Where is That Report?

To a small to large extent, most reports that are produced and delivered are late, early, inaccurate, or incomplete, with too much or too little at the time when needed to make decisions. Ouch, that sounds like a nasty indictment. But it’s true nonetheless, because we may be trapped in the paradigms that produce batched outputs in a continuous world.  That means that there is typically a schedule or a request that triggers the production of the report and the world and its impacts on us are changing all the time, so some of the stuff in the report have changed by the time we get it.

Let’s leave the compliance reporting aside as that is a very different discussion.

Now, why all the rants? The real value of reports and spending a fortune on information is to enable better choices and decisions. We can influence the future and make a better place for our enterprises and ourselves by what we chose, decide, and execute. For decisions that are influenced by transparency to what is and isn’t, we want the accessibility and usefulness to be convenient, correct, as fresh as available, all the quality stuff, and unencumbered by anything else. The bundling and batch production of a “report” affects all the above. Plus, many reports are produced with an eye to production efficiency rather than decision effectiveness. That means that we get more information than we specifically want or need, because the reports are created for a broader audience. Maybe we only need one of the twenty published pages, but sorting that out hurts production and delivery efficiency. Maybe the process requirements were set as a result of a project executed by the function that produces, rather than the one than decides. Don’t blame them, their budget and metrics prompted it.

We’ve learned to create and use these bundled documents over many years. We know how to organize the information and make it as useful as possible, maybe. As long as we “report” utilizing the constraints of documents, we will have to display in two dimensions, pay the price of hand-offs, stale information, delays and costs of compiling …. And the killing of lots of trees. When dealing with risks and decisions that have complexity and velocity, electrons do a better job than hands and people. Try asking, “what if this, and what about looking at it this way or that?”  …. Then wait for the next report.

Many have already figured it and are way beyond the simplicity of this argument. Today there are really great technologies that can answer in real time and across as many windows as are relevant. But often the richness and capability still makes it into the batched reporting, robbed of real time and stripped of the multi-dimensionality requirements of better decisions.

Now, don’t take this as an endorsement or even an encouragement for enterprise systems of big IT spend. This is a suggestion to challenge the old habit of producing in batch, potentially governing the timeliness and quality of choices and decisions.

Do we need a report, or do we need a decision? I suggest you answer the decision one first.

Thoughts?