In the 21st century, every business runs on data.

But it doesn’t matter if you’re gathering insights to recognize and resolve supply chain issues or to monitor customer behavior – your data is only as valuable as it is available. 

In a high-stakes, competitive marketplace, your analytics team can’t spend valuable hours let alone whole workdays generating multiple reports for stakeholders any given week. Depending on the structure of your business, these presentations could require gathering input from outside sources that must then be fed into spreadsheets and formatted until your data is meeting-ready. And each step introduces new possibilities for errors that could impact not just your analytics team but the health of your organization itself.

However, with the right strategy, your data team won’t be trapped navigating a maze of spreadsheets to deliver persuasive presentations on the details of your business. In a forward-thinking, data-driven culture, compelling presentations are made easy. In addition to allowing for reports to be generated quickly, your options also include distributing automated financial reports and designing a self-service, custom investor reporting portal.

With a strong program in place, data insight gathering can be customized to suit the needs of every audience. 

Only a centralized data source reaches its full presentation potential

When it’s time for your company’s quarterly meeting, your data team must gather information from every facet of your business. This could mean hours spent gathering multiple spreadsheets from marketing, sales, and product departments to compile a high-level snapshot of the details of the business for executive leadership.

In some cases, data queries must be executed from ad platform or sales dashboards. Or internal departments may not define terms like revenue or ROI the same way as your finance team. From there, your team expends more energy resolving such discrepancies in a difficult, time-consuming pursuit of accurate and consistent data. Worse yet, your analysts have to repeat this process for every meeting that calls for a look at your company’s data.

These are the organizational challenges you face when your business is not working with a centralized dataset that’s transparent, trusted, and governed. Rather than presenting clear and accurately represented data to high-level stakeholders, your reports are mired in bloated spreadsheets and lengthy decks that are error-prone and static. 

However, with an effective data quality program, board meeting anxiety becomes a thing of the past. Instead of rolling the dice by asking your analysts to compile data from multiple silos, your reports are compiled in an instant through an intuitive customized dashboard that draws from multiple databases and cloud-based environments. Instead of wasting time tracking down spreadsheets and resolving inconsistencies, your team  delivers the insights you need for a compelling presentation with a few clicks.

Freed from this stressful run-up to executive meetings, your analysts are able to focus on more strategic functions better suited to their expertise. And you can relax knowing the data you’re presenting is accurate. But from the perspective of providing a view into the information central to your business, a centralized dataset can do so much more.

The Looker dashboard opens new possibilities for reporting and presenting data

Once your data has been organized into a single source with standardized definitions, the options for disseminating its insights can be tailored to suit your needs. With a customized dashboard system designed with one of our data partners, Looker, every part of your business is accessible and open to review.

At the baseline level, your analysts can access a Looker dashboard to generate custom reports for your quarterly meetings and investor presentations. Working from data that’s trustworthy and drawn from consistent definitions, your analysts can quickly compile these reports and export them as the deliverables your presentations need. 

However, depending upon the expectations of your audience, Looker also allows for more tailored, self-service approaches.

Automated reports enable regular delivery of data insights

In some cases, your organization’s executive team may ask for updates on your business’ performance that extend beyond the typical fiscal deadlines. For this kind of consistent, scheduled reporting, you can use Looker to set up a customized PDF report. All the key insights can be compiled and then distributed.

Rather than relying on regular input from your analytics team, this option automates your reporting. Once the dashboard and its distribution list are set, the report will be generated and disseminated for as long as is needed. That way, your stakeholders stay informed without your analytics team needing to even push a button.

A customized portal provides an experience exclusive to your brand

Using the Looker API, we also can create a window into your data that’s created to match your organizational identity in both form and function. Depending on your needs, this data dashboard can be designed to reflect one of your brand’s existing properties or another extension of the corporate identity.  Leveraging the power of a cloud-based platform, this seamless experience is both visually appealing and allows for more self-service interaction from your executive audience.

In setting up a data portal, Looker’s expansive capabilities can be curated to display only the information of most interest at the executive level. These users can enjoy the engaging experience of generating their own reports, but with an intuitive, inviting interface that eliminates the learning curve Looker typically requires.

This curated experience is also useful for delivering presentations to potential investors, who can experience a dashboard consistent with your brand while also evaluating only the specific data they need – and that you want to share.

Self-service access to your data eliminates the need for anyone else in your organization to design an experience for any presentation. Plus, with a centralized and governed data set, you can take comfort knowing that regardless of what path these users follow to draw information from your data, the resulting calculations will be consistent and correct.

Streamline your board meeting reports with the right data partner

To stay competitive, companies need to know the ins and outs of their business data. Your stakeholders know that numbers don’t lie when it comes to evaluating the health of an organization. As a result, there’s more pressure than ever to make sure the insights from your data can be generated quickly, clearly, and, above all, correctly.

Whether you just need a centralized and governed dataset as a foundation for your analytics team or a branded, curated data portal to wow the next investor meeting, DAS42 can help. Right now, business moves too quickly for your company to need hours of lead time to generate reports and graphics from stacks of spreadsheets (whose conclusions may not always add up). Contact us when you’re ready to find an easier way.