts, you can drill down into specific metrics to check your performance. If progress is slow - or you’re underachieving - you can tweak your storytelling design to help provide extra clarity and, ultimately, give everyone the tools to meet or even exceed expectations.

The main point here: As a best practice, make checking in with every one of your goals individually a priority. Doing so will ensure that your designs and visuals provide the clarity and information you need to succeed.

13. Use Professional Data Report Software

Utilizing modern visual analytics software will ensure you design your reports based on the decisions you need to make, filtering the ever-present noise in reporting processes and making sure you don’t get lost in the details. Oftentimes, reports are piled with large volumes of spreadsheets and presentation slides that can create an obscure view of the presented data and increase the possibility of (unintentional) errors. The software can eliminate hideous manual tasks of searching through rows and columns and provide the necessary real-time view, alongside the possibility of looking into the past and the future of how the data will behave.

No matter if you’re an analyst working with databases and need a strong MySQL reporting tool or a marketing professional looking to consolidate all your channels under the same umbrella, the software will enable you to clear the clutter and automate your reports based on your specific intervals. It will update the data automatically, and you will not need more than small refinements to ensure the data you present is what your audience needs.

14. Empower Everyone In The Organization

Another valuable data reporting and analysis tip is ensuring full buy-in across the organization. Providing education and training will ensure everyone in the company pulls in the same direction.

Hosting talks as well as workshops will not only help everyone in the organization understand the practical importance of data analysis reporting, but it will empower everyone with the skills to use your new data tools to their advantage.

If everyone has the right level of access to your data reporting systems and the skills to interact with those tools confidently, your organization will more often exceed its goals.

Now that we’ve covered essential best practices let’s explore common challenges and mistakes to avoid.

Data Reporting Challenges & Mistakes To Avoid

Regardless of which types of data reports you’re talking about, there are certain universal mistakes you should avoid. Knowing these common pitfalls inside and out will ensure you stay on the right path and earn the best possible return on investment (ROI) from your analytical efforts. Let’s look at them:

Working with uncleaned information

One of the biggest mistakes we see is companies working with unvetted or unclean data. While it’s best to work with information from various relevant sources, it’s also crucial to omit any analytical information that is incorrect, misleading, or not absolutely essential to your organizational goals or progress.

To avoid such a pitfall, select sources you know will offer genuine value to your organization, then set about cleaning each pocket of information so that a clean funnel of metrics remains. Doing so will ensure your reports are true and accurate and won’t lead you down the wrong path.

Using one type of metric

What we mean here is that you shouldn’t narrow your analytical scope when creating a report. That said, you ideally want to work with visuals that offer historical, predictive, and in-the-moment intelligence.

By working with all of these ‘metric types,’ you will become more responsive while gaining the tools to examine past successes or failures and make accurate strategic projections for the future.

Overloading

While adding as much information as humanly possible is tempting, doing so will only result in overload. If your users are presented with too many metrics at one time, they will become distracted and overwhelmed.

You should only include visuals vital to your storytelling efforts while avoiding on-page clutter at all costs. Keep your designs neat, functional, and logical—doing so will help your users discover the information they need swiftly and confidently.

Being set in stone

Another significant pitfall of reporting is thinking that the battle is won once you’ve set everything up and you’re earning results.

Niche or sector aside, the business world is in a state of continual change. What works today might not work tomorrow, so it's paramount to regularly check in with your creations and make visual or informational tweaks where required.

The best analysis tools are fully customizable, making it easy to switch informational sources or update designs or metrics at any point. Consider whether your reporting formats are still offering the best ROI for your efforts, and if you believe they are falling short, evolve your designs and your efforts for success.

Data Reports Examples and Templates

Let's move on to data reporting examples to put everything we’ve discussed so far into perspective. Apply these examples during your report generation process to create reports that drive action and add value to your company’s efforts. 

These powerful data report examples have been developed with the help of a professional dashboard designer , who empowers everyone in the business to build their own reports. Let’s start with the finance department.

1. Financial KPI Dashboard

Finance is the beating heart of any organization, and creating a financial report is the basis for sustainable development. Companies need to monitor their monetary operations closely and ensure that their financial data is 100% accurate.

Our example focuses on metrics meticulously chosen to depict a company's general financial health. The information is presented logically, connecting various financial indicators that make a complete data story without overcrowding the screen or complicating the report.

**click to enlarge**

Primary KPIs:

• Working Capital
• Quick Ratio / Acid Test
• Cash Conversion Cycle
• Vendor Payment Error Rate
• Budget Variance

Data reporting is quite simple in this case: Presenting the most important information in a clear financial narrative that will drive action. This financial dashboard shows that the company managed to decrease the cash cycle, but the vendor payment rate spiked in September last year. It might make sense to take action and see in more detail what happened so that the processes can be adjusted accordingly.

2. Marketing KPI Dashboard 

Our next example is an intuitive marketing report composed of critical metrics related to costs and revenue. Marketers need to keep close track of this data as it helps them understand the success of their marketing efforts as well as find improvement opportunities to ensure a healthy marketing ROI.

Primary KPIs: 

• Cost per Acquisition (CPA)
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
• Return on Investment (ROI)

With valuable coverage on revenue per acquisition, profit per acquisition, cost per acquisition, and more, this data report format provides a useful overview of the most impactful marketing indicators for making strategic decisions. For instance, by looking at the CPA by channel and campaign, you can understand which of them are acquiring the most customers at the lowest price. In this case, we see that social media is the channel that brings the lowest cost per acquisition and the highest profit; therefore, it makes sense to invest more time and resources into it. 

Aside from being a great tool to support efficient decision-making, the report's visual nature makes it the perfect overview for your CEO or investors to prove the success of different marketing activities.  

3. Retail KPI Dashboard

Retailers must be extra careful in picking the right metrics and presenting their data in a clear order. They must avoid cluttering the report or confusing the people who need to read it and act accordingly.

• Back Order Rate
• Rate of Return
• Customer Retention
• Total Volume of Sales

A retail dashboard such as the one presented above focuses on the perspective of orders, which is one of the crucial points in this cutthroat business.

Gaining access to these touchpoints will equip you with the best possible ingredients to stay competitive in the market. Utilizing KPIs such as the rate of return (also by category), customer retention rate, and the number of new and returning customers will enable you to access in-depth information on your order processes and ensure your actions stay focused on developing your company sustainably. For example, you can monitor the return rate and ensure it stays as low as possible. That way, your costs will be significantly lower and, ultimately, customers more satisfied.

Your retail analytics processes don’t need to foster complex reports, but with an example, such as we presented above, you can see that reporting with dynamic visualizations empowers you to make better business decisions.

4. Customer Support Dashboard 

Our next data report template is a customer service dashboard that offers a mix of metrics related to costs, revenue, and customer satisfaction. With this information, the support team can optimize their performance by finding improvement opportunities based on data.

**click to enlarge** 

• Service Level
• Support Costs vs Revenue
• Customer Satisfaction

Although it might not seem the most obvious area to invest in, your customer service experience can make or break your company. If clients are unhappy with your problem-solving capabilities, they will likely not return to make another purchase. For this purpose, this report offers insights into revenue and costs, which helps you monitor that everything is running smoothly. For example, if your revenue is going down and your costs are up, you need to think of solutions to make the service department more profitable. 

This insightful report also offers insights into customer satisfaction and the average time your support agents spend solving issues. This can also give you insights into your team's general productivity. If you see that the average time to solve an issue is rising, then you can dig deeper into the reasons and find solutions to decrease it. 

5. Talent Management Dashboard

The next example is our HR dashboard , which is focused on talent management. Talent retention and development are ongoing challenges for HR managers. This data-centric reporting tool is designed to consistently keep your top-performing staff engaged and motivated.

• Talent Satisfaction
• Talent Rating
• Talent Turnover Rate
• Dismissal Rate

With a wealth of at-a-glance insights essential to successful talent management strategies and HR KPIs focused on rising talent as well as dismissal and turnover rates, this invaluable tool will prove vital to the health and growth of your organization. Moreover, your HR analytics efforts will prove to enhance hiring processes, enabling you to attract the best possible talent, automate tasks, and create a satisfying workforce environment.

6. Sales Opportunity Dashboard

Sales are integral to most companies' success. Our sales dashboard will help you easily identify revenue-boosting sources and prioritize them in order of prospective value.

• Number of Sales Opportunities
• Sales Opportunity Score
• Average Purchase Value

These KPIs will allow you to streamline your sales strategy for maximum income, efficiency, and sustainability. This visually-balanced performance dashboard is easy to understand and will help you take direct action when it matters most – a priceless business intelligence tool for any forward-thinking organization.

7. IT Issue Management Dashboard 

IT analytics is another relevant area in which reporting data is useful. The IT department deals with a lot of information daily, and this report helps them keep track of everything related to technical issue management.

• Server Downtime
• Meantime To Repair
• Unsolved Tickets Per Employee
• IT Support Employees per End Users

This insightful IT dashboard overviews the most important metrics needed to ensure technical issues are resolved efficiently. First, we get an overview of the real-time status of three main servers alongside information on the last time they were down. This lets you see at a glance if everything is going smoothly or if something needs immediate attention. 

This data report sample also offers information on the most common downtime issues, which lets you find the root causes of recurring issues and prevent them from happening again. Paired with this, you get data about the performance of the different IT employees. As seen in the chart, three employees have a low ratio of solved tickets compared to unsolved, meaning their amount of unsolved issues is much higher than the number of tickets they have solved. This can mean they lack training or a specific issue is very hard to solve. The data allows you to dig deeper into the reasons and improve efficiency. 

8. Procurement Quality Dashboard

Our procurement dashboard is designed to streamline and fortify the relationship between you, your vendors, and your suppliers.

• Supplier Quality Rating
• Vendor Rejection Rate & Costs
• Emergency Purchase Ratio
• Purchases In Time & Budget
• Spend Under Management

Cohesive procurement is vital to any modern organization's financial and operational success, regardless of industry or sector. This interactive procurement report will help you quality-check your suppliers while digging deeper into metrics surrounding emergency purchases, rejection rates, costs, budgetary constraints, and more. These insights help procurement managers to be more proactive, efficient, and sustainable in their every move.

9. Hospital Performance Dashboard 

From patient care to staff management, this insightful data report template for hospital performance is the perfect visual tool to ensure efficient facility management. More than any other industry, healthcare institutions can benefit from real-time data as it allows them to act immediately as soon as an issue arises – especially considering that any problems can affect the well-being of patients.

• Average Hospital Stay
• Hospital Readmission Rates
• Costs By Payer

Armed with powerful healthcare KPIs , this data analysis report covers every relevant area to ensure the efficient functioning of the hospital. By using targets and desired outcomes to achieve, managers can find improvement opportunities on a clinical, operational, and financial level. For example, readmission rates are a metric that can directly affect your reputation as it is a token of the quality of care provided in your facilities and should remain as low as possible. 

This tool can also provide relevant information about patients and staff. The nurse-to-patient ratio indicates how many nurses are available per patient. For example, if you see the ratio increasing during night shifts, you must ensure you have the right staff working at those times.

10. Facebook Page Dashboard 

Next up, we have a social media report example for Facebook. With insights into page views, behaviors, interactions, follower demographics, likes, engagements, and more, this report provides all the needed information to optimize your Facebook page's growth and ensure your strategies' success.

• Number of Fans
• Follower Demographics
• Page Views by Sources
• Actions on Page

Understanding the behaviors of your target audience is crucial for success when creating social media campaigns. Generating targeted experiences for your audience will not only make them more loyal to your brand but also save you money and time on targeting the wrong people. For that purpose, this insightful Facebook dashboard is an invaluable tool. 

Like other social channels, Facebook has its best practices and techniques to follow to ensure the best results from your organic, paid, and viral campaigns. While some of the metrics might seem purely informational, like the fans by country or gender, when mixed together, they can provide deeper conclusions that will help generate interesting content and gain loyal followers in the process.

11. Supply Chain Management Dashboard

Your supply chain is one of the most crucial aspects of any modern organization. Optimizing every element of your supply chain will make your company more efficient while boosting your bottom line. Having an effective supply chain will also help you deliver on your customer-facing promises, which in turn, will build trust and accelerate your commercial growth.

Primary metrics

• Inventory Accuracy
• Inventory Turnover
• Inventory to Sales Ratio

As one of our most visually grabbing data report examples, our supply chain logistics dashboard offers all the metrics required to explore, examine, and improve every key aspect of your processes.

Here, you can establish a firm grip on your inventory level of out-of-stock items while gaining a deeper understanding of overall inventory accuracy. You can also uncover key trends in your sales-to-inventory ratio and inventory turnover.

By gaining access to this melting pot of visual information in one cohesive space, you can decide exactly where you need to rethink your inventory choices, stocking, supply, and communication processes.

Regularly working with this data analysis report template will empower you to take charge of your supply chain while remaining adaptable to consistent change. In turn, you will gain an edge over the competition.

12. Manufacturing Production Dashboard

For organizations that deal in manufacturing, having the tools to track various processes, respond to issues, and make informed development decisions is essential. Without a clear-cut vision, things can quickly spiral out of control, putting a significant dent in budget and brand reputation.

• Production Volume
• Production Downtime
• Production Cost

This eye-catching data report example serves up critical manufacturing metrics , offering a panoramic snapshot of every cog in the machine as a result.

Here, you can drill down into your key production volumes over a specific timeframe while gaining a detailed glimpse into production costs and downtimes. Combined, these metrics will show you how efficiently your machines work while finding a correlation between productivity and revenue.

This dynamic tool will also tell you which machines are the most efficient, which will help you better distribute your production output or volumes to make your strategy as efficient as possible across the board.

Working with this tool frequently will reduce unnecessary costs and long-winded processes while helping you nip any emerging issue in the bid before it gets out of control–the perfect manufacturing manager’s companion.

13. Content Quality Control Dashboard

In an age where the consumer is well and truly in control, content is the cornerstone of building trust, establishing brand authority, and standing out from the crowd. Without publishing consistently high-quality content that meets your audience’s needs across channels, you will get left in the commercial dust.

• Flesch Reading Ease
• Average Comments per Article
• Story Turnaround Time

A data report sample designed to keep your content marketing efforts consistently on track, this powerful reporting tool is packed with visuals that will elevate your brand to new heights.

Here you can use the Flesch reading test metric to gauge the accessibility of your content while pinpointing exactly which pieces of content are performing best across channels. This most dynamic of data analysis report examples will also show how many digital subscribers you’ve gained over a certain timeframe while exploring article engagement.

If you know what your consumers want or need in terms of informational value, you will skyrocket your company’s success—and you can do that with this content report .

This perfect combination of visual information will ultimately ensure you’re producing the content that resonates most with specific audience segments while earning a consistently high return on investment (ROI) from your efforts.

14. Cyber Security Dashboard

Next is our cyber security dashboard, which helps businesses maintain a firm grasp of their systems. This IT report is mission-critical, as today’s organizations handle no shortage of sensitive information that needs to be protected. With the potential for cyber crimes at an all-time high, it’s crucial for companies to monitor for threats and implement long-term prevention measures. 

• Total intrusion attempts
• Phishing test success rate
• Intrusion attempts by malware type

To deploy proactive cyber defense, we compile essential insights into a single view. This cyber security dashboard shows you an overall security rating, along with key elements like intrusion attempts, phishing test success rates, and mean detect and resolution times.

Metrics like intrusion attempts by week and phishing test success rate show you historical values so you can see how you’re improving your cyber security efforts week by week. You can also dig deeper into specific weeks to gain more context about your efforts and events for that week. These insights can help you identify major risks and understand your employees' daily challenges, allowing you to implement the right measures to protect them (and your organization).

15. Pick and Pack Scorecard

The pick and pack scorecard focuses on warehouse operations, specifically order processing. Pick and pack refers to the procedure employees follow, starting from receiving an order to preparing an order for shipment. It entails locating the item(s) on the order, placing them in the packaging, logging them out of inventory, printing shipping labels, packaging them together, and scheduling the shipment. With so many moving parts, a detailed scorecard can provide the comprehensive view you need to identify inefficiencies.

• Pick and pack costs
• Pick and pack cycle times
• Cost of packaging materials
• Picking accuracy

This pick and pack dashboard offers insights into four key areas: Financial, Effectiveness, Utilization, and Quality. Starting with the financial section, users can track the average cost of pick and pack processes by line and the cost of returns per order. These metrics are displayed on a monthly basis, and you can view the current month and previous month on the same screen.

Next, we see productivity and effectiveness data to show how efficiently employees work. Big fluctuations in these metrics could indicate a lack of training and/or a need for new processes or quality controls, for example. Utilization also relates to the financial aspect, as you don’t want to spend more on materials and equipment than necessary. 

16. Energy Operational Dashboard

Our energy dashboard is designed for operations managers who need a bird' s-eye view of their operations and facilities. Here, we combine production distribution, availability, energy savings, and other metrics in a single view. Large plants have complex energy needs, so this dashboard helps simplify understanding energy consumption.

• Production distribution
• Energy savings
• Availability factor
• Performance ratio

The availability section refers to the amount of time your plant can operate. This metric is especially helpful when you manage multiple plants, as it helps identify potential equipment problems so you can plan for downtime. 

Production distribution helps you better understand your customers. Knowing how much of each type of energy you’re producing allows you to anticipate consumer demand and adapt your supply accordingly.

Last but not least, we have each plant's performance ratio. You can compare actual production to projected production, gauging each facility's efficiency. The difference between these two metrics can arise from a number of factors, including energy losses from solar input or water systems, for example. This indicator allows you to spot issues and take action before losses mount significantly.

17. HR Executive Dashboard

Next on our list is the HR executive dashboard, a critical helper for maintaining growth goals, employee satisfaction, and salary costs. Talent shortages and an unpredictable labor market directly impact a company’s ability to grow, so it’s essential for HR to stay ahead of the curve and make key hiring decisions at critical moments.

• Employee satisfaction
• Vacancy rate
• Salary costs to gross revenue

Maintaining a healthy workforce focuses on three key areas: high employee satisfaction, adequate staffing so employees are not overworked, and fair salary costs compared to the company’s financial health. This dashboard encompasses each of these areas in a single view.

This first section shows a growth headcount chart with insights into current vacancies, new hires, and turnover. We can see how these counts fluctuate and prepare salary budgets, recruiting efforts, and retention initiatives accordingly. 

In the employee satisfaction section, we gain insight into employees' happiness, which may indicate their likelihood of remaining with the company. This chart also includes manager feedback scores, which directly impact how confident employees feel in their roles. We can observe how these values change over time and influence other areas like hiring, retention, and turnover.

18. Operating Expenses Dashboard

Last on our list is the operating expenses dashboard. This financial dashboard is a daily helper to CFOs, as it allows them to view operating expenses, fixed and variable expenses, and operating ratios in one view.

• Operating expense ratio
• Fixed expenses
• Variable expenses
• Net profit margin

Operating expenses refer to all of the costs an organization incurs as a result of operations. These expenses may include marketing costs, production costs, employee salaries, rent or mortgage, inventory costs, and insurance, for example. 

Here we have a breakdown of fixed and variable costs, which are paid over a defined period. We can look at fluctuations in these expenses as they relate to output to see which ones we can influence. To better understand these costs, we can look to other metrics like production to see why certain costs may increase or decrease.

One of the most valuable KPIs in this chart is the operating ratio, which adds context to the overall financial picture. This metric represents operational expenses as a percentage of revenue and can indicate the success of your expense optimization efforts. Ideally, you’ll keep this ratio as low as possible without impacting efficiency or output.

Start Building Your Data Reports Now!

We’ve answered the question, ‘What is data reporting?’ and explored a host of powerful data reporting templates. During our journey, one thing has become clear: investing in the right analytical tools and processes will propel your organization ahead of the pack.

Now that you know how to create efficient data analysis reports, it’s time to embrace the power of modern BI solutions and data analytics.

Reporting, analytics, and smart informational processing can have a transformational impact if approached correctly.

Fortunately, the mind-numbing task of manually creating daily or weekly reports is a thing of the past. With the right plan and proper business reporting software , you can easily analyze your data and also create eye-catching and remarkable reports.

We live in the age of information, a time when anything is possible. By embracing data-centric reports and forming the right foundations, you will accelerate your organization's success in ways you never thought possible, pushing you ahead of the pack in the process.

All you need to do is follow these essential steps and recommendations, and you will be on your way to a brighter, more prosperous commercial future. If you want to start creating your own powerful and modern reports and testing all of these practices, you can try datapine for a 14-day trial , which is completely free. The time to strike is now.

Data Reporting: Definition, Examples and Best Practices

The average business creates immense amounts of data every passing second. Customer data, purchase history, interactions with your website, steps in the sales funnel… The list goes on and on. And when someone important in a business (or your customer) wants to see that data, you need reporting.

Data reporting turns data points into useful insights that a manager, CEO, customer, or client can use to guide their decision-making. Today, we show you all you need to know about data reporting.

What is data reporting?

Data reporting is the process of reporting on data - taking data points from various sources, distilling them in a form that is easy to understand, and finally, wrapping it up in the form of a report.

The audience for a data report can be a large number of people:

• Your direct manager
• A C-level executive
• An investor
• A customer who wants insights about how they use your product
• A client who needs a performance update about their campaigns

A data report is more than a list of numbers and raw data points. It’s a curated collection of information presented in a way that helps readers derive value from it. And the best part is - you don’t have to be a data analytics expert to create data reports.

Why is data reporting important for a modern business?

Just collecting data is a good start. But reporting on that data can benefit just about everyone in your business, from leaders to end-users.

Informed decision-making

Equipped with the right metrics and KPIs, business leaders can make the right decisions at the right time. A data report about a business’ sales numbers tells the CFO which channels are performing well, which sales reps perform the best, what products/services are (not) selling and more.

Performance monitoring

Data reporting can give you real-time access to your sales, marketing, and overall business performance. You can measure performance through static reports or interactive dashboards, which use visualizations to give you true real-time data access.

Imagine seeing how many visitors your website has in real-time and which landing pages they are on - you can do that.

Identifying trends and patterns

To make important business decisions, you first need to spot trends and patterns in your data. For example, you could pull data from various data sources, such as your CRM, website analytics tool, sales dialer and other tools. You can then use data visualization to see trends and patterns in data.

For example, you could see that a certain product category is selling poorly in the last quarter and that you need to pull in a different direction or work on a new ecommerce SEO strategy to see improvements.

Accountability and transparency

Early on in my career as a manager, my CMO told me one thing that struck me: to make someone succeed, make them own a KPI. Data reporting does just that - it tracks metrics and KPIs for every business functionality and every role.

This makes your team more accountable as it’s easy to see who is in charge of what operations and what kind of outcomes they are producing.

Regulatory compliance

In some industries, data reporting is not just about actionable insights. Reporting on data is necessary as business intelligence is built into these industries by default - you need to track and monitor data to stay compliant. Think healthcare, government, cybersecurity, and other industries.

Competitive advantage

When you collect data and pay attention to key performance indicators, this shows you which areas of your business need improvement. Whether it’s financial reports or marketing reports, you get accurate data that helps you find out what to automate, eliminate or improve.

Types of data reporting

The reporting process and the final outcome are different based on your data collection, data reporting tools and the audience reading your reports. These are some of the main types of reports you can use in your business.

Real-time reports: a reporting system where data is constantly fetched from data sources to the report, giving accurate, real-time data.

Ad-hoc reports: custom reports built upon request. For example, a CEO needs to make some data-driven decisions and they request a financial performance report for the quarter.

Regular reports: planned reports created and sent out at regular intervals, e.g. once per week, month, quarter.

Descriptive reports: reports not only showcasing data, but also covering key takeaways and conclusions based on said data.

Prescriptive reports: reports that provide data analysis and prescriptions on what could be done in the future to achieve better results.

Predictive reports: these reports are based on historical data and they make predictions about future performance.

Actionable tips for improving data reporting

If you want to kiss Excel spreadsheets goodbye and take your data reporting to the 21st century, here are a few tips on how to improve your data reporting process.

Build the report according to the audience

Before you start collecting data or build any data visualizations or graphs, think about the most important person(s): the one reading the report. The data sources, formats and visualization types you choose need to be based on that persona.

For example, a CMO won’t need the same level of SEO insights as a Head of Content or a Head of Growth. A customer who only uses one set of features won’t need the same dashboard as someone who uses your product to the full extent with all of its plugins and add-ons.

One way to solve this problem is to offer self-service reporting and allow your end-users to create the kind of reports that suit their needs.

Define the goals and objectives before creating a data report

What are you trying to achieve with the report? Do you want to get actionable insights about past performance? Predict future performance? Find out which processes can be automated, eliminated, or improved?

Collecting data for the sake of collecting data is bad, and so is creating reports just to tick a box. Reports are important initiatives that need to exist for a reason. Without that reason, your decision-makers won’t fully grasp the importance of data in front of them.

Use the right tool for the job

There are countless tools that can create reports and dashboards. But not every tool is ideal for every type of report under the sun.

For example, just using Google Sheets can be enough to create a simple work report. Looker Studio is an excellent app for reporting on Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Ads - for website traffic, paid ads stats, and more. Power BI is a great tool for on-premise BI reports for enterprise demographics. And Luzmo does embedded analytics really well.

The right reporting and data visualization tool can save time and money and present data effectively so your target audience understands it well.

Visualize your data

In its basic form, data has limited usability. Showing rows of numbers in a visual format helps your target audience understand the data better and draw conclusions more quickly and efficiently. Some examples of visualizations include:

• Line graphs
• Scatter plots
• Pie charts and donut charts
• And many others

When numbers are visualized, they become effective data - as the person reading the report can understand the data and take action based on it.

Choose the right visualizations

Just because it can be a pie chart, it does not mean it should be. There is a right and wrong type of dashboard for every type of data and intended use case. For example, pie charts are great for showing proportional data, while histograms are great for showing the distribution of continuous data.

Choose the type of visualization based on the data you’re working with and the effect you want to achieve. Some tools such as Luzmo come with report and dashboard templates that have pre-built visualizations for the right use case.

Give context to your data

While visualizations tell a story, they don’t tell the whole story and sometimes the end-user can struggle with telling what is what. You can help them come to the right conclusion by giving them tooltips and insights for each visualization.

In Luzmo, users can hover over these tooltips to get additional information about a visualization. This is especially handy for users who are not tech-savvy and don’t understand all the data points you’re delivering them.

Structure your report in a logical way

In communication, there is a concept called BLUF or Bottom Line Up Front, where you deliver the most important information first, followed by all the information that is less important. In short, it’s a reverse pyramid.

Put the most important information first as this will allow decision-makers to catch up with it before moving on to the supporting information. For example, you can show the total sales and conversion first before going into a breakdown of all the specific sales channels.

Wrapping up

Data reporting is no longer nice to have - it’s a necessity for a business that’s driven by outcomes and tangible results. It may seem like reporting is a complex topic, but thanks to reporting tools, the process of collecting, analyzing, and visualizing data is mostly automated. All you have to do is determine who your audience is and what data they need to see.

At Luzmo, we can help you create stunning reports and dashboards to share with customers within your SaaS app. Give your end-users additional value from your tool, drive new revenue, and beat the competition on the basis of product usage.

‍ Get in touch with our team so we can show you how to add an embedded analytics dashboard to your app!

Mile Zivkovic

Senior Content Writer

Mile Zivkovic is a content marketer specializing in SaaS. Since 2016, he’s worked on content strategy, creation and promotion for software vendors in verticals such as BI, project management, time tracking, HR and many others.

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The Complete Guide to Understanding Data Reporting

Raw data is collected from various channels and stored in databases, but in order to make it useful, it has to be processed to be displayed. The first step is Data Reporting. It involves using various tools to define and store data , while professionals monitor trends, the process of data collection, and the performance of the enterprise.

Thus, data reporting is the process of collecting, storing, and displaying data to monitor the performance of a process. It requires certain skills and tools.

Data Reporting and data analytics , though often used interchangeably, are two different processes, but analytics is dependent on data reports. Here is the complete guide to understanding data reporting solutions and services.

Table of Contents

• Definition of data reporting
• What are data reports
• What is the purpose of data reports
• What is the importance of data reporting
• Here’s how to write a data report
• Reporting versus analytics – what’s the difference?

What is Data Reporting?

Data Reporting can be defined as the process of collecting, storing, and displaying data to monitor the performance of a process. It can help engineers, marketers, managers, or other professionals monitor the performance of their processes.

Data Reporting is also a type of service where a company collects data from a variety of sources and then sends it to clients or other companies for further action.

Such data reports can then be used to determine trends in the performance of processes by monitoring the data over time. That is data analysis .

The analytics provides answers to questions like, “What improvements need to be made in your product sales process”, or, “Why are our costs changing? Why are we losing/gaining business?”

Data analysis is defined as the process of analyzing data collected by a data reporting system. Data analysis helps improve the process of data reporting. Reports should raise questions about the business from their end-users. But data reports do not have context, they simply present the facts.

By interpreting the data at a deeper level and providing actionable recommendations, the analysis seeks to answer questions.

This comprehensive guide will help you understand data and data reporting, and its use. You’ll learn what information is collected, how it is collected, how it’s used, and the skills required, among other things.

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Data reporting basics.

What are data reports , how do they work, and what are the common types of data reports? Here are some answers:

Basics include:

What is a data set?

A data set is made up of the data that you want to capture and present. These are the actual source documents that contain the data that you are interested in.

The following are common data sets that are used for data reporting:

Financial and operational data: Data that is provided by an organization’s accounting system or other financial and operational systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

You can extract financial and operational data from the source documents and bring it into a data mart before sending it to a reporting server for reporting.

Customer relationship management (CRM) data: Data from various systems that can be extracted from source documents to a data mart.

For example, you can extract customer information from a CRM system and put the data into a data mart for reporting.

Archival data : Data that was captured in source documents. If you need the same data several times, extract it from the source documents and load it into a data mart before sending it to a reporting server for reporting to save time and effort.

What are Data Reports and the Types of Data Reports?

Data reporting is the process of creating digestible data by translating raw data into formats that help you assess the success of your organization.

There are several different kinds of data reports. They can be classified by the kind of information they report on and the manner in which they do so.

When it comes to presenting your data, there are two different types of reports: static and interactive. Static reports are simple to create and understand but do not allow users to interact with them. Most pull data from a single source, hence are called static.

Static reports provide “historical” data, i.e. of events that have already occurred. Eg: What was the cost per lead acquisition?

Interactive reports also called real-time or dynamic reports, provide access to data as it is collected in real-time. Because they update data continuously, they allow users to drill down into the data to uncover a deeper meaning.

What types of reports do you typically create? The primary type of report is a list, which provides a brief view of the facts from source documents without presenting them in a context that can then be used down the line to make decisions.

For example, you can create a list of key facts, key dates, or key costs. An example would be: How many customers opened bank accounts, in which months, last year?

What Data are You Reporting?

The next step in designing reports is to determine the information you want your users to view and the results you want them to get.

A report is a detailed presentation of facts and can come in summary form, too. Then, there’s the query. Data Report summaries provide a snapshot of an organization’s performance.

They are usually generated for top management, who then disseminate the information to their staff.

Form queries are more complex. They are typically requested by users to filter the information they want.

For example, an analyst might want to look at sales growth by individual products, geographical locations, or customers within particular organizations.

They may want to know how many customers opened their accounts in the previous year. So they ‘query” the database for the answers.

What is the Purpose of Data Reports?

• To present information to analysts and managers so they can make effective business decisions
• To present information to analysts and managers so they can improve the performance of their organization
• To improve the quality of existing information
• For managers, it is to satisfy information needs so they can make informed decisions

How do you format it?

• Each column is a separate information item or entity
• Each line of a report summarizes a specific set of information
• If a set of information items is too large to fit on one page, it is broken into sections or lines
• A report usually contains several sections: title, purpose, list of information items, and organization chart
• The sections should be labeled, described, and described in detail

Data Reporting Tools

A data reporting tool performs the actual data reporting by collecting data from within your business processes.

The data reporting tool collects data from the business processes being conducted by the company. The data reporting tool can be an Excel spreadsheet or some other type of electronic reporting tool.

The Importance of Data Reporting

Here’s why should you care about data reporting.

If data is not reported, there are two reasons why:

1) the data was not measured or

2) the data was measured but not reported

Not measuring is never an option, but reporting is often optional. If the data is not reported, it does not exist, in a sense. The data can’t be used for making decisions. This can be a problem.

Also, not all data should be reported to make a decision. If a person is making a decision based on certain assumptions, they need the actual data to see if it supports the assumptions.

Why Measure the Data?

There are many reasons you would want to measure data, but there are five main ones:

1) it helps to mark the stages/progress of a business

2) it helps understand what is going on with competitors

3) it is a valuable measurement tool for taking action

4) it helps you improve your data management process

How to Write A Data Report?

These are the basic components of a good data report:

1) title and introduction

2) business logic

3) data summary

4) group by and sort criteria

5) visualizations

6) drill down

7) conclusions and recommendations

8) references and appendices

9) footnotes and credits

A good data report should include all of these elements, but it doesn’t need to be perfect.

The main points to remember when writing a data report are:

1) make sure your report isn’t too long

2) Define the type of data report you are trying to create

This includes the purpose and objective of the report. Data should be presented in a way that allows decision-makers to make an informed and confident decision based on your data and analysis.

3) Make sure to explain the purpose of the report

The data report should be designed in a way that helps the user answer the following questions:

1) What is the data in this report?

2) What conclusions can be drawn from this data?

3) What actions should take place because of this information?

The target audience should be able to clearly define the key issue being addressed by the report. This is very important.

What are Data Reporting Skills?

Many organizations simply store raw data from various sources within Excel, Access, SQL Server, MongoDB, NoSQL database, etc. But to prepare a data report, you need the following skills:

• Ability to compile a list of all the data that you have from research or other sources
• Identify important data and use it
• Compile a list of reports for end-users
• Present these reports to end-users in different formats

Report Vs. Analytics: Know the Difference

If you’re considering using the data to make the decision about what should happen next, should report or analytics be your guide?

A data report is a process of compiling data. It can be as simple as having a list of activities. But to take it a step further, the report has to be analyzed to deliver a statistical measure of a company, individual, product, or service.

The analysis  uses data to answer strategic business questions, while a report uses data to track the business’ performance.

Think of a story as a presentation to an audience. Storytelling allows you to use the actual data and show the inner workings of your data model or analysis in such a way that people can understand what they’re seeing and why it matters.

Here’s an explanation by QuestionPro :

Reporting : The process of organizing data into informational summaries in order to monitor how different areas of a business are performing.

Analysis : The process of exploring data and reports in order to extract meaningful insights, which can be used to better understand and improve business performance.

So data analytics is a mathematical representation of the data and models that can also be used to describe how to predict what will happen in the future. Think of analytics as a set of formulas; it’s what you use to predict the results.

Understanding the difference between a Report and Analytics could be one of the most important things to do if you’re looking to build meaningful insights from your data.

Reports will usually be much more ‘raw’, meaning they’re not quantified, and they don’t include any data analysis. They’re a way of getting your data out there so you can look at it and understand what’s going on.

If you just wanted to see the number of new visitors that have come to your site, then you’d use a report. So, reports generally include facts and statistics about a particular topic or event, but because there’s no quantifying, it’s not likely that the information will be very meaningful.

Analytics , on the other hand, will almost always include some kind of analysis of the data that you’ve collected.

It may be that the only insight that they’ll provide is what proportion of visitors are returning or how much time people spend on your site.

Or maybe you want to find out how many visitors are coming from specific countries or what type of device they’re using to view your site.

So clearly, the difference is in what they provide. In data-driven decision-making, analytics is often referred to as the “ visualization part ” .

What makes one a reporting tool and the other an analytics solution? The report is usually printed out in PDF format, sent to the user by email or Excel, or uploaded to a website.

The reports are usually visually oriented, but not generally specific enough to be useful in the decision-making process.

On the other hand, an analytics solution provides a specific set of tools to help users make better decisions.

Often this means it has a graphical user interface (GUI) which allows a user to click a few buttons and have graphs and charts appear on the screen. Other times it means that the analytics are embedded within another system.

The data provided by the analytics tool is used to identify trends, spikes, anomalies, and anomalies (e.g., outliers). If you’re not familiar with statistics then this might be an area that’s beyond your capabilities.

In conclusion: To make raw data useful, it has to be processed and displayed. Data is collected from various sources and stored in databases, but it must be processed to extract value. Data reporting, not to be confused with data analytics, involves the use of various tools for defining and storing data, along with the monitoring of trends, the collection process, and overall performance.

Therefore, data reporting refers to the process of collecting, storing, and displaying data to monitor a process’ performance. The process requires a certain level of skill and a certain set of tools. Reporting and analytics are distinct processes, despite often being used interchangeably.

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What are Data Reports? + 3 Keys to High-Quality Reports

Data reporting is the process of organizing and curating information into a format that makes it easier to digest than if you looked at the raw data.

Data doesn’t automatically translate to a “Eureka!” moment. The insights that give companies a competitive edge come from the ability to quickly synthesize and interpret complex data sets. So how does one get from point A (collecting data) to point B (organizing it into a comprehensive report)? We’ll show you how. 

What is a data report?

A data report takes an otherwise large or complex data set and is able to present this information in a way that’s succinct and broadly accessible. A data report distills key themes and trends that are represented in the data, and can take the form of a table, graph, or chart (certain business intelligence dashboards are able to update these graphs in real time).

Usually, a data report aims to answer a specific question(s). There can be quarterly data reports on key performance indicators for a business – like website traffic, closed-won deals, the conversion rate for ad campaigns – as just a few examples. 

What are the benefits of data reporting?

Data reporting, when done well, distills the essential information about a complicated situation or topic, making it easy for everyone to grasp. This characteristic makes data reports indispensable for modern organizations that often have to adapt with fast-changing macro- and micro-trends. Data-driven insights are the best way to “steer the ship,” helping businesses become more strategic, cost-effective, and innovative. 

However, data literacy can be difficult to attain across an organization, with data reports offering a great solution: simplifying the process of gleaning insight. Here are the top three benefits of data reports. 

1. Communicate complex information quickly

A good data report takes an otherwise intimidating data set and makes it simpler to understand. It helps different stakeholders cut through the noise and see the overarching points. (E.g., is performance better quarter to quarter? Are there any areas where spending has gotten egregious?). 

Data reports help simplify complex information in two important ways: 

Curation . They present relevant data to the reader that answers the specific question being asked. 

Visualization . They turn endless rows of numbers in a database into tables, charts, and graphs, making the information more accessible for the reader.

2. Monitor business performance at a glance

As we mentioned above, data reports are a quick way to get to the point, summarizing essential points and metrics. This mission-control-like overview allows managers to monitor business performance and even spot potential problems before they have a chance to unfold.  

Even better, with real-time business intelligence dashboards teams can apply specific filters to quickly spin up reports for different stakeholders. 

3. Highlight patterns and relations to uncover insights

Data reports are also an effective way to illustrate patterns and trends – helping to drive deeper insight (e.g., attributing a dip or spike in web traffic to seasonality, which a business can then prepare for or anticipate moving forward). 

Data reports play a crucial role in getting to the heart of the matter (and cutting out all the white noise). But being able to discern these overarching trends and patterns comes from understanding which metrics matter to the business (here’s a hint: focus on rates , not just totals that offer little context on their own, and know which teams are responsible for driving each metric).  

What types of data reports are there for businesses?

Data reports can come in many different forms: real-time dashboards, shareholder reports, annual research studies. Here are some common types of data reports you may come across. 

Customer analytics

A customer analytics report helps companies understand—and, ideally, anticipate— a customer’s needs. These reports can show stats like product usage, the likelihood of churn, or purchase preferences (to give a few examples). They’re essential for product, marketing, and customer support teams to understand the ease of use of their product or interface, how well they’re retaining customers, opportunities for cross-sells or upsells , and so on. 

Source: Qualtrics

Gaining a holistic view of your customers, and how they interact with your business, can become considerably more challenging for companies that support multiple business units or geographies. While a company would of course want an understanding of business health as a whole, they’ll also want to drill down to understand how each region is performing, respectively. Using Segment’s Multi-Instance Destinations , companies can send different data to different analytics destinations. In this step-by-step guide, we show how to build a customized customer engagement report with Google Analytics .

KPIs and OKRs

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) help teams set goals and measure their progress based on a set of predefined metrics. While both KPIs and OKRs are used to measure business performance and success, a key distinction between the two is that OKRs – as their name suggests – are tied to an objective. Here's an example of how one might write an OKR:

Here’s how you can build real-time, company-wide KPI dashboards using Segment. 

Financial reports

Financial reports provide an overview of the companies’ financial situation (e.g., revenue, profits, etc.). They can include historical data, like a quarterly breakdown of revenue and expenses or forecast ahead, like anticipated growth and earnings.

Most financial reports are critical for operating any business because they give you an understanding of how much money is coming in and where you’re spending it, allowing you to make corrections where necessary.

Source: Corporate Finance Institute

Research reports

Research reports often set out to find extensive answers to a predefined question, like “Is there a market for our product in this region?” or “How are consumer buying patterns changing year over year?” These reports can be more informal (e.g., user research conducted internally) or huge undertakings that involve external agencies and months of work.

At Segment, we have launched several annual research reports that look at everything from trends among fast-growing companies to patterns regarding consumer engagement – like our most recent Personalization Report .

Three keys to high-quality data reporting

There is a framework for creating high-quality data reports: having a clear goal or question in mind, understanding where the data is coming from (and how it was analyzed), and structuring the information in a clear, cohesive way. 

1. Know what you’re looking for and for whom

A data report sets out to answer a central question. Are we on track to hit our OKRs for the quarter? How does our earned revenue stack up against our forecasted revenue for the past year? There are countless questions that could be the driving force behind a data report, but the main point is: data reports aren’t aimless, random metrics pasted together. They’re an investigation into – and answer for – a larger question. 

When putting together a data report it’s important to also consider who the intended audience is. Let’s say a company wants to put out an annual report about consumer behavior. That’s a pretty broad topic on its own, and someone who works in SaaS would likely be interested in much different trends than someone who works in e-commerce. On top of that, people within the same organization may have very different ideas of what relevant data entails (e.g., someone in the C-suite may want more of a top-level summary, while a team lead would be trying to discern the impact of their specific campaigns or initiatives). 

2. Know where to get your information

Understanding where this data is coming from is also a crucial aspect of putting together an accurate report. As we say at Segment: what good is bad data? 

Knowing with certainty that the data is reliable is a must, and this comes down to how you’re collecting data, the infrastructure in place for consolidating, storing, and sharing said data, and how integrated your tech stack is (among other qualities). 

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) like Segment pays enormous dividends here. Segment Connections ensure your data is unified, centralized, and ready for company-wide use.

3. Know how to present and structure your information

Presenting and structuring your data reports involves picking the most relevant information and then visualizing that data in a way that makes it as easy as possible for the reader to grasp. Such visualization goes beyond creating a chart or graph (table stakes in modern data reporting). You’ll need to build virtual dashboards, use data visualization tools, and connect them to a centralized data platform like Segment.

Learn how to use Hex, Python, Segment, and AWS S3 for data visualization here. 

The foundation of successful data reporting: data accuracy

Throughout this report, we’ve referenced one of the most important attributes of data reporting: accuracy. If the data you collect and process is incomplete, inaccurate (e.g., duplicate entries, inconsistent), or outdated, you can bet that your data report will be too. 

This is where a customer data platform can be essential, helping businesses to ensure data collection, quality, and activation at scale. Here are a few ways a CDP accomplishes this. 

Align everyone around a single data dictionary

Internal alignment is the first step in ensuring data accuracy. When teams work in silos, data becomes divvied up between the different tools and systems owned by different departments. This results in blindspots (i.e., a lack of a complete customer view and incomplete data), and duplicates (e.g., the same event being counted twice, because it’s referred to by a different name between teams). 

Standardizing naming conventions is a fundamental step in implementing a shared data dictionary across the organization – which brings clarity and structure as to what data is being collected, how it’s being processed, and where it’s stored. 

With Segment, you can enforce this data dictionary at scale using Protocols.

Automate QA checks  

Along with helping businesses enforce a universal tracking plan , Protocols can also help automate data governance at scale. One way it’s able to do this is by automating QA checks, to proactively block bad data (that does not adhere to their predefined tracking plan) before it moves to a downstream destination. 

Pre-built and custom integrations for a connected tech stack

A key component of data accuracy is whether or not your data is complete. With all the various channels and touchpoints companies have today, it’s easy for key data points to fall through the cracks. With Segment’s CDP, businesses are able to leverage hundreds of pre-built integrations to seamlessly connect every tool in their tech stack (along with building their own custom integrations, if needed). 

Take a look at our integration catalog here. 

The State of Personalization 2023

Our annual look at how attitudes, preferences, and experiences with personalization have evolved over the past year.

Frequently asked questions

What are data analysis reports.

A data analysis report is a summary of trends, outcomes, or patterns that came from analyzing a specific set of data.

Why do we need data reports?

Data reports are important because they help identify patterns and trends in otherwise large and complex data sets – helping to distill important information across an organization to improve decision making, hone strategies, and become more data-driven.

What are some best practices for writing a data report?

A few best practices to follow when putting together a data report is to: 1. Ensure the data being used is accurate, complete, and up to date. 2. Have a clear question and goal in mind for the data report (e.g., what are we trying to answer here?) 3. Understand your audience (e.g., what takeaways are most relevant to the people we’re delivering this report to). 4. Make sure information is displayed in a clear, visually compelling way for fast analysis.

What is the difference between a data report and data analysis?

Data analysis is the process of getting insights from a data set (e.g., being able to understand year-over-year business growth by analyzing metrics like revenue, churn rate, retention rate, etc.). A data report is when these insights are aggregated and displayed in an easy-to-understand way like charts, tables, etc.

What is often included in a data report?

What’s included in a data report will depend on the type of report being created. For example, a report focused on customer engagement may focus on metrics like website traffic (and its growth quarter over quarter), retention rates, etc. A financial report may look at revenue, profit, ROI and efficiency of new technologies, etc.

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Blog Business Data Reporting: How to Create a High-Quality Data Report

Data Reporting: How to Create a High-Quality Data Report

Written by: Xiaoyun Tu Feb 24, 2022

To most people, data is incredibly boring. However, it’s also incredibly necessary for the efficient operations of any business. This means that the people who truly understand data, need to find ways of presenting it so that others can understand it, too.

The data in the infographic below could have been presented as a paragraph of text. But as data visualization, it’s more impactful. 

If you want to create a high-quality data report you should be able to support your facts and present them in a way that will entice or entertain your audience. Let’s tackle some techniques on how to create an eye-catching data report that reaches your business goals.

Start the report-making process on a positive note with Venngage’s Report Maker . No design experience required!

Click to jump ahead:

What is a data report, what are the basics of data reports, how to write a high-quality report.

A data report, like the infographic below, is how you present data in a way that is both understandable and actionable. Reports can be presented in a variety of formats that have come a long way from the old-fashioned lists of numbers on a document. 

Modern data reports must be visually engaging to help make the data more accessible to all. They may be presented in forms such as graphs, pie charts, infographics , PowerPoint presentations, and more; whatever best suits the data being presented and who it’s being presented to. 

Return to Table of Contents

Purpose of data reports

There are many reasons why data is crucial for how your business operates. It gives you exact information on various aspects of every area of operations so that you can make strategic changes when needed. 

It can allow you to accurately forecast demand so you can improve customer satisfaction or present alarming statistics that will stir people to action.

Types of data reports

The data you use, and how you present it, can vary greatly. For example, the data you collect from a warehouse management system may look very different from the data you collect from a POS (point of sale) system. There are two main types of data reports:

Static reports typically present data from a single source and provide historical data, such as seeing a drop or increase in eBay sales if you own an online store. This type of report is both easy to create and easy for any reader to understand. 

• Interactive 

Interactive reports are more dynamic and will usually present real-time or current data. Think about the kind of dimensions you can track in Google Analytics, for example. The advantage of interactive reports is that because they show current data, they allow you to look more closely at what’s happening now and take action if and when needed. 

Accessibility of data reports

Data reporting needs to be as accessible to your audiences as possible. With the advent of business intelligence (BI) tools, particularly cloud-based ones, you don’t need to be an IT expert to access and create reports. Implementing an open-source API gateway can further enhance this accessibility, allowing you to seamlessly connect and manage data across various platforms without the burden of costly licenses.

However, it is essential to be aware of potential cloud security issues when utilizing these tools, as sensitive data can be vulnerable to breaches or data loss if the proper security measures are not in place. Implementing CWPP security can significantly improve the defense against threats to your data in the cloud, ensuring that your reporting remains both accessible and secure. Additionally, using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) can further safeguard your data transmissions, enhancing privacy and security when accessing your cloud-based reports.

You can easily use tools such as Google Data Studio to present information, such as the demographic data infographic below. 

Different team members can collaborate on reports, giving you a better overview of how your business is performing. With Venngage’s real-time collaboration feature, working with team members becomes much easier.

With such flexible modern tools, it’s not only easier to create good data reports but also to disseminate them via different channels, from automated emails to presenting them via a dashboard report or via a specific app. 

Know the audience for your report

Why are you creating a report and who is it for? These are two essential questions of data reporting that will help to decide what data is used and how you present it. 

An annual report may just be an overview of how the business has performed so that relevant stakeholders can see it. Other reports may be created for specific reasons such as presenting financial data .

The ‘who’ is as important as the ‘what’. The report you present to a potential client will probably look very different from a report created for your C-suite requesting the purchase of an on-premise system to improve enterprise planning. 

For an external report, you’re more likely to be creative in the use of fonts and graphics than you would be with an internal one. 

A branded report is always more impactful. Use Venngage’s My Brand Kit to import branding assets from multiple organizations, including logos, fonts, and colors. Then you can apply the brand to any design with just one click.

Have a detailed plan and choose the appropriate metrics

You need to identify what data matters (or matters most). The first step to doing that is to consider what you want to achieve from the data and the related reports. By doing so, you can eliminate the ‘white noise’ of unnecessary data that may end up hiding the numbers that really matter.

Different reports will, of course, call for different data sets. Generally, your data will come from (and give insights into) one area of your company. For example, if creating a report on customer retention, then a major piece of data is going to be your churn rate. Reports may be created for specific reasons. These can include:

• Recommendations : These could be to encourage some changes to current systems and processes. For example, a manager may want changes to the current task management process, and a data-driven report could highlight flaws in the current process. 
• Risk/feasibility : Maybe a significant change is planned to your business model, such as switching production to a whole new line of products. Risk and feasibility reports can help assess any risks involved and the potential success of any new plan.
• R&D (research and development) : Many businesses thrive and scale through innovation. Data and reports based on R&D can influence decisions on what direction a business should take.
• Regulation/Compliance : All industries face some sort of regulatory requirements. These can include things such as PCI regulations for merchants who take payments by credit cards. Data in reports can illustrate how well you’re complying with such regulations, as well as highlighting any areas that need improving. 
• KPIs and metrics : This data can be like a major health check for your organization. It demonstrates how well you’re performing in the measured areas such as sales statistics. It can also help you see where you may need to implement new processes, such as order management solutions. 

Your KPIs will demonstrate how well, or not, your previous planning and strategic decisions are working. They can also influence every major decision regarding your business as you move forward, including scalability, budgeting (in every area), marketing campaigns, and so on. Summary reports can help illustrate your results concisely.

When working with KPI data, there are a few questions you should consider:

• What do you need to know from the metric report or data? 
• Will the data presented on your dashboard report actually help inform decisions?
• What insights do the readers need to gain from this report?
• Which KPIs are relevant and should be included in any report? 
• Are other KPIs not primarily relevant, but would offer benefits if included?

Easily add charts to your reports with Venngage. Import data from a Google sheet or CSV file and the editor automatically populates the data into your report.

Visualize data in your reports

Effective data visualization can transform boring numbers into something engaging and interesting. There are many ways to visualize data nowadays, from using the report generation capabilities of business intelligence (BI) dashboards or Google Data Studio to utilizing effective report templates like the one below. 

Some examples of good templates include:

• Statistical Infographic  
• Nonprofit Impact Report
• Budget Report  

As with other areas of reporting and analytics, it’s important to consider the reason for the report and who will be viewing it. While you may be more creative with a report designed as a pitch for a new customer, you don’t want to go overboard. Use visuals that effectively communicate what the data says in a concise and understandable format. 

You should also consider how people will view the report. While some reports may be presented at a meeting as a slideshow or presentation, other reports may be sent to relevant stakeholders in an email or other formats. This means you have to make sure that any visualizations can be viewed on multiple device types.

Make an actionable data report

Some reports may be purely for informational purposes, but the majority are designed to influence and inform decisions and actions. There’s little point in cramming such a report full of great data and visualizations without some sort of conclusion that can lead to those decisions and actions. 

You need to go beyond your report simply showing “how things are” and add in “this is what we need to do to change or improve”. Think of it as being an operational CTA (call to action) that demonstrates what steps and decisions should be made next. You should also be showing why those decisions are needed and the benefits they will bring. 

Use the right chart or table

Graphs and tables can be an integral part of a data report, but you don’t want them to be confusing or misleading. Before you create a graph or table, ask yourself the question: “What do I want this to show?” These are visual representations of particular aspects you want to report on, such as increases in conversion rates by season. 

Make your report easy to read

Whether presented virtually or as hard copy, you want people to be able to read any report easily. That means carefully considering any use of fonts, themes, colors, and backgrounds. For example, white font on a light background will be difficult to read. It is worth having your report “proofread” by at least two colleagues to ensure readability. 

The takeaway 

Data, and data reporting, have come a long way in recent years. Gone are the dull lists of figures, to be replaced by reports that can be both visually engaging and also insightful. And though visually engaging is a great thing to be, that insightfulness is the primary aim of any data reporting you do. 

Any report needs to be of high quality and must engage the reader well, but it must also inform them as much as possible, especially when the data reporting seeks to influence important strategic or operational decisions. Good data reports can be the fuel that drives your business upwards and forwards.

Need help making a data report? Create one in minutes with Venngage’s easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor.

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• Marketing Data

Data Reporting: Best Practices for Crafting Impactful Reports

• February 13, 2024

What is Data Reporting?

Data reporting is the systematic approach to taking raw data and transforming it into a structured format that highlights key information, trends, and metrics. This process involves gathering, sorting, and analyzing data to create data reports that offer actionable insights.

Organizations can understand their performance metrics through data reporting, uncover growth opportunities, and engage in data-driven decision-making. It is foundational in converting voluminous data into digestible, actionable knowledge that can guide strategic planning and operational improvements.

Why is Data Reporting Important?

The significance of data reporting in the modern, data-centric business landscape cannot be overstated. It is the backbone for understanding business performance, enhancing customer experiences, and staying ahead of market dynamics.

Data reporting acts as an essential communication tool that aligns all stakeholders, providing them with the knowledge needed to make informed decisions. This eliminates guesswork and speculative decisions, making operations more efficient and cost-effective.

However, the path to effective data utilization is not without its challenges. A significant 74% of employees feel stressed or unhappy when dealing with data tasks, indicating a gap between the current data handling practices and the ideal state of data-driven decision-making. Additionally, around 36% of employees admit to delaying data-related work for at least an hour weekly due to being overwhelmed.

These statistics highlight the importance of not just having data, but also the right strategies and tools in place to report and analyze this data effectively.

Adding to these insights, research by Forrester reveals a broader industry challenge: less than 10% of companies have reached an advanced stage in their capabilities to derive insights from data, underscoring a significant gap in the effective utilization of data for strategic decision-making.

By streamlining data reporting processes and making data more accessible and understandable, organizations can reduce the workload and stress associated with data tasks. This not only improves employee satisfaction but also enhances the overall efficiency and outcomes of data-driven decisions.

By creating data analysis reports and data report examples, businesses can showcase their successes, pinpoint areas for improvement, and strategize for future growth.

Types of Data Reports

Each type of report offers unique insights and serves different purposes, enhancing the decision-making process across departments.

Static Reports

Static reports represent the traditional backbone of data reporting. They provide a snapshot of data at a specific point in time, offering a clear, concise view of performance metrics or financial standings.

These reports are essential for historical data comparison, enabling organizations to measure growth, performance, and changes over time. Static reporting is critical for documenting key metrics and ensuring accurate data is recorded for future analysis.

Ad Hoc Reports

Ad hoc reports are tailor-made to address specific questions or concerns. They allow for flexibility in data reporting processes, enabling users to drill down into particular areas of interest.

Whether it’s analyzing a sudden drop in website traffic or investigating fluctuations in market research data, ad hoc reports provide the custom insights needed to make informed business decisions. They exemplify the essence of creating data reports that cater to immediate, unique informational needs.

Interactive Visualizations

Interactive visualizations bring data to life, offering dynamic ways to explore and understand complex datasets. Users can interact with the data through charts, graphs, and maps, uncovering data-driven insights with just a few clicks.

This data report is instrumental in presenting data in engaging, easily digestible formats, making it easier to identify trends, anomalies, and patterns. Modern tools and data visualization platforms facilitate the creation of such reports, enhancing the data reporting process and fostering a data-driven organizational culture.

Financial Reports

Critical for tracking the financial health of an organization, financial reports aggregate data related to revenue, expenses, profitability, and more. These reports are foundational for business decisions, guiding strategy on both short-term and long-term scales.

Financial reporting processes utilize accurate data from multiple sources, ensuring stakeholders have a clear view of the company’s financial status.

Annual Reports

Annual reports offer a comprehensive overview of a company’s activities, achievements, and financial performance throughout the preceding year. They are essential to transparently communicating with shareholders, investors, and customers, showcasing business objectives, marketing efforts, and progress towards goals.

Annual reports combine various types of data reports, including financial data, market research findings, and customer satisfaction metrics, to present a holistic view of the organization’s success and areas for improvement.

Marketing Performance Reports

These reports analyze marketing campaign data and assess the effectiveness of marketing efforts across different channels.

By leveraging data analytics, such reports evaluate key performance indicators ( KPIs ), such as engagement rates, conversion rates, and return on investment (ROI) . Marketing performance reports are essential for optimizing strategies, allocating budgets efficiently, and maximizing campaign outcomes.

Website Traffic Reports

Generated through tools like Google Analytics, website traffic reports offer insights into the behavior of visitors to a website. These reports track key metrics such as page views, bounce rates, and user engagement, providing valuable data for optimizing web presence and enhancing user experience.

Successful data reporting in this area helps organizations understand how users interact with their site, guiding improvements and driving conversions.

Customer Insights Reports

Focusing on customer behavior, preferences, and feedback, customer insights reports are essential for tailoring marketing strategies to meet consumer needs.

By collecting and analyzing data from various touchpoints, these reports reveal patterns in customer behavior, helping businesses enhance product offerings, customer service, and overall satisfaction. Effective data reporting here supports a customer-centric approach, driving loyalty and growth.

Social Media Analytics Reports

These reports analyze interactions, engagement, and trends across social media platforms. They provide actionable insights into the performance of social media campaigns, audience demographics, and content preferences.

Social media analytics reports help refine content strategies, boost engagement, and increase reach by monitoring key metrics and utilizing data visualizations.

Each type of data report offers unique insights and benefits. By understanding and utilizing a range of reports, organizations can harness the power of data to inform strategies, improve performance, and achieve business goals. Effective data reporting is not just about collecting and presenting data; it’s about translating data into actionable insights that drive decision-making and success.

How to Write a Data Report

Creating a compelling data report is an essential skill that involves a structured process and attention to detail. Here’s a detailed guide to writing an effective data report, incorporating best practices and key steps:

Collect Data

The foundation of any data report is robust data collection. Gather data from various sources to ensure a comprehensive and nuanced view of the subject at hand.

Utilizing a cloud data platform can streamline this process, allowing for the automatic aggregation of data from multiple sources. This step is critical for ensuring the data’s relevancy and accuracy, which are key in creating data reports that are both informative and reliable.

Analyze Data

Once data is collected, the next step is to dive deep into data analysis. This involves examining the data to identify patterns, trends, and insights that inform your report.

A data analysis report is instrumental in transforming raw data into actionable intelligence. Employing data analytics techniques and tools at this stage can help uncover hidden insights and ensure that the data is analyzed efficiently and effectively.

Choose Relevant Data

Not all collected data will be relevant to your report’s objectives. Sifting through the data to select the most pertinent information is essential. This step ensures that your report is not overwhelmed with extraneous data, making it easier for your audience to understand the key messages.

Choosing relevant metrics and data points that align closely with your report’s goals will enhance its clarity and relevance.

Use Data Visualization Tools

Incorporate data visualizations such as charts, graphs, and tables to make your report more understandable and engaging.

These tools significantly enhance data accessibility, allowing complex information to be grasped swiftly, considering that visual information is processed by the brain 60,000 times faster than text . This advantage emphasizes the utility of visuals in delivering information efficiently, as it takes considerably longer for the brain to process and recognize written words.

Bar charts, pie charts, and line graphs are just a few data-reporting examples of how you can visually represent your findings effectively. Modern reports leverage these visualizations to enhance the presentation and comprehension of data.

Reflecting on the adoption of these practices, about 84% of marketers are actively engaging in creating data visualizations , with nearly half of them (48%) doing so on a weekly basis. This widespread use underscores the importance and effectiveness of data visualization tools in making complex data more approachable and actionable for decision-making.

Present Key Findings

Highlighting the most important insights from your analysis is key. This involves summarizing the key findings clearly and concisely. Ensure that these insights are directly related to your initial objectives and questions.

This step is about distilling the essence of your data analysis and presenting it in an informative and actionable way.

Draw Conclusions

Draw conclusions that address the report’s objectives based on the key findings. This may include interpreting the data in the context of the wider research or business environment, suggesting reasons for specific trends, and offering insights into what the data reveals.

Suggest possible next steps or actions that could be taken in light of these conclusions.

Review for Accuracy

Before finalizing your report, conduct a thorough review to ensure the accuracy of the data and the clarity of your report. This includes checking for errors in data, ensuring that all visualizations accurately reflect the data, and reviewing the report for clarity and conciseness.

A concise, clear, error-free report will be more credible and effective.

Incorporating these steps into your data reporting process can significantly enhance the quality and impact of your reports. Whether you’re creating data reports for internal stakeholders, clients, or public dissemination, following this structured approach will help you deliver clear, insightful, and actionable reports.

Remember, data reporting aims not just to present data, but to tell a story that drives understanding and action.

Data Reporting Challenges & Mistakes To Avoid

Navigating the complexities of data reporting requires a careful approach to avoid common pitfalls that can undermine the credibility and effectiveness of your reports. Here are several key challenges and mistakes to be mindful of, along with strategies to mitigate them:

Overlooking Data Accuracy

Ensuring the accuracy of your data is paramount. Inaccurate data can lead to incorrect conclusions and decisions, potentially causing significant harm.

To avoid this, implement rigorous data management practices.

This includes double-checking data sources, using validation techniques, and consistently monitoring data for any discrepancies. Creating data reports that rely on accurate data is not only about maintaining credibility but also about fostering trust with your audience.

Highlighting the operational challenges that can impact data accuracy, a Capitol One survey found 82% of decision-makers in data management struggle with forecasting and controlling data costs. This statistic underscores the complexities of managing data in a way that ensures its integrity and reliability.

Ignoring Data Sources

Transparency about your data sources enhances the credibility of your report. It’s critical to cite where your data comes from, whether it’s from internal databases, public datasets, or third-party providers.

This transparency helps in building trust with your audience and adds a layer of verifiability to your work. When you create reports, ensure that you include detailed information about your data sources, enabling others to understand the foundation of your analysis.

Forgetting the Audience

A common mistake in data reporting is failing to tailor the report to the specific needs and understanding level of your audience. What may seem obvious to you might not be so for your audience.

To effectively communicate your findings, consider your audience’s background, expertise, and interests. This might mean simplifying complex concepts or providing additional context to make the information more accessible.

Successful data reporting involves crafting your message in a way that resonates with and is clear to your intended audience.

Overcomplicating the Report

Complexity can be the enemy of clarity. Overcomplicating your report with jargon, excessive detail, or convoluted data visualizations can overwhelm and alienate your audience.

Strive to keep your report concise and focused on the most relevant information. This doesn’t mean omitting necessary detail but rather presenting your findings in a clear, straightforward manner.

A report concise in nature and presentation ensures that your key messages are communicated effectively.

Not Using Data Visualization

Data visualization is a powerful tool for conveying complex information in an intuitive and engaging way. Skipping this aspect can make your report less effective. Utilize charts, graphs, and infographics to highlight key findings, identify trends, and present data in a digestible format.

When done correctly, visualizations can significantly enhance the understanding and impact of your data. Remember, a well-designed chart or graph can communicate more information at a glance than several paragraphs of text.

By being mindful of these challenges and actively working to avoid these common mistakes, you can significantly improve the quality and impact of your data reports. Whether you’re building data reports, creating custom reports, or preparing an annual report, applying these best practices will help you deliver insights clearly, accurately, and impactfully.

Data reporting aims not just to present numbers but to tell a story that informs, persuades, and inspires action.

Mediatool Makes Your Data Reporting Simple and Effective

Data reporting should turn complex data into a clear story. A good report makes data easy to understand for everyone on the team, showing what’s happening and what should be done next. When it comes to marketing, seeing and understanding these data stories quickly is key.

Mediatool stands out among tools for making marketing reports . It doesn’t just show data; it brings your data together on custom dashboards. This helps you see and understand important insights faster, giving you more time to act on them. Plus, Mediatool works in the background, updating your reports with real-time data. You don’t have to spend time building reports; they’re ready when you are.

What Makes Mediatool’s Reporting Dashboards Great

Mediatool’s dashboard is all about making data reporting easy. It takes data from different marketing campaigns and shows it in a way that’s quick to understand. This means you can spot important trends and metrics quickly and adjust your marketing plans without delay. The dashboard updates automatically with the latest data, so you always have the most current insights without having to do anything extra.

How Mediatool Fits into Your Data Reporting

In marketing, things change fast, and keeping up can be tough. Mediatool makes it easier by handling the heavy lifting of data reporting for you. It puts together and shows your data automatically, cutting down on the time and effort needed to make reports. This lets you spend more time thinking about what the data means and planning your next moves.

Mediatool Helps You Make Better Marketing Decisions

Mediatool is all about making data reporting straightforward and useful. It turns the often complex job of analyzing data into something much simpler and more user-friendly. With Mediatool, you get to understand your data better, making it easier to decide what to do next and change your strategies to meet the market’s needs.

We suggest giving Mediatool a go. See for yourself how it can change the way you report on data, making the process more streamlined and your marketing strategies more informed. Mediatool isn’t just another tool; it’s a way to make your data work harder for you.

This guide to data reporting is your starting point to understanding and mastering the art of presenting data. With practice, the right tools, and a focus on accuracy and relevance, you’ll unlock valuable insights that can drive your organization forward.

Remember, effective data reporting is about clarity, precision, and insight. Embrace these principles, and you’re well on your way to becoming a data reporting expert.

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How to Write Data Analysis Reports in 9 Easy Steps

Table of contents

To see what Databox can do for you, including how it helps you track and visualize your performance data in real-time, check out our home page. Click here .

Imagine a bunch of bricks. They don’t have a purpose until you put them together into a house, do they?

In business intelligence, data is your building material, and a quality data analysis report is what you want to see as the result.

But if you’ve ever tried to use the collected data and assemble it into an insightful report, you know it’s not an easy job to do. Data is supposed to tell a story about your performance, but there’s a long way from unprocessed, raw data to a meaningful narrative that you can use to create an actionable plan for making steady progress towards your goals.

This article will help you improve the quality of your data analysis reports and build them effortlessly and fast. Let’s jump right in.

What Is a Data Analysis Report?

Why is data analysis reporting important, how to write a data analysis report 9 simple steps, data analysis report examples.

A data analysis report is a type of business report in which you present quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate your strategies and performance. Based on this data, you give recommendations for further steps and business decisions while using the data as evidence that backs up your evaluation.

Today, data analysis is one of the most important elements of business intelligence strategies as companies have realized the potential of having data-driven insights at hand to help them make data-driven decisions.

Just like you’ll look at your car’s dashboard if something’s wrong, you’ll pull your data to see what’s causing drops in website traffic, conversions, or sales – or any other business metric you may be following. This unprocessed data still doesn’t give you a diagnosis – it’s the first step towards a quality analysis. Once you’ve extracted and organized your data, it’s important to use graphs and charts to visualize it and make it easier to draw conclusions.

Once you add meaning to your data and create suggestions based on it, you have a data analysis report.

A vital detail everyone should know about data analysis reports is their accessibility for everyone in your team, and the ability to innovate. Your analysis report will contain your vital KPIs, so you can see where you’re reaching your targets and achieving goals, and where you need to speed up your activities or optimize your strategy. If you can uncover trends or patterns in your data, you can use it to innovate and stand out by offering even more valuable content, services, or products to your audience.

Data analysis is vital for companies for several reasons.

A reliable source of information

Trusting your intuition is fine, but relying on data is safer. When you can base your action plan on data that clearly shows that something is working or failing, you won’t only justify your decisions in front of the management, clients, or investors, but you’ll also be sure that you’ve taken appropriate steps to fix an issue or seize an important opportunity.

A better understanding of your business

According to Databox’s State of Business Reporting , most companies stated that regular monitoring and reporting improved progress monitoring, increased team effectiveness, allowed them to identify trends more easily, and improved financial performance. Data analysis makes it easier to understand your business as a whole, and each aspect individually. You can see how different departments analyze their workflow and how each step impacts their results in the end, by following their KPIs over time. Then, you can easily conclude what your business needs to grow – to boost your sales strategy, optimize your finances, or up your SEO game, for example.

An additional way to understand your business better is to compare your most important metrics and KPIs against companies that are just like yours. With Databox Benchmarks , you will need only one spot to see how all of your teams stack up against your peers and competitors.

Instantly and Anonymously Benchmark Your Company’s Performance Against Others Just Like You

If you ever asked yourself:

• How does our marketing stack up against our competitors?
• Are our salespeople as productive as reps from similar companies?
• Are our profit margins as high as our peers?

Databox Benchmark Groups can finally help you answer these questions and discover how your company measures up against similar companies based on your KPIs.

When you join Benchmark Groups, you will:

• Get instant, up-to-date data on how your company stacks up against similar companies based on the metrics most important to you. Explore benchmarks for dozens of metrics, built on anonymized data from thousands of companies and get a full 360° view of your company’s KPIs across sales, marketing, finance, and more.
• Understand where your business excels and where you may be falling behind so you can shift to what will make the biggest impact. Leverage industry insights to set more effective, competitive business strategies. Explore where exactly you have room for growth within your business based on objective market data.
• Keep your clients happy by using data to back up your expertise. Show your clients where you’re helping them overperform against similar companies. Use the data to show prospects where they really are… and the potential of where they could be.
• Get a valuable asset for improving yearly and quarterly planning . Get valuable insights into areas that need more work. Gain more context for strategic planning.

The best part?

• Benchmark Groups are free to access.
• The data is 100% anonymized. No other company will be able to see your performance, and you won’t be able to see the performance of individual companies either.

When it comes to showing you how your performance compares to others, here is what it might look like for the metric Average Session Duration:

And here is an example of an open group you could join:

And this is just a fraction of what you’ll get. With Databox Benchmarks, you will need only one spot to see how all of your teams stack up — marketing, sales, customer service, product development, finance, and more. 

• Choose criteria so that the Benchmark is calculated using only companies like yours
• Narrow the benchmark sample using criteria that describe your company
• Display benchmarks right on your Databox dashboards

Sounds like something you want to try out? Join a Databox Benchmark Group today!

It makes data accessible to everyone

Data doesn’t represent a magical creature reserved for data scientists only anymore. Now that you have streamlined and easy-to-follow data visualizations and tools that automatically show the latest figures, you can include everyone in the decision-making process as they’ll understand what means what in the charts and tables. The data may be complex, but it becomes easy to read when combined with proper illustrations. And when your teams gain such useful and accessible insight, they will feel motivated to act on it immediately.

Better collaboration

Data analysis reports help teams collaborate better, as well. You can apply the SMART technique to your KPIs and goals, because your KPIs become assignable. When they’re easy to interpret for your whole team, you can assign each person with one or multiple KPIs that they’ll be in charge of. That means taking a lot off a team leader’s plate so they can focus more on making other improvements in the business. At the same time, removing inaccurate data from your day-to-day operations will improve friction between different departments, like marketing and sales, for instance.

More productivity

You can also expect increased productivity, since you’ll be saving time you’d otherwise spend on waiting for specialists to translate data for other departments, etc. This means your internal procedures will also be on a top level.

Want to give value with your data analysis report? It’s critical to master the skill of writing a quality data analytics report. Want to know how to report on data efficiently? We’ll share our secret in the following section.

• Start with an Outline
• Make a Selection of Vital KPIs
• Pick the Right Charts for Appealing Design
• Use a Narrative
• Organize the Information
• Include a Summary
• Careful with Your Recommendations
• Double-Check Everything
• Use Interactive Dashboards

1. Start with an Outline

If you start writing without having a clear idea of what your data analysis report is going to include, it may get messy. Important insights may slip through your fingers, and you may stray away too far from the main topic. To avoid this, start the report by writing an outline first. Plan the structure and contents of each section first to make sure you’ve covered everything, and only then start crafting the report.

2. Make a Selection of Vital KPIs

Don’t overwhelm the audience by including every single metric there is. You can discuss your whole dashboard in a meeting with your team, but if you’re creating data analytics reports or marketing reports for other departments or the executives, it’s best to focus on the most relevant KPIs that demonstrate the data important for the overall business performance.

PRO TIP: How Well Are Your Marketing KPIs Performing?

Like most marketers and marketing managers, you want to know how well your efforts are translating into results each month. How much traffic and new contact conversions do you get? How many new contacts do you get from organic sessions? How are your email campaigns performing? How well are your landing pages converting? You might have to scramble to put all of this together in a single report, but now you can have it all at your fingertips in a single Databox dashboard.

Our Marketing Overview Dashboard includes data from Google Analytics 4 and HubSpot Marketing with key performance metrics like:

• Sessions . The number of sessions can tell you how many times people are returning to your website. Obviously, the higher the better.
• New Contacts from Sessions . How well is your campaign driving new contacts and customers?
• Marketing Performance KPIs . Tracking the number of MQLs, SQLs, New Contacts and similar will help you identify how your marketing efforts contribute to sales.
• Email Performance . Measure the success of your email campaigns from HubSpot. Keep an eye on your most important email marketing metrics such as number of sent emails, number of opened emails, open rate, email click-through rate, and more.
• Blog Posts and Landing Pages . How many people have viewed your blog recently? How well are your landing pages performing?

Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Analytics and HubSpot Marketing experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template that contains all the essential metrics for monitoring your leads. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your HubSpot and Google Analytics 4 accounts with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

3. Pick the Right Charts for Appealing Design

If you’re showing historical data – for instance, how you’ve performed now compared to last month – it’s best to use timelines or graphs. For other data, pie charts or tables may be more suitable. Make sure you use the right data visualization to display your data accurately and in an easy-to-understand manner.

4. Use a Narrative

Do you work on analytics and reporting ? Just exporting your data into a spreadsheet doesn’t qualify as either of them. The fact that you’re dealing with data may sound too technical, but actually, your report should tell a story about your performance. What happened on a specific day? Did your organic traffic increase or suddenly drop? Why? And more. There are a lot of questions to answer and you can put all the responses together in a coherent, understandable narrative.

5. Organize the Information

Before you start writing or building your dashboard, choose how you’re going to organize your data. Are you going to talk about the most relevant and general ones first? It may be the best way to start the report – the best practices typically involve starting with more general information and then diving into details if necessary.

6. Include a Summary

Some people in your audience won’t have the time to read the whole report, but they’ll want to know about your findings. Besides, a summary at the beginning of your data analytics report will help the reader get familiar with the topic and the goal of the report. And a quick note: although the summary should be placed at the beginning, you usually write it when you’re done with the report. When you have the whole picture, it’s easier to extract the key points that you’ll include in the summary.

7. Careful with Your Recommendations

Your communication skills may be critical in data analytics reports. Know that some of the results probably won’t be satisfactory, which means that someone’s strategy failed. Make sure you’re objective in your recommendations and that you’re not looking for someone to blame. Don’t criticize, but give suggestions on how things can be improved. Being solution-oriented is much more important and helpful for the business.

8. Double-Check Everything

The whole point of using data analytics tools and data, in general, is to achieve as much accuracy as possible. Avoid manual mistakes by proofreading your report when you finish, and if possible, give it to another person so they can confirm everything’s in place.

9. Use Interactive Dashboards

Using the right tools is just as important as the contents of your data analysis. The way you present it can make or break a good report, regardless of how valuable the data is. That said, choose a great reporting tool that can automatically update your data and display it in a visually appealing manner. Make sure it offers streamlined interactive dashboards that you can also customize depending on the purpose of the report.

To wrap up the guide, we decided to share nine excellent examples of what awesome data analysis reports can look like. You’ll learn what metrics you should include and how to organize them in logical sections to make your report beautiful and effective.

• Marketing Data Analysis Report Example

SEO Data Analysis Report Example

Sales data analysis report example.

• Customer Support Data Analysis Report Example

Help Desk Data Analysis Report Example

Ecommerce data analysis report example, project management data analysis report example, social media data analysis report example, financial kpi data analysis report example, marketing data report example.

If you need an intuitive dashboard that allows you to track your website performance effortlessly and monitor all the relevant metrics such as website sessions, pageviews, or CTA engagement, you’ll love this free HubSpot Marketing Website Overview dashboard template .

Tracking the performance of your SEO efforts is important. You can easily monitor relevant SEO KPIs like clicks by page, engaged sessions, or views by session medium by downloading this Google Organic SEO Dashboard .

How successful is your sales team? It’s easy to analyze their performance and predict future growth if you choose this HubSpot CRM Sales Analytics Overview dashboard template and track metrics such as average time to close the deal, new deals amount, or average revenue per new client.

Customer Support Analysis Data Report Example

Customer support is one of the essential factors that impact your business growth. You can use this streamlined, customizable Customer Success dashboard template . In a single dashboard, you can monitor metrics such as customer satisfaction score, new MRR, or time to first response time.

Other than being free and intuitive, this HelpScout for Customer Support dashboard template is also customizable and enables you to track the most vital metrics that indicate your customer support agents’ performance: handle time, happiness score, interactions per resolution, and more.

Is your online store improving or failing? You can easily collect relevant data about your store and monitor the most important metrics like total sales, orders placed, and new customers by downloading this WooCommerce Shop Overview dashboard template .

Does your IT department need feedback on their project management performance? Download this Jira dashboard template to track vital metrics such as issues created or resolved, issues by status, etc. Jira enables you to gain valuable insights into your teams’ productivity.

Need to know if your social media strategy is successful? You can find that out by using this easy-to-understand Social Media Awareness & Engagement dashboard template . Here you can monitor and analyze metrics like sessions by social source, track the number of likes and followers, and measure the traffic from each source.

Tracking your finances is critical for keeping your business profitable. If you want to monitor metrics such as the number of open invoices, open deals amount by stage by pipeline, or closed-won deals, use this free QuickBooks + HubSpot CRM Financial Performance dashboard template .

Rely on Accurate Data with Databox

“I don’t have time to build custom reports from scratch.”

“It takes too long and becomes daunting very soon.”

“I’m not sure how to organize the data to make it effective and prove the value of my work.”

Does this sound like you?

Well, it’s something we all said at some point – creating data analytics reports can be time-consuming and tiring. And you’re still not sure if the report is compelling and understandable enough when you’re done.

That’s why we decided to create Databox dashboards – a world-class solution for saving your money and time. We build streamlined and easy-to-follow dashboards that include all the metrics that you may need and allow you to create custom ones if necessary. That way, you can use templates and adjust them to any new project or client without having to build a report from scratch.

You can skip the setup and get your first dashboard for free in just 24 hours, with our fantastic customer support team on the line to assist you with the metrics you should track and the structure you should use.

Enjoy crafting brilliant data analysis reports that will improve your business – it’s never been faster and more effortless. Sign up today and get your free dashboard in no time.

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At Databox, we’re obsessed with helping companies more easily monitor, analyze, and report their results. Whether it’s the resources we put into building and maintaining integrations with 100+ popular marketing tools, enabling customizability of charts, dashboards, and reports, or building functionality to make analysis, benchmarking, and forecasting easier, we’re constantly trying to find ways to help our customers save time and deliver better results.

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Stefana Zarić is a freelance writer & content marketer. Other than writing for SaaS and fintech clients, she educates future writers who want to build a career in marketing. When not working, Stefana loves to read books, play with her kid, travel, and dance.

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12 Tips for Developing a Successful Data Analytics Strategy

What Is Data Reporting and How to Create Data Reports for Your Business

What is kpi reporting kpi report examples, tips, and best practices.

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Data Reporting: Methods, Examples, and Best Practices

• Data management

Olga Cheban

Mar 21, 2023

Create dynamic reports or use the ready-to-go dashboard templates with Coupler.io

Turning raw data into valuable insights and crisp ideas is at the heart of any data-driven organization, and data reporting is an important link in this process. Good data reports effectively organize information, highlight essential correlations and KPIs, and provide stakeholders with a solid basis for data-driven business decisions.

In this article, we’ll explore types and methods of data reporting. We’ll also see some real-life examples of various reports, and discuss the best practices and tips on how to automate reporting.

What is data reporting?

This is the process of gathering data from various sources, analyzing it, and presenting the findings in a concise form. Typically, the purpose of such reports is to allow decision-makers to assess the situation and come up with specific data-backed action points. Reports can take various forms – from simple tables and graphs to automatically updated dashboards that show key metrics in real time. 

Data visualization is an important part of data reporting. Information, presented in a visual format, is more compelling and easier to work with. Another major trend is automated data collection. As the number of data sources keeps growing, updating reports manually is often counterproductive and too time-consuming if you need to do this regularly. Automation allows you to streamline this process and make data management and data reporting seamless and effortless. 

Why is data reporting important?

When performed effectively, data reporting brings many tangible benefits, such as:

• Enabling data-driven decision-making . When all the latest data from across the organization is instantly available in one place, this creates ultimate transparency. Through data analysis, stakeholders can explore the situation from various angles and take action exactly where it’s needed.
• Monitoring performance. Be it tracking business performance, analyzing cash flow, or looking into employees’ performance on certain projects – efficient data reporting is crucial. Monitoring performance is important for accessing current progress and adjusting strategy accordingly.
• Building forecasts. Data reporting allows you to analyze historical data, blend it with information on expected changes, and build projections for the future. This is a great way to assess the feasibility of new initiatives or prepare in advance for an increase in customer demand or an upcoming business challenge.
• Enhancing efficiency. Quality reports allow professionals to identify the best-performing strategies, as well as define areas of improvement. This helps optimize processes, use funds efficiently, and allocate resources proportionately to what a task requires.
• Improving collaboration. Presenting and discussing reports allows everyone to be on the same page. If you share the information on crucial KPIs and actionable insights across the organization, it helps to better align different departments and coordinate their efforts.

Data reporting methods

There are various methods of organizing data for reporting purposes, which result in building different types of reports. Which method to choose depends, first of all, on the goal of the report, its audience, and the type of data you need to present. Let’s explore the main methods.

In addition to this, regardless of the data representation type, reports can be:

• Static. As the name suggests, data in static reports does not change and cannot be manipulated. Once it’s included in a report, it always remains the same. 
• Interactive. Such reports allow the reader to work with the data – filter it, sort, extract it for custom calculations, explore it from different angles, and so on.
• Self-updating. If you create an automated report, data presented in it can be updated automatically as the latest information from your data sources will be continuously channeled into your report.

As we’ve already mentioned, this can be applied to any report type – for example, a tabular report can be static, or it can be interactive and/or self-updating, depending on how it’s built.

Main types of data reporting

There are many types of data reporting. We’ve summed up the most common of them in the table below.

These types can overlap – for example, you can perform regular descriptive reporting or ad-hoc predictive reporting.

Data reporting examples

Now, let’s take a look at some real-life examples of data reporting. In this section, we’ll focus mainly on dashboards as this is arguably one of the most useful reporting types for business needs. This type of data visualization allows you to present data in the most concise and actionable way. It’s also a perfect format for monitoring performance and KPI tracking progress.

Sales leads report

This is an interactive self-updating dashboard that allows you to analyze where your leads are coming from and to track the dynamics of your sales process. This visualization is a useful tool that can help manage your sales effort, build accurate predictions, and make data-driven decisions.

As this report is interactive, you can zoom in to explore the data in granular detail from various angles. For example, if you click on a specific area on the map, the other graphs will adjust accordingly to reflect the information related to this particular region. You can also select different time ranges for the report.

View the interactive version of the Sales leads dashboard in PowerBI.

This dashboard self-updates automatically without any manual effort. This is possible because it was created with the help of Coupler.io, a popular data analytics and automation platform. It allows you to collect data across multiple sources, gather it in one place for analysis, and turn it into actionable insights. In this case, Coupler.io was used to connect various data sources to a spreadsheet, which, in turn, is connected to this dashboard in PowerBI. Coupler.io has an Automatic data refresh functionality – thanks to it, fresh data from all the linked data sources is regularly loaded to the destination file on a custom schedule.

You can use Coupler.io to build such self-updating dashboards yourself – or, if you need help with creating an advanced visualization or with deriving insights from your data, you can use Coupler.io’s data analytics consultancy services . As a result, you will get a tailored solution so that your team can use it to make data-driven decisions on a daily basis.

Customer service report

This visualization allows you to monitor customer support team performance and workload. This dashboard was created by Coupler.io’s data analytics team. It’s fully interactive, and all the metrics update automatically according to the specified schedule. You can switch between different channels and time periods to dive into detail. A visualized report like this one can be built to monitor the performance of any team. 

View the interactive version of the Customer service dashboard in Looker Studio.

Ecommerce KPI report

This visualized report is designed for tracking an ecommerce store’s main KPIs via omnichannel reporting . It’s a great way to analyze sales funnel metrics and conversion dynamics in order to determine where the most conversions come from and how the strategy could be improved. This report is also interactive and self-updating, which allows monitoring performance in near-real time. When the latest data from across multiple sources is easily available in an easy-to-understand visualized format, this provides a great foundation for timely and informed decisions. 

View the interactive version of the Ecommerce KPI report in PowerBI.

Ad campaigns report

Another example is part of a marketing report focusing on ad campaign performance. This dashboard gives you a concise overview of ad campaigns across different channels – in this case, LinkedIn Ads and Google Ads. However, Coupler.io, which was used to create this report, allows you to connect over 60 various apps as data sources to power such visualizations with a stream of fresh data. As for the marketing apps, it also supports Google Analytics 4, Instagram Ads, Facebook Ads, and others.

When analyzing or presenting your ad data, you can switch between different channels, campaigns, products, time periods, and more.

View the interactive version of the Ad campaigns report in Looker Studio.

Other data reporting examples

See more report examples on Coupler.io’s website in the Actionable dashboards section. 

How to automate the data reporting process – a practical example

Automation is a crucial part of a successful reporting process. From having a full-scale custom reporting system to using simpler tools, automation provides an enormous efficiency boost.

Here are some benefits of automating the reporting process:

• Saving time – when your reporting process is automated, you save a significant amount of time because you don’t need to collect ever-changing data across multiple sources to update your reports manually. 
• Enabling continuous monitoring – with auto-updated reports, you always have access to the latest data and can closely monitor projects or processes in near-real time.
• Ensuring regularity – automation allows organizations to streamline their reporting process and perform reporting regularly without any manual work.
• Efficient data management – with automation, you can effortlessly collect data across your company and bring it to one place for analysis. This allows you to actually use the data you accumulate on a daily basis.

In our example, we will show you how you can easily automate your dynamic reporting process with the help of Coupler.io. We’ve already mentioned this data analytics and automation platform when we talked about the self-updating dashboards. Coupler.io’s data integration solution can also be used to automate other types of reports, such as tabular reports in spreadsheets, for instance. The tool’s functionality allows you to automatically populate your reports with fresh data from 60+ business apps , such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, WooCommerce, Artable, Shopify, and many more. 

Here’s how you can automate your data reporting process using Coupler.io:

• Once you sign up , you can create your first importer on the My importers tab. It’s very simple and only takes a few minutes, no tech knowledge is needed.
• Select the app you want to extract data from and specify where you want to transfer your information. In this example, we will export data from Google Analytics 4 to Google Sheets. As we’ve already mentioned, you can extract data from dozens of different sources and transfer it to Excel, Google Sheets, or BigQuery.

• Then, connect your GA4 account and specify what metrics should be included into your report. If you want to export data from another app, this step will be similar. You will need to connect your account and select the data type to extract.

• Once this is done, you can connect the destination file and specify where exactly your data should be transferred.

• Next, you can set up a custom report scheduling for the automated updates. Specify the preferred update interval (from every month to every 15 minutes), the time range, and the days of the week when you want Coupler.io to transfer fresh data from the selected source to your destination file. For example, for a weekly report, you can schedule an update for every Friday at 9:00 am – and the report with fresh data will be ready every week without any manual effort. If you use this spreadsheet to power a self-updating dashboard and want to monitor your project closely, you can schedule an update for every 15 minutes.

• Then, run the importer, and Coupler.io will transfer your data automatically. Here’s an example of raw data exported from GA4 to Google Sheets:

After this, you can create a new sheet for your report and connect it to this sheet with row data. If you want to combine data from multiple sources, you can use the same flow to transfer this data to separate sheets and then connect them to your report.

If needed, this tabular report in a spreadsheet can be used to build a self-updating dashboard using Excel’s or Google Sheets’ native functionality. Alternatively, it can be connected to PowerBI or Looker Studio for creating advanced visualizations.

If you need help with visualizing or analyzing your data, you can contact Coupler.io’s data analytics consultancy team.

Data reporting best practices

Now, let’s explore some of the best practices that can help you improve data reporting and make it more effective.

• Focus on the audience

When you are planning to work on a report, it’s best to begin with analyzing the audience and their goals. Then, you can structure your report according to what your audience needs. For example, C-level executives will likely be interested in a high-level overview of your project, while people working on your team might need much more detailed information to see how things are going and what needs to be adjusted. Asking for feedback is also a great way to learn what the target group might need and how to improve your reporting. 

• Use automation

The process of collecting information and updating your regular reports might be tedious and time-consuming when performed manually. With automation, the speed, efficiency, and quality rapidly increase. As digital transformation gains momentum, businesses that fail to implement automation will be falling behind the competitors who leverage it successfully. Using automation for reporting data can be quite simple and affordable, so this option is worth considering, regardless of the scale of your business. In the previous section, we have already explained how you can easily automate the reporting process with simple-to-use tools.

• Visualize your data

Arranging your data into a visual story is a very effective approach. It helps your audience quickly understand what the main correlations are, grasp the gist at a glance, and focus on what matters most. Various graphs, charts, tables, as well as comprehensive dashboards, make working with data easier and improve collaboration. It’s even better if you make these visualizations interactive to enable filtering data and zooming into particular details.

• Make it a regular activity

Of course, reporting data is valuable even if you only perform it from time to time. But if you want to make your organization data-driven, you will need a solid basis for informed decisions. Data that is incomplete or simply not fresh enough may result in giving a distorted picture and lead to wrong or untimely decisions. If the process of collecting and analyzing data is regular or, better yet, continuous, this will provide decision-makers with the ultimate transparency they need to gain actionable insights.

• Use templates

Even though you might need to prepare custom reports for some purposes, many reports can be standardized. Ready-to-use templates let you save time and implement a unified approach across the organization. This improves collaboration and helps keep everyone on the same page. You can find a lot of various templates online, but it’s usually best to create a set of custom templates in-house.

• Select meaningful data

Even if everything about your project seems worthy of attention, there’s no need to include all the data you have. As we’ve already mentioned, you should consider the needs of your audience. What decisions do they need to make after reading your report? What information might they need for this? Answering these questions will help you select relevant metrics and make your report concise, clear, and effective. 

How to improve data reporting?

The tips, best practices, and examples provided in this article can help you streamline the data reporting processes in your organization. One of the main takeaways is that automation and data visualization are an important part of this process. So, if you want to improve data reporting, it’s strongly recommended to use graphical reports, build dashboards, and make them self-updating with the help of automation. This will ensure timely access to fresh and accurate data, which is necessary to enable data-driven decisions.

Another way to improve your reporting further is by asking for feedback. As every report must meet the needs of its audience, requesting their opinion can give you valuable ideas on how to make your reports more helpful and meaningful.

One more option is requesting professional help. For example, Coupler.io’s data analytics consultancy team can assist you with creating analytical reports and advanced visualizations, taking your data reporting to the next level.

For more information on the data visualization topic, check our article about CRM dashboard examples .

Technical Content Writer at Coupler.io. I’ve been writing about data, tech solutions, and business for years, and this passion never fades. I find technology fascinating and hope that the content I create helps people discover new solutions and ideas. My other passions are birdwatching, swimming, and reading📚

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What is Data Reporting?

What is the purpose of data reporting.

Data reporting serves to collect and organize data from various sources into a structured format, making it easily accessible and understandable for stakeholders. Its primary goal is to facilitate data-driven decision-making by providing valuable insights into a business's performance, answering important questions, and offering evidence to inform decisions.

Through data reporting, businesses can track their progress, evaluate performance, and gain insights into past, present, and future performance trends. Data reports can be presented in various formats such as tables, graphs, or charts, and are utilized for both operational and strategic decision-making.

What are some examples of data reporting in a business context?

In a business context, data reporting can be used to compile data related to key performance indicators (KPIs), such as customer satisfaction scores, return on assets, or operating margins. Companies often use dashboard reports to monitor these KPIs and make informed decisions based on the data presented.

For instance, a company might use data reporting to track sales performance, monitor employee productivity, or analyze customer behavior. This information can then guide management in making data-driven decisions to improve business operations, enhance customer experiences, and ultimately, drive company growth.

How to create effective data reports?

Creating effective data reports involves a systematic approach that ensures the collected information is accurate, relevant, and easy to understand. Here are some steps to follow:

1. Identify the purpose and audience

Start by determining the purpose of the report and the target audience. This will guide you in selecting the most suitable data sources and the appropriate format for presenting the information.

2. Collect and organize data

Gather data from various sources, such as databases, spreadsheets, or external files. Organize the data into a structured format to ensure consistency and accuracy.

3. Clean and validate data

Clean and validate the data to eliminate inconsistencies, errors, or duplicate entries. This step is crucial in maintaining data integrity and ensuring the report's reliability.

4. Analyze and interpret data

Analyze the data to identify trends, patterns, or correlations, and interpret the findings to provide valuable insights and actionable recommendations.

5. Visualize data

Present the data in a visually appealing manner using tables, graphs, or charts. This will make it easier for stakeholders to understand the information and draw meaningful conclusions.

6. Review and refine the report

Review the report for accuracy and clarity, and refine it as necessary. Ensure that the information is presented logically and consistently, and that it addresses the intended purpose and audience.

Unlock the power of data reporting with Secoda

In conclusion, data reporting is an essential tool for businesses to make data-driven decisions, evaluate performance, and drive growth. By following the steps outlined above, you can create effective data reports that provide valuable insights and guide your decision-making process.

Key takeaways on data reporting:

• Facilitates data-driven decision-making
• Provides insights into business performance
• Helps answer important questions and inform decisions
• Can be presented in various formats, such as tables, graphs, or charts

Secoda is a data management platform that uses AI to help data teams manage data sprawl, scale infrastructure, and automate data discovery and documentation. By integrating with business intelligence, data transformation tools, and databases, Secoda can assist your organization in creating effective data reports and harnessing the full potential of data reporting.

Related terms

Types of rdbms, data dictionary for bigquery, data stewardship, from the blog.

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What is data reporting and how do you create effective data reports?

Data reporting has long been a cornerstone of running businesses. Whether filing earnings with the SEC or doing strategic planning, organizations rely on data reports to understand the state of their business, customers, and products. 

In our evermore digital world, the demand and requirements for data reporting have dramatically changed . Using data to stay ahead of competitors, tap new opportunities,  and avoid unnecessary risk can be the difference between success and failure, driving massive investments in the modern data stack . 

Despite this need, data leaders still report abysmal adoption of analytics projects, fueled by dead, static reports and dashboards that keep insights locked in the past and decisions about the future uncertain. Luckily, the evolution of data reporting, including ad hoc reporting and dashboard reporting , let’s individuals ask and answer their own questions in real time, is creating new means for leaders and businesses to turn reports into impact. That's why it's important to understand not just what data reporting is but also which best practices need to be followed when undertaking a data reporting project. 

In this post, we'll explore both topics - defining what data reporting is at its core as well as going over some of the top steps that should be taken in order to secure accurate results from your reports. 

What is data reporting?

Data reporting is the process of collecting and presenting data in a structured format to facilitate data-driven decision making . The goal of data reporting is to make data easily understandable and accessible to stakeholders, such as managers, executives, and clients. This involves selecting and analyzing relevant data, and presenting the results in a clear, concise, and visually appealing way. Data reporting is often part of a business intelligence program, and includes everything from pixel perfect reports for regulatory bodies, as well as ad hoc reports generated through self-service analytics as business users have questions.

Why is data reporting important?

Effective data reporting is essential for businesses to be able to share the status of various parts of their organization and make informed decisions. By providing stakeholders with accurate, relevant, and timely information, backed by data,, they can identify trends, patterns, and insights that can help them understand their business better. This can lead to improvements in areas such as operations, customer service, marketing, and sales, which can ultimately drive business growth.

Best practices for effective data reporting

Keep it simple.

When building a report, it’s easy to slip into the thinking that you need to include every potential piece of information that could possibly be of value. One of the most important principles of effective data reporting is to keep it simple. Complex reports that are difficult to read and understand can be counterproductive, as they may obscure key insights and lead to confusion or inaction. To avoid this then creating a data report, focus on the key metrics that matter most to your business. Don't try to include every piece of data that you have available, as this can lead to information overload. Instead, focus on the metrics that are most relevant to your business objectives and provide a clear picture of performance. By using a data analytics tool like ThoughtSpot, you can also continue to drill into your report if you have follow up questions, reducing the information overload without limiting your user’s ability to get to the answer they want.

Visualize your data

Data visualization allows you to convey complex information in a way that is easy to understand and interpret. By presenting data in charts, graphs, and other visual formats, you can quickly unearth meaningful insights that might be missed in a table of numbers. 

When choosing a data visualization tool , consider the types of data you'll be working with and the audience you'll be presenting to. Different visualization methods may be more appropriate for different types of data, and some tools may be better suited to certain audiences. For example, if you are building a report that many domain experts or business users will use, consider an interactive data visualization tool that allows your users to click into a specific chart or graph, tailor it to their needs, without requiring extensive technical resources. 

Provide context

When presenting data, it's essential to provide a clear understanding of the context in which the data was collected and the meaning behind the numbers. For example, if you're reporting on website traffic, it's important to note whether the data includes mobile traffic or only desktop traffic, as this can have a significant impact on the insights gained. This can help to ensure that the insights gained from the data are accurate and actionable. Generative AI tools like Sage take this even further, using large language models like GPT to create a natural language narrative to explain insights, meaning everyone is on the same page.

Be consistent

To ensure that your reports have reliable data and are accurate, it's essential to use consistent data quality metrics , data sources, and reporting periods. Implementing or leveraging a cloud data platform as a single source of truth can be very effective. 

In creating this reliable, clean data, you can avoid confusion and ensure all stakeholders are working from the same version of the data instead of arguing about whose data is more correct, accurate, or up to date. 

When creating data reports, establish a clear process to follow for consistency and ensure that all stakeholders are aware of them. This can help to prevent misunderstandings and ensure that everyone is working from the same set of assumptions.

5 steps to follow when creating data reports

Effective data reporting is an essential aspect of any business analytics program, and helps build a truly data-driven organization . Here are five steps you can follow to create an effective data report:

Step 1: Define your goals and objectives

Like all good things, start at the very beginning: why are you creating your report at all. This involves identifying the purpose of your report, determining the audience of your report, and establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) that will be used to measure success. You may need to create different reports for different stakeholders, such as executives, managers, or customers, or for different use cases. For example, you may want to forecast sales for the next quarter, monitor customer satisfaction, or see how you can optimize inventory . 

Step 2: Gather and analyze your data

Once your goals are clear, you’re ready to begin preparing the data foundation. This involves identifying relevant data sources, data cleaning , and preparing the data. This may involve removing duplicates, correcting errors, or formatting the data to ensure consistency. The data sources you use will depend on the specific goals and objectives of your report. From there, you’re ready to start analyzing the data to draw conclusions and insights. 

Step 3: Choose the right data visualizations

Seeing your data can be a powerful way to identify insights. To determine the type of visualization to use, consider the type of data you have and the message you want to convey. Some common types of visualizations include histograms , bar charts, line charts, pie charts, scatterplots, and maps. Each type of visualization has its own strengths and weaknesses, so it is important to choose the right type for your data. Creating effective data visualizations involves more than just choosing the right type of chart or graph. It is important to consider the design and layout of your visualization to ensure that it is easy to read and understand. Consider following these data visualization design tips when you get to this step.

Step 4: Organize your report

Organizing your report effectively can help ensure that your audience can easily find the information they need and understand the key takeaways from your data. This is the perfect time to make sure you’re considering the purpose and audience for your report so the most relevant, impactful information is easily accessible. 

Armed with this information and the insights you want to convey, you can create an outline for your report that can help you organize your thoughts and ensure that your report is structured logically. Your outline should include key sections, such as an executive summary, introduction, data analysis, and conclusion. The executive summary should be a brief overview of your report, highlighting the key takeaways and conclusions. It should be written in a way that is accessible to a non-technical audience and should provide a clear and concise summary of your findings.

Step 5: Review and finalize your report

Review your report carefully, check for errors, inconsistencies, and gaps in your analysis. Consider the tone and style of your report, ensuring that it is written in a way that is accessible and engaging to your audience. After you do this, it is important to get feedback from stakeholders who will be reviewing and using the report. This can include colleagues, supervisors, clients, or other relevant parties. Provide specific questions or prompts for feedback, and ask for feedback on both the content and presentation of the report. Be open to suggestions and be willing to make changes based on feedback. 

For example, many executives and managers want to dig deeper into a given report in real-time, while they’re in meetings. By making your report interactive through AI-Powered Analytics, stakeholders can explore your report without having to ask the data team to re-engage. 

See why Snowflake CIO Sunny Bedi runs his entire IT team on interactive data reports from ThoughtSpot

Once you have received feedback and made any necessary revisions, it is time to finalize and publish your report. After publishing your report, it is important to track how it is received and used. This can help you assess the effectiveness of your report and improve future versions.

Start making more data-driven decisions

Data reporting is immensely important in making business decisions and ensuring the success of an organization. However, not all data reporting is made equal. Organizations may need dashboard reporting complete with interactive visualizations and intuitive design if they want to reap the rewards of data-driven decision making . Whether you are starting a business or growing one, following the practices we outlined throughout this post will help you create reports that offer an accurate and complete picture of your organization's data without stymieing you with stale insights in static, dead dashboards . 

Now it’s time to put your newfound knowledge into practice and empower everyone to build data reports. Sign up for a ThoughtSpot free trial today to see how anyone can use data reporting to gain deeper insights into your company’s performance. You don’t have to be a data expert to get started – ThoughtSpot allows even beginners to leverage the power of AI Analytics without requiring extensive tech skills or background experience. 

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How to build a marketing data analysis report (template and examples)

Creating a data analysis report is an underrated yet critical skill for marketers. A marketing report can impact team, stakeholder, and company decisions, so highlighting (and omitting) the right information is crucial.

But how do you consistently churn out clear and compelling reports? This guide will help you tie your reports up in a neat little bow, ensuring alignment with and buy-in from your audience—and beneficial decisions for your end-users. 

Last updated

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Data analysis reporting is a process that combines quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate performance, share findings, and inform future decisions. One common example is reporting on the results of a marketing campaign, but there are plenty more reasons marketers might create a data analysis report.

More examples—plus the reporting steps, tools, and template—await below, so keep reading.

Get started fast with our  free monthly data analysis report template , and follow these six key steps to creating a persuasive report:

Nail down the elements : provide a title, timeframe, and summary. Present data visually and close with action points.

Determine your purpose : figure out why you're making this report so you can focus on the right information

Identify your audience and their needs : define your readers and tailor your report to their requirements

Put your key insights first : maximize Hotjar, a multi-product data analytics platform, to track metrics and gather meaningful insights 

Visualize your data : incorporate charts, heatmaps, and other visuals to convey facts and insights effectively

Ask your audience for feedback : collect your audience's feedback to continuously improve your reporting approach

How to write a data analysis report in 6 easy steps

Knowing how to write a data analysis report is vital—especially in a data-informed field like marketing. Organizing and visualizing your data helps you

Evaluate strategies and performance

Inform future decisions and actions

Share findings and recommendations to serve users better

However, even marketers dealing with data regularly may find the task time-consuming. But we can promise you one thing: it won’t feel that way once you have a repeatable process and fewer data analysis and visualization tools to work with.  

1. Nail down the elements

This chapter of our data analysis guide focuses on creating an executive report. But regardless of the type of report (we'll touch on a few more of them later), most share the same building blocks:

Title: use a straightforward title to convey your report's intent. Call it as it is, whether it's your overall marketing performance or a multi-channel marketing campaign.

Timeframe: reporting intervals include daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. Monthly data analysis reports work best for marketing teams, clients, and executives.

TL;DR: summarize your key objectives and findings, such as insights, issues, and recommendations, in an executive summary. This sets your audience's expectations and helps busy team members focus on what matters to them. 

Body: your bar charts, graphs, tables, and heatmaps go here. Add visual evidence from your analysis that supports your conclusion to win buy-in from decision-makers.

Conclusion: backed by the data in the body, state your plan for making progress with your goals. For instance, say you need additional dollars to spend on social media advertising since it's shown a consistent return on investment (ROI).

Discover actionable data, enhance business decisions

Craft compelling marketing reports fast. Collect, analyze, and report on crucial insights using Hotjar’s multi-product platform to get stakeholder buy-in and team alignment.

2. Determine your purpose

What data should you incorporate in your report? The answer lies in the purpose of your data analysis report.

Consider this: what do you hope to achieve when you share the results of your analysis? Is it to show stakeholders how customers use your products so you can improve them? Or is it to enlighten your team about what customers like so you can tailor campaigns to each segment?

Pulling the relevant data becomes a breeze once you’ve locked in your report’s primary purpose.

Collect meaningful data in real time with Hotjar

Marketers conduct quantitative data analysis to answer questions like, “How many?” or “How often?” In other words: this type of analysis involves numerical data, such as traffic and conversions. 

But numbers alone don't provide the whole picture—you need to uncover the why behind them. Why did traffic from France increase yesterday? Why do certain customers rage-click on a call-to-action (CTA) button on your Demo page?

It's qualitative data that reveals the reasons customers behave a certain way. This non-numerical data includes behavioral observations, interview clips, and survey responses. 

In Hotjar, an analytics platform for user behavior and digital experience insights, you can gather qualitative data via Surveys , Feedback, and Interviews , plus visualize quantitative data via Heatmaps and capture user behavior in real-time with Recordings, all from a single platform.

Here, it's easier than ever to collect and analyze quantitative and qualitative data, and build a user-centric marketing report based on your analysis.

Complement quantitative data with qualitative insights

3. Identify your audience

Always determine two audience types for your report: primary and secondary.

Company executives, clients (for marketing agencies), team members, and cross-functional collaborators, such as product managers, can fit into either category, depending on your report. Once you've categorized your primary and secondary audiences, it's easier to customize the report to their needs. Here are a few tips on how to do it:

Speak their language: in any business setting, this means striking a balance between not too formal and not too casual—think business in the front, party in the back 

Discuss results, not methodologies: immediately dive into the insights gleaned from your quantitative and qualitative data analysis  

Present key takeaways in the summary: as we said earlier, highlight your main points at the top of your report so the reader can instantly note what they think is interesting

Place eye-catching visuals in the body: your audience may skim through and search only for additional details in the body, so ensure your data visualization is easy to interpret

📋 Need a hand? Try using a template 

If you’re unsure how to design your report or prefer not to build from scratch each time you run it, use a data analysis report template. Ensure it’s a well-crafted one aimed at showing—instead of telling—your audience what works and what doesn’t.

Aside from making you look good (😎), an excellent template saves you time, and gives your readers something to rely on during each reporting period.

So, what would an extremely occupied marketer do? Streamline the creation process, of course! Plug, play, and present your insights with our free monthly data analysis report template to get started 📈.

Click the link above to make a copy of our handy template

4. Prioritize key insights

Here comes the exciting part: assembling the data to draw a clear picture for your audience. Before you discovered this guide, you might have gathered data manually from various sources, such as Google Analytics, your preferred A/B testing platform, and even Hotjar.

Luckily for you, there's a faster way to track and spot patterns occurring in your custom metrics. Hotjar Trends enables you to find the behavioral data you need, such as visitors who viewed any of the two landing page variations you were A/B testing, or users who rage clicked (a sign of frustration) before exiting your checkout page. 

Compare your A/B test participants or new and returning users to see if one segment encountered any issues. Or view your rage clicks over time to understand what makes users frustrated. Then, click the ‘play’ icon to dive straight into your session recordings and discover the reason behind their actions.

Go from quantitative to qualitative data in a single click with Hotjar Trends

Finally, screencap the charts in Trends and link to some relevant recordings in your trend report .

A sample trend report showing rage clicks over time, created via Hotjar Trends

What else can you do within Hotjar? Use Highlights and Collections to group snippets of recordings and heatmaps to support your conclusion. Add these meaningful insights to your monthly report or share them with teammates on an ordinary day, without having to switch between multiple analytics tools. 

Trends, Highlights, Recordings…will my audience remember all these names?  

They may even start looking for them in every report from now on. Our tools and features are self-explanatory, so everyone, from the marketing and sales teams to clients and C-suite execs, can quickly understand them.

Personally I love using Highlights and Collections together. I see each highlight as a self-contained explanation for the case I’m making to the product team. I’ve got the video. I’ve got the tags if I need them. I’ll add comments and a thread for a response. 

There’s no risk of distraction and minimal lift to get my stakeholders directly to the central issue. 

And then the Collections view basically creates a visual report of all the evidence I have for a given case. Here's how much this hurts (one Highlight); click on the rest of these if you can stomach it (a Collection of Highlights).

5. Incorporate visual data

Whether you're comparing past and present conversion rates or sharing multiple data sets, it's crucial to get your point across quickly. After all, you're not the only team or department vying for your audience's attention. This is where data visualization plays a considerable role: maps and charts allow you to effectively convey your message by making your data interactive, digestible, and enjoyable. 

To visualize data, use your spreadsheet of choice (for example, Excel or Google Sheets) or a dedicated platform like Tableau . You can also screenshot your data in the Hotjar Dashboard to save time and effort. Showcase relevant heatmaps, recordings, survey responses, interview snapshots, and direct feedback to drive your point home and get everyone on the same page.

6. Collect feedback from your audience

Just as Surveys and Feedback let you connect with actual customers, they also prove valuable in asking your audience’s thoughts once you’ve sent out your reports. By building a custom survey—for free—in Hotjar, you can include and analyze open-ended questions like, “How did this data analysis report help you?” and “What would you want to see in the next report?”

This enables stakeholders to give you proper feedback, especially if they didn't get the chance to speak after your presentation.

4 examples of data analysis reports 

Now, we’re tackling four popular types of data analysis reports. Practice makes permanent, so let’s go over the ones you’ll likely produce regularly (you'll ace them in no time).

Executive report or digital marketing report

This comprehensive report combines vital insights into your marketing efforts across various channels. It tracks metrics like advertising ​​cost, conversion rate, customer acquisition cost, and online revenue. 

Remember: you'll send this document out to company executives who want to see how marketing directly contributes to the bottom line. Be sure to connect your efforts to revenue. And what better way to demonstrate your impact than showing heatmaps or recordings of people responding positively to your campaigns?

Search engine optimization (SEO) report

While an executive report may contain an SEO performance overview, this specialized report breaks down organic traffic in detail. Show your keyword rankings, conversion rates, and top traffic channels to explain your strategy to executives and stakeholders.

Note that you can track these essential metrics in Hotjar's Dashboard. Screenshot your customized dashboard or share it live with your audience as you discuss key insights. Pull up a recording or two or highlight customer feedback to strengthen your case.

For example, if session recordings reveal an unclear CTA has caused conversions for several landing pages to decline, you might recommend changing the CTA by running an A/B test and going with the winning variation.

Social media marketing report

This data analysis report example unpacks multiple channels. Which ones are helping you spread brand awareness and enhance customer loyalty? As such, you should track social key performance indicators (KPIs) like new followers, total reach, share of voice (SOV), engagement, and website referrals.

You can access relevant data and insights in your social media pages’ in-app analytics or analytics tools like Buffer and Hootsuite .

Marketing funnel report

Conversion funnels allow you to home in on the few steps users take from first contact to final conversion. Here’s a basic conversion path if you’re marketing an ecommerce brand:

Homepage > category page > product page > cart > checkout > thank you page

Initially, you’ll look at how many people visit your main pages and who they are. Take your data analysis further with Hotjar Funnels , where you can measure conversion and drop-off rates. Add filters like traffic channels and user attributes to compare performance. To deepen your insights, jump into relevant recordings and see what causes users to leave before they convert. 

The best part? You can gradually collect data, conduct funnel analysis , and integrate your findings into your report with in Hotjar and with out manually handling data: no hassle, no fuss.

Create data analysis reports that drive action

Ensure your team, stakeholders, and executives make data-informed decisions regarding your marketing campaigns and strategies with compelling data analysis reports.

Needle-moving, user-centric insights deserve the spotlight. Start with our free template and populate it with numerical and non-numerical data from Hotjar and other sources. Go ahead and tell a visual story that inspires action today. 

FAQs about data analysis reports

What is a data analysis report.

A data analysis report is a document containing key insights derived from quantitative and qualitative data analysis. Marketers, for instance, use it to share findings and recommendations with teammates, stakeholders, clients, and company executives. This is to ensure everyone is on the same page before deciding on any improvements to marketing strategies and campaigns.

What is an example of a data analysis report?

One example of a data analysis report is the executive report on a company’s digital marketing efforts. It presents evidence backed by data on how different channels create opportunities for a business to serve its customers better and, in return, achieve sustainable growth.

How do you write a data analysis report?

Here’s how to develop your marketing report in seven simple steps:

Nail down the elements

Determine your purpose

Identify your audience and their needs

Enhance your reports using templates

Put your key insights first

Visualize your data

Ask your audience for feedback

Data analysis tools

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• Case Studies
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What is data reporting?

Types of data reports, why is data reporting important for a business, 5 steps to follow when creating data reports, modern business data reporting tools, best practices for effective data reporting:, data reporting examples and templates, how to improve your data reporting, key takeaways, what is data reporting and how to create data reports for your business.

Vlada Malysheva ,  Creative Writer @ OWOX

Top 30 Handpicked Google Looker Studio Dashboards for Marketers

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Collecting and analyzing data helps professionals track and monitor a company’s progress and success. As you know, half of your marketing budget will be spent in vain, but it’s essential to determine which half and adjust your strategy on time. According to McKinsey data reporting can reduce marketing costs by 30%.

Just as your car’s speedometer shows you how fast you’re driving (and perhaps whether you’ll be late for your meeting), a well-configured report helps you determine the success of your brand’s promotions and the effectiveness of your marketing channels to evaluate whether you’ll have time to fulfill your marketing or revenue plan. 

In this article, we are going to cover what data reporting is, how to create a data report, and what dashboards you can use as a guide or template.

Note: This blog post was written in 2021 and updated with new context to suit current state of marketing reporting and trends in 2023.

Data reporting helps you track what’s happening to your business and evaluate its performance. It’s the process of collecting, merging, and visualizing raw data from all available sources. 

Most often, it's presented in the form of tables, graphs, or charts.

Also, you shouldn’t forget that:

In most cases, data-based records show only historical data, so you see an assessment of past actions that you can no longer change.

To correctly evaluate your brand’s ongoing performance, you need to apply the business context (such as the industry and niche in which your company works).

With modern martech tools, you can evaluate past events, monitor what’s happening in real time, and use machine learning to predict your customers’ future actions.

You need to gather all possible information to get specific and validated answers to business questions. Using data analysis, you can get powerful insights, detect errors or problems, and fix them before significant damage is done.

With  OWOX BI , your data is ready for analysis and reporting. Build any report you need in minutes. Eliminate hours of manual work with automated accurate user behavior tracking, data collection, data preparation, and reporting .

Your personal demo will include:

• An overview of the OWOX solutions to empower better business decisions
• A complex and clear analytics workflow for achieving higher ROI and lower ads spend with accurate reporting and insights
• After the demo, you’ll receive a customized solution for reaching your business goals.

1. Performance Reports:

Performance reports are crucial for evaluating a business's achievements over a designated timeframe. They encapsulate key metrics (KPIs) like sales, revenue, and market share to provide a comprehensive view of business performance.

Example : A quarterly performance report could illustrate a company's sales figures, revenue generation as well as advertising costs or expences, comparing AOV with CAC, allowing stakeholders to assess the business's health and competitive position during that quarter.

2. Real-time Monitoring Reports:

These reports provide immediate insights into ongoing business operations by monitoring real-time data. They enable swift responses to operational changes, thereby enhancing efficiency and effectiveness.

Example : A real-time website KPI dashboard displaying website traffic and conversions can provide immediate insights into customer engagement and the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns, facilitating timely adjustments if necessary.

3. Historical Analysis Reports:

Historical analysis reports help evaluate past actions and performance, facilitating a deeper understanding of trends and informed decision-making. Businesses can identify growth patterns and areas needing improvement by comparing data over a period.

Example: A yearly sales report comparing performance over several years could highlight trends in sales growth or decline, helping to pinpoint successful strategies or areas for improvement.

4. Predictive Analysis Reports:

By employing statistical techniques and machine learning, predictive analysis reports analyze current or historical data to forecast future events. This forward-looking approach helps in better planning and preparedness.

Example: A report predicting the next quarter’s sales based on historical data and industry trends could help in inventory planning and budget allocation.

5. Industry Benchmarking Reports:

Benchmarking reports compare a business's performance against industry standards or competitors, providing a relative understanding of the business's position in the market.

Example : A report comparing your marketing ROI against industry standards could unveil where your marketing efforts stand compared to the broader market.

6. Problem Detection Reports:

These reports aim to identify errors, issues, or areas of improvement within business operations, aiding in maintaining the quality and efficiency of processes.

Example : A report identifying bottlenecks in the production process could help find solutions to enhance production efficiency.

7. Insights and Recommendations Reports:

These reports delve into data analysis to provide insights and suggestions for improving business operations.

Example : A report suggesting marketing strategies based on customer behavior analysis could help optimize marketing campaigns for better engagement and conversions.

8. Visual Data Reports:

Visual data reports present data in graphical forms like graphs, charts, and tables, making it easier for stakeholders to comprehend the information.

Example : A visual report displaying customer demographic information could help understand the target audience better.

9. Automated Reports:

These reports involve automated data transfers, preparation, and reporting to save time and ensure accuracy, making the process more efficient.

Example : A monthly report automatically generated and sent to stakeholders displaying key performance indicators could streamline the reporting process and keep stakeholders informed.

10. Custom Reports or Ad-hoc reports (e.g., using OWOX BI Transformations):

Custom reports are tailored based on specific business needs and questions, providing bespoke insights that are highly relevant to the business.

Example : Data is prepared for a custom report with a transformation tool, and theb visualized in Looker Studio displaying the effectiveness of different marketing channels could help allocate marketing budgets more effectively.

These types of data reports can help a business monitor its performance, understand historical trends, identify issues, and make data-driven decisions for future strategies.

Data reporting is crucial for businesses for various reasons, as it helps in informed decision-making and strategy optimization. Here are some points elucidating the importance of data reporting for businesses:

1. Informed Decision-Making:

Data reports provide factual evidence and insights, which are vital for making informed decisions. They help understand the current situation, predict future trends, and make choices that propel the business forward.

2. Performance Monitoring:

Through regular data reporting, performance monitoring assesses different sectors' effectiveness, pinpointing improvement areas. Concurrently, data-driven insights promote continuous improvement by highlighting strengths and weaknesses, thereby guiding focused efforts for better results.

3. Identifying Trends and Patterns:

By analyzing data over time, businesses can identify patterns and trends that can be harnessed for competitive advantage. It also helps in understanding market dynamics and customer behaviors.

4. Cost Efficiency:

Data reporting can help identify areas where costs can be reduced without compromising quality. It also helps in optimizing resource allocation to get the best returns.

5. Clear Communication:

Data reports facilitate communication within the organization by providing a clear and factual basis for discussions. It ensures everyone is on the same page regarding performance, goals, and strategies.

6. Compliance and Accountability:

Accurate reporting ensures that the business complies with legal, financial, and operational requirements. It also fosters a culture of accountability as performance and results are documented and reviewed.

7. Real-time Problem-Solving:

Real-time data reporting allows immediate problem identification. It helps in addressing issues as they arise, preventing them from escalating.

8. Measuring Return on Investment (ROI):

Through precise data reporting, businesses can measure the ROI of various initiatives, helping to justify investments and prioritize future spending.

9. Improving Customer Satisfaction:

Analyzing customer data helps understand their needs, preferences, and issues, which in turn aids in improving products, services, and customer satisfaction.

10. Competitive Advantage:

Having a robust data reporting system can provide a competitive advantage as it helps in reacting quickly to market changes, optimizing strategies, and staying ahead of competitors.

11. Long-term Strategic Planning:

Data reporting provides the historical data and current insights necessary for effective long-term strategic planning.

By investing in effective data reporting, businesses enhance their operational efficiency and build a foundation for sustainable growth and success.

By analyzing data, you can make informed decisions and test working hypotheses. You can specify where your company’s resources go, what progress has been made, and what your company should focus on most.

Want to know how to write a data analysis report? Let’s look at the steps you need to take to create what perfectly fits your company:

Step 1: Determine the Report’s Purpose

Identify the primary goal of the report and the specific questions it needs to answer. Different stakeholders require different insights, so ensure that the report is tailored to address the concerns of the intended audience. Avoid overloading the dashboard with excessive questions, which may dilute the focus.

Step 2: Define Metrics and Data Sources

Select the key metrics that will be monitored and analyzed in the report. Determine the data sources that will provide the necessary information. Ensure these metrics and data sources align with the previously identified questions and are relevant to the intended audience.

Step 3: Ensure Accurate Data Collection

Establish processes to ensure that data is collected accurately and consistently. This might involve setting up automated data collection systems or validating the data collection methodologies. Tailor the attribution model to suit your business needs, ensuring it reflects the operational realities of your organization.

Step 4: Design and Build the Report

Design the report layout and decide on the visualization formats (such as graphs, tables, and charts) that best convey the information. Ensure the report is clear, intelligible, and that visualizations precisely answer the specified questions. Utilize modern data reporting tools to create a well-structured report which can be easily interpreted.

Step 5: Establish Monitoring and Update Frequency

Determine how often the report will be updated and reviewed—daily, weekly, monthly, or in real-time. Set up systems for regularly monitoring and updating the report to reflect the most current data. Ensure there’s a feature to filter information by specified parameters to allow for more granular analysis when needed.

These steps form a structured approach to creating comprehensive and insightful data reports. By adhering to these steps, you will be able to produce reports that provide valuable insights, aid in informed decision-making, and effectively channel resources toward priority areas in your company.

In the past, marketing reports included slides from presentations, screenshots of PDF files, and huge, incomprehensible tables. Naturally, they couldn’t provide any real-time data or predictive insights. However, with the advent of modern tools, it’s possible to say goodbye to this suffering.

With modern marketing services, you don’t need to be a professional to build the reports you require and get answers to your questions. Nowadays, martech tools provide real-time data and offer easy-to-understand visualizations. With business intelligence solutions, you can collect all the information you need, perform advanced analytics, and bring businesses more value.

Modern services allow even inexperienced specialists to make data work and transform tables with numbers into understandable dashboards with options such as real-time updates, critical notifications, and the ability to share insights with colleagues. Also, modern cloud-based solutions are easily customizable to meet any business requirements and are optimized for mobile devices, which means you’ll have 24/7 access to business-boosting information. So you can control what happens at any time of the day or night, from anywhere in the world.

In the online world, information is everything and everywhere.

According to Gartner , 74% of CMOs expect to increase spending on digital advertising, and 66% expect to increase spending on paid search in 2021. This means companies will spend million-dollar budgets without properly organized and customized processes for tracking their performance.

Effective data reporting is about sharing information from data in a clear and easy way so that people can make good decisions.

Simplicity is Key:

Focus on core metrics relevant to business objectives to avoid information overload.

Use tools like ThoughtSpot for in-depth analysis, allowing users to explore further as needed.

Visual Representation:

Employ charts, graphs, and interactive visualizations to convey complex data briefly.

Choose data reporting tools based on integration capability, ease of usage and requirements. Only with the correct tool complex data can be broken down into understandable, actionable insights.

Contextual Clarity:

Clearly outline the data collection context to ensure accurate interpretation and actionable insights.

Utilize tools like Sage with GPT for natural language narrative, enhancing stakeholder understanding and alignment.

Consistency Across Board:

Maintain consistent data quality metrics, sources, and reporting periods for reliable reporting.

Establish a cloud data platform as a single source of truth to eliminate data discrepancies.

Take Feedback from Stakeholders:

Establish clear reporting processes and ensure stakeholders are well-informed to prevent misunderstandings.

Engage stakeholders in feedback loops for continuous improvement in the reporting process.

Compliance and Record-Keeping:

Adhere to legal and organizational data privacy, security, and documentation standards.

Clearly document methodologies, data sources, and assumptions for transparency and auditability.

These guidelines will streamline data reporting practices, ensuring clarity, accuracy, and effectiveness, pivotal for informed decision-making and efficient communication within your organization.

As we mentioned above, each business has different requirements, even within the same industry. If you want to meet any inquiry fully armed, consider your marketing analytics system in advance. You can begin to structure necessary reports by how often they’re needed (on demand, daily, monthly, or once a year) and which departments or specialists need them (some metrics are essential for PPC specialists, and entirely different metrics are crucial for the CMO).

Below are data reports that may be useful to you.

When you need to assess performance and monitor your KPIs in real time, an overall report is what you need. For example, this  CMO dashboard  from OWOX BI shows the performance of all marketing channels, traffic, advertising platforms, website user bahavior metrics, attribution models and company growth.

Overall reports are also actively used for monthly, annual, or any other summaries. For example, this one from OWOX BI shows the effectiveness of a website’s performance.

If you want to get such dashboards customized specifically for your company’s needs, book a demo with our specialists!

Note! Of course, not all templates are suitable for everyone. But you can adjust these dashboards and use the most successful ideas for yourself. Looker Studio , one of the most popular  data visualization  services, has a great gallery of dashboard solutions (see the Looker StudioReport Gallery). 

Let’s have a look at some data reporting examples.

1. Chief Marketing Officer Dashboard Template

Website traffic is multichannel. Whether it's Facebook ads, Google Ads, SEO, or referrals - as a marketing leader you need to know whether your digital marketing efforts are paying off and generating the desired ROI.

Questions you can answer with this dashboard:

Which channels are driving the most traffic or sales to our website, and how has this changed over time?

What was the return on investment (ROI) for each ad platform, campaign, or keyword?

What is the conversion rate for each traffic source?

What are the best-performing ads across all platforms? 

How many conversions I’m getting from my campaigns?

What’s my ad spend? Break down by period, platform, or campaign;

What was the cost per click (CPC) and cost per order (CPO) for each ad?

What are the keywords people are using that drive traffic to your website?

and much more...

2. PPC Report Template

Creating a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) report can be crucial for reviewing the performance of advertising campaigns and for making data-driven decisions. A good PPC report should be clear, concise, and provide insights that can be acted upon.

What is covered in this template:

Campaign Performance Overview: (Clicks, Impressions, CTR, CPC, Spend, Conversion Rate, Cost Per Conversion, Conversions)

Performance Comparison (previous periods, different campaigns)

Keyword Performance: (Top Performing Keywords, Keywords Needing Improvement, New Keyword Opportunities)

Ad Performance (Top Performing Ads, Ads Needing Improvement)

Audience Demographics (Age, Gender, Location, Device)

Geographic Performance

Performance by Device Type

Budget Analysis (Budget Utilization, Budget Recommendations)

3. Google Analytics 4 & paid channels report template

Get a clear overview and analysis of your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google Ads, TikTok Ads, Twitter Ads campaigns and Google Analytics 4 events on one Google Looker Studio dashboard .

4. Google Merchandise Store E-commerce Report

This ecommerce report would typically include metrics crucial for understanding the online retail performance of the Google Merchandise Store. It would provide insights into sales figures, website visitor behaviors, and conversion rates.

Overview (Summary of key findings)

Total Revenue and Revenue Breakdown (by product categories, regions, etc.)

Traffic Overview (number of visits, page views, etc.)

Conversion Rate Analysis

Customer Behavior Analysis (new vs. returning customers, etc.)

Product Performance (sales, refunds, etc.)

5. Website Performance Report

This website performance report provides an overview of a website's overall performance, including speed, uptime, user engagement, and more.

Traffic Analysis (visits, unique visitors, page views)

Engagement Metrics (bounce rate, average session duration)

Technical Performance Metrics (page load time, uptime)

Conversion Metrics (conversion rate, goal completions)

6. SEO Report Template

An SEO report focuses on a website's performance in organic search. It covers keyword rankings, backlink profiles, and organic traffic metrics.

Keyword Rankings (keyword performance, visibility, etc.)

Organic Traffic Analysis (traffic, engagement metrics)

Backlink Profile (new backlinks, lost backlinks, domain authority)

On-Page SEO Analysis (meta tags, heading structure, mobile optimization)

7. Organic Traffic Template

This organic report dives into the performance of organic traffic acquisition, focusing on metrics like traffic volume, behavior, and conversions from organic search.

Traffic Volume (sessions, users, new users from organic search)

Engagement Metrics (bounce rate, pages per session, average session duration)

Conversion Analysis (goal completions, conversion rate)

Landing Page Performance (top-performing pages in organic search)

Keyword Performance (top keywords driving organic traffic)

These outlines provide a structured way of presenting vital information in each report to help stakeholders understand the performance in each respective area and make informed decisions accordingly. Each section within the reports can be visualized using graphs, charts, and tables for clearer comprehension.

Correct and timely reports are critical to your company’s success. Therefore, it’s important not only to choose the tool that best suits your business needs but also to ensure that all interested colleagues can access it and work with it. After all, to remain relevant in a constantly changing market, you need to use all available information. Your data should work for you.

There are two common ways to improve data reports:

Go from manual reporting to automated marketing reporting .

Convert static reporting to real-time automated updates.

​As you can see, it all comes down to using modern cloud-based business intelligence tools that are flexible enough to evaluate and visualize complex data. OWOX BI is easy to use and helps you automate data collection and get ready-made marketing reports without the help of analysts.

Useful links

How to build advanced marketing reports in Looker Studio

The OWOX BI guide for digital marketers: data collection, dashboards, and templates

The most common reports for e-commerce and retail

Marketing report templates and examples of daily, weekly, and monthly reports

Top 6 Irreplaceable Digital Marketing Services to Boost Your Website Effectivenes

Marketing Dashboards:

SaaS report

Advertising performance & Attribution report

Retail performance report on HubSpot data

E-commerce dashboard. Item position effectiveness report

PPC report template based on item availability

ROPO dashboard

Microconversion report

Digital marketing dashboard

Marketing dashboard. Landing page effectiveness report

Facebook and Instagram advertising performance dashboard

PPC marketing report template

Facebook advertising dashboard template

Facebook and Instagram ads campaign performance dashboard template

Twitter advertising performance report template

Google advertising performance report template

Digital marketing report template

With the development of martech tools, you no longer need to be a professional analyst to build data reports and get answers to help reach your business objectives. All-in-one platforms such as OWOX BI help you manage your disparate data sources and evaluate your marketing effectiveness.

When you control your data, you can get valuable insights and grow your business. If you want to start creating modern reports, test hypotheses faster, and keep your hand on the pulse of your business, sign up for a demo! Our specialists will show you how you can quickly achieve your business goals with the help of OWOX BI.

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Published: February 14, 2022

Data reporting provides a meaningful and actionable view of how a business is performing. It connects the dots between disparate metrics and gives a true birds-eye view of individual roles, departments, and the company as a whole.

No matter the size of your organization, reporting is a must-have. It's also easier than ever for small businesses to implement cost-effective and straightforward data reporting. Let's look at how below. 

What is Data Reporting?

Data reporting is the process of collecting, organizing, and visualizing raw data in order to assess a business's performance in real time and historically.

Data reporting is crucial to any business. It allows you to make data-driven decisions that generate business value, instead of decisions based on gut instincts that may or may not generate value. 

Image Source

Think of it like test-driving a car. It’s top-of-the-range, fresh out the factory, and you’ve heard great things about the model. Even though you have a good feeling about it, you’d probably be hesitant to set off without a clear view of the dashboard computer. No matter how respected the brand, you need to see how the car is running, and if there are any faults. It's a similar story with business. 

Now that we understand the importance of a data reporting strategy, let's look at the difference between data reporting and business intelligence.

Data Reporting vs. Business Intelligence

Sometimes data reporting and business intelligence are talked about interchangeably, but that's not always correct. Here's how you can understand the difference:

Reporting shows you what has happened so far and what the status of your business performance is. This can include charts, graphs, tables, and other visualizations of performance on reporting dashboards.

Business intelligence (BI) shows you why things happened and helps to identify trends and risks to improve business performance in the future. With BI tools, you can explore and forecast metrics such as customer satisfaction, changes in demand, and cash flow.

With data reporting and business intelligence apps in your stack, your business can be in the best position to assess current performance, forecast how that will change in coming months, and react to trends and risks.

Types of Data Reporting

There are dozens of types of data reporting. Below we’ll look at some most common types. Each of these can help businesses ​​track progress toward their goals. 

Compliance Reporting

Compliance reporting typically provides information on how company and/or customer data is obtained, stored, distributed, and secured. This type of reporting is essential for showing that a company is adhering to all requirements set by a government or regulatory agency under a particular standard, like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

Analytical Reporting

Analytical reporting combines qualitative and quantitative data to analyze a business strategy or process. The goal is to collect, analyze, and present data in order to determine what the next course of action should be.

For example, a market analysis could help a company decide how to best allocate their resources. If the analysis predicts that a particular market is growing and becoming more competitive, then the company may decide to allocate more resources into promoting that product.

Periodic Reporting

Periodic reporting provides summaries of performance data at fixed intervals. These intervals can be hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly. Best for communicating performance to a group of stakeholders, this type of reporting provides a view of a company’s incremental growth.

Dashboard Reporting

Dashboard reporting provides a visual representation of the key performance indicators (KPIs) of a company or specific team. Integrating data from multiple reports and tools, dashboard reporting uses charts and graphs to provide an at-a-glance and multi-dimensional view of a company’s or team’s performance.

Dashboards, like the one shown below, can allow employees to get answers to their one-off questions quickly and easily. 

How Small Businesses Can Implement Data Reporting

Not all reporting tools are equal. Although there are countless fancy analytics apps on the market, the best data reporting app is the one that your business can actually use and gain insights from. For small businesses, this often means simplicity and clarity, not complexity.

Before choosing a data reporting platform, understand what your business really needs from it. Here are some of the most important reporting features for most small businesses.

What to Look for in Data Reporting Tools

• Customizable dashboards and reports
• Simple user experience
• Ability to centralize data from multiple sources
• Range of reporting templates
• Range of chart types
• Professional design
• Ability to add notes for context
• Easy sharing with stakeholders

Now that we know what characteristics to look for, let's evaluate some of the best analytics tools below. 

Top Analytics Tools for Small Businesses

There are two main ways for small businesses to implement data reporting: as part of a standalone analytics tool, or via functionality that's already integrated with their other apps.

Integrated reporting is offered with most cloud-based apps. This is the simplest way to get started with centralized data reporting.

However, if your apps don't provide sufficiently in-depth reporting, or you want to centralize insights from multiple tools, you can add a dedicated analytics app to your stack. Here are some of the best to shortlist for your business.

HubSpot's custom report builder is ideal for analyzing multiple data sources across HubSpot, including marketing and sales activities as well as objects (ie. contacts, companies, deals, tickets, etc). For example, you can create a report to measure how your target accounts are engaging with your website.

Watch this video by Impulse Creative to learn how to generate reports with the HubSpot custom report builder:

2. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is among the most popular and straightforward ways to track your website traffic and performance. With this platform, you can create custom dashboards or use standard templates to monitor the performance of your marketing, content, products, and more.

Fathom is a user-friendly app for financial intelligence that integrates seamlessly with Xero, QuickBooks, and Excel data. It's a fantastic choice for small businesses to take their accounting software's analytics further.

Futrli is a financial prediction software that offers a clear, live, and customizable view of your business's performance and cash flow. It also analyzes customer and supplier data to alert you to hidden trends and risks.

5. Mixpanel

Mixpanel is one of the top product analytics platforms to help you convert, engage, and retain more users. With built-in behavioral analytics, data science, data governance, and user analytics infrastructure, Mixpanel is a great choice for SaaS, financial services, and ecommerce businesses.

6. Zoho Analytics

Zoho Analyics is a self-service BI and data analytics software that lets you visually analyze your data and discover hidden insights. Like the rest of the Zoho product family, it's optimized for small businesses.

7. Supermetrics

Supermetrics centralizes all of your marketing metrics, including PPC, SEO, social, and web analytics. Supermetrics also integrates seamlessly with Google Data Studio, Google Sheets, Excel, and Google BigQuery so you can present your reports on these platforms.

Data Reporting Examples 

Quality beats quantity when it comes to data reporting, especially for small businesses. You can't track everything, so it's much more effective to stay on top of a handful of metrics that you can be sure are accurate and relevant.

But which metrics are worthwhile for small businesses to track? Here are some of the most valuable examples of data reporting that any business can implement.

1. KPI Dashboard

Best for: Providing a snapshot of your business's health

A KPI dashboard displays a visual overview of key performance metrics. Some of the best KPIs to include are website traffic, new contacts, new customers, and monthly revenue. With one glance, you should be able to tell how your business is performing, ideally against predetermined monthly and annual goals.

Here's an example of an acquistion-focused KPI dashboard in Google Analytics: 

2. Website Performance Dashboard

Best for: Seeing how your website is performing and converting at-a-glance

If your small business is like most, your website is a vital sales and marketing channel. It's essential that it's functioning well, otherwise you risk losing valuable leads. The good news is you can easily monitor website performance with a simple dashboard powered by data from Google Analytics or a similar service. Some of the most important website metrics are page views, views per source (such as organic traffic, social media, and direct traffic), time on page, and bounce rate.

Here's a template of an Adobe Analytics dashboard for tracking website performance and conversions in Supermetrics: 

3. Marketing Report

Best for: Analyzing marketing metrics to inform future decisions, strategies, and performance

It's easy to spend big on new marketing tactics. To identify what offers the highest return for your time and investment, you can create marketing reports to clearly measure which channels drive the most traffic leads or to identify top blog posts by conversion, for example. 

Here's a an example of a channel-specific traffic marketing report in HubSpot:

4. Revenue Attribution Report

Best for: Analyzing the impact of your marketing and sales activities

Ideally, you want to tie each marketing and sales activity to revenue so you can understand which are creating revenue for your business. This might help you, for example, identify which channels and campaigns bring the highest-value leads that easily convert to customers.

Here's an example of a HubSpot revenue attribution report that shows deal revenue divided equally among all of the interactions that happened before the deal was closed: 

5. Sales Pipeline Performance Report

Best for: Forecasting sales performance in order to prioritize your sales team’s efforts

Your KPI dashboard usually contains key sales metrics, but it's useful to have another report that digs into more details. This can visualize how many leads are in your sales pipeline and which stage they're at. First outreach, first sales call, and contract sent are just a few examples of stages you might use. Not only can this report forecast sales and revenue, but it can also help locate blockers and the areas that need streamlining.

6. Service Performance Dashboard

Best for: Tracking and improving customer service

Customer service and support is another key area to focus on. After all, if churn rates are too high, your investment in sales and marketing will be wasted. Helpful metrics to collect and track include customer satisfaction metrics (such as NPS and CSAT), churn rates, and ticket response times.

Here's an example of a detailed service report in Zoho Desk:

Best Practices for Small Business Data Reporting

For the most effective data reporting, pay close attention to the raw data you are working with. You'll have the best results when using data that is:

• Collected in real-time
• Integrated between apps
• Accessible and not stuck in silos

Since most reports need data from different and disparate applications and databases, integration solutions are a good option. Most small businesses, rather than building in-house integrations, go for integration platforms as a service (iPaaS) or a native integration to have entire databases in sync. 

Once you're sure you have high data integrity , you can choose analytics functionality that effectively processes your data for relevant, timely, and actionable insights on engaging dashboards.

Start Relying on Data Reporting, Not Instinct

Instinct is valuable, but it isn't enough to determine how your business is performing. Data reporting enables you to measure the health of your business, no matter the size or industry, with accuracy and timeliness. With data-driven insights that allow you to fine-tune the areas that matter most, you can be confident that your business is heading in the right direction.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in December 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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A Guide To The Top 14 Types Of Reports With Examples Of When To Use Them

What Is The Report Definition?

What are the different types of reports, what does a report look like, what you should look for in a reporting tool, types of reporting for every business & purpose.

Businesses have been producing reports forever. No matter what role or industry you work in, chances are that you have been faced with the task of generating a tedious report to show your progress or performance.

While reporting has been a common practice for many decades, the business world keeps evolving, and with more competitive industries, the need to generate fast and accurate reports becomes critical. This presents a problem for many modern organizations today, as building reports can take from hours to days. In fact, a survey about management reports performed by Deloitte says that 50% of managers are unsatisfied with the speed of delivery and the quality of the reports they receive.

With this issue in mind, several BI tools, such as RIB BI+ , have been developed to assist businesses in generating interactive reports with just a few clicks, enhancing the way companies make critical decisions and service insights from their most valuable data.

But, with so many types of reports used daily, how can you know when to use them effectively? How can you push yourself ahead of the pack with the power of information? Here, we will explore the 14 most common types of reports in business and provide some examples of when to use them to your brand-boosting advantage. In addition, we will see how online dashboards have overthrown the static nature of classic reports and given way to a much faster, more interactive way of working with data.

Let’s get started with a brief report definition.

A report is a document that presents relevant business information in an organized and understandable format. Each report is aimed at a specific audience and business purpose, and it summarizes the development of different activities based on goals and objectives.

That said, there are various types of reports that can be used for different purposes. Whether you want to track the progress of your strategies or stay compliant with financial laws, there is a different report for each task. To help you identify when to use them, we will cover the top 14 most common report formats used for businesses today.

1. Informational Reports

The first in our list of reporting types is informational reports. As their name suggests, this report type aims to give factual insights about a specific topic. This can include performance reports, expense reports, and justification reports, among others. A differentiating characteristic of these reports is their objectivity; they are only meant to inform but not propose solutions or hypotheses. Common informational reports examples are for performance tracking, such as annual, monthly, or weekly reports.

2. Analytical Reports

This report type contains a mix of useful information to facilitate the decision-making process through a mix of qualitative and quantitative insights as well as real-time and historical insights. Unlike informational reports that purely inform users about a topic, this report type also aims to provide recommendations about the next steps and help with problem-solving. With this information in hand, businesses can build strategies based on analytical evidence and not simple intuition. With the use of the right BI reporting tool, businesses can generate various types of analytical reports that include accurate forecasts via predictive analytics technologies. Let’s look at it with an analytical report example.

The example above is the perfect representation of how analytical reports can boost a business’s performance. By getting detailed information such as sales opportunities, a probability rate, as well as an accurate pipeline value forecast based on historical data, sales teams can prepare their strategies in advance, tackle any inefficiencies, and make informed decisions for increased efficiency.

3. Operational Reports

These reports track every pertinent detail of the company’s operational tasks, such as its production processes. They are typically short-term reports as they aim to paint a picture of the present. Businesses use this type of report to spot any issues and define their solutions or to identify improvement opportunities to optimize their operational efficiency. Operational reports are commonly used in manufacturing, logistics, and retail as they help keep track of inventory, production, and costs, among others.

4. Industry Reports

Next in our list of the most common kinds of reports, we have industry-specific reports. As its name suggests, these types of reports are used in specific industries and provide valuable information about KPIs and goals that are unique to that industry. For instance, construction reports are invaluable tools to track project progress and extract valuable conclusions to optimize processes.

The example below is a report for a construction company that has multiple active projects. The template offers a complete overview of performance with KPIs related to contract value, budget, and profit margins, among other things. That said, the most valuable part of this report is the detailed overview of finishing projects and projects in execution, where we see that industry-specific KPIs like the SPI and CPI are tracked for each project with color to understand the status at a glance. Templates like this one play a fundamental role in efficient project management in construction as they offer the necessary overview to make smart decisions with fresh data. 

5. Product Reports

As its name suggests, this report type is used to monitor several aspects related to product development. Businesses often use them to track which of their products or subscriptions are selling the most within a given time period, calculate inventories, or see what kind of product the client values the most. Another common use case of these reports is to research the implementation of new products or develop existing ones. Let’s see it in more detail with a visual example.

The image above is a product report that shows valuable insights regarding usage intention, purchase intention, willingness to pay, and more. In this case, the report is based on the answers from a survey that aimed to understand how the target customer would receive a new product. Getting this level of insight through this report type is very useful for businesses as it allows them to make smart investments in new products and set realistic pricing based on their clients’ willingness to pay.

6. Department Reports

These reports are specific to each department or business function. They serve as a communication tool between managers and team members who must stay connected and work together for common goals. Whether it is the sales department, customer service, logistics, or finances, this specific report type helps track and optimize strategies on a deeper level. Let’s look at it with an example of a team performance report.

The image above is a department report created with an online data analysis tool, and it tracks the performance of a support team. This insightful report displays relevant metrics such as the top-performing agents, net promoter score, and first contact resolution rate, among others. Having this information in hand not only helps each team member to keep track of their individual progress but also allows managers to understand who needs more training and who is performing at their best.

7. Progress Reports

From the branch of informational reports, progress reports provide critical information about a project’s status. Employees or managers can produce these reports daily, weekly, or monthly to track performance and fine-tune tasks for the project’s better development. Progress reports are often used as visual materials to support meetings and discussions. A good example is a KPI scorecard.

8. Internal Reports

A type of report that encompasses many others on this list, internal reports refer to any type of report that is used internally in a business. They convey information between team members and departments to keep communication flowing regarding goals and business objectives.

As mentioned above, internal reports are useful communication tools to keep every relevant person in the organization informed and engaged. This healthcare report aims to do just that. By providing insights into the performance of different departments and areas of a hospital, such as in and outpatients, average waiting times, treatment costs, and more, healthcare managers can allocate resources and plan the schedule accurately, as well as monitor any changes or issues in real-time.

9. External Reports

Although most of the report types listed here are used for internal purposes, not all reporting is meant to be used behind closed doors. External reports are created to share information with external stakeholders such as clients or investors for budget or progress accountability, as well as for governmental bodies to stay compliant with the law requirements.

The image above is the perfect example of an external client report from an IT project. This insightful report provides a visual overview of every relevant aspect of the project’s development. From deadlines, budget usage, completion stage, and task breakdown, clients can be fully informed and involved in the project.

10. Vertical & Lateral Reports

Next, in our rundown of types of reports, we have vertical and lateral reports. This reporting type refers to the direction in which a report travels. A vertical report is meant to go upward or downward the hierarchy, for example, a management report. A lateral report assists in organization and communication between groups that are at the same level of the hierarchy, such as the financial and marketing departments.

11. Research Reports

Without a doubt, one of the most vital reporting types for any modern business is centered on research. Being able to collect, collate, and drill down into insights based on key pockets of your customer base or industry will give you the tools to drive innovation while meeting your audience’s needs head-on.

The image above is a market research analytics report example for customer demographics. It serves up a balanced blend of metrics that will empower you to boost engagement as well as retention rates. Here, you can drill down into your audience’s behaviors, interests, gender, educational levels, and tech adoption life cycles with a simple glance.

What’s particularly striking about this dashboard is the fact that you can explore key trends in brand innovation with ease, gaining a working insight into how your audience perceives your business. This invaluable type of report will help you get under the skin of your consumers, driving growth and loyalty in the process.

12. Strategic Reports

Strategy is a vital component of every business, big or small. Strategic analytics tools are perhaps the broadest and most universal of all the different types of business reports imaginable.

These particular tools exist to help you consistently understand, meet, and exceed your most pressing organizational goals by providing top-level metrics on various initiatives or functions.

By working with strategic-style tools, you will:

• Improve internal motivation and engagement
• Refine your plans and strategies for the best possible return on investment (ROI)
• Enhance internal communication and optimize the way your various departments run
• Create more room for innovation and creative thinking

13. Project Reports

Projects are key to keeping a business moving in the right direction while keeping innovation and evolution at the forefront of every plan, communication, or campaign. But without the right management tools, a potentially groundbreaking project can become a resource-sapping disaster.

A project management report serves as a summary of a particular project’s status and its various components. It’s a visual tool that you can share with partners, colleagues, clients, and stakeholders to showcase your project’s progress at multiple stages. Let’s look at our example and dig a little deeper.

Our example above is a construction project management dashboard that offers a 360-degree view of a project’s development. This invaluable construction collaboration tool can help keep every relevant project stakeholder involved and informed about the latest developments to ensure maximum efficiency and transparency.

Work and budget development and cost breakdown charts can help develop efficient construction cost control strategies to ensure the project remains profitable and on schedule. On the other hand, progress metrics like the SPI and the CPI can help assess construction productivity issues that can lead to delays and costly overruns.

14. Statutory Reports

It may not seem exciting or glamorous, but keeping your business’s statutory affairs in order is vital to your ongoing commercial health and success.

When it comes to submitting vital financial and non-financial information to official bodies, one small error can result in serious repercussions. As such, working with statutory report formats is a watertight way of keeping track of your affairs and records while significantly reducing the risk of human error.

Armed with interactive insights and dynamic visuals, you will keep your records clean and compliant while gaining the ability to nip any potential errors or issues in the bud.

Now that we’ve covered the most relevant types of reports, we will answer the question: what does a report look like?

As mentioned at the beginning of this insightful guide, static reporting is a thing of the past. With the rise of modern technologies like self-service BI tools, the use of interactive reports in the shape of business dashboards has become more and more popular among companies.

Unlike static reports that take time to be generated and are difficult to understand, modern reporting tools are intuitive. Their visual nature makes them easy to understand for any type of user, and they provide businesses with a central view of their most important performance indicators for an improved decision-making process. Here, we will cover 20 useful dashboard examples from different industries, functions, and platforms to put the value of dashboard reporting into perspective.

1. Financial Report

Keeping finances in check is critical for success. This financial report offers an overview of the most important financial metrics that a business needs to monitor its economic activities and answer vital questions to ensure healthy finances.

With insights about liquidity, invoicing, budgeting, and general financial stability, managers can extract long and short-term conclusions to reduce inefficiencies, make accurate forecasts about future performance, and keep the overall financial efficiency of the business flowing. For instance, getting a detailed calculation of the business’s working capital can allow you to understand how liquid your company is. If it’s higher than expected, it means you have the potential to invest and grow—definitely one of the most valuable types of finance reports.

2. Construction Report

Our next example is a construction report offering the perfect overview for efficient construction bid management . In this case, the template is tracked for an enterprise that has multiple projects working simultaneously and needs a general view of how everything is performing to ensure maximum efficiency.

The key metric highlighted in this report is the net bid value, which shows the value of all submitted bids, including canceled ones. As seen in the net bid value by status chart, only a small amount is accounted for canceled bids, which means this organization’s construction bidding process is efficient. The rest of the charts displayed in the template help provide a deeper understanding of bids to make informed decisions.

Another valuable aspect of this construction report is its interactivity. The filters on top allow the user to visualize only data for a specific category, project classification, or bid status, making it possible to answer any questions that arise during meetings or discussions. This was not possible in the past as the construction industry relied heavily on static reporting. Luckily, with the rise of digital construction tools, like interactive real-time reporting, they no longer need to rely solely on intuition or outdated information. Instead, they have fresh insights at all times.

3. Marketing Report

Our following example is a marketing report that ensures a healthy return on investment from your marketing efforts. This type of report offers a detailed overview of campaign performance over the last 12 weeks. Having access to this information enables you to maximize the value of your promotional actions, keeping your audience engaged by providing a targeted experience.

For instance, you can implement different campaign formats as a test and then compare which one is most successful for your business. This is possible thanks to the monitoring of important marketing metrics such as the click-through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), cost per acquisition (CPA), and more.

The visual nature of this report makes it easy to understand important insights at a glance. For instance, the four gauge charts at the top show the total spending from all campaigns and how much of the total budget of each campaign has been used. In just seconds, you can see if you are on target to meet your marketing budgets for every single campaign.

4. Sales Report

An intuitive sales dashboard like the one above is the perfect analytical tool to monitor and optimize sales performance. Armed with powerful high-level metrics, this report type is especially interesting for managers, executives, and sales VPs as it provides relevant data to ensure strategic and operational success.

The value of this sales report lies in the fact that it offers a complete and comprehensive overview of relevant insights needed to make smart sales decisions. For instance, at the top of an analysis tool, you get important metrics such as the number of sales, revenue, profit, and costs, all compared to a set target and to the previous time period. The use of historical data is fundamental when building successful sales strategies as they provide a picture of what could happen in the future. Being able to filter the key metrics all in one screen is a key benefit of modern reporting.

5. HR Report

Our next report example concerns human resources analytics. The HR department needs to track various KPIs for employee performance and effectiveness. However, it must also ensure that employees are happy and working in a healthy environment since an unhappy workforce can significantly damage an organization. This intuitive dashboard makes this possible.

Providing a comprehensive mix of metrics, this employee-centric report drills down into every major element needed to ensure successful workforce management. For example, the top portion of the dashboard covers absenteeism in 3 different ways: yearly average, absenteeism rate with a target of 3.8%, and absenteeism over the last five years. Tracking absenteeism rates in detail is helpful as it can tell you if your employees are skipping workdays. If the rate is over the expected target, then you have to dig deeper into the reasons and find sustainable solutions.

On the other hand, the second part of the dashboard covers the overall labor effectiveness (OLE). This can be tracked based on specific criteria that HR predefined, and it helps them understand if workers are achieving their targets or if they need extra training or help.

6. Management Report

Managers must monitor big amounts of data to ensure that the business is running smoothly. One of them being investor relationships. This management dashboard focuses on high-level metrics that shareholders need to look at before investing, such as the return on assets, return on equity, debt-equity ratio, and share price, among others.

By getting an overview of these important metrics, investors can easily extract the needed insights to make an informed decision regarding an investment in your business. For instance, the return on assets measures how efficiently are the company’s assets being used to generate profit. With this knowledge, investors can understand how effectively your company deploys available resources compared to others in the market. Another great indicator is the share price; the higher the increase in your share price, the more money your shareholders are making from their investment.

7. IT Report

Just like all the other departments and sections covered in this list, the IT department is one that can especially benefit from these types of reports. With so many technical issues to solve, the need for a visual tool to help IT specialists stay on track with their workload becomes critical.

As seen in the image above, this IT dashboard offers detailed information about different system indicators. For starters, we get a visual overview of the status of each server, followed by a detailed graph displaying the uptime & downtime of each week. This is complemented by the most common downtown issues and some ticket management information. Getting this level of insight helps your IT staff to know what is happening and when it is happening and find proper solutions to prevent these issues from repeating themselves. Keeping constant track of these metrics will ensure robust system performance.

8. Procurement Report

The following report example was built with intuitive procurement analytics software. It gives a general view of various metrics that any procurement department needs to manage suppliers efficiently.

With the possibility to filter, drill down, and interact with KPIs, this intuitive procurement dashboard offers key information to ensure a healthy supplier relationship. With metrics such as compliance rate, the number of suppliers, or the purchase order cycle time, the procurement team can classify the different suppliers, define the relationship each of them has with the company and optimize processes to ensure it stays profitable.

One of the industries that could truly benefit from this template is construction. Managing procurement in construction projects is not easy, as suppliers must be picked carefully to ensure they meet the project’s needs. An overview like this one can help assess the abilities of each supplier to choose the ones that best meet the requirements. In construction, supplier selection is more than just about pricing, it also involves availability, certifications, quality, etc.

9. Customer Service Report

Following our list of examples of reports is one from the support area. Armed with powerful customer service KPIs, this dashboard is a useful tool for monitoring performance, spotting trends, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and improving the overall effectiveness of the customer support department.

Covering aspects such as revenue and costs from customer support as well as customer satisfaction, this complete analysis tool is the perfect tool for managers who have to keep an eye on every little detail from a performance and operational perspective. For example, by monitoring your customer service costs and comparing them to the revenue, you can understand if you are investing the right amount into your support processes. This can be directly related to your agent’s average time to solve issues; the longer it takes to solve a support ticket, the more money it will cost and the less revenue it will bring. If your agents take too long to solve an issue, you can think of some training instances to help them reduce this number.

10. Market Research Report

This list of report types would not be complete without a market research report. Market research agencies deal with a large amount of information coming from surveys and other research sources. Considering that, reports that can be filtered for deeper interaction become more necessary for this industry than for any other.

The image above is a brand analytics dashboard that displays the survey results about how the public perceives a brand. This savvy tool contains different charts that make it easy to understand the information visually. For instance, the map chart with the different colors lets you quickly understand in which regions each age range is located. The charts can be filtered further to see the detailed answers from each group for a deeper analysis.

11. Social Media Report

Last but not least, we have a social media report. This scorecard-format dashboard monitors the performance of four main social media channels: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. It serves as a perfect visual overview to track the performance of different social media efforts and achievements.

Tracking relevant metrics such as followers, impressions, clicks, engagement rates, and conversions, this report type serves as a perfect progress report for managers or clients who need to see the status of their social channels. Each metric is shown in its actual value and compared to a set target. The colors green and red from the fourth column let you quickly understand if a metric is over or under its expected target.

12. Logistics Report

Logistics are the cornerstone of an operationally fluent and progressive business. If you deal with large quantities of goods and tangible items, in particular, maintaining a solid logistical strategy is vital to ensuring you maintain your brand reputation while keeping things flowing in the right direction.

A prime example designed to improve logistical management, our warehouse KPI dashboard is equipped with metrics required to maintain strategic movement while eliminating any unnecessary costs or redundant processes. Here, you can dig into your shipping success rates across regions while accessing warehouse costs and perfect order rates in real-time. If you spot any potential inefficiencies, you can track them here and take the correct course of action to refine your strategy. This is an essential tool for any business with a busy or scaling warehouse.

13. Manufacturing Report

Next, in our essential types of business reports examples, we’re looking at tools made to improve your business’s various manufacturing processes.

Our clean and concise production tool is a sight to behold and serves up key manufacturing KPIs that improve the decision-making process regarding costs, volume, and machinery.

Here, you can hone in on historical patterns and trends while connecting with priceless real-time insights that will not only enable you to make the right calls concerning your manufacturing process at the moment but will also allow you to formulate predictive strategies that will ultimately save money, boost productivity, and result in top-quality products across the board.

14. Retail Report

As a retailer with so many channels to consider and so many important choices to make, working with the right metrics and visuals is absolutely essential. Fortunately, we live in an age where there are different types of reporting designed for this very reason.

Our sales and order example, generated with retail analytics software, is a dream come true for retailers as it offers the visual insights needed to understand your product range in greater detail while keeping a firm grip on your order volumes, perfect order rates, and reasons for returns.

Gaining access to these invaluable insights in one visually presentable space will allow you to track increases or decreases in orders over a set timeframe (and understand whether you’re doing the right things to drive engagement) while plowing your promotional resources into the products that are likely to offer the best returns.

Plus, by gaining an accurate overview of why people are returning your products, you can omit problem items or processes from your retail strategy, improving your brand reputation as well as revenue in the process.

15. Digital Media Report

The content and communications you publish are critical to your ongoing success, regardless of your sector, niche, or specialty. Without putting out communications that speak directly to the right segments of your audience at the right times in their journey, your brand will swiftly fade into the background.

To ensure your brand remains inspiring, engaging, and thought-leading across channels, working with media types of a business report is essential. You must ensure your communications cut through the noise and scream ‘quality’ from start to finish—no ifs, no buts, no exceptions.

Our content quality control tool is designed with a logical hierarchy that will tell you if your content sparks readership, if the language you’re using is inclusive and conversational, and how much engagement-specific communications earn. You can also check your most engaging articles with a quick glance to understand what your users value most. Armed with this information, you can keep creating content that your audience loves and ultimately drives true value to the business.

16. Energy Report

In the age of sustainability and in the face of international fuel hikes, managing the energy your business uses effectively is paramount. Here, there is little room for excess or error, and as such, working with the right metrics is the only way to ensure successful energy regulation.

If your company has a big HQ or multiple sites that require power, our energy management analytics tool will help you take the stress out of managing your resources. One of the most striking features of this dashboard is the fact that it empowers you to compare your company’s energy usage against those from other sectors and set an accurate benchmark.

Here, you can also get a digestible breakdown of your various production costs regarding energy consumption and the main sources you use to keep your organization running. Regularly consulting these metrics will not only allow you to save colossal chunks of your budget, but it will also give you the intelligence to become more sustainable as an organization. This, in turn, is good for the planet and your brand reputation—a real win-win-win.

17. FMCG Report

The fast-moving consuming goods (FMCG) industry can highly benefit from a powerful report containing real-time insights. This is because the products handled in this sector, which are often food and beverages, don’t last very long. Therefore, having a live overview of all the latest developments can aid decision-makers in optimizing the supply chain to ensure everything runs smoothly and no major issues happen.

Our report format example above aims to do just that by providing an overview of critical performance indicators, such as the percentage of products sold within freshness date, the out-of-stock rate, on-time in full deliveries, inventory turnover, and more. What makes this template so valuable is the fact that it provides a range of periods to get a more recent view of events but also a longer yearly view to extract deeper insights.

The FMCG dashboard also offers an overview of the main KPIs to aid users in understanding if they are on the right track to meet their goals. There, we can observe that the OTIF is far from its target of 90%. Therefore, it should be looked at in more detail to optimize it and prevent it from affecting the entire supply chain.

18. Google Analytics Report

Regardless of your industry, if you have a website, you probably require a Google Analytics report. This powerful tool helps you understand how your audience interacts with your website while helping you reach more people through the Google search engine. The issue is that the reports the tool provides are more or less basic and don’t give you the dynamic and agile view you need to stay on top of your data and competitors.

For that reason, we generated a range of Google Analytics dashboards that take your experience one step further by allowing you to explore your most important KPIs in real-time. That way, you’ll be able to spot any potential issues or opportunities to improve as soon as they occur, allowing you to act on them on the spot.

Among some of the most valuable metrics you can find in this sample are the sessions and their daily, weekly, and monthly development, the average session duration, the bounce rate by channel and by top 5 countries, among others.

19. LinkedIn Report

Another very important platform that companies use, no matter their size or industry, is LinkedIn. This platform is the place where companies develop and showcase their corporate image, network with other companies, and tell their clients and audience about the different initiatives they are developing to grow and be better. Some organizations also use LinkedIn to showcase their charity or sustainability initiatives.

The truth is LinkedIn has become an increasingly relevant platform, and just like we discussed with YouTube, organizations need to analyze data to ensure their strategies are on the right path to success.

The template above offers a 360-degree view of a company page’s performance. With metrics such as the followers gained, engagement rate, impressions vs unique impressions, CTR, and more. Decision-makers can dive deeper into the performance of their content and understand what their audience enjoys the most. For instance, by looking at the CTR of the last 5 company updates, you can start to get a sense of what topics and content format your audience on the platforms interact with the most. That way, you’ll avoid wasting time and resources producing content without interaction.

20. Healthcare Report

Moving on from platform-related examples, we have one last monthly report template from a very relevant sector, the healthcare industry. For decades now, hospitals and healthcare professionals have benefited from data to develop new treatments and analyze unknown diseases. But data can also help to ensure daily patient care is of top quality.

Our sample above is a healthcare dashboard report that tracks patient satisfaction stats for a clinic named Saint Martins Clinic. The template provides insights into various aspects of patient care that can affect their satisfaction levels to help spot any weak areas.

Just by looking at the report in a bit more detail, we can already see that the average waiting time for arrival at a bed and time to see a doctor are on the higher side. This is something that needs to be looked into immediately, as waiting times are the most important success factors for patients. Additionally, we can see those lab test turnarounds are also above target. This is another aspect that should be optimized to prevent satisfaction levels from going down.

As you learned from our extensive list of examples, different reports are widely used across industries and sectors. Now, you might wonder, how do I get my hands on one of these reports? The answer is a professional online reporting tool. With the right software in hand, you can generate stunning reports to extract the maximum potential out of your data and boost business growth in the process.

But, with so many options in the market, how do make sure you choose the best tool for your needs? Below we cover some of the most relevant features and capabilities you should look for to make the most out of the process.

1. Pre-made reporting templates

To ensure successful operations, a business will most likely need to use many reports for its internal and external strategies. Manually generating these reports can become a time-consuming task that burdens the business. That is why professional reporting software should offer pre-made reporting templates. At RIB, we offer an extensive template library for the construction industry that allows users to generate reports in a matter of seconds—allowing them to use their time on actually analyzing the information and extracting powerful insights from it.

2. Multiple visualization options

If you look for report templates on Google, you might run into multiple posts about written ones. This is not a surprise, as written reports have been the norm for decades. That being said, a modern approach to reporting has developed in the past years where visuals have taken over text. The value of visuals lies in the fact that they make the information easier to understand, especially for users who have no technical knowledge. But most importantly, they make the information easier to explore by telling a compelling story. For that reason, the tool you choose to invest in should provide you with multiple visualization options to have the flexibility to tell your data story in the most successful way possible.

3. Customization

While pre-made templates are fundamental to generating agile reports, being able to customize them to meet your needs is also of utmost importance. At RIB Software, we offer our users the possibility to customize their construction reports to fit their most important KPIs, as well as their logo, business colors, and font. This is an especially valuable feature for external reports that must be shown to clients or other relevant stakeholders, giving your reports a more professional look. Customization can also help from an internal perspective to provide employees who are uncomfortable with data with a familiar environment to work in.

4. Real-time insights

In the fast-paced world we live in today, having static reports is not enough. Businesses need to have real-time access to the latest developments in their data to spot any issues or opportunities as soon as they occur and act on them to ensure their resources are spent smartly and their strategies are running as expected. Doing so will allow for agile and efficient decision-making, giving the company a huge competitive advantage.

5. Sharing capabilities

Communication and collaboration are the basis of a successful reporting process. Today, team members and departments need to be connected to ensure everyone is on the right path to achieve general company goals. That is why the tool you invest in should offer flexible sharing capabilities to ensure every user can access the reports. For instance, we offer our users the possibility to share reports through automated emails or password-protected URLs with viewing or editing rights depending on what data the specific user can see and manipulate. A great way to keep everyone connected and boost collaboration.

As we’ve seen throughout our journey, businesses use different report formats for diverse purposes in their everyday activities. Whether you’re talking about types of reports in research, types of reports in management, or anything in between, these dynamic tools will get you where you need to be (and beyond).

In this post, we covered the top 14 most common ones and explored key examples of how different report types are changing the way businesses are leveraging their most critical insights for internal efficiency and, ultimately, external success.

With modern tools and solutions, reporting doesn’t have to be a tedious task. Anyone in your organization can rely on data for their decision-making process without needing technical skills. Rather, you want to keep your team connected or show progress to investors or clients. There is a report type for the job. To keep your mind fresh, here are the top 14 types of data reports covered in this post:

• Informational reports
• Analytical reports
• Operational reports
• Product reports
• Industry reports
• Department reports
• Progress reports
• Internal reports
• External reports
• Vertical and lateral reports
• Strategic reports
• Research reports
• Project reports
• Statutory reports

At RIB Software , we provide multiple solutions to make construction companies’ lives easier. Our construction data analytics software, RIB BI+, offers powerful business intelligence and reporting capabilities to help businesses in the building sector manage their data and make data-driven decisions to boost the quality of their projects. If you are ready to benefit from automated, interactive analytics, get a demo of RIB BI+ today!

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Data Analysis Reports

Data analysis reports are vital tools for businesses to understand their performance and make informed decisions. The ability to analyze and interpret data has become increasingly critical in today’s data-driven world. Data analysis reports allow businesses to investigate trends, patterns, and anomalies in their data to generate meaningful insights and actionable recommendations. In this article, we’ll dive deep into the world of data analysis reports, from their importance and types to best practices and tools for their creation and interpretation.

Table of Contents

The Importance of Data Analysis Reports

Data analysis reports are essential for a variety of reasons. They provide businesses with objective insights and help them make informed decisions based on real data. By analyzing data, businesses can identify areas of improvement and optimize their performance. Additionally, data analysis reports can help businesses identify trends and patterns that are not readily apparent, enabling them to adjust their strategies to capitalize on these emerging opportunities.

Moreover, data analysis reports can also help businesses identify potential risks and threats. By analyzing data, businesses can identify patterns that may indicate potential problems and take proactive measures to mitigate them. For example, a business may notice a decline in sales in a particular region and investigate the cause, which could be due to increased competition or changing consumer preferences. By identifying these risks early on, businesses can take steps to address them before they become major issues.

Types of Data Analysis Reports

There are several types of data analysis reports that businesses utilize. Some of the most common ones include:

• Trend analysis reports: These reports examine trends in data over a period of time to identify patterns or changes.
• Comparative analysis reports: These reports analyze multiple sets of data to compare and contrast performance between different periods or segments.
• Correlation analysis reports: These reports identify the relationship between different sets of data. If two sets of data are correlated, there may be a causal relationship between them.
• Predictive analysis reports: These reports utilize algorithms and statistical models to predict future outcomes and trends.

Another type of data analysis report is the descriptive analysis report. These reports provide a summary of the data, including measures of central tendency and variability. They are useful for providing an overview of the data and identifying any outliers or unusual patterns.

Additionally, businesses may use diagnostic analysis reports to identify the root cause of a problem or issue. These reports use data to identify potential causes of a problem and help businesses make informed decisions about how to address it.

How to Create Effective Data Analysis Reports

Creating effective data analysis reports can be challenging, but there are some best practices that businesses can follow to ensure their reports are comprehensive and understandable. Here are some tips for creating effective data analysis reports:

• Establish clear objectives: Before starting your report, define your objectives, and identify the specific data sets you need to achieve them.
• Simplify complex data: Use data visualization tools like charts and graphs to simplify complex data and make your insights more accessible.
• Provide context: Contextualize your data by providing relevant background information that explains the significance of your findings.
• Be objective and unbiased: Ensure that your report is objective and unbiased by avoiding making unfounded assumptions or conclusions.

Another important aspect of creating effective data analysis reports is to ensure that your report is easily understandable by your target audience. This means using language that is clear and concise, avoiding technical jargon, and providing explanations for any complex terms or concepts. Additionally, it is important to consider the format of your report, as different audiences may prefer different formats such as visual presentations or written reports. By taking these factors into account, businesses can create data analysis reports that effectively communicate their insights and drive informed decision-making.

The Role of Visualization in Data Analysis Reports

Visualization plays a crucial role in data analysis reports. Visualizing data can help businesses identify patterns, trends, and anomalies that may not be immediately apparent from raw data. By using visual aids like charts, graphs, and tables, businesses can communicate insights more effectively to stakeholders across different departments. Data visualization also allows businesses to spot discrepancies easily, leading to faster decision-making and problem-solving.

Key Metrics to Include in Your Data Analysis Report

Choosing the right key performance indicators (KPIs) to include in your data analysis report can make all the difference in how effectively your report is received. Here are some critical metrics that every data analysis report should include:

• Conversion rates: This metric identifies the percentage of users who take a desired action, like making a purchase or signing up for a service.
• Customer acquisition cost: This metric shows how much it costs to acquire a new customer and is essential for assessing overall profitability and growth potential.
• Customer retention rate: This metric measures the percentage of customers who remain loyal to your business over a given period of time.
• ROI: Return on investment (ROI) calculates the profitability of your business and helps evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing and advertising efforts.

However, there are other important metrics that can provide valuable insights into your business performance. One such metric is the bounce rate, which measures the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate can indicate issues with website design, user experience, or content quality.

Another important metric to consider is the customer lifetime value (CLV), which calculates the total amount of revenue a customer is expected to generate for your business over their lifetime. This metric can help you identify your most valuable customers and tailor your marketing and retention strategies accordingly.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Creating Data Analysis Reports

It’s easy to make mistakes when creating data analysis reports, making it important to take proactive measures to avoid them. Here are some of the most common mistakes businesses make when crafting data analysis reports:

• Using irrelevant data sets: Make sure that the data sets you use are relevant to your objectives and business needs.
• Misinterpreting data: Avoid drawing unfounded conclusions or making assumptions based on incomplete data.
• Using complicated jargon: Avoid technical jargon and explain your findings in simple terms that are easily understood by stakeholders.
• Not providing context: A lack of context can lead to misinterpretation, so it’s crucial to provide relevant background information that helps explain your data.

Best Tools and Software for Generating Data Analysis Reports

Several tools and software are available to help businesses generate data analysis reports more effectively. Some of the best tools for generating data analysis reports include:

• Microsoft Excel: Excel is a versatile tool that allows businesses to automate reporting and analyze data. It’s an excellent tool for small and medium-sized businesses.
• Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a web analytics tool that provides businesses with insights related to user behavior and website performance.
• Tableau: Tableau is a data visualization tool that allows businesses to create interactive dashboards and reports.
• SAS: SAS is a data analytics tool that provides businesses with insights into customer behavior, financial performance, and operational efficiency.

How to Interpret and Communicate Insights from Your Data Analysis Report

Interpreting and communicating insights from your data analysis report is critical for its effectiveness. It’s crucial to understand your data thoroughly before presenting it and to use visualization tools to make your insights more accessible. When communicating your insights, make sure to provide context and explain your findings in simple terms that are easily understood by stakeholders. Be prepared to answer any questions or concerns they may have about your data and findings.

Using Data Analysis Reports to Drive Business Decisions

Data analysis reports are a powerful tool for driving business decisions. By providing objective insights, data analysis reports enable businesses to identify trends and patterns and make data-driven decisions. When making decisions based on data analysis reports, it’s essential to consider your objectives, relevant data sets, and potential risks and opportunities.

Examples of Successful Data Analysis Reports in Different Industries

Data analysis reports can be applied to a wide range of industries, from healthcare to finance to retail. Here are some examples of successful data analysis reports in different industries:

• Healthcare: Data analysis reports can be used to examine patient outcomes and identify trends that can improve patient care.
• Finance: Data analysis reports can be used to analyze investment trends and identify potential opportunities for investors.
• Retail: Data analysis reports can be used to analyze customer behavior and preferences, enabling businesses to tailor their marketing strategies to their target audience more effectively.

Tips for Presenting Your Data Analysis Report to Stakeholders

Presenting your data analysis report to stakeholders is a critical part of the process. Here are some tips for making sure your presentation is as effective and engaging as possible:

• Know your audience: Understand who your stakeholders are and their level of expertise to tailor your presentation accordingly.
• Provide context: Provide relevant background information that explains the significance of your data and findings.
• Use visualization tools: Use charts, graphs, and other visual aids to make your insights more accessible and understandable.
• Demonstrate the ROI: Show how your insights can lead to measurable benefits and ROI for the organization.
• Be prepared to answer questions: Be prepared to answer any questions or concerns your stakeholders may have about your data and findings.

Measuring the ROI of Your Data Analysis Report

Measuring the ROI of your data analysis report is critical for determining its value and effectiveness. Here are some metrics you can use to calculate the ROI of your data analysis report:

• Conversion rates: Calculate the percentage of users who took a desired action based on your data analysis report.
• Cost savings: Calculate how much your business saved by implementing insights derived from your data analysis report.
• Revenue growth: Calculate how much your business grew as a result of implementing insights derived from your data analysis report.
• Customer retention: Calculate how many customers you were able to retain as a result of implementing insights from your data analysis report.

The Future of Data Analysis Reports: Trends and Predictions

Data analysis reports are becoming more sophisticated and complex, with increasing quantities of data and new analytical tools being developed regularly. Here are some key trends and predictions for the future of data analysis reports:

• Increased automation: Businesses are increasingly automating their data analysis processes to save time and improve accuracy.
• Use of AI and machine learning: AI and machine learning are becoming more prevalent in data analysis reports, enabling businesses to analyze vast quantities of data more efficiently and effectively.
• Data privacy concerns: As data privacy concerns continue to rise, businesses must take measures to protect their data from breaches and other threats.
• Real-time reporting: Real-time reporting is becoming more prevalent, enabling businesses to monitor and adjust their performance in real-time.

Data analysis reports are a powerful tool for businesses to understand their performance and make informed decisions. By analyzing and interpreting data, businesses can identify trends, patterns, and anomalies to generate meaningful insights and actionable recommendations. With the right tools, best practices, and strategies, businesses can create effective data analysis reports that drive business outcomes and deliver value to stakeholders.

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How to Write Data Analysis Reports

Reports on data analysis are essential for communicating data-driven insights to decision-makers, stakeholders, and other pertinent parties. These reports provide an organized format for providing conclusions, analyses, and suggestions derived from data set analysis.

In this guide, we will learn how to make an interactive Data Analysis Report.

What is a Data Analysis Report?

A data analysis report is a comprehensive document that presents the findings, insights, and interpretations derived from analyzing a dataset or datasets. It serves as a means of communicating the results of a data analysis process to stakeholders, decision-makers, or other interested parties.

These reports are crucial in various fields such as business, science, healthcare, finance, and government, where data-driven decision-making is essential. It combines quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate past performance, understand current trends, and make informed recommendations for the future. Think of it as a translator, taking the language of numbers and transforming it into a clear and concise story that guides decision-making.

Why is Data Analysis Reporting Important?

Data analysis reporting is critical for various reasons:

• Making decisions : Reports on data analysis provide decision-makers insightful information that helps them make well-informed choices. These reports assist stakeholders in understanding trends, patterns, and linkages that may guide strategic planning and decision-making procedures by summarizing and analyzing data.
• Performance Evaluation : Data analysis reports are used by organizations to assess how well procedures, goods, or services are working. Through the examination of pertinent metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) , enterprises may pinpoint opportunities for improvement and maximize productivity.
• Risk management : Within a company, data analysis reports may be used to detect possible dangers, difficulties, or opportunities. Businesses may reduce risks and take advantage of new possibilities by examining past data and predicting future patterns.
• Communication and Transparency : By providing a concise and impartial summary of study findings, data analysis reports promote communication and transparency within enterprises. With the help of these reports, stakeholders may successfully cooperate to solve problems and accomplish goals by understanding complicated data insights.

How to Write a Data Analysis Report?

Writing a data analysis report comprises many critical processes, each of which adds to the clarity, coherence, and effectiveness of the final product. Let’s discuss each stage:

1. Map Your Report with an Outline

Creating a well-structured outline is like drawing a roadmap for your report. It acts as a guide, to organize your thoughts and content logically. Begin by identifying the key sections of report, such as introduction, methodology, findings, analysis, conclusions, and recommendations. Within each section, break down the specific points or subtopics you want to address. This step-by-step approach not only streamlines the writing process but also ensures that you cover all essential elements of your analysis. Moreover, an outline helps you maintain focus and prevents you from veering off track, ensuring that your report remains coherent and easy to follow for your audience.

2. Prioritize Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

In a data analysis report, it’s crucial to prioritize the most relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to avoid overwhelming your audience with unnecessary information. Start by identifying the KPIs that directly impact your business objectives and overall performance. These could include metrics like revenue growth, customer retention rates, conversion rates, or website traffic. By focusing on these key metrics, the audience can track report with actionable insights that drive strategic decision-making. Additionally, consider contextualizing these KPIs within your industry or market landscape to provide a comprehensive understanding of your performance relative to competitors or benchmarks.

3. Visualize Data with Impact

Data visualization plays a pivotal role in conveying complex information in a clear and engaging manner. When selecting visualization tools, consider the nature of the data and the story you want to tell. For instance, if you’re illustrating historical trends, timelines or line graphs can effectively showcase patterns over time. On the other hand, if you’re comparing categorical data, pie charts or bar graphs might be more suitable. The key is to choose visualization methods that accurately represent your findings and facilitate comprehension for your audience. Additionally, pay attention to design principles such as color contrast, labeling, and scale to ensure that your visuals are both informative and visually appealing.

4. Craft a Compelling Data Narrative

Transforming your data into a compelling narrative is essential for engaging your audience and highlighting key insights. Instead of presenting raw data, strive to tell a story that contextualizes the numbers and unveils their significance.

Start by identifying specific events or trends in data and explore the underlying reasons behind them. For example, if you notice a sudden spike in sales, investigate the marketing campaign or external factors that may have contributed to this increase . By weaving these insights into a cohesive narrative, you can guide your audience through your analysis and make your findings more memorable and impactful. Remember to keep your language clear and concise, avoiding jargon or technical terms that may confuse your audience.

5. Organize for Clarity

Establishing a clear information hierarchy is essential for ensuring that your report is easy to navigate and understand. Start by outlining the main points or sections of your report and consider the logical flow of information. Typically, it’s best to start with broader, more general information and gradually delve into specifics as needed. This approach helps orient your audience and provides them with a framework for understanding the rest of the report.

Additionally, use headings, subheadings, and bullet points to break up dense text and make your content more scannable. By organizing your report for clarity, you can enhance comprehension and ensure that your audience grasps the key takeaways of your analysis.

6. Summarize Key Findings

A concise summary at the beginning of your report serves as a roadmap for your audience, providing them with a quick overview of the report’s objectives and key findings . However, it’s important to write this summary after completing the report, as it requires a comprehensive understanding of the data and analysis.

To create an effective summary , distill the main points of the report into a few succinct paragraphs. Focus on highlighting the most significant insights and outcomes, avoiding unnecessary details or technical language. Consider the needs of your audience and tailor the summary to address their interests and priorities. By providing a clear and concise summary upfront, you set the stage for the rest of the report and help busy readers grasp the essence of your analysis quickly.

7. Offer Actionable Recommendations

Effective communication of data analysis findings goes beyond simply reporting the numbers; it involves providing actionable recommendations that drive decision-making and facilitate improvements. When offering recommendations, remain objective and avoid assigning blame for any negative outcomes. Instead, focus on identifying solutions and suggesting practical steps for addressing challenges or leveraging opportunities.

Consider the implications of your findings for the broader business strategy and provide specific guidance on how to implement changes or initiatives. Moreover, prioritize recommendations that are realistic, achievable, and aligned with the organization’s goals and resources. By offering actionable recommendations, you demonstrate the value of your analysis and empower stakeholders to take proactive steps towards improvement.

8. Leverage Interactive Dashboards for Enhanced Presentation

The presentation format of the report is as crucial as its content, as it directly impacts the effectiveness of your communication and engagement with your audience. Interactive dashboards offer a dynamic and visually appealing way to present data, allowing users to explore and interact with the information in real-time.

When selecting a reporting tool, prioritize those that offer customizable dashboards with interactive features such as filters, drill-downs, and hover-over tooltips. These functionalities enable users to customize their viewing experience and extract insights tailored to their specific needs and interests. Moreover, look for reporting tools that support automatic data updates, ensuring that your dashboards always reflect the most current information. By leveraging interactive dashboards for enhanced presentation, you create a more engaging and immersive experience for your audience, fostering deeper understanding and retention of your analysis.

Best Practices for Writing Data Analysis Reports

• Understand Your Audience: It’s important to know who will be reading the report before you start writing. Make sure that the language, substance, and degree of technical information are appropriate for the audience’s expertise and interests.
• Clarity and Precision: Communicate your results in a clear, succinct manner by using appropriate terminology. Steer clear of technical phrases and jargon that stakeholders who aren’t technical may not understand. Clarify terminology and ideas as needed to maintain understanding.
• Stay Objective: Don’t include any prejudice or subjective interpretation while presenting your analysis and results. Allow the data to speak for itself and back up your findings with facts.
• Focus on Key Insights: Summarize the most important conclusions and revelations that came from the examination of the data. Sort material into categories according to the audience’s relevancy and significance.
• Provide Context: Put your analysis in perspective by outlining the importance of the data, how it relates to the larger aims or objectives, and any relevant prior knowledge. Assist the reader in realizing the significance of the analysis.
• Use Visuals Wisely: Employ graphs, charts, and other visualizations to highlight important patterns, correlations, and trends in the data. Select visual forms that make sense for the kind of data and the point you’re trying to make. Make sure the images are simple to understand, educational, and clear.

Conclusion – How to Write Data Analysis Reports

It takes a combination of analytical abilities, attention to detail, and clear communication to write data analysis reports. These guidelines and best practices will help you produce reports that effectively convey insights and facilitate well-informed decision-making. Keep in mind to adjust your strategy to the demands of your audience and to remain impartial and transparent at all times. You can become skilled at creating compelling data analysis reports that benefit your company with practice and improvement.

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The Importance of Data Reporting

Data reporting is a very important factor in the day to day activities of life. From business to finance and commercial activities. Data reporting goes hand in hand with data analysis and is essential in every work of life.

Nov 26 2019 ● 6 min read

Table of Contents

Basics of how data reporting works, what are data reporting skills, what is data in report writing, what is the purpose of reporting.

Data reporting and analysis is a very important factor in the day to day activities of life. From business to finance and commercial activities. Data reporting goes hand in hand with data analysis and is essential in every work of life.

Data processing is the idea of collating data, analyzing, processing and submitting data that gives a ride to accurate facts and figures.

Facts and figures have a way of affecting and addressing general and public decision-makers just like during elections and during product testing in science fairs. Inaccurate stress reports can lead to misinformation and alter decision making.

From census to election processes, hundreds of officially are employed to carry out these tasks feasibly. Student data, worker data, hospital data are all used to effect management and also for the functionality of a duty.

Certain skills are required of a data analyst based on the purpose of the data required. So what therefore is reporting skills and the purpose of data reporting?

Reporting skills did across different areas based on the pride at which the analysis is needed. Main skills are:

• Ability to collate;
• And report recorded data from a certain amount of people.

A data reporting analyst must be good in calculations with little to no error with recording, data analysis report must be easy to understand regardless of how complex it is, it must have backups for every data record, he/she must have knowledge on feasibility and recording.

These skills are essential especially for a software engineer, comprehensive data reporting and agile project management are top-notch skills in data processing.

Data reporting analysts are responsible for processing data and making sure it is brought on an easy platform for easy understanding. Data reporting skills are though not restricted to professionals and should be learned by everyone.

Data can be said to be collated figures and files awaiting processing, analyzing and submission for it's designated propose.

Data is very important in reporting as it is the basis of the information that will form the report and its type . A data report, therefore, is a technical document that is organized for understanding and for the purpose of aiding management.

Samples of such technical documents can be found on Whatagraph marketing report samples which could be used by agencies businesses and marketers.

Data can spread through the type of food, date of birth, courses, transactions, property, attendance, materials, it spreads through a lot. So data reporting is important as it is the designation of everything that runs. Also, it is important to store and protect data on your devices, such as Windows and macOS, according to a 15% U.S. survey, order such services like Mac data recovery software .

To as little as a schedule, a bio-data, even a game is all a function of data.

Programmers, marketers, schools, churches, government use data. Tax, families, exercise, science requires data. It is plainly in information and information is knowledge provided it is documented in a way at which it is easy to read and understand.

Data reports are the threshold of any organization. An organization need not be involved with financial transactions directly before data can be collated. Data reporting is mainly for the purpose of accountability, management, and organization.

Reports do not necessarily have to be recorded in the coming of an event, data reports can be taken over time for functionality.

Data reports are used for academic research, scientific innovations, business transactions, personal included data, census and tax records, business intelligence, buildings and constructions, electoral processes, etc.

Data can be taken in different forms. It could be in the form of a questionnaire, an online form, a medical form, physical counting, balloting, voted casting, physical form filling it depends on data sources .

It is quite popular for businesses to use Ad hoc reporting to predict the next 5 or 10 steps.

Research and innovations are easier and feasible with the analysis of raw data. These reports range from various topics but the endpoint and purpose of data analysis reports are to transmit information on a feasible platform.

Data reports are spread to every area of life either professionally, casually, socially, emotionally, economically and academically.

Data reports should always be backed up regardless of how available it's the source is. With the advent of technology, a series of software programs have been created to make data reporting easier. Data can now be backed up to computers and to the cloud. Error-free calculations can be done on the computer and research is done online. Data reports are not restricted to figures, they can even be as little as symbols yet hold the same level of importance.

Published on Nov 26 2019

Indrė is a copywriter at Whatagraph with extensive experience in search engine optimization and public relations. She holds a degree in International Relations, while her professional background includes different marketing and advertising niches. She manages to merge marketing strategy and public speaking while educating readers on how to automate their businesses.

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Intelligent Investment

Global Data Center Trends 2024

Limited power availability drives rental rate growth worldwide.

June 24, 2024 20 Minute Read

Executive Summary

Data center insights & research.

Explore what’s next for digital infrastructure, including enterprise IT, networking and data center operations strategies—and what it means for corporate owners and users of data centers worldwide.

• A continued worldwide power shortage is significantly inhibiting the global data center market’s growth. Sourcing power is a top priority for operators across all regions (North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia-Pacific). Secondary markets with ample power should attract more data center investment.
• Vacancy rates continue to decline across most global markets due to strong demand. Singapore, the world's most power-constrained market, has only 7.2 MW of available capacity and a near record-low 1% vacancy rate.
• Large corporations face increasing difficulty securing data center capacity. Low supply, construction delays and power challenges are impacting all markets. For example, Querétaro, Mexico has only 0.6 MW available for lease.
• The worldwide power shortage continues to fuel price increases for data center capacity. In U.S. dollar terms, Singapore still has the highest rental rates at US$315 to US$480 per month for a 250- to 500-kW requirement, while Chicago still has the lowest at $155 to $165.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) advancements are projected to significantly drive future data center demand. High-performance computing will require rapid innovation in data center design and technology to manage rising power density needs.

All analysis in this report is based only on the four largest data center markets by inventory in each global region, as follows:

• North America: Northern Virgina, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Chicago and Silicon Valley.
• Europe: Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris.
• Latin America: Querétaro (Mexico), Sáo Paulo (Brazil), Santiago (Chile) and Bogotá (Colombia).
• Asia-Pacific: Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sydney.

Inventory (MW)

North America Despite power supply issues, North American data center inventory grew by 24.4% year-over-year in Q1 2024, adding 807.5 MW across Northern Virginia, Chicago, Dallas and Silicon Valley. Northern Virginia led with 391.1 MW of new supply, due to demand from public cloud providers and AI companies. Local governments are addressing power constraints by simplifying permitting and integrating renewable energy into the grid.

Europe The European data center market grew by nearly 20% year-over-year in Q1 2024. There was significant development in all four major FLAP markets (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris), with Paris leading at over 40% year-over-year growth. However, supply shortages persist across the continent, especially in core markets like Frankfurt. Preleasing new facilities is now common, indicating a need for ongoing investment in data center development. Power sourcing remains a key challenge.

Latin America The region's data center inventory grew by 15% year-over year in Q1 to 650.2 MW, with São Paulo accounting for 67% of the top four countries’ total inventory. Bogotá’s inventory grew the most at 25%.

Asia-Pacific The region’s data center inventory increased by 22% year-over year in Q1 to 2,996 MW. Tokyo, Sydney, Hong Kong and Singapore each contain well over a half-GW of live power capacity, despite tighter planning constraints in Singapore. The capacity pipeline is strong, with numerous developments under construction across the region.

Figure 1: Data Center Inventory by Market

North America North American data center vacancy rates hit new lows across major markets. Chicago led again with the biggest year-over-year decrease to 2.4% from 6.7%. Northern Virginia's vacancy rate decline closely followed, dropping to 0.9% from 1.8% the year prior despite an 18% increase in inventory over the same period.

Europe The FLAP markets' combined vacancy rate fell by 2 percentage points year-over-year in Q1 to 10.6%. Amsterdam had the largest decrease of nearly 8 percentage points to 11.5%. Despite expected new supply, the low vacancy rate should persist due to strong demand.

Latin America The region’s vacancy rate held steady year-over-year at 11.1%. Querétaro had the biggest decline (1.9 percentage points) to a record-low 1.2%. There is persistently strong regional demand, mainly from hyperscalers.

Asia-Pacific The vacancy rate slightly increased in Asia-Pacific due to many new project completions, with primary market vacancy rising to 16% from 13.5%. Hong Kong’s vacancy rate hit around 30% due to 195 MW of new 2023 supply amid softer leasing conditions. However, Singapore remained an extremely tight market with a vacancy rate of 1.0%.

Figure 2: Data Center Vacancy Rate by Market

Net absorption.

North America Public cloud providers and AI companies are driving strong demand for North American data centers. All four featured North American markets–Northern Virginia, Chicago, Dallas-Ft. Worth and Silicon Valley–had major year-over-year net absorption increases. Northern Virginia had the largest year-over-year increase at 407.4 MW. Chicago absorbed 218.7 MW, Dallas gained 140.2 MW and Silicon Valley secured 62.6 MW.

Europe Despite macroeconomic headwinds, Europe’s data center demand remains high. FLAP markets had a significant surge in net absorption, reaching a combined 487.6 MW from Q1 2023 to Q1 2024, nearly double the previous year’s absorption.

Latin America Latin America's data center demand continues to rise, with net absorption reaching 73.3 MW in Q1 2024. São Paulo, the region's leading market, absorbed 40.4 MW this year. Hyperscalers are expanding their regional presence, seeking reliable data center infrastructure for their growing needs.

Asia-Pacific Asia-Pacific leasing demand remains strong due to corporate and government digitization, and cloud services adoption. AI-related industries, particularly in Tokyo and Sydney, also show massive potential with multi-MW requirements. Singapore’s take-up increased despite supply constraints. Net absorption in Hong Kong improved due to demand from mainland Chinese companies and multinational hyperscalers.

Figure 3: Data Center Net Absorption by Market, Q1 2023 to Q1 2024

Pricing & rental rates.

North America North American data center pricing is significantly accelerating due to supply shortages and high demand. Average asking rates for a typical 250- to 500-kW requirement across all four featured North American markets surged by 20% year-over-year, the highest global increase.

Europe European data center pricing continues increasing due to high demand and rising construction costs. Rental rates in key markets like Frankfurt and London have steadily climbed over the past 18 months. Frankfurt saw a steeper 15% increase, reflecting its status as one of the most expensive markets in Europe.

Latin America Latin America’s data center pricing shows a mixed picture this year. Overall rental rates are rising slightly from last year, with market-specific variations. For example, Bogotá saw an unexpected 8% year-over-year colocation rate decrease, possibly due to increased competition or a temporary market correction. Conversely, Santiago’s rental rates increased by 15%, reflecting strong demand and limited supply.

Asia-Pacific Asia-Pacific pricing has steadily increased due to strong demand and rising construction and operational costs, despite a relatively large amount of new inventory. Singapore, one of the most expensive global markets, is asking over US$300 per kW. Tokyo’s pricing has generally increased, with rates around US$200 per kW. Sydney’s pricing remains steady at US$195 despite significant new supply.

Figure 4: Monthly Pricing Range for 250-500kW (Min-Max) $USD Without Electricity Cost

Availability.

North America North American data center availability keeps tightening due to robust demand. Significant supply additions from Q1 2023 to Q1 2024 were quickly absorbed, further reducing leasing availability. Northern Virginia saw the largest decrease (-16.2 MW), followed by Chicago (-10.6 MW) and Dallas (-1.5 MW). Silicon Valley was the only major market with increased availability (+19 MW).

Europe Despite significantly increased data center supply across FLAP markets, leasing availability stayed relatively flat from Q1 2023 to Q1 2024 due to robust demand quickly absorbing new supply. Amsterdam had Europe’s largest decline, dropping to 65.4 MW from 98.6MW.

Latin America Latin America's data center availability modestly increased in 2024, largely due to more space in São Paulo, the region's largest market. São Paulo’s availability increased to 62.1 MW from 52.3 MW in Q1 2024. However, this growth remains slight, indicating that demand still exceeds new supply in many Latin American markets.

Asia-Pacific Leasing availability in Asia-Pacific slightly rose due to a wave of recently completed facilities, yet demand remains high. Many companies are opting for pre-commitments, absorbing a sizable portion of the new supply. Singapore remains supply-constrained, benefiting alternative markets. Overall, Asia-Pacific maintains a balanced supply-and-demand dynamic, facilitating strong conditions for market entry and expansion.

Figure 5: Data Center Availability by Market

North america featured markets, northern virginia.

Northern Virginia, the world’s largest data center market, increased its inventory by 391.1MW year-over-year despite Dominion Power’s power supply issues. Public cloud providers and AI companies leased most of the market’s space, resulting in a record-low 0.9% vacancy rate. Consequently, rental rates surged by 41.6% year-over-year as tenants secured leases pre-construction to meet capacity needs. The high electricity demand also boosted power costs by 20.8% year-over-year.

Opportunities:

Dominion Energy's current transmission line projects should boost power capacity by 2026, potentially easing existing limitations. This may encourage further data center development in the region.

Persistently low vacancy and preleasing activity indicate sustained demand. Developers may explore opportunities in surrounding areas such as Central Virginia (including Fredericksburg and Richmond), Maryland and neighboring Virginia counties.

Challenges:

Power supply issues remain despite progress on transmission line construction. Power availability and permitting processes dictate data center construction timelines.

Land scarcity in core counties such as Loudoun and Prince William may increase development costs. Additionally, extended timelines could reduce profit margins for some developers.

Dallas-Ft. Worth

Dallas-Ft. Worth has cemented its status as the nation’s second-largest colocation market, with 31.9% year-over-year inventory growth to 573 MW. Currently, it has a record 372.2 MW of data center space under construction, with 91.8% pre-leased. Limited supply is driving rental rates up across all requirement sizes. Hyperscale and AI companies’ continued interest is further fueling market growth.

The independent decision-making and faster development timelines of Texas' energy grid, ERCOT, give it a unique advantage over many other markets facing power and supply chain delays. Oncor Electric's available power further strengthens Dallas-Ft. Worth's appeal for data center development.

Increasing land prices in South Dallas over the past three years indicate strong developer and hyperscale interest in this area, signaling potential for further regional expansion.

Unprecedented preleasing and record-high construction levels raise questions about the market's ability to sustain current growth and meet future demand.

Available colocation space in Chicago is scarce, with a record-low 1.9% vacancy rate, due to high demand from hyperscalers, enterprise users and especially financial services companies. This limited supply and high demand led to a 33% increase in rental rates over the past year. The challenge of power procurement is driving data center development westward towards areas like Elk Grove, Northlake, Wood Dale, Hoffman Estates and Itasca. Meanwhile, established providers are strategically acquiring developed land near existing campuses for future expansion.

Limited land availability in core areas is driving exploration of new submarkets and redevelopment opportunities, offering a chance for innovative solutions.

Affordable development land is scarce and power procurement poses a significant challenge.

Silicon Valley

Public cloud providers continue to dominate the tech industry’s epicenter, setting a gross leasing absorption record in 2023. Most leases were full building takeovers by cloud service providers, whose cloud businesses are growing partly due to AI adoption. The 6.5% market vacancy is solely in second-generation space, mainly smaller 1-2MW suites, which struggle to meet market standards for performance and efficiency. Power constraints will limit new data center supply for the foreseeable future. Asking rental rates in the 250- to 500-kW range have reached $155 to $250 per kW, the highest in our report.

The constrained power grid has opened opportunities for new technology and alternative power sources like fuel cells or on-site generation systems, to alleviate the market’s supply crunch.

Several developers who purchased property to build a data center have been informed that they won’t receive utility power for over a decade. They must decide whether to wait, sell, reposition or pursue a less-common alternative power source.

EMERGING MARKET

Northern indiana.

Two major hyperscaler announcements this year highlighted Northern Indiana as a new data center frontier. Located near major Midwest cities, it’s become one of North America’s fastest-growing markets for new greenfield data center projects. Cities within a 300-mile radius, including Chicago, Toledo, Cincinnati, Detroit, Cleveland and Columbus, are fueling interest in new data center development. Power and land availability, along with tax incentives, are set to drive further growth in 2025.

Boise, Idaho

In 2022, a leading hyperscaler announced a major development in Kuna, near Boise, Idaho, sparking significant interest for data center development land. We anticipate ongoing development in this region due to Idaho Power’s prevalent hydropower, a new solar facility in Pleasant Valley, abundant land and minimal natural disaster risk.

Europe Featured Markets

Germany’s financial capital maintains the lowest vacancy rate (6%) of any primary market. Data center space is typically preleased before a facility opens, making it nearly impossible for many organizations to find space in this market. Remaining capacity is quickly leased, with Frankfurt’s absorption rate being the lowest of any FLAP market. CBRE expects the vacancy rate to drop below 5% this year.

Despite this low availability, organizations are not deterred. There is strong demand for data center space in Frankfurt, with hyperscalers and many enterprises seeking to grow their substantial presence in the metro market. Operators have responded by adding significant capacity to their pipeline and initiating construction for 2024 and 2025 projects.

However, any space in Frankfurt not already pre-leased will likely be swiftly leased. This situation is further complicated by the difficulties providers face in delivering supply due to issues with securing power, finding suitable land and obtaining the necessary construction permits.

Providing service to Frankfurt from nearby areas like Mainz, located west of Frankfurt, may present an opportunity for providers due to its proximity to hyperscaler availability zones.

Providers face more regulations, limiting available building areas and increasing their already high construction costs.

The British capital still attracts significant demand despite its supply shortage. Hyperscalers primarily drive demand in London’s western corridor but are seeking data center space further afield. Expected demand growth from start-ups, enterprises and GPU-as-a-service providers will likely be challenged by capacity scarcity, limited power availability and few local AI-ready data centers. Hyperscalers and enterprises may struggle to find available power in the largest submarkets. However, areas well outside of London’s main regions, with less data center concentration, may offer more options. Consequently, London’s development radius will likely expand, even after key electricity substation upgrades.

Providers who find a site with available power and proximity to hyperscaler availability zones are far likelier to lease space in a data center that can be built on it.

Securing power sources for data centers is increasingly challenging for providers, potentially driving hyperscalers to invest elsewhere due to the considerable difficulty of development.

Amsterdam, a top global connectivity hub and Europe’s third-largest market, remains a strategic region for international data transfer and peering. However, stringent data center regulations and limited power availability make building data centers more challenging. This has slowed development relative to other primary European markets. There is no new supply this year and 2023’s growth was lower than any other FLAPD market, except the much larger London. Year-over-year new supply declines and take-up are common in Amsterdam, like any other data center market after a strong year.

In the short-term, limited power availability will deter development and limit new supply delivery. Numerous markets face this same issue. Still, the expected 2025 completion of a key local electricity substation upgrade should boost future data center development, as Europe faces a need for available wholesale capacity.

Amsterdam is underrepresented in hyperscaler deployments. It’s imperative for operators to make Amsterdam appealing to hyperscalers, as they account for the vast majority of data center demand.

Attracting data center investment may be difficult for Amsterdam due to regulatory constraints such as a national moratorium on data centers with a maximum IT load of over 70MW.

Paris recently surpassed Amsterdam and Dublin in terms of growth. It is expected to become Europe’s third-largest market for total supply this year, after Frankfurt and London. Demand, pricing and construction costs are rising due to record levels of data center capacity being delivered to meet the growing requirements of hyperscalers.

Over the past two years, take-up has surged due to the top hyperscalers’ local cloud regions, with much expansion and new construction delivering space in South Paris last year. Major cloud providers now offer, or soon will, a “Sovereign Cloud” product aimed at French public sector organizations and other security-needy sectors like healthcare and financial services.

More hyperscaler business is obtainable if operators can overcome regulatory and labor law challenges to deliver ample new capacity this year. The potential success makes the risk worthwhile, considering the scale of hyperscaler deployments, particularly in South Paris.

Securing land and power for new developments is increasingly difficult, particularly in the North. The zoning restrictions initiated due to the 2024 Olympics have further complicated matters for providers and others aiming to build in the region.

Data center development in Madrid is expected to accelerate this year despite its relatively high vacancy rate. In contrast, it experienced a development slowdown last year, following a peak in 2022 when market supply nearly doubled. This vacant space surplus distinguishes Madrid from other secondary markets like Milan and Vienna.

Norway’s capital and largest city hosts a mix of retail and wholesale colocation data centers. It had 70MW of supply as of Q4 2023. It is one of Europe’s faster-growing markets due to available, affordable power and land, prompting significant construction of wholesale data center campuses in the broader region.

Latin America Featured Markets

Querétaro, mexico.

Querétaro, an internet backbone connecting Mexico City and the U.S., is a favored location for hyperscale development in Mexico. Its ample land, professional industrial park operators and easy road access make it ideal for new developments. Additionally, it hosts several banks and telecom companies.

The region already hosts cloud availability zones for Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, with the latter having recently opened. Odata, KIO and Ascenty have consistently expanded their presence here over recent years. However, power challenges have slowed new data center launches and expansions. Hopes for resolving these challenges by 2025 are fading, making 2026 a more likely timeline for energy solutions implementation.

Electrical infrastructure limitations hinder market growth but strong demand persists. Securing extra electrical capacity can give operators a significant advantage. Solid government support for the tech sector enhances this market’s appeal for data center investment. Furthermore, land costs remain attractive compared with other markets.

Power supply is the main challenge in the region, impacting Querétaro and other Mexican markets. There are many industrial parks but few have secure energy capacity. Those that do often charge high prices.

São Paulo, Brazil

São Paulo is Latin America’s primary data center market, boasting its largest data center campus under development. This market’s advantages include the country’s best connectivity, strong energy supply and power infrastructure, and proximity to many corporate headquarters and a high-skilled IT labor force. Furthermore, it has the country’s largest concentration of rapidly expanding data center retailers and wholesalers. Its clean energy sources, primarily hydroelectricity, are diversifying with increasing investments in solar and wind power, ensuring stable energy supply.

The market’s potential for AI workload deployment has been studied, taking its clean energy matrix and energy availability into account. Certain areas in Barueri and Osasco have attracted development interest for smaller demands, as land and energy availability diminish.

Space and energy constraints are forcing new development farther from the market’s core.

Santiago, Chile

The Santiago market is connected to several submarine cables through Valparaíso, including the US$400-million Humboldt submarine cable project, a public-private partnership with Google, set to launch in 2026 and link the country to Sydney. This diverse data center market—encompassing retail, hyperscale and public cloud providers—creates a strong ecosystem in a key Latin American country, despite its small size and population. With market vacancy at a record-low 1.1%, hyperscalers and public cloud providers are demanding more energy. Regulation has been widely discussed, with debates over data center permits and usage in different zones.

The connection to Australia should bring more demand. New companies will likely enter the market with the lowest vacancy rate in Latin America, despite recent project completions.

This is a challenging region for data center development, with just a few areas permitting construction. Water restrictions also contribute to the difficulties developers have faced.

Bogotá, Colombia

Bogotá's data center market approached the size of Querétaro's last year due to increasing demand for cloud services, data storage and digital transformation initiatives. Hyperscalers have expanded their regional presence and newcomers have launched data centers through powered shell acquisitions in the main Free Trade Zones. These zones offer tax benefits and strategic locations near main highways and industrial corridors. The market utilizes green energy, despite some transmission constraints.

Several established free trade zones in the city’s main industrial corridors offer financial benefits. Due to some project delays in the region, there are opportunities this year to acquire remaining land subject to tax benefits.

Some free trade zones are far from the city’s core, with only a few fiber paths. Additionally, establishing the energy infrastructure needed for hyperscale projects may delay data center delivery dates.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Brazil’s second-largest market has consistently grown, delivering key hyperscale developments. As some industrial regions become saturated, new areas are emerging, prioritizing energy supply expansion.

Peru has garnered attention for its significant data center activity. The market is transitioning from telecom sites to a third-party focus, facilitated by the entry of international companies like Equinix and Odata.

Asia-Pacific Featured Markets

As a major regional data center hub, Singapore has consistently high demand. However, scarce new supply has led to a 1.0% vacancy rate. An upcoming 80-MW supply awarded from the Data Center-Call for Application (DC-CFA) and 58 MW from the recently announced Singtel Tuas DC will provide temporary relief, supporting market expansion. As new capacity development extends to neighboring markets like Johor and Batam, Singapore will remain the regional interconnection hub. Data center operators will shift focus from size to technology and sustainability, driven by the AI demand boom requiring higher rack density specifications and advanced cooling technology.

Singapore is a top Asia-Pacific market, enjoying political stability, robust digital infrastructure and connectivity, and a tech-friendly business environment. Its serious focus on technological innovation and decarbonization also make it a regional leader, as well as a springboard to many fast-growing Asia-Pacific countries.

Power constraints and government restrictions have limited new supply. Competition from nearby countries with cheaper land, development costs, taxes and utility provide alternative opportunities to operators, investors and customers. Singapore must form part of multi-market strategy to sustain its regional leadership.

This key Asia-Pacific data center market is experiencing strong interest from occupiers and investors. The demand is largely driven by public cloud providers that seek space in strategically located central Tokyo edge facilities, and AI-related companies, which target suburban locations. Greater Tokyo’s current vacancy rate is around 10% to 15%. Despite the expected completion of numerous data centers over the next few years, prices remain stable or are rising due to strong demand. The government promotes data center development in regional areas like Osaka, Fukuoka and Hokkaido as part of its “digital garden city nation" vision.

Tokyo, Japan’s telecommunications hub, is an established data center market with strong international connectivity. It’s currently experiencing high data center demand due to the growth and adoption of cloud services. The surge in AI-related deployments also offers opportunities for colocation/edge providers.

Limited land and power constraints increase costs and potentially delay new developments. Emerging competitors from decentralized locations such as Hokkaido and Kyushu offer alternative options for non-latency-critical AI deployments.

Hong Kong is a major connectivity and commercial hub, acting as a gateway to China. Recent data center supply has outpaced demand, causing an uptick in vacancy levels. Mainland Chinese companies and international hyperscalers drive most absorption. Hong Kong IT service providers have also boosted regional take-up. The current wave of supply is expected to persist until mid-2025, then taper off, allowing greater long-term supply-and-demand balance. Given the softer vacancy rates, the outlook for colocation pricing in the retail & enterprise sectors remains relatively subdued.

Large multinational and domestic hyperscalers have leveraged the high vacancy rate to secure large transactions over the past year. Despite challenges, Hong Kong’s political and environmental stability, along with its role as a regional commercial hub, continues to attract data center occupiers with new supply and competitive prices.

Geopolitical issues still affect multinational retail & enterprise companies’ data center plans in Hong Kong, impacting absorption. The slowing Chinese economy has also reduced activity from mainland Chinese occupiers, though they remain the main market participants. With limited new land and power supply, developers and operators might retrofit existing industrial buildings for supply after 2026.

As one of Asia-Pacific’s largest data center markets, Sydney continues to attract public cloud providers, operators and investors. The persistent demand for colocation capacity is driven by governmental and corporate shifts from traditional on-premises/enterprise models to colocation and cloud service solutions. Despite a slight softening in vacancy levels, the market has seen an influx of new colocation developments, which has increased supply and kept pricing stable. Future growth is expected to be driven by significant activity in the cloud, content, gaming and AI-related industries, necessitating greater use of liquid cooling technologies for intensive computing workloads. The continued expansion by U.S.-based public cloud providers will support Sydney’s and Australia’s data center ecosystem.

Sydney offers a robust data center market, attracting public cloud providers, content, gaming and AI-related industries. With growth constraints in other Asia-Pacific markets, Sydney offers a viable alternative for meeting regional data center demand.

Sydney’s large development pipeline may pressure vacancy levels in the short-to-medium term. Power accessibility remains a challenge, impacting development timelines.

Mumbai, India

Mumbai, India’s largest data center market, boasts over 600 MW of live capacity, comprising about 54% of the overall market. Inventory is expected to surge due to strong demand from banking, financial services and insurance companies, hyperscalers, and media segments supported by international/domestic network connectivity and the government. Generative AI deployments are also fueling demand. Both established domestic and global operators are expanding in the market. International investors planning major developments in Greater Mumbai (Navi Mumbai) include Blackstone, Digital Edge, Digital Connexion and Princeton Digital Group.

Seoul, South Korea

Greater Seoul’s total capacity of 605 MW makes it Korea’s largest data center market. Previously dominated by domestic telecoms and Korean companies, the market now welcomes many new facilities from international developers, expecting a two-thirds increase in supply by 2026. The government’s restrictions on power availability are causing developers to explore land outside of Greater Seoul. Most facilities are pre-leased to hyperscalers because customer demand is high, limiting remaining capacity for enterprise users.

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The demand for data centre space in Europe's five largest markets – Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin (FLAPD) – exceeded supply in Q1 2024. This demand is projected to grow to 440MW this year as hyperscalers, start-ups and enterprises seek space that can accommodate their cloud and AI-related needs. For a comprehensive analysis of the key data centre markets tracked by CBRE, read the full report.

Asia Pacific Data Centre Trends - Q1 2024

April 3, 2024

Despite a challenging economic environment, data centres remain in focus for the commercial real estate industry in Asia Pacific, with notable market developments across the region. This report explores key data centre investment trends and outlook for the sector in Asia Pacific, and offers insights into the data centre occupier and investment market in Australia, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, Singapore, India and Korea.

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GOP recruits poll monitors from suburban areas to monitor the vote in Democratic cities

Republicans have made suburban areas a recruiting ground for their army of Election Day poll monitors , with plans to deploy some into urban, Democratic epicenters that have remained the focus of conservatives’ erroneous claims of voter fraud.

The strategy has the potential to be uniquely disruptive to voters and election staff this fall, nonpartisan elections experts say, given that the volunteers would be dispatched to monitor areas with different political and demographic makeups than their own — and potentially different protocols for casting and counting ballots.

“In addition to voter intimidation risks, I think that the strategy also poses the potential to be just disruptive to the election process in general,” said Jonathan Diaz, the director of voting advocacy at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.

“In the abstract, it’s a good thing to have representatives from every political party and from the campaigns observing election processes. That’s normal,” he said. “The problem comes when you have an effort like this that seems to be aiming to recruit people for the express purpose of uncovering the fraud that doesn’t exist.”

During the 2020 election, many of Republicans’ unfounded voter fraud claims were directed at big urban areas in battleground states — including Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee — where large populations of Black and Latino voters cast their ballots. Despite no widespread fraud being unearthed, the claims have remained a prominent rallying cry from elements of the right who have spent the last four years pre-emptively building the idea that it could occur again in 2024.

The Republican National Committee kicked off in-person recruiting efforts this month for its “Protect the Vote” project — which seeks to deploy a force of 100,000 volunteers and attorneys — with a series of events, mostly in battleground states, designed to sign up and begin training people to be poll monitors. While the RNC won’t send all of its volunteers from suburban areas to urban areas, several of its initial recruiting events say it is a key component of the strategy.

The GOP has so far held events in Oakland County, Michigan, a blue-leaning suburban area outside Detroit; Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a swing suburban area outside Philadelphia; Nassau County, New York, an area on Long Island that has grown redder in down-ballot races; as well as in suburban areas of Charlotte, North Carolina, and Atlanta.

All five areas are far whiter and more Republican than nearby major cities, though Oakland, Bucks, Nassau, Mecklenburg and Fulton counties have all gone Democratic in the past several presidential elections.

Plans are also underway to hold events in or around Phoenix and Las Vegas early next week, RNC officials said.

In Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina, poll watchers may serve in any county as long as they are a registered voter in the state. But in Pennsylvania and New York, they must serve only in the county they’re registered to vote in.

“Where we deploy our people is contingent on the state laws,” RNC spokesperson Gates McGavick said. “If a state has rules that you can only be a poll watcher in your county, then obviously we adhere to that.”

Asked at a recent event whether the broader GOP strategy was specifically to recruit election volunteers from suburban areas and dispatch them into cities for the election, RNC Chair Michael Whatley said it was, explaining that “if there’s a statewide ability to do it, then obviously we will deploy those.”

McGavick added that “in states where it makes sense for us to allocate our bodies to bigger cities, then, yes, they might come from areas outside of bigger cities.”

Poll watching is a normal part of elections that both major parties engage in. But nonpartisan election experts have said Republican plans to dispatch monitors from out of town who have been told for years that voter fraud is rampant in Democratic cities could sow chaos.

“When you think about [tens of thousands] of potential poll observers or poll watchers going from a suburban county into a more urban area, ostensibly to monitor for evidence of voter fraud, I would have two major concerns, and the first is the potential for voter intimidation, especially when you consider the racial dynamics of some of these communities and some of the accusations that were made in the wake of the 2020 election,” said Diaz, of the Campaign Legal Center.

The second concern, Diaz and others explained, was that insistent questioning, even if legal and nonthreatening, could still create broad disruptions.

“Even if voters themselves are not intimidated, even if [watchers] don’t deter people from voting, if you have these out-of-county or out-of-precinct poll watchers coming in to second-guess and question every single thing that election officials are doing, that can be hugely disruptive to the administration of elections,” Diaz said.

It would be possible, he said, for those efforts “to contribute to longer lines” or put a “bigger strain on election offices and poll workers who are already underresourced in most parts of the country.”

In 2020, for example, hundreds of mostly white Republican and nonpartisan monitors signed up to be poll challengers at the TCF Center in Detroit, where the vast majority of the poll workers were Black. Witnesses have said in sworn affidavits and interviews that they were uncomfortable with how certain poll challengers were treating the Black workers, arguing that the white poll challengers were harassing workers and accusing them of wrongdoing without evidence.

Representatives for the RNC did not respond to questions about whether parts of their election integrity strategy might present challenges related to race and election operations. Whatley, however, has rejected any notion that the trainings have included any elements of intimidation tactics.

“We work very hard on the front end to make sure that there is no voter intimidation. We are going to respect the process. We’re going to respect the people that work the polls, and we’re going to respect the voters,” Whatley told reporters after a recent RNC event on Long Island.

An opaque, but growing effort

RNC officials declined to provide total recruitment numbers the effort has so far yielded. They have also provided few details about the trainings, have declined to answer questions about whether volunteers are being or will be trained on how to navigate differences in communities and protocols, and have repeatedly not allowed the media to observe training sessions.

Attendees of some sessions who spoke to NBC News have described them as thin on details and not unlike prior guidance local party officials have provided on how to best perform the duties of a poll monitor. Others have said the sessions have been only preliminary recruiting events and that they’ve been told additional in-person and virtual ones with more details will follow.

Until 2018, the RNC’s poll watching plans were significantly limited by a consent decree, which required it to seek court approval to prove that any poll watching work wasn’t discriminatory. That meant the party’s effort in 2020 was its first in decades. And while Republicans attempted to deploy 50,000 volunteers during that cycle, specific organizational and in-person training efforts were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Republican strategists and election workers, meanwhile, said they didn’t see a problem with bringing in volunteers to urban areas to monitor elections, as long as they are following the rules.

A problem, many said, only emerges when unsanctioned groups take it upon themselves to monitor polling places. In 2022, that included right-wing groups like Clean Elections USA in Arizona .

“I don’t know that it’s an issue to have two monitors at every polling place. You know, I think they’re going to find that there isn’t a problem,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist in Arizona.

“I do see a big difference between, say, monitors connected to a party and whatnot, and these roving gangs of armed civilians who think they are lawmen,” he said, referring to Clean Elections USA.

Whatley indicated that the party’s election integrity effort had in fact grown beyond the RNC.

“We do interface with” and “have a lot of conversations with” outside Trump-aligned groups — including the America First Policy Institute — regarding election integrity and poll monitor recruiting, he said following the RNC’s recent event on Long Island.

“Anybody who is going to have an organization that thinks that election integrity is serious, we’re going to be talking to and working with,” he said.

Ashley Hayek, the executive director of America First Works, the advocacy arm of AFPI that is involved in election integrity efforts, said the group is running its own poll monitor recruitment efforts and trainings, as well as encouraging people to attend the trainings run by the RNC.

Asked whether her group’s trainings conveyed to participants how to avoid intimidating voters or disrupting the voting process, Hayek said, “Everybody that has been a part of our program have been upstanding citizens who want to make sure that every citizen is registered to vote and casts one ballot that is counted one time.”

Hayek said AFW plans to recruit volunteers for its own efforts only in the counties those volunteers live in.

Bill Gates, an elected Republican election official in Maricopa County, Arizona, who faced threats over the 2020 and 2022 elections , said none of the national GOP’s strategy bothered him — but said the problem is that it is based on one fundamental lie.

“It really doesn’t matter what the intention is, as long as they’re following the law, as long as they’re exercising the right that they have to observe,” he said of the RNC’s election integrity efforts.

“But to the extent that folks are being told that ‘the 2020 election was stolen, so we need you to participate in this effort,’ — that’s troubling to me,” said Gates, who decided not to run for re-election this year because of the threats he endured in recent electoral cycles. “It’s not the participation in this effort — it’s that they’re being lied to about what happened in 2020.”

Repeatedly debunked claims of widespread election fraud in 2020 have nevertheless been the prominent theme in Whatley’s speeches at the RNC’s election integrity events.

“We cannot have what happened in 2020 ever happen again,” he said at the June 21 event in Westbury, New York.

Adam Edelman is a political reporter for NBC News.

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When the Terms of Service Change to Make Way for A.I. Training

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Reporting from San Francisco

Last July, Google made an eight-word change to its privacy policy that represented a significant step in its race to build the next generation of artificial intelligence.

Buried thousands of words into its document, Google tweaked the phrasing for how it used data for its products, adding that public information could be used to train its A.I. chatbot and other services.

Text changes:

We use publicly available information to help train Google’s language AI models and build products and features like Google Translate , Bard, and Cloud AI capabilities .

The subtle change was not unique to Google. As companies look to train their A.I. models on data that is protected by privacy laws, they’re carefully rewriting their terms and conditions to include words like “artificial intelligence,” “machine learning” and “generative A.I.”

Some changes to terms of service are as small as a few words. Others include the addition of entire sections to explain how generative A.I. models work, and the types of access they have to user data. Snap, for instance, warned its users not to share confidential information with its A.I. chatbot because it would be used in its training, and Meta alerted users in Europe that public posts on Facebook and Instagram would soon be used to train its large language model.

Those terms and conditions — which many people have long ignored — are now being contested by some users who are writers, illustrators and visual artists and worry that their work is being used to train the products that threaten to replace them.

Our Access to Your Content: We may will only access, view, or listen to your Content through both automated and manual methods, but only in limited ways, and only as permitted by law.

My AI is an experimental chatbot a chatbot built on generative AI technology designed with safety in mind . It’s a fun way to get information, but it remains an evolving feature so you should always independently check answers provided by My AI before relying on any advice, and you should not share any confidential or sensitive information. Generative AI is a developing technology that may provide responses that are biased, incorrect, harmful or misleading. So, you should not rely on its advice. You should also not share any confidential or sensitive information — if you do, it will be used by My AI.

When you interact with My AI, we use the information we collect to improve Snap’s products and personalize your experience the content you share and your location (if you have enabled location sharing with Snapchat) to improve Snap’s products, including enhancing My AI’s safety and security, and to personalize your experience , including ads.

We use the information we collect to provide and operate X products and services. We also use the information we collect to improve and personalize our products and services so that you have a better experience on X, including by showing you more relevant content and ads, suggesting people and topics to follow, enabling and helping you discover affiliates , third-party apps, and services. We may use the information we collect and publicly available information to help train our machine learning or artificial intelligence models for the purposes outlined in this policy.

No Modifications, Reverse Engineering, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML)

Except as expressly permitted in the Terms, you must not (and must not allow third parties to)… use the Services or Software, or any content, data, output, or other information received or derived from the Services or Software, to directly or indirectly create, train, test, or otherwise improve any machine learning algorithms or artificial intelligence system, including but not limited to any architectures, models, or weights.

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