The Importance of Business Monitoring and Reporting

The Importance of Business Monitoring and Reporting

Consistent business reporting and monitoring is a necessity for many companies, as the board may demand to view weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual reports to get a good sense of how the business is performing. Across business industries, from eCommerce to the service industry, business monitoring and reporting can save time and money, in addition, these reviews can also improve your processes in the long run.

Management Insight
Business reports collate a lot of data around your company which can provide useful information for management. Insights around spending, growth, and profits will be included, which can be used to help create future projections, marketing plans, and budgets.

Management will also use business reports for tracking growth and the company’s progress, identifying trends and any anomalies which may need investigating. Having a thorough and reliable set of data about your business means it can be regularly consulted and shown to potential investors, for example.

Identify Problems
Routine monitoring and reporting should help highlight any issues there may be in your business before they have a chance to escalate. If it’s only an annual report which your company produces, then problems and anomalies may be easily missed and could be draining your business of finances and time without your knowledge. Monitoring an area that has problems and comparing data collected over time should help point out what has triggered any issues or where they began. This can then be used to provide a fix or come up with ways to improve.

Highlight Opportunities
Along with highlighting problems within the business, monitoring and reporting over time can identify any opportunities to expand. Reports work as a good way of recording past activity and times when expansion has proven a success. These can be used to help define future growth opportunities, identify what worked well and what more could be done in the future. Monitoring and reviewing competitors on a regular basis can also assist with this.

Transparency
An annual report is a legal requirement for many public companies to provide stockholders, the government, and others with financial data and ownership information about the business. More regular reporting can offer additional transparency throughout the year, possibly making the business appear more attractive to potential investors. It allows businesses within the same sector to be easily compared and their performances measured against one another.

Set Goals
Reporting on business performance ensures that performance over different time periods can be compared. The objectives of the reporting should be in line with the KPIs, as they can demonstrate if these have been met, exceeded, or not. Whatever the results, identifying trends in the performance and where the company is at can then be used to set future goals. This could be for general decision-making regarding budgets to devising future growth strategies.

Monitor Partners
As well as your own business, it is important to monitor and measure the performance of any business partners you rely on to make sure they are an effective use of money and time. For eCommerce and online retailers, using parcel tracking services is often commonplace, to provide transparency and accountability for customers. However, parcel tracking can also be useful for businesses to assess and review the effectiveness of their delivery partners.

Whistl offers a range of parcel tracking options, whether you wish to provide customers with more choice or streamline your own processes. Data recorded from such parcel tracking services can be included in any reports and offers a way to drive better performance for your business.