The Importance
of Data Representation:
Best Practices in Creating a Usable Report
It’s all about the data. You love the
data. You work hard collecting the
data: metrics, benchmarks, sales
numbers, operation stats, expenses,
etc. At times, you live for the data.
nd now it’s time to share the data. How can you make
A people care as much about your data as you do? How
can you help them understand your report? The
answer is in data representation. The best data in the world
means little if you can’t put that data into a usable report.
A good report doesn’t just show the conclusions you
want it to. The best report is one that
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VISUAL INTEREST: Getting your point across in a report can be as easy as changing the font, applying color or using charts and graphs.
These samples show how you easy it is to improve the impact of your data by using even the most basic chart.
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contains the data you need and facilitates making vital
decisions based upon that data. But what exactly consti-
tutes a usable report? In a nutshell, a usable report con-
tains the following key features: accuracy, completeness,
relevance, visual interest, timeliness, and clarity.
Sure, this sounds basic, but it’s easier said than done.
One of the most important factors in creating a meaningful
report is the level of knowledge and depth of understand-
ing by the report writer. Too often, especially in enterprise
reporting situations, this is not compatible with the skills
needed to actually create the report. In an environment
where the person designing the report is not the expert on
the report data, a template may be inappropriate to the
data. Or the template may force the data to be laid out in a
misleading way. Or it may leave out key pieces of data so
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the conclusion is invalid. Or… the list goes on.
It’s crucial that the report designer use a design tool
that has the ability and flexibility to include necessary
and appropriate data. If the software used to generate
reports is too technical and prevents the involvement of
the report owner in the process, you can end up with an
unusable report.
Accuracy
In addition to the report owner’s involvement, there are
many other keys to designing a usable report. One of the
most important features is accuracy. We all understand that
inaccurate data is useless. You wouldn’t want to rely on a
report that showed sales had increased by 2 percent after an
advertising blitz if the increase really were 20 percent.
How can we ensure the accuracy of the data? One way
is to use a reporting solution where the data flows direct-
ly out of the database into the report. This leaves no room
for error, nor is there a need for interpreting the data. This
direct process ensures a level of security because it takes
humans out of the equation. When you don’t re-key fig-
ures pulled from one place and entered into another, data
is inherently more accurate and dependable.
Windward helps ensure data accuracy in just this way.
When you use Windward to create a report template, you
put placeholders for data into the template. When you run
the report, the correct data is automatically pulled directly
from your database and inserted exactly where you want it.
Completeness
Being able to pull data directly from a database may
safeguard the accuracy of the data, but it doesn’t guaran-
tee that you are receiving all the data you need in order to
form an accurate conclusion. The data must be complete,
and in our digitized world, dealing with machine-read-
able data can be a challenge.
Many reports are the summary of bits of data that
reside in different databases and in different formats,
and bringing them together is essential to the impact of
the reports. For instance, you may be creating reports
that display financial data spanning long time periods.
You may be pulling data from several different types of
databases, and the data may be in a variety of formats.
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Unfortunately, many reporting products do not allow
the inclusion of certain types of data or inclusion from
multiple sources. But getting the data to say what you
need it to say is often a matter of what types of input you
can use, what output you can get, and how you can
make the data look.
Windward is flexible regarding the type of input you
include. Windward allows data to be pulled from various
places, including an infinite number of databases and a
wide range of data types. You can have all the necessary
information included, right in front of you.
Relevancy
Sometimes having a complete data set isn’t what you’re
looking for, however. A report writer needs access to the
complete set of data but must also be able to select only
relevant information. This can be critical because not only
do you need to call upon data that is useful, you need to
be able to exclude sensitive, confidential or otherwise
inappropriate data.
For example, consider an executive who must share a
report as part of a presentation at a professional confer-
ence. The executive needs the ability to show the results of
a certain technique or tactic that the company employed
without sacrificing the privacy of the data. It’s crucial that
the report writer know what key data must be extracted
and included, and at the same time, the report writer
must know what to leave out or risk compromising
security or competitive secrets. A programmer design-
ing the report might know how to pull information from
various databases but not know which specifics are off
limits. Further, some reporting tools do not allow such
pinpointing of data.
Windward facilitates the use of relevant data because it
is designed to be easy to use for the business manager.
Reports are written in Microsoft Word, Excel, or
PowerPoint, so there’s no need to learn a complex new
tool or leave report writing to an overworked program-
ming staffer or database administrator. The people who
are best suited to making the decisions about which data
are included are the same ones who write the reports.
Specific bits of data can be selected, ensuring that only
relevant facts are included.

Visual Interest
When working with data, it’s easy to get caught up in
figuring out how to present words and numbers in a
straightforward, linear manner. Sometimes, however, the
best way to present data is to use visual elements such as
charts, graphs and other eye-catching graphics. While you
don’t want a report that is ornate or busy, you want to be
able to outline key concepts and illustrate trends.
We all see this in our day-to-day lives. Newspaper and
magazine reporters (after all, reporters create "reports")
often use charts and graphs to illustrate information they
otherwise would have difficulty presenting. In a report on
the increased cost of housing, for instance, a chart can
more easily represent the data than a paragraph of num-
bers. In business reporting, the same holds true. It may be
as simple as changing the font of a data point to highlight
it or using different fonts and styles within a report to sep-
arate out sections.
Windward gives report writers the ability to create
reports that are visually intriguing. Because the writer cre-
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Getting any report to say what you need it to say is a matter of
accuracy, relevance, completeness and visual interest. Ultimately,
a flexible reporting tool is the key to achieving a usable report.
In the above examples, you can see how a Windward customer
was able to tailor their report output, in this case invoices, to
meet their needs. Windward’s flexibility allowed the user not only
to select data from multiple data sources but to generate differ-
ent outputs as well. Here they show how they were able to pull
data into PDF for one invoice, but for other situations, needed to
pull the same data into an HTML output. Extreme flexibility
allowed the user to add his own pull down menus and formats
into the HTML invoice format
ates a report in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, the report
writer can do anything Microsoft Office can do. This
includes design functions, fonts, shapes, and other ele-
ments. For instance, you can insert a table into a report,
call upon a graphic, or use different fonts, type sizes and
text enhancements to add visual interest.
Clarity
When designing a report, it’s important that the report
ultimately say what you need it to say or show what you
need it to show. In part, this will depend heavily upon the
accuracy of the data, the completeness of the data, the rel-
evance of the data, and the visual interest.
One of the best ways to create a clear report is to use a
reporting solution that lets you easily put down on paper
what you envision in your head. For many experienced
report writers, the challenge isn’t in designing a clear
report. The challenge is finding the right tool to allow you
to physically create that report.
Based on Microsoft Word, Windward gives the report
writer the ability to create a clearly written report quick-
ly and easily. The report writer can take advantage of all
of Microsoft Word’s flexibility; data is not confined to a
narrow output. You can directly pull data from any
source, and you can choose what data to include. Plus,
because you have the ability to make the report visually
interesting, you can display the in a way that lets the end
user quickly and easily understand the point of the
report. And because Windward allows the final report
output to be PDF, RTF, HTML, WordML, XLS,
spreadsheetML, TXT, or multi-part MIME email mes-
sages format, you’ll be able to share your usable reports
with whomever you like.
set the system to pull a report on certain days and times.
In addition, you can generate an up-to-date report within
seconds.
What’s the bottom line? It’s not enough to "know your
stuff." Great data is useless if you can’t share it, show it, or
have it make your case. Now more than ever, data repre-
sentation is the difference between having an effective
report and having a bunch of useless information. Using
the best reporting tool allows the right person to show rel-
evant facts in an interesting way, and it makes all the dif-
ference in getting a report you can use.
About Windward Studios:
Windward Studios has been in business since 1995.
Based in Boulder, Colorado, Windward was formed in
2003 to develop innovative software products for both
enterprise and individual customers. Windward is the
only comprehensive report generator to use Microsoft
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as a layout tool, thus signif-
icantly reducing the learning curve while saving time and
money for both technical and non-technical users alike.

Timeliness Windward
Picture this: you’ve created an ideal report, with access PMB 115, 637B S. Broadway
to accurate, complete and relevant data displayed in a Boulder, CO 80305
clear format. You run the report and present it to your 303-499-2544
boss. Two weeks later you are summoned to the boss’s
windward.net
office to be praised in person for your stellar report. And
by the way, your boss says, "Could you bring the most
updated report with you along with last week’s report?"
You panic, because while the report you handed in was
accurate at the time, it’s now out-of-date – and your cur-
rent reporting solution doesn’t let you generate reports in
real time or run regularly scheduled reports.
Obviously, a reporting solution is fairly useless if it
doesn’t allow you to retrieve the data you need when you
need it. The best reporting tool is one that allows you to
automate the process of generating reports as well as run
an updated report at a moment’s notice.
Windward can be set to run reports in a predictable and
repeatable manner. Like setting an alarm clock, you can

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