Most of us in leadership roles can agree that status reporting isn’t always the most fun part of the job. It’s necessary, though, and automating your reporting process can help you to keep track of important data. It also allows you to enjoy more time to handle other tasks related to managing your team or running your business.
For 10+ years our Team Compass software has been the leading solution for this. Read on to learn more about the importance of creating weekly reports and automating your reporting process. You’ll also find a list of some of the best tools you can use for automatic report generation.
Why Reporting Matters
Lots of team leaders and managers are already using status reporting on a regular basis. Some, though, might need a bit of a refresher on why reports matter.
There are lots of benefits that come with regular (ideally weekly) status reporting, including the following:
- Keep track of what everyone on your team is doing
- Provide and receive feedback
- Encourage collaboration
- Monitor progress and highlight what employees are doing well
- Manage and stay in touch with remote teams
- Gain insight into matters that need to be addressed during weekly planning and team meetings
Benefits of Automatic Weekly Reporting
Clearly, there’s a lot that can be gained from regular status reporting. Now, let’s talk about the benefits of automating this process.
As is the case when you automate other tasks, automatic weekly reporting helps you take back some of your valuable time. When you invest in automation, it’s easier to prioritize your tasks, and you’re free to focus on other matters that need your attention and that help you to grow your business.
Automatic reports can provide a higher level of accuracy, too. You can feel confident that important data is getting collected each week, and you’ll be less likely to let things fall through the cracks.
Types of Automatic Reports to Create Each Week
Some team leaders have a hard time keeping track of what they should or shouldn’t be monitoring and reporting. This, in turn, can make it more difficult for them to write effective weekly reports.
If you’re not sure what kind of data to reference in your reports, here are some key factors you might want to start monitoring:
- Employee time usage
- Sales and revenue
- Expenses
- Website traffic
- Social media analytics
- Employee progress
- Weekly activities
Top Tools for Automated Reporting
There are lots of tools you can use to automate the reporting process and help your employees stay motivated, engaged, and on track toward achieving their individual goals (as well as larger company goals). Here are some of the best ones you can start using today:
Weekdone Team Compass
Team Compass is an excellent reporting tool, as well as an employee engagement platform. It allows you to monitor your team’s progress and keep track of how they’re doing each week.
This tool is highly flexible and provides you with clear, easy-to-read reports that will help you track performance, gather and analyze data, and conduct productive weekly reviews with your team. It also allows you to choose when reports are due. It sends out automatic reminders to team members and ensures that everyone has submitted their data on time so it can be included in the final report.
You can also use Weekdone to keep in touch with team members and communicate with them individually or as a group to go over reports, provide feedback and recognition, and address potential issues in a prompt manner.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics also offers robust reporting features for web traffic. It allows team managers and supervisors to collect, present, and compare data with ease. It’s especially useful for digital marketing team leaders who are looking to create reports on the company’s website performance.
You can use Google Analytics to keep track of things like traffic volume, traffic sources, content relevancy, and more. All of this data will come in very handy when it comes to making informed decisions for your team and the business as a whole.
Google Analytics automatic reports can be set up to be sent to daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly.
Salesforce
Salesforce is a cloud-based software company that offers customer relationship management services along with a whole suite of applications for customer service, analytics, marketing automation, and more.
Lots of businesses use salesforce’s reporting features to create weekly status reports for their teams. It boasts a comprehensive analytics program that teams can use to track everything from the ROI of specific marketing campaigns to the effectiveness of their website content.
Level Up Your Reporting Process Today
As you can see, there are lots of reasons why you should prioritize weekly reporting and utilize automatic weekly reports. Keep this information in mind as you move forward so you can track your team’s data and monitor everyone’s progress.
Of all the automatic reporting tools you can use to streamline your workflows and get more done, Team Compass is one of the best to add to your toolkit. Sign up here for a free two-week trial today to see for yourself what Team Compass can do for you and your team.