02267: Report Crafting


Reports are always perceived to be tedious and that fact can be quite true. Regular reports mean updating the same template with new data over and over again and that can be quite the drag.

Creating reports is a completely different story.

I really enjoy coming up with a new report. It means translating a list of requirements into a meaningful data story using numbers, charts, and all that fun stuff. You can be lazy and just throw up data tables and all it a report, but that's not it. A report has to inform the reader - it has to highlight trends it has to say something. Good reports tell stories and help people make decisions.

And so it's really important to know what the report recipients hope to see or the sort of decisions they hope to make using the data. That's the only way to figure out what data to dig up, what trends to hope for and what results to show.

Making a new report takes a heck of a lot longer than updating an existing one and the process of creating the report never gets easier. But one can only keep at it and keep refining the report until everyone is happy with it..

And then that will probably lead to a new report request.

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