Here are eight steps to transforming your management reporting

Teaser: Accounts tell the story of a company, but numbers don’t make sense to everyone. How can you deliver a compelling story for a multi-disciplinary audience in your management reporting?

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How can you blow up your current management reporting and start over? It may seem like a daunting task, but don’t worry – we’ve got you covered.

The most important thing is not to lose sight of the reason you are making that report in the first place. You are telling your audience a story about the current and possible future state of the business that you are all responsible for running.

Accounts tell the story of the company in a language that we, as FP&A professionals, understand. It’s baked into our DNA to go back to the numbers to determine the state of a business and its prospects for the future.

But the numbers don’t sing to everyone in the same way.? The story has to be delivered in a way that the whole decision-making team, a multi-disciplinary board, can understand and act upon.

How do film and TV producers adapt books to a new medium to reach a mainstream viewing audience? A great example is Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Those who have read the books know that Tolkien wrote in a lot of detail and included plenty of distractions along that winding road to Mordor.

Jackson’s skill was in drawing out the key elements of the storyline and presenting it in a way that a much broader audience could absorb and understand. There are lessons we can learn from this approach that will transform our management reporting.

Eight steps to get you started

1. Start with a storyboard. Yes, the film analogy is front and center. You’re taking your audience on a journey and you want them with you all the way to the data-driven decision-making finale.
2. Outline key messages. Writers work to the beats of a story to keep their audience engaged, and your reporting should be no different. Let the important decision-making factors and key performance indicators stand out.
3. Support with telling visuals. These should enhance the message, illustrating the beats. Keep them clear and simple and aim for maximum impact. The audience needs to understand the key message straight away without a long narrative pointing out the detail.
4. Build your slides. Get the story in the right order to engage the audience and keep their attention.
5. Start with your recommendation. Every good thriller kicks off with a murder or a heist, then the audience is hooked and wants to know how it was done. If they know where the story is going they’ll be more attentive to the detail.
6. Share your main arguments. How did you get to that recommendation? Give the audience those key metrics, the beats of the storyline, with the strong visuals that support them.?
7. End with the next steps. You have the audience in the palm of your hand, and you need to use that to inspire them to action. How does the company move forward to follow your recommendations?
8. Put all the numbers in an appendix. The original data has to be there to support your key messages and recommendations. Making a detailed appendix available gives the audience the chance to dig deeper into the story and builds trust in the messages you deliver.

Give transformation a chance

Want to see a simple example of how it could look in practical steps. Check out my recent post on the topic and download our well-illustrated example.

Does good decision-making warrant this radical new approach? What are your thoughts on adapting your management reporting to engage and inspire your audience, as well as inform?

Will you give this a chance? Are you happy with retaining the status quo? Or are you already planning the next episode of your monthly blockbuster?? Let us know in the comments.

This was the second article in my new series "It's time to fix management reporting". You can read the previous article below.

It's time we fix management reporting once and for all

Don't forget to check out my latest series "Building the FP&A team of the future". You can read all the articles below.

The FP&A team of the future

The key roles you need on your FP&A team

Re-inventing the modern FP&A leader

How to assess if your FP&A team is fit-for-purpose

How to recruit stellar FP&A professionals

How to boost collaboration in your FP&A team

Branding your FP&A team toward the business

Building a diverse FP&A team

Are you ready to build a world-class FP&A team?

Developing the potential of FP&A teams

You can read a lot more articles about FP&A, Business Partnering, and Finance Transformation below. It all start's with “Introducing The Finance Transformation Nine Box”?where you set the ambition for your transformation. You should join the?Finance Business Partner Forum,?which is part of the Business Partnering Institute's online community.

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Anders Liu-Lindberg?is the co-founder and a partner at?Business Partnering Institute?and the owner of the largest?group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering?on LinkedIn with more than 11,000 members. I have ten years of experience as a business partner at the global transport and logistics company?Maersk. I am the co-author of the book “Create Value as a Finance Business Partner” and a?long-time Finance Blogger?on LinkedIn with 140,000+ followers and 220,000+ subscribers to my blog. I am also an advisory board member at?Born Capital?where I help identify and grow the next big thing in?#CFOTech.?Finally, I'm a member of the board of directors at?PACE - Profitability Analytics Center of Excellence?where I support the development of new analytics frameworks that can improve profitability in companies around the world.