Installation Reporting: Turning Operational Data Into Useful Management Information
If producing the Monday morning operations report takes until Monday afternoon, there is probably a problem.
Not necessarily with the report.
The problem may be how the information required to produce it is being collected.
Reporting should be a by-product of operations
Many businesses treat reporting as a separate exercise.
Someone exports one spreadsheet, obtains another from somebody else, checks a diary, asks several project managers for updates and combines everything into a management report.
The finished report may be useful. But by the time it exists, some of the underlying information may already have changed.
Ideally, management reporting should draw from information being captured as part of normal operations.
Start with the questions
Businesses can accumulate enormous amounts of data without gaining much useful information.
A better starting point is asking what management actually needs to know.
- How many live jobs do we have?
- How many are at each stage?
- How many surveys are outstanding?
- How many installations are scheduled?
- Which jobs are delayed?
- Where are jobs becoming stuck?
- How much remedial work is outstanding?
- Which teams are carrying what workload?
- How many completed jobs are awaiting documentation?
- What is our likely installation volume over the coming weeks?
The right reporting structure depends upon the decisions the business needs to make.
Bad underlying data creates bad reporting
A dashboard cannot solve inconsistent operational information.
If job status is not maintained accurately, a beautifully presented chart simply provides a clearer picture of inaccurate data.
Reporting therefore starts much earlier than the dashboard. It starts with how information is captured during day-to-day work.
This makes one version of the truth a prerequisite for dependable reporting.
Avoid parallel reporting processes
A warning sign is when operational teams use one system but management reporting depends on somebody maintaining a separate spreadsheet.
That introduces delay and creates another version of the truth.
Where practical, reports should be generated from the same information that drives the underlying workflow.
Look for exceptions, not just totals
Knowing that 150 installations were completed last month is useful.
Knowing that 23 jobs have been waiting for documentation for more than seven days may be more actionable.
Effective operational reporting should help management identify areas requiring attention rather than simply describe what has already happened.
Different people need different views
Senior management, operations teams and individual project managers may require different levels of detail.
A useful reporting environment should therefore allow people to move from high-level indicators towards the underlying jobs where appropriate.
Good reporting also improves capacity planning and scheduling visibility.
How Instalr can help
Because Instalr manages operational information around the installation workflow, the data captured through day-to-day activity can also support management visibility and reporting.
This can reduce reliance on manually assembled reporting spreadsheets and make it easier to examine current workloads, progress and exceptions using information connected to the underlying jobs.