4 Ways to get the Most From Your Reports
Reports show trends on how well your firm did in the past, as well as what’s coming down the pike. These are key factors that drive success for the firm. Information provided by reports is especially important in today’s compliance environment, where it’s critical to be proactive instead of reactive.
To make the most of RegEd’s Advertising Review reporting capabilities, follow these proven steps to improve your process.
1. Determine what's important to your firm
Executives consider reporting vital to find answers to questions regarding their business.
Start by asking questions at the top. When prototyping your reports, it’s important to first define what executives (especially your CCO and CEO) want to see. Are they concerned about turnaround time or just general data regarding the advertising review compliance process? What are their key metrics? What behaviors do they want to encourage or discourage?
Align with your team’s vision. Take your business goals and map those metrics to the capabilities of Advertising Review reports. For example, if the firm wants to know how long a certain item takes to be reviewed, pull the turnaround time report. Or use the Search All Requests tool to create custom reports based on a variety of metrics – including timeframes, standard metadata fields, FINRA-specific fields, and custom metadata fields.
2. Capture the right data
Your reports are only as good as the data behind them. Planning and setup are the keys to capturing the right metrics. The RegEd implementation process takes data in to consideration during the workflow creation process, but sometimes years have passed since a firm has reviewed their setup. If you’re just about to start an implementation, be sure to look at your custom fields and configurations to see if it will provide the reports you want. If your workflow is well established, it may be a good time to audit your process to find ways to optimize. In either event, we suggest working backwards – plan your reports first and then configure the application accordingly.
Keep your scope focused and only measure what matters. Pick a limited number of key performance indicators and metrics. A third-party survey of the number of metrics used by CEO’s showed that over half use only 5–10 metrics to manage their entire firm. It is also a good idea to limit the number of reports. Focus on those tied to specific business objectives.
3. Create your reports
Most firms start with existing reports from previous applications or processes as a baseline. As you begin to build workflows, and subsequently your reports in Advertising Review, there are several resources to help you get started.
Begin with standard reports. Advertising Review offers standard reports across all versions. See the following standard the filtering options. Note that not all reports have the same filtering options.
- Completion Date: Allows for filtering based on date values (YTD, Last 12 months, etc.). Use this to target important data.
- Grouping Options: How should reports be grouped? This filter will be report-specific and could include status, originator, branch, and/or format.
- Rep Attributes: Filter by up to four (4) different rep attributes such as title, position, or hire date (as well as many more).
Next take a look at the Search All Requests reports tool. This allows you to create ad hoc reports using over 25 standard metrics as well as any custom metadata fields in your workflows. Configure, save, export, and repeat as often as needed. Don't reinvent the wheel! Talk with your Relationship Manager to see what other firms have implemented and learn more about best practices so that you and your team are working with data that helps you make more informed decisions.
4. Use data to drive behavior and produce results
Reports are designed to be iterative, it’s important to keep them current and relevant. To successfully roll out business metrics, good communication is key. Use the My Reports feature to easily find your favorite reports.
Manage from the top down. Encourage managers to run meetings directly from their reports. Many customers also have the following mandate for compliance and marketing: “If it’s not in Ad Review, then it doesn’t exist.” This directive proves to be extremely motivating for teams.
Finally, engage your user community. Don’t make the mistake of tracking metrics only at the executive level, make sure your users can access the reports that are important to them. What do your users want to see? What will help them do their jobs faster and smarter? Those are the metrics that matter.