How Automated Reporting can change the Quality of Your Project Management

I’m sure you have been in a situation where you are asked for a report on the week’s work right there and then, and you end up in a frenzy of searching through countless spreadsheets and emails trying to gather together all the information you need to make those reports happen.

According to the Project Management Institute, 80% of high-performing projects use automated reporting, and for good reason. The word “automated” connotes ease, especially when it is placed next to something that usually means you have to stress yourself out to get done.

Imagine the burden of creating reports for the week being taken off your hands and by extension, the nagging feeling you get in your head because you are dreading the work it entails. The way the automated reports feature skyrockets your productivity, and completely changes the quality of your project management should not be underestimated.

In this article, I will be diving into automated reports and the good tidings they bring to your project management game.

What does the automated reports feature mean on a project management tool?

According to a study Wrike carried out, 75% of project managers admitted that automated reporting saves them at least an hour of work per week. That is a lot in the grand scheme of things—heck, in the small scheme it is huge.

What the automated reports feature does is let you compute reports for the week, month, or year with little effort from your already understandably tired-out brain after the week’s work, whatever the case may be. This feature computes these reports by automatically collating and analyzing data that you have entered into project management software previously, and then presenting those results in a visual format for your perusal, usually in the form of charts or graphs.

These reports can contain information like the project’s progress, and how productive the team was for the specific period of time measured, and so on.

What is the goal of automated reporting?

The goal here is to provide useful information to the stakeholders of a project without the need for manual data collection or analysis and in a timely manner.

For example, on Drogo, all you need to have done to get a detailed report is to have fed in relevant data where it was needed. Take, for example, the goals for the week are; a thousand website visits, 10,000 impressions on social media, and getting 400 people to attend a webinar that was set up.

By the end of the week, you would have recorded the relevant numbers, and at that minute, the automated reports feature would have collated all this information you entered into the project management software and created a report for the week for you. It is that simple.

When all reports are created, relevant stakeholders like team members, clients, and management are alerted and this information is easily shared with them and deliberated on by the relevant parties. It’s a neat feature if you ask me.

So once again, the goal here is to keep the stakeholders of a project informed and help them make better decisions to achieve their goals.

See also: 5 ways project management tools can help you prioritize effective communication

5 things the automated reporting feature does for the quality of your project management

1. It reduces the risk of human error

Let me paint you a picture: it’s Friday afternoon, it’s almost time to review how the week went, you have droopy eyes already and you’re clocking out soon because it’s a half day. Those droopy eyes are what you use to take a look at the information you have earlier recorded somewhere. It might be information you previously entered into your project management software, and other spreadsheets, along with the lot of information you have shared via email. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?

You would then have to take out the figures you need to create a whole presentation, represent them in a graph or chart, and draw meaningful conclusions from your calculations.

Automated reporting eliminates the need for a manual collation of data which, by extension, takes away the predisposition to human error. By using the automated reports feature, you are reducing the risk of errors by a lot and ensuring your project data is accurate.

2. It provides accurate and timely information

With automated reports, you don’t have to worry about waiting for a detailed report by the end of the week. As you feed in the few figures you need into your project management tool per day, it automatically collates those figures or observations and forms a report that will be ready when you’re ready to check them out.

For example, on Drogo, if you enter how many social media impressions you measured for that day, and you’ve been doing that since the beginning of the week, as you go, you will be continuously greeted by a graph detailing how close you are to achieving your goal of say, 40,000 impressions by the end of the month.

3. It saves your time and effort

I earlier talked about how the word “automated” connotes ease, and that is evident in the way automated reporting saves your time and directs your effort to where it is needed.

Instead of spending your time worrying about repeatedly entering data you have recorded into another sheet and/or presentation, and doing calculations to figure out where you are when it comes to your goals, you spend the time more productively, getting the actual work done. Your time and your effort are in the right places, and if that doesn’t change the quality of your project management, I don’t know what will.

4. It provides relevant insights and trends

Using automated reporting makes it easier for you to notice certain patterns your work is taking which will lead you to take informed decisions on what you should do more of or less of in your project implementation.

5. It enables effective communication

Communication is the oil that keeps teams going. In a study by the Project Management Institute, they found that effective communication can improve success rates by a whopping 80%. That reason in itself is why you should prioritize finding a comprehensive tool for your project management.

Automated reporting makes it easier to share valuable information with the different stakeholders in a project—team members and clients alike. You then have a smoother information-sharing and decision-making process.

Wrapping up

Automated reports can transform your project management process in so many necessary ways. It reduces the possibility of human error, polishes your information and makes it more valuable, gives you enough time to focus on other things in your purview and actually get work done, and most of all, helps you make informed decisions.

If all this does not change the quality of your project management, I don’t know what else will.

Drogo puts its users’ welfare at the forefront of all its updates, and the process of adding the automated reporting feature was no different. Go ahead, and let us know if you’d like to get a taste of quality project management.