4 reporting essentials to streamline business intelligence

Whether you are a small startup with a simple ecommerce system or a global retailer with a complex sales process, clear dashboarding and insightful reporting are key for teams to work effectively. However, reports often take significant time and effort to create, only for the data to be questioned or ignored. Maintaining these reports also uses valuable resources that would be better spent reviewing results and making informed decisions.

Centralizing and simplifying dashboards helps solve these issues by improving efficiency and delivering better results. At our agency, we work with leading brands to design and implement business intelligence (BI) solutions using a proven approach based on four key factors.

1. Use case methodology

You’ve probably seen reports filled with tables, metrics and graphs that feel overwhelming. It can be hard to figure out which parts matter most or what to focus on. While it’s tempting to include as much detail as possible, keeping it simple is usually more effective — unless there’s a clear need for extra data or visuals.

A “use case” methodology helps streamline dashboard views by ensuring each report connects with specific business decisions. Tailoring reports to their audience is also essential. For instance: 

• Senior management needs clear performance indicators like percent against sales targets or YoY comparisons.
• Operational teams benefit from detailed breakdowns, such as CPA by site and audience, to optimize ongoing activity.

Start by answering a few key questions, such as: 

• Who is the target audience? 
• What business decisions are expected to be made after looking at the report? 
• What are the core KPIs that enable this? 

Careful consideration before reporting will help you offer an impactful and useful BI view. 

2. Data governance

While data governance may not be the most exciting topic, many have experienced debates over the accuracy of report figures. A strong data governance structure is key to building trust in the numbers shared across the business.

Two areas are especially important in data governance: data inputs as well as taxonomy and naming conventions.

Data inputs

In a media performance report, it’s crucial to validate conversion tracking tools, such as Adobe, Google Analytics (GA), or other platforms, to ensure confidence in performance metrics. It’s also important to note differences between data sources, like GA figures excluding returns while backend CRM data includes them.

Taxonomy and naming conventions

Consistent naming helps combine data from multiple sources (e.g., stitching together Meta spends with Adobe conversions). It also supports the creation of custom report dimensions, such as tactic, audience and channel groupings. This requires a clear taxonomy followed by all teams and partners and automated monitoring to catch errors — because mistakes can happen.

Dig deeper: How to put marketing data into meaningful context

3. Reporting automation

Ten years ago, manually running reports in Excel filled with endless VLOOKUP and SUMIF functions was understandable. Today, there’s no reason not to have an automated BI setup.

If one isn’t already in place, starting with a centralized repository for all marketing and analytics data is key. Whether you’re using Snowflake, Google Cloud or another platform, keeping all data in one location enables automated reporting. It also opens the door for advanced applications like propensity scoring, media mix modeling and customer churn analysis.

Whatever platform you choose, having dedicated technical experts is crucial to ensuring the setup is robust, well-maintained and properly documented. These experts also play a key role in creating automated data validation processes to catch and resolve issues early rather than reacting to user concerns about data accuracy after the fact.

4. Advanced analytics

It’s important to make your reports insightful and engaging. While regular summaries of key business metrics are essential, improving them often means providing more advanced insights.

You could try a creative analytics view to pinpoint what’s driving creative performance — like background color, logo placement or CTA design. You might also explore forecasting tools that show expected ROI based on different budget scenarios. 

Adding these deeper insights gives you and your team a clearer reason to use reports and make smarter business decisions.

Streamline your reporting to boost BI

Insightful and accurate reporting is essential for your business success, but few brands feel fully satisfied with their current setup. Reporting will always be a work in progress as your business evolves, but laying strong dashboarding foundations now can help you get better results and spend less time on maintenance.

Hopefully, these four key considerations have given you practical steps to review your current setup and create more effective, streamlined reports for smarter decision-making in 2025.

Dig deeper: 5 steps to make the most of your reporting and analytics

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