What's the best way to present key performance indicators (KPIs)?

People resist change. Some clients will be ready to embrace technology and see all the benefits waiting for them. Some, however, will be stuck in their ways and refuse to budge. While preference is one thing, is there a real winner between PDF reports and live dashboards?

Naturally, there are pros and cons to both ways of working, but why should you have to choose?

Your clients will need to present their data to a variety of different people, and for different reasons. Learn their pain points and introduce them to Futrli’s presentation mode, a sleek way of showing reports onscreen, and for clients which prefer to work on paper, our new printable reports will show a full report or a takeaway snapshot.

Dynamic working: creating an online reporting dashboard

Benefits include:

• Real-time business information for relevant decision making for your organization
• Easy collaboration
• Better understanding of data
• Ability to forecast the future
• Staff working towards the same goals
• Make measuring key performance indicators (KPIs) simple

We caught up with Naren King, owner of the tourist attraction Crystal Castle in Australia a little while back. He works remotely, from a beach in Bali, yet has constant zen about how his business is ticking over.

How? He uses the collaborative functionality Futrli provides to make his organization, both his managers and staff, operate in harmony. Each employee in your client's teams is aware of their personal and team key performance indicators (KPIs) and is responsible for hitting targets.

Struggling to get started?

If you’re struggling to get started, look into Futrli Advisory Certification. Within our in-depth course, you’ll complete 6 modules, and it’s CPD-accredited. You’ll learn how to set up dashboards, master forecasting and more. It’s the best way to get yourself and your team up to speed.

Set up your clients’ data in a real-time dashboard and add alerts to tell you when you should be giving them a call to check in. Not only will clients be impressed with your conscientious attitude, but they’ll also be grateful when you stop them from spending their last few pennies.

Some clients, however, want printed reports to view their figures. It’s a rigid way of working, but sometimes it’s just what people want. It’s super easy to convert your online dashboards to printed PDFs – all you have to do is hit ‘print’.

Physically backed up data: offline reports for your organization (using a key performance indicator (KPI))

Benefits of the process include:

• Some institutions (banks, etc) will only allow this format
• Some people ‘think’ better on paper
• Takeaway information
• Physical data back up
• Collaborate on paper – write as many notes as you need!
• Connect to different ways of working
• Check back on how clients performed from that date
• Little margin for error

With printed reports, you’re traditionally either a) a bit boxed in with what you can do or b) you don’t have the time to pull together so many data sources to present one, easy view of the business.

Futrli’s new printed report builder is designed with this pain in mind: they’re flexible and things like kpis are customizable, yet really fast to prepare. All the data is seamlessly connected to Xero or QuickBooks, so you can analyse and present how the business is performing against its budgets and forecasts.

A lot of accounting is repeating the same tasks and the same process but for each client individually, so to make this easier, you can update and re-run reports with one click – no re-building required. The whole idea behind producing these reports is to save you time and energy. Create your own advisory template, and easily swap it between client accounts for continuity.

Equally, if you want a client to have a monthly or quarterly report for their board meeting – once you have this template, you print and go as the report and data are ready, minus any admin.

So which is better for reporting on business metrics?

We’ve made the case for both online and offline working methods, though the best practice is to use both. Printed reports will be a great reminder for clients as to where they stood at the time and for some, that’s just how they get the job done. Online dashboards will help your clients ' performance measurement. Together, you can diagnose business problems, monitor KPIs and business metrics and so much m.

They allow you and your client to work collaboratively as teams and deep dive into what’s relevant for their performance measurement at the moment. Businesses and business processes are changing daily – so planning for different scenarios, keeping your team on-target with their budgets, etc helps keep you in a strong position and develop your business strategy. If you relied on a monthly or quarterly printed report only, you might find out something (good or bad) when it is too late, having both options ensures you are protected from risk and aware of all opportunities.

You can also white label Futrli to make it your own. This function automatically projects your branding onto the printed PDFs, so there’s no menial work involved, and everything looks polished, professional and on-point with your organization's brand.