By highlighting these insights, BI reports make it faster and easier for decision-makers to identify customer service challenges and optimize the customer experience.
There are many approaches to the BI reporting process, and some are likely to prove more effective in certain scenarios than others. To get the most out of BI reporting, organizations should consider the following best practices:
Because the preferences and technical skills of decision-makers can vary, it's important to understand the needs and priorities of your target audience before preparing BI reports. Consider, for example, whether stakeholders can understand technical jargon, or whether reports should steer clear of language that only data analysts would be able to digest.
Sometimes, the needs and preferences of a target audience are too diverse to accommodate with just one type of report or data presentation approach. In this case, it's a best practice to offer multiple ways for your audience to interpret and react to BI insights -- such as representing takeaways using data visualizations while also presenting natural language summaries of key data trends.
The most effective BI reporting processes don't simply identify takeaways. They also provide the context necessary for decision-makers to understand where data-driven insights or recommendations came from, such as which data sources or data modeling techniques analysts used.
BI reports should present insights in the simplest way possible. However, they should avoid "dumbing down" information to the point that it becomes less useful or trustworthy. Avoid oversimplifying findings or failing to present all relevant data.
If the data behind BI reporting changes, the reports should also change. This is especially important because the target audience for BI reporting might not always know when data has changed, so the onus is on data analyst teams to update reports when necessary.
In some cases, decision-makers might have questions about insights or wish to see additional information. To this end, the BI reporting process should be interactive, such that audiences can pose questions or have conversations about the information with the people who analyzed it.