With the economy pushing companies to do more with less, new research underscores the case for automated reporting

insightsoftware, a global provider of reporting, analytics, and performance management solutions, today released new research on the state of operational reporting. Surveying global decision-makers in finance, IT, and operations, results showed that 71% of IT departments are spending an entire day each week generating recurring operational reports. With 66% of respondents seeing an increase in demand for operational reporting in 2022, it’s crucial that organizations invest in automating these processes to stabilize through economic uncertainty.

Operational reporting — reporting that enables day-to-day operations by accessing the latest, often detailed and transactional-level data — is key to organizational agility. While organizations may continue to downsize, workloads are not often reduced, forcing employees to do more with less. This calls for up-to-date operational data to check the pulse of the business, increasing the pressure on IT teams to generate and distribute more operational reports, often a manual process utilizing static formats.

While insightsoftware’s new State of Operational Reporting in 2023 report found that the demand for operational reporting is rising, it comes at a cost. This includes both direct costs such as the actual time spent developing these reports and the technology itself, as well as indirect ones from the negative impacts on job satisfaction and the loss of time for completing strategic, value-added tasks.

Key findings include:

• Operational reporting costs 71% of IT departments, on average, 1 day per week, or $23,730 per year in salary costs.
• Capex spending (38%) and revenue trends (34%) were found to be the most challenging to produce – concerning statistics with more than half of organizations running these reports regularly.
• When analyzing the relationship between IT and Finance, 63% of IT decision makers find that finance is either very- or over-reliant on the IT department.
• A whopping 98% of respondents distribute reports via static PDF, and 95% of organizations generate either all or mostly static reports. Such reports do not provide real-time or refreshable data, so stakeholders are making key decisions based on dated or imperfect information.

“To battle wide-ranging costs and mounting expectations, organizations must prioritize the modernization of operational reporting processes to protect IT department productivity,” said Bryan Motteram, VP, Product Marketing at insightsoftware. “Automating related manual tasks, for example, can save an entire day’s worth of time each week, smooth out complicated workflows, and reduce the pressure on IT departments. All while still providing the critical operational reporting needed for business to thrive.”

“IT will always play a role in data-driven decision-making. But enabling non-technical teams to solve their own data problems with intuitive tools and self-service report design will ensure IT is focused on important tasks that really move the needle for the business. In other words, empower teams with operational reporting tools that deliver financial data in an easily-consumable format for non-financial staff,” Motteram explains.

Download the complete findings of the State of Operational Reporting in 2023 here.

Learn more about Angles from insightsoftware – with integrations to Oracle, Netsuite, Deltek, and SAP – and how it can provide comprehensive operational reporting technology with pre-built dashboards that enable professionals to easily fulfill recurring and ad hoc reporting needs. This integrated solution leverages real-time data and delivers actionable insights to support decisiveness in an uncertain and quickly changing world.

Research Methodology

insightsoftware’s State of Operational Reporting in 2023 was developed in coordination with Hanover Research. This independent survey was conducted among 331 professionals in Accounting, Finance, Operations, IT, Analytics, and Product/Project Management departments across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

About insightsoftware

insightsoftware is a leading provider of reporting, analytics, and performance management solutions. Over 32,000 organizations worldwide rely on us to support business needs in the areas of accounting, finance, operations, supply chain, tax, budgeting, planning, HR, and disclosure management. We enable the Office of the CFO to connect to and make sense of their data in real time so they can proactively drive greater financial intelligence across their organization. Our best-in-class solutions provide customers with increased productivity, visibility, accuracy, and compliance. Learn more at insightsoftware.com.

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