As a BI user, how much of your day is spent preparing data, building visualisations, or customising dashboard views? Is the bulk of your time consumed by answering ad hoc questions and investigating metric changes? According to industry insights, analysts spend 80% of their time on these routine tasks, leaving only 20% for strategic projects, decision-making, and delivering new analytics to the business. This stands true for the Pareto Principle.
But what if we could flip this ratio? What if BI reporting tools, particularly those available in the UK, could automate these mundane processes, freeing up your time for more impactful work? This is where BI-driven automated reporting makes a subtle yet strong presence, revolutionising how we handle data and arrive at conclusions.
In this blog, we'll explore the transformative power of BI-driven automated reporting. We'll delve into the specific challenges businesses face with traditional reporting methods and demonstrate how modern BI tools can address these issues. By the end, you'll see how BI reporting can shift your focus from operational tasks to strategic initiatives, driving better business outcomes and enhancing your ability to make data-driven decisions.
Let’s dive in and discover how you can leverage BI reporting tools to maximize your productivity and efficiency.
What is automated reporting?
Automated reporting combines analytics, BI, and automation technology to streamline the various steps involved in the process of creating reports, which helps with in-depth analysis. This includes automating the steps for converting raw data into meaningful observations or insights. The automation of key processes in reporting by organisations enables them to focus more on insights and positively boost productivity.
What’s the need for Automated BI reporting?
Traditional BI reporting tools have had a history of shortcomings when it comes to catering to the needs of present-day data management.
Let’s look at some of them in detail to understand better:
1. Time-consuming processes
Traditional Business Intelligence tools are notoriously slow, and when it comes to embracing complete data(both external and internal) for processing and analysing, these tools take not even days but weeks to get the results out. This lag means that by the time the report is ready, the data may already be outdated. Businesses in the UK, especially those operating in dynamic industries, cannot afford delays in traditional BI reporting. Implementing streamlined BI reporting UK strategies can expedite these processes, providing real-time insights that are crucial for timely decision-making.
2. The cost of data inaccuracy
The smallest of errors can lead to significant losses in the business arena. According to new findings from Experian Data Quality, 88% of businesses see a negative effect on their bottom line as a result of erroneous data, with an average revenue loss of 12%.
Take Edits Suits Co. example, wherein this custom menswear brand having stores in multiple locations in London and Singapore, faced a natural and common dilemma of scaling the business operations after the division of their team at different branches.
Patrick Jungo, the CEO, needed a grip on the real-time numbers and accuracy of the data in terms of sales, ops, and customer service figures. Grow, a modern BI reporting tool, was able to address the issues of scalability even if the company kept expanding to multiple locations, stores, users, or products.
3. Unnecessary Warning Storms Distract Users from Real Business Emergencies
The Business Intelligence (BI) operations teams of data-driven companies frequently lose precious time sifting through a deluge of alerts, commonly known as an "alert storm," the majority of which are merely symptoms rather than the actual source of a problem. Finding issues and distinguishing between little deviations and major anomalies can be a real challenge when using typical business intelligence tools.
Rapid and unpredictable traffic growth requires an endless cycle of increasing static thresholds on legacy BI tools—sometimes to the point of uselessly high levels—to avoid alarms. Conventional Business Intelligence tools are unable to distinguish between real problems and random information.
Although dashboard noise is soothing at first, it eventually becomes a nuisance because it isn't necessary. It is challenging to distinguish between minor and major problems when there is no cap on the amount of data points collected and no room to customise alert signals. Being able to scale the amount of alerts and identify the significant ones is the first step in good alert management.
4. The presence of false positives
Even if you focus on a handful of metrics to measure performance, you may get tired of them by receiving constant alerts.
You risk missing out on real abnormalities or getting too many false positives if you set static criteria.
Because thresholds vary between channels, analytics teams may waste a lot of time and money manually placing and replacing alert thresholds. While introducing new services, they may fail to notice performance alerts completely. To make sense of the deluge of metrics, an increasing number of incidents may go unnoticed as a company expands. There is a great deal of space for human mistakes when creating multiple dashboards and checking data on a daily or weekly basis or setting alert levels for each indicator. Unfortunately, these methods don't always work since they either detect too many abnormalities (false positives) or not enough.
Filtering out the low-priority activity and emphasising high-priority risks can provide sufficient context to reduce false positives significantly and the strain they put on already overburdened analytic teams.
How do BI tools help automate reports?
Teams are able to generate more in-depth insights with the use of automated reporting systems, which alleviate typical problems with manual report construction. Among the many advantages of automation are:
Cuts down on time, resources, and human intervention:
Analyst-led insight production generally necessitates close cooperation between business stakeholders and analysts, which can take up a lot of an organisation's time. Saving time and money, automation allows analysts to prepare and publish more reports in the same amount of time. Automation and process improvement have the potential to save costs by 35%-46% across numerous critical financial activities, according to PwC.
Automation of reporting helps enhance data accuracy by reducing the amount of manual adjustments needed to prepare reports, leading to improved uniformity and accuracy. A standardised report format allows for easier comparisons within the company.
Enhanced teamwork and ease of access:
Automation allows non-technical people to generate reports with less reliance on data scientists and data specialists who often develop reports manually. This alleviates a common problem that many businesses experience: the necessity to hire expensive, highly-specialised technical staff just to fulfill the most fundamental reporting requirements. More people can have a say in reporting, which means more people can share information and make decisions based on data.
Automated reporting solutions can detect and provide real-time suggestions based on changing data, in addition to manual alerts and anomaly detection, allowing for faster insights and dynamic detection. Because new data leads to new insights, these features boost productivity and allow for quicker decision-making.
2 Brothers Moving & Delivery, a Portland-based moving service, leverages Grow's automated reporting tools to make their data accessible and engaging for their busy team. With Grow, the company has streamlined the visualisation of performance metrics on office leaderboards, enhancing team motivation, with an increase in healthy competition. This approach has resulted in greater data access, transparency and understanding across the company, driving operational efficiency and supporting their mission of relieving the stress of relocation.
Scheduled Reports
The ability to schedule reports is one of the main characteristics of BI systems. Users can set up reports to be generated and distributed at specific times (e.g., daily, weekly, monthly) without any manual intervention, ensuring the stakeholders receive timely updates, helping businesses react more quickly to emerging trends and issues.
Grow's automated reporting feature provides a robust and user-friendly platform for scheduling and distributing customised reports, ensuring that key stakeholders receive timely and relevant information. From the Reports Tab within the account settings, users can easily search for and manage a comprehensive list of organisational reports.
The intuitive interface allows for the creation of new reports with options to select dashboards, set specific delivery schedules (daily, weekly, or monthly), and specify the exact time and timezone for report distribution.
Furthermore, the platform supports adding multiple recipients simply by entering their email addresses, promoting effective communication and transparency across the team. With the ability to save configurations and automate the delivery process, Grow empowers businesses to maintain continuous insight into their operations.
Conclusion
Navigating the fast currents of data in today’s business environment requires not just precision but also speed. BI-driven automated reporting stands as a means for companies aiming to enhance efficiency and harness the power of real-time decision-making. With Grow.com, this isn’t just possible; it’s simplified and made more powerful than ever.
Transform Your Data into Decisions with Grow
Grow.com's platform redefines what automated BI reporting can do for your business. Here’s why Grow should be your choice for turning complex data into actionable insights:
- Instantaneous Updates: Leverage the power of automated, scheduled reports that deliver crucial data when you need it most. With Grow, "now" means the moment data becomes available, ensuring your team is always equipped with the latest insights.
- Tailored Reporting: Grow recognizes that no two businesses are alike. Customise reports to reflect your specific metrics and KPIs, ensuring that every piece of data serves a strategic purpose.
- Scalable Intelligence: As your business expands, so does your need for robust reporting. Grow’s platform scales intuitively with your enterprise, offering consistent performance regardless of data volume or complexity.
- User-Centric Design: Grow is built for users at every technical skill level, ensuring that anyone can create, manage, and benefit from automated reports, making data democratisation a reality in your workplace.
Join Leaders, Choose Grow
Step beyond traditional reporting and embrace a future where data serves you daily through Grow’s advanced BI tools. Discover how other leaders are driving their businesses forward by reading the "Grow.com Reviews & Product Details on G2." Their stories are a testament to the transformative power of Grow’s solutions.
Experience Grow Today
Why wait to experience the benefits of advanced BI reporting? Start your journey with Grow’s 14-day free demo and see for yourself how our tools can streamline your processes, enhance your insights, and empower your decision-making.
