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Reporting Design

Financial reporting and annual reports are a daily part of business life. The design of external and internal reporting is a challenging and complex task. A consistent and easy-to-understand reporting design for business reports is important, as misrepresentations can easily mislead decision makers into misinterpretations. In the theroy, there is agreement on the overall three principles of reporting design. On the one hand, the forms of presentation used should be simple, clear and standardized.

 

standard

A consistent, rule-based approach encourages learning and builds trust in reporting.

 

clear

Compact and clear representations that avoid uncertainties, misunderstandings and perceptual anomalies.

 

easy

The forms of presentation used must be easy in order to focus the report reader's focus on the essentials.

 

effective Reporting

Controllers today are required in reporting to process significant amounts of data so that managers can draw the necessary conclusions quickly and accurately. In addition to the selection of the "right" content, the focus is increasingly on optimal visual processing.Very different patterns of perception among decision makers require a professional, standardized implementation of the reporting design.To achieve this goal, a broad project experience and efficient project management are mandatory. This is the only way for effective reporting to emerge from naturally grown and decentralized reporting.

 

The goal should be to provide the most relevant information with appropriate graphics (e.g., waterfall graphics) and any additional information should be assigned to an attachment.

 

Scope pf Application - Reporting Design

The scope of application includes all types of company reports and ranges from reports for specialist departments such as production, sales, etc. to top management reports and classic business reports. It is detached, whether it is a print version or a reporting dashboard solution - even the current medium such as the PC, the tablet or smartphone does not matter.

 

IBCS® Standards

As part of our reporting development for the CoPlanner software, we try the principles of Prof. Dr. med. Rolf Hichert (www.ibcs.com). The rules of Prof. Dr. med. Hichert is an optimal support for the standardization and consolidation of information in reporting. Thanks to the IBCS® standards, annual reports are visually and content optimized. The basic rules of Prof. Hichert are part of an intelligent controlling.

 

Important information for reporting dashboards

  • Defining the target audience of the dashboard exactly
  • Integrate only audience-relevant data
  • set the timeline dashboard update
  • choose a suitable and meaningful way of the dashboard
  • Logically group and group data together and define a suitable layout
  • Use visualization forms, languages and symbols that are uniformly communicated and familiar in the enterprise.
  • Provide a simple and clear overview, user-friendly navigation including drill-down functions
  • Test all dimensions and representations
  • If necessary, provide appropriate assistance or instructions / online documentation

Thanks to CoPlanner, our entire reporting system is much more efficient. At the push of a button, we now receive meaningful reports that we can build up according to the purpose.