3 Ways Real-Time Reporting Benefits Agencies

Whatagraph gives you the ability to easily create real-time reports now with even more flexibility than before. So let’s learn more about this feature and what it can do for your business.

What is real-time reporting?

Real-time reporting is a business intelligence (BI) feature that enables users to check the status of their performance at any given moment to get the most up-to-date results possible. To put it simply, looking at real-time data and report on it is the easiest way for businesses to make decisions fast.

How is it different from static reports?

For one, real-time reports are shared online and can be accessed anywhere, anytime by anyone with a valid link. Static reports, sometimes also called batch reports, are generated periodically (daily, weekly, monthly…) and generally come in PDFs or another downloadable file format.

Secondly, whereas static reports hold historical data that showcases performance results for chosen criteria within a specific date range, real-time reports update continuously to display the most current data.

Benefits of real-time reporting

The main benefit of real-time reporting is that it saves time for everyone. And, as we all know very well, time is dollars, euros, pounds, pesos, you get the idea. It provides more clarity and speeds up course correction. See how real-time reports benefit different stakeholders:

For agencies

1. Minimize manual work – real-time reports work on a “set it and forget it” basis where you only really need to build the report once. As long as you connect all the right sources, include relevant KPIs, and share the link with your client, you won’t have to build reports every time a performance meeting is coming. 
2. Increase transparency and trust – by giving your client access to view their performance data at any time you create a shared, collaborative experience rather than something that is delivered to them on agreed deadlines. 
3. Ace your client meetings – a progress meeting shouldn’t be the first time your client gets to review the data. With a real-time report, you can give them time to digest it, develop some questions, and then present the final numbers once you’re all on the same page. 
   
   What’s more, you can easily switch between date ranges and look at performance in different time frames. If you’re looking at weekly data and all of a sudden they’d like to see the whole month, you can seamlessly pull up those numbers within the same report.

For clients

1. Cut out the middleman – real-time reports provide a sense of ownership of your real-time data analytics as you can access the report at any time without having to ask someone to generate it for you. This could be achieved with automated reports as well, but you still wouldn’t have the flexibility of viewing it any time you like or filtering different date ranges.
2. Easily share between departments – if you represent a large enterprise, you know that sharing information between departments isn’t as easy as it sounds. Emails get lost, ignored, etc. With one link and live reports that update automatically, you can make sure all your departments have equal access to information.
3. Speed up your decision-making process – with real-time reporting, you don’t have to wait to get updated KPI data delivered to you. Having the most current available data on your real-time dashboard, you can adjust your strategy much faster if you don’t see desired results.

Conclusion

While real-time reporting is amazing in its own way, static reports that hold historical data are by no means obsolete. In fact, many professionals suggest basing your long-term strategy on historical data rather than real-time information.

Our recommendation – use both to get the most thorough and actionable evaluation of your performance. Whatagraph helps you do just that :)