Reporting and Dashboards Best Practices

Salesforce.com

Best Practice
Business Driver Best Practice Overview Additional Information
Salesforce Editions Alternative Options Skill Level Required Prerequisites Links and References

Business Driver
All organizations buy a CRM tool to derive clear quantitative metrics on their business. Good Reporting and Dashboards help organisations to present data stored within the CRM solution in a manor that allows executives to manage from the system and end users to use their data in a meaningful and productive manor.

Best Practice Overview

This best practice is divided into two components being reporting and dashboards. This best practice is aimed at both new users and then expands on the base line to cover more advanced techniques.

Reporting and Dashboards Best Practice

Would You Drive at Night Without Headlights?

Understand how Reports and Dashboards can help you monitor business goals & performance Understand how Dashboards can be used to motivate and promote success Walk away with specific deployment tips and tricks

Overview - What Can You Report On?

The information you see in reports is only the data to which you have access, including
Records you own, Records to which you have read or read/write access, Records that have been shared with you, Records owned by or shared with users in roles below you in the hierarchy, Records for which you have "read" permissions In addition, you can view only those fields that are visible to you

In general, if you can see it, you can report on it.

Where to start?
Out-of-the-Box Reports - Standard reports across all objects that should be the basis for your custom reports
Account and Contact Reports Opportunity Reports Sales Reports

Lead Reports
Support Reports Campaign Reports Administrative Reports Activity Reports Product and Asset Reports

Custom Report Wizard 6 easy steps

Predefined reports

Reports Types and Uses

Tabular
Tabular reports are the simplest and fastest way to list your data. Quick Lists w/out summarization.

Summary
Summary reports list your data with subtotals and other summary information. Avg Sales per Rep, Total $ Opptys

Matrix
Matrix reports list summaries of your data in a grid against both horizontal and vertical criteria. Sales per Rep per FY by FQ.

ReportsCreating Custom Reports

1. Select data source 2. Select report type

Predefined Relationships between objects

3. Select columns to summarize and define custom formulas

4. Select Grouping

Record Counts, Avg., Highs/Lows

FY and then by FQ Acct and then sub-acct Sales Manager and then Rep

ReportsCreating Custom Reports

5. Select fields (columns) to include 6. Order the fields (columns)

7. Set filter criteria

8. Create chart

and = Default filter. Use advanced filters link and () to create or filters

Reporting Usage Tips

Role Hierarchies Run time customisations

Hide Details

Hide Details

Reporting Advanced Options

Advanced Filtering Charting and Graphs

Conditional Highlighting

Opportunity Trends

Exporting and Printing

Use Printable View to preserve sections and formatting
Display the report in a print-ready format in Excel

Use Export to Excel to export directly to an Excel spreadsheet

File format: either .xls or .csv Export up to 256 columns and 65,536 rows of data in one report.

Reports - Best Practices

Canned reports (most commonly used, starting point for customizing)
Train users to understand the difference between SAVE and SAVE AS

Create/manage report folders and access

Develop folder & report naming conventions
Regional Sales Report Folder
SE Pipeline, US Marketing, EMEA Lead Gen, etc.

Save your reports as your browser Favorites Review Tips and Hints for Custom Reports and Maximizing Report Performance cheat sheet

Reporting Tips
If you are thinking a report may end up on a dashboard, always select Summary or Matrix report Archive old reports run Report on Reports Office Edition Run reports from Excel Leads & Contact reports Add to Campaign Avoid Custom Dates, use generic ranges, such as last 30 days, Current FY

Turn the lights on with Dashboards!

Why Dashboards?
Allows users to consume large amounts of information in a simple, graphical view Enables management to monitor key performance indicators company-wide Enables users to standardize on one common languageone version of the truth Great for driving specific behavior Critical for driving executive support for salesforce.com

Dashboard Basics
Based on custom reports 20 elements per dashboard Click to drill into underlying report Can be refreshed anytime Results based on Running User Data has to be there to report on it. Field created, info entered. Reports only as good as the data they are based on.

The Components
1. Chart
Pie, Line, Vertical or Horizontal
ex. Stacked or Side by Side

2.

Table
Sort by label or value with max values displayed

ex. Leaderboard/Top Reps

3.

Metric
Stackable with colors

ex. Compare multiple reports

4.

Gauge
Custom breakpoints and colors ex. Quota or Goal attainment

Common Metrics
Sales Metrics Number of prospects Number of new customers and total revenue Number of existing customers and total revenue Top 10 open opportunities Revenue target for quarter or year Top Accounts Pipeline by Stage Pipeline by Owner Exceptions - (i.e.Open Opportunities despite a past close date) Bookings trends month to month Average age of closed opportunities by Sales Rep Opportunities by lead source Marketing Metrics Number of executed campaigns Number of responses by campaign Number of opportunities won by campaign Revenue generated by campaign ROI by Campaign # of Respondents per campaign Number of new customers acquired by campaign Number of new leads by campaign Number of leads by lead source

Customer Support Metrics

Number of Cases closed same day Number of Cases open/closed by agent Average number of case by type Average time to resolution Top solutions created by rep op solutions as rated in knowledge base Percentage compliance with service-level agreement Percentage of service renewals Case time open-to-resolution

Dashboards - Where Do I Begin?

Survey management and your top users

determine the most effective use of dashboards

Executive Level - Start at the Top!

- what information does your CEO, VP Sales, VP Marketing, VP Support, etc. need to effectively run the business? What behaviour do they want to drive?

Work with your salesforce.com users

what information do they need that would make their everyday lives easier? Prospecting information? Lead age information?

HINT: Use the application to view usage such as login usage

you can target these users for your focus group

Map the end-results analysis to the application Can the current configuration support the analysis needs?
- you may need to reconfigure salesforce/ add custom fields

Designing for Successful Analysis

Work backwards - (re)configure salesforce.com to match the reporting needs

Create new custom fields, make certain fields required on page layouts to drive consistency
Calculated fields can help with a great deal of reporting needs Use reports and dashboards to help drive data consistency as part of the data cleanup process Example: create a dashboard that lists All Accounts without Industry

The Mechanics of Reports/Dashboards

Updated Real-Time

Dashboards Graphical depiction Up to 20 elements per page Reports Sort and organize Segment and summarize Records Track individual records Create associations between records Search across all records
Click to Drill-Down

Dashboard - Best Practices

Setting Up
Identify users who will have Manage Dashboards permission User folders to organise dashboards and control visibility (security) Ensure that underlying reports are accessible to the run time user Always use graph in underlying report Side-by-side dashboard components for comparison views

Use Report Headings for columns, Title Headings for components

Deploying
Develop reports and dashboards in personal folders, save to public folders when ready Leverage reports that use My Team filters Clone dashboards and change the run time user

Create dashboards for others or temporarily grant required permissions

Dashboard - Best Practices

Using
Right-click on an individual dashboard graphic to send as an attachment Email picture

Add your dashboard to the home page show top three elements
Compliance checks Review refresh date Manage from the application for improved adoption
Pipeline Review Calls Board Presentations Departmental Reviews Individual Performance Reviews (One on Ones)

Use reports and dashboards to help drive data consistency as part of the data cleanup process/ to enforce data quality
Example: Create an exception dashboard that lists All Accounts without Industry

Leverage the AppExchange

Dashboards 2 Dimensions

Create two horizontal bar charts and put side-by-side

Dashboards Year on Year

Create formula for month/quarter label Create formula Current year amount Create formula Previous year amount

Create Summary report formula - percentage

http://blogs.salesforce.com/blogs/2005/09/year_over_year_.html

Substitute URL for Drill to Report in Dashboards

1
Allow users to control the drill-to location The creator of the dashboard can drill to another dashboard, a report (possibly passing parameters), a detail page, an s-control, or another system using a web interface

Allow a user to select whether to use the standard drill-down location or a user entered one
Users can create custom workflows linking dashboards or directing users to any web page

Since Winter 07 - Analytics Capabilities

1 2 3
S-Controls as a dashboard components
Allows inline integration with 3rd party and custom components. Deliver visually stunning, interactive dashboards.

Drill through to URL

Build guided analysis into dashboards allowing users to move easily from one dashboard to another in a logical fashion.

Read-only report user

Restrict users from performing ad hoc analysis and report creation. Provides system administrators with greater control over user functionality.

https://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/detail_overview.jsp?id=a03300000033IPOAA2 Report in Dashboard HTML code

Analytics Mash-ups
Insert any application component into a dashboard

Any Analytic Component

Interactive Controls

On Demand Spreadsheets

Success in the AppExchange Analytics Category

Choice of best-in-class analytics applications

AppExchange Analytics Category

Current AppExchange partners

Products in development for Winter 07

Dashboard - Best Practices

Setting Up
Identify users who will have Manage Dashboards permission User folders to organize dashboards and control visibility (security) Ensure that underlying reports are accessible to the run time user Always use graph in underlying report Side-by-side components for comparison views

Use Report Headings for columns, Title Headings for components

Deploying
Develop reports and dashboards in personal folders, save to public folders when ready Leverage reports that use My Team filters Clone dashboards and change the run time user Create dashboards for others or temporarily grant required permissions

Dashboard - Best Practices

Using
Right-click on an individual dashboard graphic to send as an attachment Email picture Add your dashboard to the home page show top three elements

Compliance checks Review refresh date

Manage from the application for improved adoption
Pipeline Review Calls

Board Presentations
Departmental Reviews Individual Performance Reviews (One on Ones)

Useful Links
Reporting Fundamentals - 30 minutes
http://www.salesforce.com/au/services-training/educationservices/online-training/adm-120.jsp

Dashboard Mechanics - 20 minutes

http://www.salesforce.com/au/services-training/educationservices/online-training/adm-125.jsp

Successforce.com
Search Reporting or Dashboards Analytics Blog - http://blogs.salesforce.com/analytics/

AppExchange
Category Analytics http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/category_list.jsp?NavCode__ c=a0130000006P6IoAAK-1

Additional Information

Salesforce Editions
Salesforce Editions
Group, PE, EE & UE (Some items such as sControls examples shown are only available in EE & UE)

Alternative Options
Please check out the AppExchange (www.appexchange.com) under the Anlaytics category. There are several alternative offerings to salesforce.coms reporting and dashboards. There are also a number of prebuilt dashboards available.

Skill Level Required

The person setting up reports and/or dashboards should have a good understanding of the which objects data is being input to and the relationships of those objects with each other.

Reports can be created by end users. Dashboards are generally best created by the system administrator.