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Manual reporting is a pain. It takes long hours of repetitive work, evenings, and weekends. No matter how many times the data is checked, and re-checked, something goes wrong. Don’t you hate it when your audience finds a mistake in your numbers? “Human error” can be avoided only by automation or by checks and balances. But automation takes time and costs money. A more frugal method (the one I favor the most) is to provide transparency. Read this article for some interesting background.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/06/academia-edu-raw-data/

The lesson for you, dear reader, is as follows. If you are requesting a report that is generated manually, check and double check the numbers. If you accept the numbers, you are responsible for mistakes. As the above article shows, some very smart people have made mistakes with numbers!

Data and reporting is messy business. In this case, you need to get involved in how the sausage is made. Ultimately, its not about the numbers. Understanding the numbers will help you understand the business. By staring at the numbers, and understanding how they are generated, you will ask meaningful questions, and have meaningful conversations.You will then spend the right amount of time and money on generating the numbers. Just ask the folks from Finance why SOX is “popular” target for automation.

The myth of an antiseptic presentation with clean numbers on a good looking slide, with neat conclusions, and standing applause, is just that. A myth.

If you are an executive, ask for a summary, and recommendations, but dig into the numbers. If you are presenting, don’t take the “digging” as anything other than a good thing.