Enterprise Reporting: What It Is, Best Practices, and Examples

Looking at data from a high level ensures organizations have a better idea of how decisions will impact the company as a whole. It ensures critical and actionable information doesn’t get lost in departmental silos and keeps everyone focused on overall goals.

But to make it work, you need the right tool to connect data from across your organization and provide actionable insights. And your enterprise reporting system needs to provide teams access to the data in a way that makes sense, no matter their level of data intelligence or technical capabilities. 

What is enterprise reporting?

Enterprise reporting is the process of using business data to develop reports, charts, and graphs to share with key decision-makers across an organization. Enterprise reporting isn’t merely about gathering data to be reported on but also the process of developing actionable reports that teams can use to act on and drive their decisions. 

Enterprise reporting differs from traditional business intelligence (BI) and data analysis in that it focuses on high-level data that matters across an organization. It provides executives and individual contributors with data from across the organization that can help better inform decisions for individual roles or departments. 

Let’s dive into what your company needs to support enterprise reporting and why it matters. 

Why is enterprise reporting important?

Enterprise reporting turns data into meaningful insights that can guide critical business decisions. An enterprise reporting system ensures all departments are working toward the same objectives by focusing on key performance indicators (KPIs) aligned with organizational goals. Because of this alignment, your team gets to have more collaboration, minimize silos, and help leaders track progress at a high level.

Enterprise reporting drives efficiency and empowers decision-makers with timely and accurate information to identify trends, address risks, and create growth opportunities. By providing a holistic view of performance across departments, enterprise reporting helps businesses achieve goals and use their data to gain a competitive edge.

Enterprise reporting vs business intelligence?

Enterprise reporting is similar to business intelligence, but there are some important distinctions. While both focus on bringing business data together and surfacing insights, business intelligence is more granular. Think about it as the process of uncovering all possible insights from your data. It’s about diving deep into specific areas of your business, whether sales performance in one region or the engagement rate of a single marketing campaign. BI tools are designed to be flexible and exploratory, allowing you to analyze data at a granular level to answer specific questions or spot trends.

On the other hand, enterprise reporting gives more structure and shape to the data you’re reporting on. Instead of focusing on every data point, it homes in on the information that aligns with your company’s overall goals and priorities. Enterprise reporting emphasizes cross-departmental data and key performance indicators that measure success at a company-wide level. For example, while BI might help you see why sales dropped in one store last quarter, enterprise reporting highlights how total sales are trending across all regions and whether those trends support the company’s long-term objectives.

Because enterprise reporting is focused on high-level data and information with a larger impact across the whole company, it can help inform larger decisions and provide guidance on the more nuanced data business intelligence might surface. 

Use cases for enterprise reporting and business intelligence

A good way to use enterprise reporting would be helping a CEO prepare for a quarterly board meeting. Instead of presenting dozens of isolated insights from various teams, enterprise reporting consolidates the data into a cohesive narrative that reflects the company’s overall health. This could include financial performance, operational efficiency, and customer satisfaction scores—all tied to the organization’s strategic goals.

Another example of using enterprise reporting is working toward a company-wide initiative, such as reducing costs or improving customer retention. Enterprise reporting can pull together relevant data from across departments—such as finance, marketing, operations, and customer service—to provide a comprehensive picture of progress. 

In both of these examples, BI tools still play a role by digging into the details. They provide the information to build the reports, while enterprise reporting ensures everyone is looking at the same big picture.

While both have valuable assets for your company, there will be times when either enterprise reporting or business intelligence might be the best approach. For example: 

• Business intelligence may be more advantageous when you need flexibility and detail, allowing you to answer specific questions quickly. It’s excellent for diagnosing problems, identifying trends, and exploring new opportunities, especially when you’re looking at a specific role or data set.
• Enterprise reporting may be more advantageous when you need consistency and clarity. Focusing on high-level data and aligning with company goals helps guide strategic decision-making and keeps everyone on the same page.
• Enterprise reporting makes sense when you consider BI’s limitations. The sheer amount of granular data surfaced by BI tools can be overwhelming, and not every insight will be relevant to broader business goals. Enterprise reporting provides much needed direction and structure.
• On the flip side, the structured nature of enterprise reporting means it may miss some of the nuanced insights that BI tools excel at finding. It’s not as exploratory and works best when paired with more detailed BI analysis.

Implementing effective enterprise reporting 

Setting up an enterprise reporting system in your organization starts with understanding what you’d like from your reporting and then making sure you have the reports and data to track, measure, and report on your goals. Here are some steps to help you get started: 

1. Get stakeholder buy-In. Since this reporting will directly impact key stakeholders in your business, you need to make sure they know and understand what they need from reporting. Engage executives, department leaders, and end users to understand the data they need to make decisions.
2. Establish key performance indicators. Once you’ve got stakeholders on board, work with them to define the KPIs you need to track. These metrics should be specific, measurable, and aligned to your overall corporate goals. 
3. Audit and organize existing data. Look at the data you have available and what data you will need to measure and track your KPIs. Review your current data sources to identify what’s available and ensure it is organized and accessible. Address any gaps or inconsistencies in your data before setting up reports.
4. Choose a reporting tool. Select an enterprise reporting tool that meets your organization’s needs. Look for features like automated data updates, an interface that makes data accessible even to team members who aren’t experienced with the tool, customizable dashboards, and the ability to pull data from multiple sources. Tools like Domo support the entire lifecycle of data without needing multiple tools.
5. Design reports. Focus on actionable insights and design data visualizations that can be easily understood. 
   • Use clear labels, concise descriptions, and logical layouts to make your reports easy to understand. 
   • Avoid overwhelming users with too much information on a single page. 
   • Emphasize key metrics with visual cues like bold fonts, contrasting colors, or larger chart sizes. 
   • Prioritize high-impact KPIs at the top of your reports.
   • Include benchmarks, historical trends, or comparative data to help users interpret the numbers. 
6. Train your yeam. Make sure your teams understand how and why data can help them make decisions. Ensure your teams know how to set up and interpret data reports, then establish who will own and maintain the data and reports.
7. Keep gathering feedback. Enterprise reporting is not a one-time setup, so you need to continuously gather feedback from users and refine the reports to better meet their needs. Stay flexible and adjust the KPIs or report designs as business goals evolve.

To ensure your enterprise reporting is best meeting your needs, keep some of these best practices in mind: 

• Maintain data accuracy: Regularly audit your data sources to ensure they’re reliable and up-to-date.
• Automate: Use automation to reduce manual data entry errors and ensure consistent updates.
• Maintain data governance: Define roles and responsibilities for data management and establish clear processes for data validation and corrections.
• Keep it simple: Avoid overly complex visuals that might confuse readers. Simplicity often leads to better comprehension.

Benefits of enterprise reporting

An enterprise reporting system is a good way to see your business from a high level. It gives everyone access to data from across the organization and ensures teams can benefit from data, no matter where it’s created. Enterprise reporting can make your organization more efficient and keep everyone in line. 

Here are a few of the many additional benefits:

• Efficiency: It automatically gathers data in one place and presents it in an understandable and actionable way. 
• Strategy: Combining data from across the organization allows teams to be more strategic in how they make decisions.
• Simplification: By establishing how and when data is collected, shared, and acted on, your team can look at the data and make choices quickly without questioning if more data is needed or if you’re acting on the right data. 
• Decision-making: Bringing data from multiple sources into one clear view highlights the trends, progress, and risks that matter most. 
• Alignment: Enterprise reporting keeps everyone focused on the right KPIs that reflect company goals. 
• Collaboration: When all teams are working with the same priorities in mind, silos break down and collaboration becomes easier.
• Accountability: Having performance metrics visible makes it clear how each team’s efforts contribute to the bigger picture.

Examples and use cases of enterprise reporting

Ready to see some of the ways you could apply enterprise reporting in your own business? We’ve put together several enterprise reporting examples to give you ideas of how you can get started building reports customized to your organizational needs. 

Financial performance reports

Build a report for your CFO to track revenue, expenses, and profit margins across the company. By consolidating financial data, leaders can identify underperforming areas and optimize resource allocation to improve profitability.

Customer data

To get an enterprise-level view of customers, you can put together a report with customer satisfaction scores, churn rates, and support ticket resolution times to ensure service options are meeting customer needs. Using this combined view of high-level customer data highlights trends across regions or departments, ensuring customer-facing employees will improve service quality.

Operations

Use enterprise reporting to make operations run more smoothly. Track KPIs like production efficiency, equipment downtime, maintenance schedules, inventory levels, and supply chain performance. Use this report to get a comprehensive view and enable teams to optimize processes and reduce costs.

Sales performance

Sales is a data-heavy area, and there are a lot of metrics to track. The key for enterprise-level reporting is choosing the data that will help executives make decisions about the company and its future. An enterprise sales report can look at total sales, regional performance, comparisons to historic performance, and product-specific trends. By identifying which areas or products are driving revenue, leaders can adjust strategies to maximize growth.

Compliance and security

Compliance and security teams can use enterprise-level reporting to track adherence to regulatory standards across the organization. Keeping track of all of this data in one report ensures potential issues are tracked early on. 

Incorporating an enterprise reporting solution like Domo can significantly enhance how your organization can manage and analyze your data. Domo offers an all-encompassing tool that centralizes data from various sources, giving you the access you need to all your data to build customized reports that work for your whole business. 

With Domo’s intuitive dashboards and support of real-time data updates, your company will get deeper insights into your financial performance, customer behavior, operational efficiency, sales trends, and compliance metrics. Domo’s enterprise reporting features empower decision makers across your teams to act swiftly and strategically. 

To learn more about how Domo can transform your enterprise reporting and BI strategies, get in touch with us today.