How to make reporting more meaningful in records.

Stop making it about records.

Records are an artefact of a thing, they're not the thing.

It's the thing that's important.

The kinds of reports we usually generate in records won't win a single person to your side - they’re about records, and not the thing.

The kind of reporting people are dying for tells them how they're doing at their jobs, and helps them manage the things they need to do to be effective.

People who don't have a system to do this for them will do almost anything to get it - if only to reduce their anxiety that they’ve forgotten something.

If the only questions your records system can answer is how many records were created, your reporting is going to be ignored.

If your reporting can answer questions that are of real impact for the people who use your service, your reporting will be in demand.

Real questions are things like -

- How many times have we run this process in the last year, and what is the trend for the last 5 years.

- How many instances of this process do we currently have active in our business unit, and who is working on them?

Those reports will be consumed, and hungered for by everyone.

When the regular email with the report doesn't arrive, people will hound you for it - because suddenly your work will be critical to the quality of theirs.