What is Ad Hoc Reporting?

Ad hoc is a Latin term which translates as “to this.” However, it’s also understood as “as needed” or “as required.” Ad hoc reporting is when reports are generated on request or created on request. They are usually created for a specific use or to answer a precise question. For example, if a company had a holiday sale and they wanted to see the volume of sales at a specific store, the sales of a certain product, or an overall amount of discount given to customers.

Traditional reporting requires technical specialists to create and distribute reports. There are also ongoing and recurring reports that are created on a schedule, which tend to use the same parameters each time.

The ability to run reports that answer specific business questions allows employees to make empowered, data-driven decisions. From operational questions, such as staffing levels on any given day through to strategic decisions such as products offered—ad hoc reporting offers flexibility, insights, and answers.

What is Ad Hoc Reporting Used For?

Ad hoc reporting is designed to fulfill needs not being met by standard recurrent reporting. Imagine your last work meeting. Were there questions regarding specific teams or branches? Was an employee looking at updating systems to reflect new needs? Did a manager want to assess the performance of an individual? All require ad hoc reporting. For all day-to-day decision making, ad hoc reporting providers users data to drive their decisions. It allows an organization to stay agile, up to date, and highly competitive.

Human Resources Reporting

Organizations collect lots of information: timesheets, benefit information, sick and holiday leave day, performance appraisals, and salary information. HR departments can use ad hoc reporting to identify problems or deficiencies with this plethora of data. This can not only improve employee satisfaction but also can improve business practices. For example, a retailer can assess if they have enough staff for the holiday season.

Imagine an organization notices rates of absenteeism are increasing over an eight month period. The executives cannot pin-point the exact cause, so they run some ad hoc reporting. It shows no pattern to the time off. After running another report (showing workflow and days off alongside each other), they note a correlation between busy periods of work and days taken off. The executives can then address the issue, lowering absentee rates and providing a better workplace for employees.

Benefits of Ad Hoc Reporting

There are huge benefits to ad hoc reporting, resulting in plenty of scope for improvements that organizations can use.

Agility and Proactiveness

By far, the biggest benefit of ad hoc reporting is the positive impact on the organization. If something changes, employees notice disparities, or there is an opportunity to improve processes, ad hoc reporting becomes vital. It gives fast answers to specific issues and questions. The answers to these questions allow an organization to make data-backed decisions that will result in positive outcomes. Once the changes are implemented, reports can be run again to ensure the results are as expected.

Ease of Use

If the right reporting tools are used, anyone with some basic computer experience can run reports. There is no need to submit requests to the IT department or to the data analyst team. It is simply a matter of building the report needed from a series of listed options and pressing the go button. No delays or bottlenecks.

Real-time Reporting

Because there is no waiting around for IT or analyst teams, reporting is completely up to date. This means organizations can make up-to-the-minute decisions that allow agility and proactive problem solving.

Alternatives to Ad Hoc Reporting

Canned Reporting

Static, traditional, or canned reporting is recurring reporting. It is created by IT or analyst teams on a schedule and distributed to the set group of people that require the information. It could be weekly sales data to the branch and managers, quarterly financials to the C-level executives, or annual KPIs to individual employees and their reporting managers.

While these are essential to running an organization and do not replace ad hoc reporting, they have limitations. They require IT or analyst departments to run them, cannot be altered to answer specific queries, do not supply detailed information, and do not provide the ability to drill down.

Excel Reporting

Excel does not produce true ad hoc reporting, as the data is imported, and therefore is not real-time. While pivot tables can be used, alongside charts and graphs, Excel is not “live” data and is also prone to human error. As long as users can edit and change information in the file, it can be inaccurate.

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