Reports Are So 2004

Reports are only as good as you use them. Unfortunately most people don't know how, or even take the time to use them. For the most part we've found that to be true with clients of Leads360. Of course there are a handful of clients that really dig in and get value from our reports and the custom reporting engine. But for the bulk of our clients they're "cool" at best.

As we race into the 2nd quarter of a very instrumental year we've done a lot of thinking and research on what our clients really need when it comes to reporting. The most common thing we hear from clients is "just tell me what to do". Well, when we give them reports we're doing the exact opposite. This is where analytics comes in.

Analytics is such a ubiquitous term, how do we know what clients really want, and more importantly, how do we know what actually working? This is a question we're trying to answer right now.

Wikipedia defines analytics as how an entity (i.e., business) arrives at an optimal or realistic decision based on existing data. The online resource continues by stating, business managers may choose to make decisions based on past experiences or rule of thumb, or there might be other qualitative aspects to decision making; but unless there is data involved in the process, it would not be considered analytics.

Analytics is about making intelligent decisions that are meaningful and make a significant impact on the business. If we can present our clients w/ tools to enable good decision making, along with data to back it up, and a clear course of action to get results, we're on to something. My partner Nick Hedges has a great post on the importance of consistent metrics which I agree is the first step toward good analytics. Trust me, it's all coming, and then some.