The primary goal of reporting is to present data in a manner that is understandable. It transforms raw data into information that is useful in making decisions. Reporting helps to identify patterns of correlation, causality, and patterns in the data. In essence, it’s essential for establishing a foundation to understand what the numbers mean and how they change over time.

It’s important to have a clear set of questions to be thinking about when writing reports. This will help you avoid making a lot of visualizations for the sake of it, which could be distracting and deconstructive to explanation the objectives of your product. Every report should be concluded with a question clearly stated, such as “How do we know whether our growth is actually on track?”

Although a report can contain several metrics, analytics should concentrate on one. The goal of analysis is to discover patterns, insights, and causality surrounding the specific metric.

The most effective analytical reports provide information and clarity regarding an individual product’s metric over time. These reports should be based upon the goals of your client, and help to make decisions that are geared towards the future regarding their growth. This can be achieved by including the analytics team regularly in business reviews to determine whether necessary changes to the strategic plan are required. They’ll have the largest perspective on the progress of product goals and will be able to continuously run reports that detect fraud signals and other threats long before they affect the company’s reputation or revenue.