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Ad hoc reporting

What is ad hoc reporting?

Ad hoc reporting is a process of creating single-time-use reports as and when needed, based on request. The term ad hoc is derived from Latin, which means "for this specific purpose". An ad hoc report can be used to analyze data and derive insights.

For example, say you lead the customer support team for your organization. You have regularly been tracking all the relevant metrics to assist your customers. At one point, you start noticing that there's one particular query you have received quite a lot lately.

That's when ad hoc reporting comes into the picture.

You then start analyzing the number of queries received for the same issue, the types of customers who faced the same issue, and some more related information. Based on the collected data, you can create a report, analyze it to identify any patterns and trends, and derive actionable insights, that is, the solution to the problem. It could be a minor update in the product or adding a help article.

What are the benefits of ad hoc reporting?

Organizations that include ad hoc reporting in decision-making can get many benefits.

• Offers flexibility: For ad hoc reporting, leaders and executives can combine any required data, choose appropriate visualizations that help identify trends and patterns, and derive insights. Ad hoc reports offer complete flexibility to make the right decisions at the right time.
• Quick data to insights: The key purpose of data analytics is to derive insights from any volume of data quickly. With ad hoc reports and data visualization, organizations can reduce the time to derive insights from data, and plan strategies to reach a target, or overcome an issue, problem, or bottleneck.
• Easy decision-making: Decision-making is hard. But data-driven organizations can handle this hurdle. For every strategy and every problem you encounter, you can use the relevant data available, visualize and analyze it, and start making data-driven decisions.
• Less reliability on analyst teams: Modern self-service business intelligence (BI) software has changed the way of data analysis. With BI software, anyone can derive insights from the data without relying on analyst teams, which helps in ad hoc reporting as non-technical employees can make decisions by creating their reports and extracting insights.
• Encourage every department to utilize data: When ad hoc reporting is used in one department and they get the intended results, it will also inspire other departments to leverage data available at their disposal and become data-driven, thereby creating a data-driven culture across the organization.

Although ad hoc reporting offers multiple benefits, it is always better to create ad hoc reports only when it's necessary. If the reports are not managed properly, then you'll end up with a huge volume of one-time use reports.

Examples and use cases of ad hoc reporting

There is no one-size-fits-all example or use case for ad hoc reporting that businesses can use, as ad hoc reports are created only when a particular situation arises. However, to get acquainted with ad hoc reporting, below are some examples and use cases.

A classic example

You might have come across the classic story from Ford, where one of their customers had one crazy issue. He complained that every time he bought a vanilla ice cream, his car wouldn't start. But if he buys any other flavor, there's no problem with his car.

Ford started collecting data from the customer. Then, they sent an engineer to the spot and collected data. After collecting data, they analyzed it. Finally, they identified that the time taken to buy a vanilla ice cream was less than others as the store kept vanilla ice creams near the cash counter.

Because it took less time to buy vanilla ice creams, the car didn't have enough time to cool down, which caused a vapor lock. This ad hoc analysis was done to solve one particular customer's problem. Likewise, ad hoc reporting can be implemented to solve a specific problem.

Sales Ad hoc reports example

Here's an example scenario that requires ad hoc reporting.

Say you're the director of sales at a manufacturing company and want to know the products that drive the most sales and the company's regional territories. So, you request your team to provide an ad hoc report that shows the sales data for each product in each region, along with any significant trends or changes over the past month.

With this ad hoc report, you can identify which products are in high demand in each region so that you can make informed decisions about inventory management and sales strategy.

Marketing Ad hoc reports example

Let's imagine you're the head of marketing at an e-commerce company and planning a major email campaign for the upcoming holiday season. To do that, you need to know which products were most popular during the holiday season last two years so that you can select the products and messaging for this year's campaign.

So, you request your team to prepare an ad hoc report that shows the sales and revenue data for all products sold during the holiday season last two years, broken down by product category and customer segment.

This ad hoc report will help you extract insights into product selection for your email campaign.

Finance Ad hoc reports example

Let's assume you're the CFO of a company, and you need to review the financial performance of a new product line that was launched three months ago. So, you request the finance team to create an ad hoc report showing the revenue and expenses associated with the product line, and any significant trends or patterns over the past three months.

With this ad hoc report, you can evaluate the profit of the new product line and make decisions about its future, like increasing or decreasing the marketing spend of select campaigns.

Challenges in ad hoc reporting

While ad hoc reports offer various benefits, there are still some challenges, and organizations that implement ad hoc reporting will need to know these challenges and overcome them.

1. Incomplete data: When preparing an ad hoc report, you should ensure that all the required data for analysis has been included. For an ad hoc report, you might need to import data from multiple sources, and if even one data source is missed, the insights you'll derive will not be meaningful.
2. Lack of training: Most BI tools in the market require training to start the analytics journey. If you need help with using a BI tool, or are unaware of all the features available, then there will be some limitations on the insights derived. You can use truly self-service BI software such as Zoho Analytics to overcome this challenge.
3. Data availability: Even if you know what data you need to create ad hoc reports, you will have some limitations to accessing them, or the required data won't be available. In addition, the data should be the same across the organization.
4. Lack of data governance: Although ad hoc reporting democratizes data and inspires everyone in the organization to be data-driven, everyone might not be aware of data handling best practices. When you want to build a data-driven culture, you should educate them on the necessary aspects of data analysis.

Ad hoc reporting best practices

Below are a few tips that help you create better ad hoc reports and extract actionable insights.

1. Understand the question you want to answer: Before starting to create an ad hoc report, you will need to understand the question clearly. First, ensure there are no other reports already in place that will answer that question. Then, identify the required data to create the ad hoc report.
2. Keep it simple: A BI software like Zoho Analytics may offer more than 50 visualization types; however, you are not required to use all the visualizations for your ad hoc reporting. You can use only the appropriate visualizations for your reports. If you need help choosing the right visualization type, you can refer to our chart picker guide.
3. Keep relevant metrics easily accessible: Your audience should not spend more time analyzing the ad hoc reports. Keep key metrics at the top, so your audience can get insights faster. Also, the colors you choose shouldn't overpower, mislead, or confuse them.
4. Maintain consistency: Keep the fonts used, colors, names, and abbreviations consistent across the ad hoc reports so that your audience can spend less time analyzing the reports and more time providing inputs.

Implementing ad hoc reporting in the organization

The process of implementing ad hoc reporting takes time and effort, but once implemented, you can reap numerous benefits. Here's how you can implement ad hoc reporting in your organization.

Make data accessible

To inculcate a data-driven culture in your organization, every team needs access to the required data. Keep your data in a common location, set access permissions based on roles, and ensure everyone has access to the necessary information.

Provide data governance training

Educate on data governance best practices to handle the data securely and responsibly. Train others on how to use data better and extract insights easily.

Have Zoho Analytics in place

When you choose the right ad hoc reporting tool, half the job is done. Here are some key features you should expect while choosing an ad hoc reporting tool.

• Easy integration with multiple data sources: Your organization might regularly use different business apps and databases. The tool you choose should offer easy integration options and regular sync capabilities.
• Truly self-service: As ad hoc reporting is used by almost everyone in the organization, the tool should be easy to use, and the learning curve needs to be simple.
• Data visualization options: The more flexible the number of visualization options, the better insights your team can derive. So, choosing an ad hoc reporting tool that offers multiple visualization options is vital.
• Augmented analytics capability: Modern self-service tools are built with advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to augment analytics. You can pick the tool that helps users along the analysis journey and provides automated insights.
• Scalable: In recent times, many organizations handle a massive volume of data, and the volume keeps increasing as the organization grows. With the right tool, you should always be reassured about the data volume, no matter how big your data volume becomes.

Zoho Analytics offers all the features mentioned above and a lot more.

With Zoho Analytics, you can

• import and blend data from 250+ data sources
• create reports and dashboards with 50+ visualization options
• leverage AI, ML, and NLP to get automated and conversational insights

The best part, it's completely scalable, and it takes little time to get started and complete the setup.

Sign up with Zoho Analytics for free, start creating reports whenever necessary, derive key insights, and make better decisions.