Operational reporting- What is it ?

Operational reporting is the production of detailed reports on a company's operations. It provides a structural and tactical view of the organization, in particular to identify immediate needs.

Operational reporting typically focuses on short-term, highly granular, real-time data. They detail the day-to-day aspects of operations to deliver actionable Business Intelligence insights. In most companies, operational reports serve as a basis for rapid decision making. They complement other Business Intelligence tools.

These reports can include data on production costs, resource expenditures, business processes or accounting. They are accurately formatted and ready for analysis to provide valuable information on operational activities such as sales performance or productivity.

By relying on operational reporting, employees can monitor their performance and correct their weaknesses to remain competitive. However, reports can also be shared externally with customers or partners.

The data used vary according to the industry. For example, in marketing and advertising, operational reports typically present data on lead generation, cost per click, or conversions.

In the technology sector, operational reports can be used to measure the quality and speed of customer support and truck deployments. For their part, airlines can identify delay trends to improve on-time performance.

A manufacturing company, on the other hand, can improve its production line with data on costs and resource utilization, production efficiency or machine status. Transportation companies can examine delivery times and volumes or customer satisfaction to measure the efficiency of their logistics systems.

Merchants can track the efficiency of their stores and the productivity of their employees. In short, the data brought to light by operational reports depends precisely on the nature of the organization's operations.

In addition, the format of operational reports varies depending on the type of data presented and the frequency of reporting or the type of Business Intelligence software used to create them. Reports can be shared as PDFs or documents, through a web browser or directly printed.

They can also be presented in the form of tables. Enterprise dashboards are also part of operational reporting, and use data visualization to present information in real time.

Operational reporting brings many advantages. Business managers can take advantage of it to track trends and analyze data in real time, enabling them to make real-time decisions.

However, several constraints must be respected in order to take full advantage of the potential of operational reporting. Reports must be intuitive, easy to read, and highlight the most important information through an inverted pyramid format.