Operational Reporting: 5 Common Challenges

The pace of business change across multiple industries puts considerable pressure on finance teams today. Tasked with providing strategic support to decision-makers organization-wide, finance teams are producing operational reports at a volume and velocity that strains their resources.

Common Tools for Operational Reporting

Finance professionals struggle with the tools they currently use for operational reporting. According to a recent insightsoftware survey, only 11% of finance professionals are happy with their current tools. The three most common tools used for operational reporting are:

• Microsoft Excel (76%)

• Microsoft Power BI (45%)

• Native ERP reporting tools (30%)

While these are great tools for their intended purpose, none of them are designed for operational reporting. That presents some challenges for finance teams.

Five Operational Reporting Challenges

1. Use of Reporting Tools Requires Technical Skills That Are Scarce 47% of survey respondents identified the need for advanced technical skills to use reporting tools as a major challenge. For example, respondents reported needing technical skills to create the kind of impactful data visualizations and dashboards that decision-makers need. With a current labor shortage in effect, the need for workers with advanced technical skills is urgent and doesn’t look likely to change significantly anytime soon. 2. Report Creation or Modification Takes Too Much Time 46% of survey respondents said that creating or modifying reports takes too much time. This is a perennial problem for finance teams—especially those mired in manual processes. Manually pulling disconnected data into a spreadsheet for analysis and presentation is incredibly time-consuming and prone to human error. Furthermore, when reports need to be modified, the process begins again from scratch. 3. Tools Lack Drill-Down Capabilities 28% of respondents cited the lack of drill-down capabilities as a major challenge in operational reporting. Native enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools may provide very basic operational reports, but lack the level of detail needed for strong operational reporting that leads to better business insights. Decision-makers need the ability to quickly drill down to explore insights at a granular level on a self-service basis. 4. Tools Lack Real-Time Capabilities 24% of survey respondents struggle with the lack of real-time reporting capability. Producing static reports that must be constantly updated wastes time and resources that are already stretched to capacity. 5. Tools Are Not Designed to Handle Financial Data 23% of survey respondents are frustrated by the fact that the tools they currently use for operational reporting are simply not designed to handle financial data. That makes it difficult or, in some cases, impossible to create certain reports, leading to increased time spent and more technical resources needed.

Learn More about Streamlining Operational Reporting with insightsoftware

Insightsoftware recently partnered with Hanover Research to survey financial decision-makers across multiple industries globally in an effort to discover the challenges finance teams face with operational reporting and how those teams are meeting those challenges. To learn more, download the report “Operational Reporting Trends” today.