Turning financial data into action: Key information every business must track for reports

From internal audits to mergers and acquisitions (M&A), companies depend on intelligent data analysis to drive their operations. Such business intelligence is driven by comprehensive, consistent, and comparable financial information, which is critical for tracking a company's health and operations. 

This article will review the types of financial information companies must track to present key performance indicators in internal reports. We'll also look at how organizations can organize the financial data in their reports, and how the right reporting tool can support better data-driven business decisions. 

Understanding financial information and its importance

Financial information includes a wide range of datasets that can be recorded over a given period to assess a company's financial health. Statements, records, contracts — such financial data are often unstructured and can therefore be difficult to analyze and report. But it's critical for determining profitability, presenting annual findings to stakeholders, and a host of other business processes. Accurate financial data can also drive better budgeting, enable more accurate forecasting, and give valuable insights into how businesses can improve their operations. 

Organizations that present their financial information with transparency and consistency are also less likely to incur compliance violations, enhancing their brand reputation and building stakeholder trust at the same time. However, turning all those financial statements into actionable insights that tangibly change your business operations requires clear, contextual financial information analysis, so having the right reporting tool is a must. 

Operational vs. strategic financial data: Making sense of both

Financial reporting should help team members across your organization assess the company's financial status, enabling them to adjust their operations as needed and develop a plan for the future. That requires two different types of data: operational and strategic. 

While operational metrics help you evaluate your short-term financial status, strategic financial data lets you plan for the future. The two serve distinct purposes in informing your business intelligence (BI), but both data types work together to support accurate financial reporting. 

For example, businesses may use operational KPIs, such as cost per lead (CPL), to determine whether they're paying too much to attract potential clients, and may pivot their operations to use more cost-effective marketing channels. They may also look at their lead response time (LRT) and find that it's taking too long to reach out to prospective customers. They can then launch a new outreach campaign from there. Taken together, a company can use this operational and strategic data to adjust its current business processes and craft an intelligent strategy to drive business growth. 

Leveraging reporting tools to present your financial data

Despite their different applications, both types of data are only useful to your organization if they make your financial analysis transparent for all. That requires a reporting tool with the ability to format and present the data in an accessible way, using capabilities such as: 

• Visuals. Financial data can feel obscure or complicated, but data visualization tools can make your reports come alive. Use pie charts, graphs, or heat maps to clearly display how assets are allocated and how money moves through your organization, and improve your data storytelling for stakeholders.

• Application. Ad hoc reports are beneficial for using your financial data to answer specific, one-time questions, and they may require custom features not needed for other reports. However, periodic reports, such as quarterly financial reviews, may require standardized templates for faster report generation, so companies need a reporting tool with the functionality to streamline the creation of each type. 

• Formatting. An internal report from sales or accounting will be formatted differently from those created for stakeholders. Some industry standards also have specific formatting requirements that companies must adhere to in order to maintain compliance. A financial reporting tool must therefore support multiple formats while still enabling a company to present its own unique data and visuals — a balance that only pixel-perfect reporting tools can strike.

By employing the right visuals for each unique application and applying them under the appropriate formatting requirements, companies can deliver the findings of their financial data to stakeholders, executives, and other team members. This lets them present a more compelling case for pivoting their current operations as needed to maximize profitability, or to create a long-term business strategy that fosters sustainable growth. Both are rooted in operational and strategic financial data and brought to life by pixel-perfect financial reporting tools.

How to organize and analyze financial information for reporting

To make meaningful business decisions from your business data, your reporting tool must connect different data sources to combine multiple views into a single unified picture of your company's operations. Jaspersoft's guide to embedded reporting provides best practices for organizing, analyzing, and incorporating sensitive data into your financial reports, such as:

• Implementing workflow automation tools to increase the consistency of your financial reports 

• Leveraging data visualization to clearly demonstrate the findings of your analysis

• Using real-time analytics to gain granular insights from your most recent data

• Creating centralized dashboards that give easy access to your most common reporting tasks

Standard BI tools may offer some of these organizational and analytical capabilities, but the financial industry has multiple standardization requirements that some tools may be unable to meet. Fully tailored reporting solutions keep financial institutions from incurring compliance violations — part of the importance of pixel-perfect reporting. 

Avoiding common mistakes in managing financial data

Inconsistent tracking, missing or low-quality data, and manual entry errors can plague your financial analysis, causing you to reach incorrect conclusions about your operational status and make inaccurate business projections. To avoid these pitfalls, consider implementing best practices, such as automatically validating your financial data, conducting routine data audits, and creating clear, consistent reporting protocols. To maximize your insights and your bottom line, invest in a reporting tool that streamlines your analysis. 

Using financial insights to drive business growth

Reporting financial data can feel complicated — but it doesn't have to be. By presenting complex analysis in a concise, accessible way, the right reporting tool can help your company turn large volumes of raw financial data into actionable insights, allowing you to make smarter decisions that drive your business growth. 

Jaspersoft offers pixel-perfect reporting functionalities and the ability to seamlessly embed reporting into your workflows and custom applications.  Jaspersoft gives you full control over your reports and how your reports respond to your users. Our platform delivers crystal-clear data visualization capabilities, drill-down data analysis, and centralized reporting and dashboards that are white-labeled to align with your company's branding, operations processes, and unique business needs. The result is a tailor-made reporting suite that transforms raw data into a competitive edge.  Contact Jaspersoft today to discuss your financial reporting needs.

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