Reporting to Somebody Who Liked the Old Reports

The report is a habit, not a document

Somebody who has received the same monthly figures for three years is not reading a report. They are checking a small number of familiar values against their expectations.

Which means the value is in the continuity rather than in the presentation, and a change to the format costs more than it appears to.

Handing them a new layout, with different metrics, in a different order, and one figure conspicuously missing, invites the wrong conversation entirely.

The goal is for the change of underlying tool to be nearly invisible to them, which is achievable and requires a little planning.

Change one thing at a time

The principle, and it applies to reporting as much as to a website.

If you are changing the source of the data, do not simultaneously redesign the report, add new metrics, or reorder the sections.

Keep the format, the headings, the order, and the questions exactly as they were, and change only where the numbers come from.

Then, months later, if the format genuinely needs improving, that is a separate conversation on its own merits.

Two changes at once means any objection to either becomes an objection to both, and a recipient who was comfortable becomes suspicious of the whole thing.

Warn them before, not after

The single most useful thing you can do, and it takes one short message.

Tell them a month in advance that the underlying tool is changing, that the report will look the same, that two or three numbers will shift because they are counted differently, and that you will point those out.

That converts a surprise into an expectation, and somebody who was told a figure would move does not conclude something has gone wrong when it does.

Say what is being replaced and why in one sentence, without technical detail nobody asked for.

And say plainly that the change was not optional, because a recipient who thinks you chose to make their report worse responds differently from one who understands it was a product change.

What they will notice

• Visitor numbers that differ from before.
• Bounce rate being absent entirely.
• Session counts grouped differently.
• Conversions that do not match the old goals.
• A break in the trend where the source changed.

The last is the one that produces the most difficult question, because a chart with a discontinuity in it looks like an error to anybody who was not told.

Mark the change on the chart

The presentational fix for that, and it is simple.

Where a trend chart spans the transition, draw a line at the point the source changed and label it.

That converts an unexplained step into a documented one, and it prevents the same question being asked every month for a year.

Where possible, avoid presenting a single continuous line across the boundary at all, and show the two periods as separate series.

Add one sentence beneath saying that figures before and after the marked date come from different systems and are not directly comparable.

That sentence should stay on the report for at least a year, since somebody will look back at it long after everybody has forgotten.

A worked example

An agency changed the source of a client's monthly report and redesigned it at the same time, on the reasonable basis that they were in there anyway.

The client's first response was that the traffic had fallen, which it had not, and their second was that the report no longer showed the one metric the marketing manager quoted internally.

Two months were spent explaining the change rather than discussing the results.

On the next account they did it differently: a short message a month ahead, the same format retained exactly, a labelled line at the transition, and a note listing the three figures that would move and why.

That client asked one question, which was answered by the note, and the subject did not come up again.

The work involved was about twenty minutes of preparation.

Replace the missing metric with something

Because removing a familiar figure and leaving a gap is what draws attention to it.

Where somebody relied on a metric that no longer exists, put its nearest equivalent in the same position, with a short label explaining what it is.

If nothing is equivalent, put something genuinely more useful there instead and say so.

The worst option is a report that is visibly one item shorter, which reads as a reduction in service regardless of the reason.

This is also a reasonable opportunity to swap a metric nobody could act on for one they can, provided you say what you have done rather than doing it quietly.

Say what has not changed

A small reassurance that carries weight.

The tracking is still on every page. The enquiry count still comes from the same place. The questions the report answers are the same questions.

Naming the continuity explicitly is more reassuring than it sounds, because in the absence of that statement people assume everything is uncertain.

It also gives them something concrete to hold on to while the unfamiliar parts settle.

One short paragraph at the top of the first report, removed after two or three months.

The counter-case

Preserving the old format indefinitely has its own cost.

Some old reports were poor, built around metrics that never informed a decision, and reproducing them faithfully in a new system is effort spent maintaining a bad habit.

There is also a point at which protecting somebody from change becomes patronising, and plenty of recipients would rather be shown something better and told why.

The argument here is about sequencing rather than about never improving: change the source first, let it settle, then propose the improvement as its own conversation.

Doing both at once is what turns a routine change into a difficult month.

The preparation

1. Send a short note a month ahead.
2. Keep the format identical.
3. Change only the source.
4. List the two or three figures that will move.
5. Mark the transition on any trend chart.
6. Fill the gap left by any missing metric.
7. Say what has not changed.

Step one costs five minutes and prevents most of what goes wrong, since a figure that moves after a warning is expected and the same figure without one looks like a mistake.

Reading a supplier's report critically is covered in reading a report from an agency.

Frequently asked questions

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