How to Automate Your Business Reporting Workflow

When running a business, it is vital to develop a regular reporting process to keep track of your current business objectives and progress. However, creating comprehensive reports that provide insights on business performance, vulnerabilities, and struggling departments is a highly time-consuming and exhausting process. And this is exactly what makes it one of the most suitable areas to automate in the first place.

Fortunately, various business automation software tools are available to help you make this transition as smooth as possible and implement new, more efficient solutions into your business workflow.

Below, you will find several ways to automate your business reporting workflow, including establishing effective communication between teams, enabling built-in reporting for your CRM and critical apps, taking advantage of Google Analytics, Google Sheets, and other automation tools for an up-to-date data overview and analysis, among other things. Continue reading to find out how you can reap the benefits of automation for your business.

Automate Communication Between Teams

A streamlined communication process can significantly improve team collaboration, enhance information sharing between employees, and reduce the need for individual problem-solving. And this is precisely why automation is so important when it comes to making sure your business reporting process works efficiently.

By establishing an efficient, transparent communication channel between teams, you will have a chance to increase the accuracy of your reports, help employees achieve better results faster, and eliminate manual work that doesn’t contribute much to the end result.

Here are some ways to adopt effective communication tools in your business reporting workflow to encourage better collaboration:

• Use communication apps and improve your phone system. Enhance your business communication by using VoIP phones, instant messaging apps, and video conferencing software. Collaboration tools like these are essential for keeping everyone on the same page, especially if you work across time zones or have a remote team. You can also use them to establish an efficient call routing system to make sure your employees are aware of their priorities at all times.
• Synchronize data in real-time. Real-time data integration software is the best way to automate your business reporting workflow. It can be used to update your CRM with accurate information from other applications, synchronize data in real-time across multiple databases, and create links between them, future-proofing your data management processes.
• Keep your CRM up-to-date without leaving the app. Another great way to automate your business reporting workflow is by using CRM integration software. It will allow you to keep your CRM up-to-date without leaving the app you are working in, so you can continue focusing on the task at hand.
• Automatically update important data. If you use multiple apps to collect and process different types of data, it is highly recommendable to automate your business reporting workflow by using data integration software. You will then be able to automatically update important information across your apps, ensuring their accuracy and eliminating the need for manual updates.

Automate Reporting for Your CRM and Other Critical Apps

If you want to automate your business reporting workflow, it is vital to use tools that enable you to create custom reports for your CRM and essential business apps without relying on developers or IT teams. In addition, you can use them to automatically generate reports for your team, as well as provide them with access to all reports from their Windows desktop.

When choosing a reporting tool, you need to select a solution that is easy to implement and use, offers a set of standard reports, and is compatible with your current business apps.

To help you navigate through the vast array of reporting tools available on the market, here are a couple of helpful tools:

• App Annie is one of the best reporting tools for SMBs, noting that it is easy to use, provides a set of standard reports, and most importantly – is compatible with a wide range of business apps. In addition, App Annie allows you to create custom reports for your CRM and essential business apps, automate data updates and monitor your most important metrics in real-time.
• Google Analytics is a free reporting tool that can be used to automate your business reporting workflow. It provides a set of standard reports and enables you to create custom reports for your CRM and other critical business apps. Google Analytics allows you to automatically monitor your most important metrics in real-time and share your reports with team members or customers.

Use Built-in Reporting for Your CRM and Other Critical Apps

If you already use a CRM, the chances are that it offers a built-in reporting tool. However, if you are not satisfied with the one in your CRM, you can choose from many others available that will be compatible with your software.

For example, Salesforce Analytics Cloud is a powerful reporting tool that allows you to use Salesforce data for deeper insights into your business performance, share reports with team members or customers, and automate report creation to save time. It is compatible with other leading CRMs, such as NetSuite, SugarCRM, and Oracle CRM On Demand.

Take Advantage of Google Analytics, Google Sheets, and Other Automation Tools

Google Analytics is not only one of the most widely used tools for website analytics, but it is also one of the best solutions for automating your business reporting workflow. It allows you to create custom reports for your CRM and provides other useful features for effective automation of your business reporting process, which include:

• Advanced Segments – help you filter reports by various criteria, including date ranges, traffic sources, location, device type, and other variables;
• Custom Dashboards – enable you to create custom dashboards to track important metrics;
• Real-time alerts – alert you when specific metrics hit predefined thresholds;
• Data Export – export reports to Excel format;
• Geotargeting – enable you to target users based on their location;
• AdWords integration – enable you to view AdWords campaign data in your reports.

Another great way to automate your business reporting workflow is by using Google Sheets. Not only does it offer a set of standard reports, but it can also be used to create custom reports for your CRM and other critical business apps. In addition, Google Sheets has a number of features that can assist you in improving data quality and ensuring effective automation of your business reporting process:

• Alerts – enable you to receive a notification when a value in a cell meets a certain condition;
• Formulas – help you calculate values by combining those from different cells;
• Filter views – let you view only the data that meets certain conditions;
• Sorting – allows you to arrange data in a specific order;
• Importing or Exporting data from/to Microsoft Excel files;
• Language Translation – translate reports from one language into another.

In Conclusion

As you can see, there are many ways to automate your business reporting workflow, including establishing effective communication between teams, automatically generating reports for your team, taking advantage of Google Analytics, Google Sheets, and other automation tools for up-to-date data overview and analysis, among other things.

If you are looking to leverage automation for your business reporting workflow, it is vital to use a solution that offers a set of standard reports and is compatible with your current business apps.