What Is Data Reporting? Definition, Uses, Types, and Tools

For businesses looking to gain a competitive advantage, it's important to understand how to utilize your available data. Understanding data can help identify opportunities for growth and improvement and help you make informed decisions based on data-driven insights. 

However, for data to be useful, you must first process it. That's where data reporting comes in. Effective data reporting enables you to present data in an easy-to-understand way, summarizing findings so that decision-makers and business leaders can utilize the information to create a path forward. 

In this article, you'll learn more about what data reporting is, why it's important, how to use specific data reporting tools, and the steps for writing your own data reports.

What is data reporting?

Data reporting is the process of taking data and converting it into an easily understandable format. This practice allows you to collect information and convey what is happening within your organization to relevant stakeholders, giving them an accurate read on day-to-day operations and performance indicators, among other things.

The purpose of reporting is to take data and transform it into usable information, but it doesn’t offer specific insight or suggestions as to what you should do with the data. Instead, data analytics is responsible for discovering the “why.”

You can present data reports in various formats, such as spreadsheets, charts, and graphs.

How do data analysis and data reporting compare?

Data reporting seeks to provide context as to “what” is happening, whereas data analytics focuses on “why” it is happening. With data reporting, you need to organize and summarize the data. However, with analytics, you examine the data to find the right questions to ask, conclude, and use data analysis to make decisions. Although data analytics goes further than reporting to understand the data, both play an essential role in equipping organizations with valuable insights. Additionally, analytics relies upon proper data reporting to come to accurate conclusions.

Read more: What Is Data Analysis? (With Examples)

What are the benefits of data reporting?

Performing regular data reporting can allow you to measure specific metrics, track your progress over time, and monitor the performance of your business or organization. In addition, data reporting takes information that’s often difficult to process and presents it in a manner that’s easy to grasp, making information more accessible and allowing you to notice trends that can help you better understand your business performance and inform data-driven decision-making for long-term success.

Types of data reports

You can use data reports to help improve many areas of your business. Below are just a few different types of data reports that you may see organizations implement:

• Financial reports: A financial report allows you to examine your company's current financial state in specific areas, such as earnings and profits. Financial reports often give quarterly breakdowns of revenue or profit, giving businesses an idea of the money spent and earned month by month and allowing them to adjust for the future.

• Growth reports: Growth reports communicate how your company projects it will grow in the future. You can also compare your growth projections with your competitors' to understand your positioning and adapt your business goals accordingly. 

• Revenue reports: Revenue reports include crucial financial information that gives you an idea of how much you can afford to spend. Revenue reports can include customer profit, business loans, or investor cash flow to track your total capital. 

• Expense reports: Expense reports help monitor your company's spending. They allow you to keep track of all your expenses and ensure that money is being spent appropriately in ways that benefit the business. 

• Customer analytics reports: This reporting type empowers you to understand your customers better. You can learn how they interact with a product, what improvements you can make, and what your customer demographics look like.

• Research reports: If you have a specific question you’re looking to answer, you can utilize research reports to address that question and make informed business decisions, such as determining the ideal time to release a product to the market. 

Who uses data reporting?

Data reporting is valuable for several industries, including banking, health care, finance, and government. From creating financial reports to collecting data on patients in health care systems, data reporting helps organizations compile and share the data they’ve gathered in an understandable and easy-to-read format. With data reports, these industries and organizations can make informed decisions and understand how well their business models meet their goals.

Read more: What Does a Data Analyst Do? Your Career Guide

How to write a data report

When writing a data report, you must first consider who you’re reporting to, the type of data you’re reporting, and where you’re sourcing it from. After establishing this, you’re ready to move on to writing your report. Follow these steps:

1. Define your goal.

Before you start implementing your report, you need to define its purpose. Who is your audience? What metrics are you hoping to discover, measure, or reveal? What questions are you trying to answer? Figuring out your goals can help you choose the best reporting format for your needs.

2. Select the format.

Depending on the data type you’re reporting and your goals, specific formats will be better than others. Determine whether you should represent the data in a visual report using charts and graphs or if it makes more sense to report the data using tables in a spreadsheet to list the data. 

3. Compile data and build the report.

Using the available data, ensure that your data is complete and consistent so that it’s ready to use in the report. Use multiple reliable sources when building your report. Using your selected format, present the data in an organized way so that the information is easy to understand and visually appealing.

4. Review the report.

Ensure that all the data in the report is accurate, easy to understand, and focused on relevant information. In this stage, getting feedback from team members or stakeholders can be helpful, allowing them to ask questions and make significant revisions. After the review stage, your report will be published and shared with others.

Data reporting tools

Using tools that help automate the process can make data reporting easier. Some of the best data reporting tools and software you can use to create reports include the following:

• Tableau: Tableau lets you visually report data with analytics features and interactive reports. It requires no previous experience with coding, making it an excellent beginner-friendly tool. 

• Quickbooks: Quickbooks is effective for reporting important financial information and tracking transactions. It uses customized reports and templates highlighting vendors, inventory, pricing, and more.

• Datapine: When working with complex or multiple databases, Datapine effectively manages data from several sources, allowing you to track key performance indicators.

• Power BI: Another visualization tool, PowerBI can process large quantities of data from several sources and is a good fit for larger and growing organizations.

• Zoho Analytics: Zoho Analytics helps you transform business data into reports while also offering features that emphasize data integration, visual analysis, data storytelling, and collaborative analytics.

• Whatagraph: Receiving data from several channels, Whatagraph can create visual reports and effectively track metrics from your social media accounts, email, SEO, and more.

• Hive: Hive provides up-to-date tracking you can access from anywhere using the cloud. It integrates well with other software and optimizes project management data reporting. 

Read more: 10 Data Analysis Tools and When to Use Them

Build your data reporting skills on Coursera

Data reporting is a critical step when working with data. Effective data reporting explains “what” is happening so that data analytics can find out “why.” As you're exploring data solutions for your organization, you’ll find a range of tools available to support your data reporting efforts, along with courses that can help you use them. 

To build knowledge of Tableau, consider taking Tableau's Introduction to Tableau course on Coursera. You'll learn how to preprocess data and combine data from multiple tables in Tableau Public. Plus, if you enjoy the course, you'll be one step closer to finishing the Tableau Business Intelligence Analyst Professional Certificate.

To learn how to use Power BI and build compelling reports, try Microsoft's Power BI Data Analyst Professional Certificate. There, you'll build in-depth knowledge of how to use Power BI for data analysis and reporting. Plus, you'll prepare for the industry-recognized Microsoft PL-300 Certification exam.