Management Reporting Software: ClearPoint Strategy

Most reporting projects have an ownership-and-time problem, not a data problem. When reporting depends on people remembering to log in, the report is always late and incomplete. ClearPoint shows which metric owners haven’t updated their numbers yet. It also automates more than 70% of the reporting process, and organizations that lean on it auto-generate roughly 4.5× more reports than those still assembling them by hand. Management reporting software earns its keep by removing the manual step that quietly kills accountability.

The buying question is which tool connects every measure and project back to a strategic goal and keeps it current without heroics, not which tool makes a dashboard. This guide compares management reporting software with spreadsheets, report builders, and BI dashboards, and covers the six features that set a management reporting platform apart.

To reach your organization’s ambitious goals, you need to spend more time executing plans and less time managing the reporting process. With spreadsheet-based tools (including Excel), staff gather data and build each report by hand. ClearPoint Strategy gives you better reports in less time, so you have a better chance 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, so everyone can follow performance and spot issues early.

To see how ClearPoint could affect your organization’s performance, take a tour of our software. Fill out our form and we’ll be in touch soon. If you are still comparing management reporting systems, read on.

What is management reporting software?

Management reporting software helps you measure your company’s performance and make better decisions based on the big picture. It shows how your business activities help you reach 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. They are the usual choice for entry-level management reporting because they're cost efficient and familiar to most employees. As your business and ambitions grow, they create more work, because users have to bend the programs to fit their reporting needs.
• Report generation software like SAP Crystal Reports or JasperReports. These tools create sophisticated, interactive reports that give you insight into your data sets. But they can be hard to use, and their limited flexibility makes it difficult to create custom formulas or use anything beyond basic chart types.
• Dashboarding and data visualization tools like Qlik, Power BI, and Tableau. These tools create highly visual reports that convey performance data quickly. That helps to a point. If your reports don't connect performance back to your strategic goals, they don’t tell you much.

In our view, management reporting software is the best option. Organizations are flooded with data, and “reporting software” alone won’t improve performance. You need a management reporting tool designed to give leadership a full view of the business. It should show which actions and strategies pay off, expose weak links, and support proactive, data-based decisions. The other options can generate numbers, but they won’t connect the dots into 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

ClearPoint creates reports showing linkages between your projects and your objectives. They show your strategy and all its components. Your audiences can see how everything “fits together” across the organization, perhaps for the first time. You can also align your resources and your budget with your strategic priorities more easily.

“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 time entering data, creating reports, sending emails, or writing up action items. Look for software that handles these tasks for you. ClearPoint has built-in automation that sharply cuts the time you spend on reporting. It automatically handles:

• 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

That leaves more time to execute your strategic initiatives and help 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 present both types of data as one narrative, your management reports will become the most valuable tools in your organization.

ClearPoint offers standard report templates and custom reports that combine qualitative and quantitative data. They link and arrange it into a clear story that focuses attention where it matters most.

4) Report Customization

Most tools force you into a standard way of reporting. ClearPoint doesn’t. You can 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 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. With ClearPoint, you don’t need technical knowledge to build the reports you want. Build a report once, then change it whenever you need to. Even the least tech-savvy users find its drag-and-drop functionality easy to use.

6) Excellent customer support.

Contact with your vendor shouldn’t end after your initial training. You’ll likely have questions about troubleshooting, advanced features, and maybe strategy planning. The best vendors act as partners in your strategy work, not only as software providers.

At ClearPoint, we help your team get up and running with the software, and we keep helping you use it well as your organization grows. Users give our customer service high marks. 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 switch to ClearPoint, they often wonder how they lived without it. It brings clarity and simplicity to performance reporting, which sets the stage for real progress. If you want to make that change at your organization, see our software in action, no strings attached. Book a time with us today!