Get Deep with your Financials

We have the reporting software, what next?
Every BI consultant I've encountered has worked with clients who've paid for and installed a complex reporting solution without a plan for how they were going to implement it in their workplace. The story often unfolds as follows:

1. Mid-level and C-level executives are frustrated because they are unable to get the answers to their questions quickly.
2. IT personnel are consulted to find a solution.
3. After reviewing several excellent options, the company invests in a sexy commercial-off-the-shelf solution that meets 70% of your reporting requirements and theoretically just needs a few hours of services to dial it in.
4. The vendor asks: "So what do you need us to do?"

The story ends here because, the customer has never had to articulate the list of indicators that let us know when the company is doing well or poorly. Company health is something execs often intuitively know, but perhaps have not articulated on paper how they measure it!
Let's get the ball rolling again and talk about common KPI's you may find useful in your reporting and analytic environment! You may find them useful, or discover that your company uses variations of the ratios I present here. Either way, in articulating where we are similar or different, you solidify ideas of what may be useful in your reporting environment!
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​10 KPIs Every Finance Solution Needs

The AIA (American Institute of Architechts) have an excellent write-up of Key Performance Indicators for the Balance Sheet and Income Statement. While some of the KPI's and examples reviewed are clearly written from the perspective of a services company, documents like this may get your mind churning. Additionally, I regularly discover new business metrics under Klipfolio.com's body of KPI examples and Templates which I had not considered.

Walkthrough: Adding KPIs to your Cube using Jet Enterprise
This tutorial shows you how to implement many of the measures highlighted in the earlier graphics using Jet Reports' Jet Data Manager product to manipulate a Microsoft SSAS Cube.

For readers with a Sales or Operations bent, in an earlier blog post, I reviewed calculating 'Top 10 Customers' and 'Yesterday's Sales'.


That's All Folks!
As a freelance BI and Jet Reports consultant at Onyx Reporting, I'm available to provide both consulting services and training for Microsoft BI and Jet Reports products as well as dashboarding in Excel.