Prepare the correct message – It is important that you choose content for the report based on your understanding of who your target audience is and how they will use the report provided. Get this right and you will ensure that the hard work you have put into the analysis will achieve the goals for providing commercial benefits to a business.

1) Level of detail – An aspect of any report which is important is making sure that the level of detail is relevant to your particular audience.

On a strategic level for example, a high level business summary will be required. It will need to look over the business as a whole and may well need to be broken down in subdivisions such as region, channel, and customer segment or product area. Doing this will help to alert the audience to any vital changes taking place within a business.

Whereas at a tactical level more detail needs to be provided to help them understand the changes. However, there needs to be a balance between the two to disguise any details which may cloud their understanding yet provide enough to reveal the insight. This you can achieve through combining summarising with prioritising the results. For example focus on the top products or customers that form a subset which impacts on businesses top level results.

As for operational planning this takes places at a more granular level for individual products (product areas), stores or customers (customer segments). So these types of audiences need more detailed reports. You may be tempted to think like an analyst and present the results in a report simply because the information is there and you have done the work. However, this can result in a report being created with too much information that won’t be used or not enough usable information. By choosing the right amount of detail for your audience is crucial when it comes to creating an effective business insight report.

2) Spin on Content – It is commonly commented that “statistics can be manipulated to support any argument”. Whilst this implies misusing statistics this principle can also be applied to ensure an effective use of reports as any given set of figures can be represented in various ways within a report.

It is crucial that we “manipulate” or “present” the content of the report in a relevant way so that the information is delivered to the audience in question. The word “spin” does come with negative connotations but we aren’t actually talking about distorting the results simply choosing a representation of the numbers which:

1. In a language that the audience find easy to understand and so helps them focus on the reports main issues 2. Ensures that the report fits the shape of the data and therefore makes sure the main issues contained within are highlighted

The following examples apply to all kinds of reports and help to illustrate some of the simple points. However, these can be very easily over looked when creating a report. Investing some time in to understanding your audience needs will help you to choose how to represent the results ensuring that all the hard work gone into doing the analyst will help to convert it into a message that is relevant and understood easily.

What are you measuring? Make sure you measure and report on things relevant to the audience. This could be something as simple as deciding whether to show the number of customers or their value to a business in terms of profit and revenue. Or it could be more involved for example you could count “genuine visitors” to a website by eliminating transient visitors and so will make the report more relevant that if you measured all visits.

However when it comes providing reports on a more operational level the volume of customers to a business would be more relevant. For example with in flight catering they need to know exactly how many passengers they are likely to have.

Likewise when it comes to marketing communications a business would need to know how many welcome packs would be needed for their new customers. Whilst on a strategic level the revenue or profits that customers generate will be more relevant. For example in the insurance industry if there is an increase in customer numbers it may be associated with a decrease in their profits because the new customers are a much higher risk.