The future of management reporting

Establishing an insightful Management Reporting is a core topic for CFOs. Providing the right information at the right time in a quality-assured way is essential, but needs to be complemented by both state-of-the-art enabling technologies to support managers new working style and an effective integration into companies’ decision-making processes.

Three trends with fundamental impact on reporting and decision-making

The Selection dilemma
In an information-enabled society, more and more data is available. Combined with a shifting content focus from physical assets to intangibles such as customer insights or human capital as the main source of value creation, reporting needs to find the most relevant information nuggets in the data jungle.

A new way of managing
Managers act in a dynamic environment and increasingly expect access to up-to-date information anywhere and whenever needed. Combined with their growing digital affinity and new technological developments such as enhanced human-machine interaction in form of robotics and AI, managers’ working style evolves – and reporting has to keep up with it.

Evolving organizations
Organizational boundaries resolve and are replaced by flexible teams and communities, ultimately leading to virtual network structures. Companies are experiencing a shift in accountability and decision-power to lower, decentralized units. These developments increase the need for transparency, effective collaboration and joint decision-making processes.

These trends will significantly shape the management reporting of the future. To make them more tangible, Deloitte has developed 10 more specific theses to discuss the impact on your management reporting: 

Starting points for your future management reporting

Find the right information nuggets
Reporting needs to provide decision-makers with individually relevant, preselected information at the right time and in an intuitive format.

Adapt reporting to new working styles
Reporting needs to adapt to managers’ changing needs by embracing new technologies and new features to offer a more intuitive and efficient work support that accelerates decision-making.

Adjust company’s decision-making
Decision-making processes need to adjust to new organizational accountabilities and establish a performance culture with effective collaboration ensuring that appropriate actions are taken.