Been pulling tons of data for our monthly reports but feels like leadership just nods and moves on.
How do you structure analytics to actually get people to make decisions instead of just saying “interesting insights”?
Make it about money they’re losing every week.
Start every report with three specific actions they can take right now based on the data.
I learned this running ad campaigns. Numbers are useless unless they change what you do next. Put actions at the top before any charts or explanations.
Tie each action directly to revenue or costs so leadership sees the business impact immediately.
Compare your numbers to last month and show what’s different. People notice when things go downhill.
Stop showing them everything. Pick your three worst areas and focus there.
I used to send 15-slide decks with every metric we tracked. Nothing got done because it was information overload.
Now I send one page: biggest problem, what it’s costing us, and exactly what needs fixing by when. Way more actually gets done.
Always include who owns each action. Vague recommendations just die in meetings.
Put deadlines on every recommendation. Saying “we should improve conversion rates” gets you nowhere. Say “cut checkout abandonment by 15% before month end” and suddenly everyone cares about timelines. I throw a follow-up date into every report - “checking back on this in two weeks.” Makes people accountable and shows you’re actually tracking if they used your data.