Reporting vs Analytics – Understanding the Key Differences and Why Both Matter

Reporting vs Analytics, what’s the difference? Reporting gives you a structured view of what has already happened in your business, while analytics digs further to help you understand why it happened and what actions to take next.

According to Deloitte, 67% of businesses struggle to turn data into valuable insights. This is often because they do not utilise both reporting and analytics, or fully understand the difference. When you rely too much on one and ignore the other, you miss the full picture needed for sound decision-making.

This article clears up the difference and shows how using both reporting and analytics leads to better decisions.

Reporting vs Analytics: Side-by-Side Comparison

Both reporting and analytics help you work with data, but they serve different purposes. We compare both of them side-by-side in the table below:

What is Reporting?

Reporting is presenting and summarising historical data in a clear and structured way. It shows what happened in your business by organising numbers and facts into easy-to-read formats such as dashboards, charts, and tables.

You use reporting to track the business’s performance over time. It helps you monitor key metrics like sales, customer growth, profit margins, or any KPIs that matter to your team.

Reporting also plays a key role in compliance, as it ensures that records are accurate and that processes are being followed. For it to be effective, reports need to be accurate, consistent, and shared regularly, i.e. on a weekly or monthly basis.

The image above is an example of a report created by Vidi Corp. It’s an accounting dashboard built in Power BI that displays essential financial metrics, such as sales, cost of goods sold, and gross margin. All compared to the same period last year.

The report breaks down these figures by month and quarter and gives users the ability to filter by date range. That way, stakeholders can zoom in on specific periods and understand how the business is performing at a glance.

This is precisely what reporting is for: to help you understand ‘what’ has happened in your business.

To understand why it happened and what might happen next, you need analytics.

What is Analytics?

Analytics takes reporting to the next level. It’s the process of digging into data to find patterns, test assumptions, and uncover insights that drive better decisions.

Let’s revisit the accounting dashboard example from Vidi Corp.

The report showed a drop in sales compared to the previous year- that alone is reporting.

But analytics helps you drill into the numbers to discover more insights behind them. For instance, analytics enables you to determine if the drop was due to fewer repeat purchases in a specific region or if sales declined immediately after a price change. It connects the dots between events and outcomes.

Analytics uses techniques like trend analysis, statistical modelling, and even machine learning to reveal what’s working, what’s not, and where to focus. You use it to answer forward-looking questions like:

• Why did sales drop? (as seen in the example above)
• Which customers are going to churn?
• What products will perform well next quarter?

Reporting provides a snapshot, while analytics tell you the story and guide you on what to do next. It’s more complicated but also more powerful. It’s how you turn data from something you look at into something you act on.

Similarities Between Reporting and Analytics

While reporting and analytics have distinct roles, they are similar in several ways. They both:

• Require accurate, reliable data to guide decisions and improve business results.
• Use visual tools like charts and dashboards to make data and insights easier to understand.
• Help you track business performance and measure key metrics over time.
• Involve good data management to ensure information is consistent and trustworthy.

Why Both Are Essential for Data-Driven Success

Reporting gives you the facts. Analytics help you understand those facts and determine the next steps. You need both to make decisions that move your business forward.

Take Vidi Corp’s accounting dashboard as an example… one last time.

You can see there was a massive drop in gross margin in Q3 2020. But if all you have is reporting, you stop there.

When you add analytics, you can dig into the numbers, figure out why that drop happened, and make all adjustments needed to ensure a bounce back. Analytics help you figure out if the margin dropped due to increased costs in specific regions or a surge in customer returns. That’s the kind of insight that enables you to fix problems, not just spot them.

As shown above, using reporting and analytics together helps you:

• See the full picture, not just isolated facts about your business.
• Understand what’s driving your results and vice versa.
• Make better, faster decisions based on facts and insights.
• Spot problems early and find the right solutions

You can’t rely on just one. You need both reporting and analytics to make well-grounded, data-driven decisions.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

When working with data, it’s easy to get it wrong, even with the right tools. A few small errors can quietly render your reporting and analytics ineffective for informed decision-making. The most common of these mistakes are:

• Using outdated, messy, or incomplete data. Your reports will be unreliable, and your insights will be weak.
• Tracking too many KPIs. Your dashboard will be cluttered, and you’ll struggle to focus on what matters.
• Ignoring basic design principles like grouping related metrics or keeping visuals clean. Good data becomes hard to use when it’s poorly presented.
• Running reports without clear goals. If you don’t know what you’re measuring or why you’re measuring it, you’re just collecting noise.
• Choosing the wrong chart for the job. For example, pie charts are not great for showing changes over time; line charts will be a better fit.

Vidi Corp provides more details on the reporting and data analytics mistakes to avoid.

Best Practices for Integrating Reporting & Analytics

To get the most out of your data, you need to follow the best practices for reporting and analytics. We’ve outlined some for you:

• Have a clear plan for your reporting and analytics. Know what you want to measure and what you want to decide. You can read more in Vidi Corp’s article about creating a solid data analytics strategy.
• Choose tools that support both reporting and analytics so you can easily switch between overview and insight.
• Keep your data clean and tidy, so reports and analytics deliver accurate results. Good data management is the foundation of everything.
• Use interactive dashboards to drill into the data behind the numbers. This bridges the gap between reporting and analysis.
• Automate as much as you can. Reporting and analytics tools like Power BI can refresh data automatically, helping to avoid errors and save time.

Top Tools for Reporting & Analytics

These tools enable you to create reports and dashboards, as well as explore data to inform your decisions.

Real-World Example:  Case Study

Reporting and analytics are helpful in every business, no matter the industry. At Vidi Corp, we’ve helped over a thousand businesses across finance, healthcare, education, and real estate realise more value from their data through reporting and analytics.

We have a handful of reporting and analytics case studies, but to keep things simple, we’ll dive deep into only two in this article.

Marketing Reporting and Analytics

A global company with over 400,000 employees used to spend 6 hours manually updating their marketing reports. Vidi Corp helped them build a standard reporting and analytics workflow and dashboard that automatically pulls data from Salesforce, LinkedIn Ads, and Webeo multiple times a day, revealing where leads originate, their conversion rates, and the performance of different regions. As a result, the marketing team quickly refines their strategies and easily demonstrates impact to senior management.

Finance Reporting and Analytics

For a UK-based FMCG business, Vidi Corp built an analytics report that combines data from Sage 8 and Sage 200. This report provides real-time insights into key metrics, including sales, costs, profits, and credits, with filters and charts that enable in-depth analysis by product, customer, supplier, and category. This gives the business a comprehensive view of its financial health, allowing it to make informed financial decisions at all times.

Here are examples of how reporting and analytics turn data into clear, actionable insights you can rely on.

Ready to start or improve your reporting and analytics? Contact Vidi Corp Consultancy for expert guidance.

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