5 signs your reporting is costing you money

No reporting "fails" all at once. It degrades slowly, until it becomes normal. These are the most common signs we find in mid-sized companies before automating their reporting. If more than one sounds familiar, it's probably costing you more than you think.

1. Someone spends hours every week copying data between spreadsheets

If a report starts with "download this, paste it here, adjust the formulas", it isn't a report: it's manual work dressed up as one. And every time it's done by hand, there's a chance of error.

2. Two people give different figures for the same question

Sales says €340,000, finance says €352,000, and both are certain they're right. It isn't a question of honesty: it's that each starts from a different source, refreshed at a different moment.

3. Reports arrive when they're no longer useful for deciding

If you find out a product is running out of stock once it has already run out, the report arrived late. Reporting should warn you before the problem, not describe it afterwards.

4. Nobody dares touch the "master" spreadsheet

Every company has one: that enormous file, with formulas chained together over years, that only one person understands. If that person takes holiday or leaves, reporting stops with them.

5. You know you have the data, but not where

You have an ERP, a CRM, perhaps an online shop. All three hold part of the answer to your question. None holds the whole of it. And cross-referencing them by hand takes so long that it almost never happens.

If any of these sounded familiar

You don't have to solve them all at once. The first step is simply to see clearly where you're losing the most time and reliability, and prioritise from there. That's literally what we do in the first meeting, free of charge, to put a name to what today is only a feeling that "this takes us too long".