Management Reporting Software: ClearPoint Strategy

ClearPoint is the only management reporting software that automates more than 70% of the reporting process for you—so you can focus on strategy.

If you hope to have any chance of accomplishing your organization’s ambitious goals, you need to spend more time executing plans and less time on managing the reporting process. Outdated reporting tools (including Excel) require hundreds of hours for report generation and tend to produce half-baked reports that take even more time to unpack. At best, this approach delays significant business achievements; at worst, it puts them beyond your reach altogether.

ClearPoint Strategy flips the script: You get better reports in less time, increasing your chances of success.

Here’s why using ClearPoint produces better results than traditional reporting tools:

• Your monthly reports virtually update themselves. ClearPoint automatically pulls data from the relevant sources, calculates performance evaluations, and sends automatic update reminders to data owners. The pain of monthly reporting is gone.
• Your leadership team is better prepared. ClearPoint generates highly visual, easy-to-read reports that present the full picture of performance in context. It also automatically distributes reports to attendees in advance of meetings.
• Your employees (and other stakeholders) can always access accurate performance data. ClearPoint automatically updates dashboards and other reports with incoming new data, giving everyone a way to stay on top of performance at all times and identify issues early.

Want to see how ClearPoint could impact your organization’s performance? Take a tour of our software! Fill out our form and we’ll be in touch soon.

Still researching your options for a management reporting system? Keep reading and we’ll explain what management reporting software does in comparison to other types of reporting tools; we’ll also call out some of the top features to look for when purchasing it.

What is management reporting software?

Management reporting software helps you measure your company’s performance and make intelligent, performance-enhancing decisions based on the big picture. In other words, it lets you see how your activities as a business are helping you accomplish your goals and make your vision a reality.

Some organizations try to measure their performance efforts using other tools:

• Office applications like Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. These are usually the tools of choice for entry-level management reporting because they're cost efficient and familiar to most employees. But as your business and your ambitions grow, these tools create more work for users, who tend to have to manipulate the programs to meet their needs for reporting.
• Report generation software like SAP Crystal Reports or JasperReports. These tools allow you to easily create sophisticated, interactive reports that will give you insight into your data sets. However, they can be hard to use and their flexibility tends to be limited, making it difficult to create custom formulas or use anything other than basic chart types.
• Dashboarding and data visualization tools like Qlik, Power BI, and Tableau. These tools allow you to create highly visual reports that quickly convey performance data. While that’s helpful to a point, if your reports don't connect performance information back to your strategic goals, the exercise isn’t particularly insightful.

In our view, management reporting software is the best option. Why? Organizations are inundated with data today; simply having “reporting software” won’t help you improve performance. You need a management reporting tool that is specifically designed to give leadership a more holistic view of the business, helping them actually measure which business actions and strategies are most prosperous, identify weak links, and make proactive, data-based decisions to improve. The other options can generate numbers, but they won’t be able to help you connect the dots that make up the larger picture of performance.

What features are most important in management reporting software?

Any management reporting software worth its salt should support goal-setting, planning, strategic project management, and the tracking and reporting of strategic data. Specific features to look for include:

1) The Ability To Link Objectives, Measures, And Projects To Strategic Goals

One of the reasons ClearPoint stands out as a reporting tool is because it has the unique ability to create reports showing linkages between your projects and your objectives. This gives your organization a dynamic way to see your strategy and all its components. Your audiences will be able to understand how everything “fits together” across the entire organization, perhaps for the first time. You’ll also be able to more easily align your resources—and your budget—with your strategic priorities.

“ClearPoint makes managing our Strategic Plan very easy and tying performance measures and action items to our tactical actions is fantastic.”

—G2 reviewer

2) Automation For Data-gathering And Reporting

No one wants to spend their time inputting data, creating reports, sending emails, or writing up action items, so look for software that can handle these tasks for you. ClearPoint has built-in automation capabilities that dramatically reduce the time you spend on reporting. It is capable of automatically:

• Uploading data from various spreadsheets and databases
• Sending update reminders to relevant employees
• Performing calculations and evaluations on progress
• Building reports for different audiences
• Distributing reports on a predetermined schedule

As a result, you’ll be able to spend more time executing on your strategic initiatives and helping your organization reach its goals.

3) The Ability To Incorporate Quantitative And Qualitative Data

Numbers don’t tell the full story; you need qualitative data to support and explain them. If you can effectively present both types of data as a cohesive narrative, your management reports will become the most valuable tools in your organization.

ClearPoint offers both standard report templates and custom reports that intuitively combine both qualitative and quantitative data, linking and arranging it to present a clear story that focuses attention where it matters most.

4) Report Customization

Most tools force you to conform to a standard way of reporting, but not ClearPoint! You can easily customize management reports by:

• Incorporating logos and personalizing report fonts, colors, borders, and headers to match your organization’s brand and style
• Choosing how and when you want to display information—for instance, you might want to hide a particular data field during a presentation but include it in the PDF version
• Displaying whatever information is important to you, whether that means creating a custom data field or picklist, displaying an image, referencing a chart, and more.
• Designing your own summary report layout, bringing together whatever elements your target audience would like to see

“It's not a ‘one size only’ type of program—ClearPoint Strategy is a ‘your size’ program, providing solutions and tools that fit your immediate needs, but can grow with you as you continue to grow your plan and metrics, with a price point that can fit practically any budget.”

—G2 reviewer

5) Ease Of Use

Software that isn’t easy to use won’t get used—it’s as simple as that. With ClearPoint, you don’t need any technical knowledge to build your dream reports. Simply build a report once and then change it on the fly, whenever you need to. Even the least tech-savvy users find Its drag-and-drop functionality user-friendly.

6) Excellent customer support.

Contact with your vendor shouldn’t end after your initial training; you’ll likely always have questions related to troubleshooting, advanced features, and maybe even about strategy planning. The best vendors are those who consider themselves partners in your strategy efforts, not simply software providers.

At ClearPoint, we’ll do everything we can to not only help your team get up and running with the software, but also to continue to use it effectively as your organization grows. Our customer service gets high marks from users: We have been recognized for a Stevie Award for Customer Service Department of the Year, and the quality of our support is rated 9.7 on G2.

“ClearPoint really goes above and beyond in this respect. It is easy to book appointments with your designated support contact, who will help you learn how to create the system that meets your needs. Ours even checks in with us periodically to see how our major projects are going! This ongoing support truly makes the investment worthwhile for our organization.”

—G2 reviewer

See ClearPoint for yourself.

Once organizations make the switch to ClearPoint, they often wonder how they lived without it! It brings a level of clarity and simplicity to performance reporting that truly sets the stage for making meaningful forward progress. If you’re interested in making that change at your organization, we invite you to see our software in action—no strings attached. Book a time with us today!