Reports can be invaluable tools for understanding and cultivating the success of any business.
It’s not enough to just put together a fantastic course – you need to know the details, too.
There’s a lot of data that goes into developing a truly successful company, and without recognizing the kind of reports you want and need, it’s practically impossible for you to achieve your full potential.
The right software can make this whole process exponentially easier.
By combining the right techniques with the right technology, you can tweak and optimize your course more effectively than ever before.
Here are a couple of the best reports to help your organization thrive.
Post-Program Reports
Pulling together a quality post-program report is vital for demonstrating both your return on investment (ROI) and your return on objectives (ROO).
This is actually probably one of the most complicated reports we’ll talk about here, but it’s absolutely critical to actually understanding how well your course is running.
Looking at ROI in particular is often a great way to measure up just how well any program went.
You always want to see how your course did in terms of the bottom line, once all expenses are accounted for. You’re a business, after all – your goal is to make money!
Valuable as ROI is, though, ROO is actually often a better way to really grasp the full impact of your course. You don’t just need to know how much you made – you also need to know whether you satisfied your attendees. It doesn’t matter what kind of profits you brought in if nobody left the course satisfied.
Try sending out surveys after your course is over asking what your attendees thought. Was the pricing fair? Were they happy with the content? Good registration software can help you organize the answers to these questions with minimal effort.
Rosters
Another critical step to keeping your course organized is simply keeping track of everyone you’re working with.
There are a lot of people involved in any given course, and it’s a nightmare trying to account for everything by hand.
Again, registration software is often your best friend here. You want your system to do more than just keep a list of everyone you’re dealing with. You should also be able to filter out any category of people you want.
You want a roster for everything – one for all your speakers, and one for all your attendees; a roster for your specific class; a roster for your entire program; etc., etc. At any given time, you should never have anyone left unaccounted for.
Travel Reports
Most courses involve quite a bit of travel, since you’re often shipping people around the world to be at these events.
If you collect information about anything related to travel – arrival times, plane reservations, etc. – you want to be able to have this all neatly bundled up in a single report.
It just makes sense. You need to know where your people are supposed to be. You can’t really plan otherwise, and it makes it a lot easier to recognize and react in case of delays or other travel mishaps.
Statistical Reports
Understanding your customer is at the core of any successful business strategy. Good software should be able to let you break down your “average” or “ideal” client based on any data point you keep track of.
Age, gender, race, location… A full report on all these demographics should be at your fingertips at any given time.
How are you supposed to market yourself if you don’t understand your customer? Keep ahead of the game with robust and flexible statistical reports.
The Report That Makes You Rethink Everything
So far, we’ve been talking about some pretty standard reports.
They’re all super important for understanding your business, but at the same time, we all know that the best practices often come out of things we never could’ve expected.
That’s why the best kind of report is the report that doesn’t even exist yet, but rather, is just out there waiting for you to find.
Don’t resign yourself to software that limits you to just a few templates. You don’t want limits on the way you do business, so why would you ever accept limits on the way you can look at your business?
You want software that allows you to draw connections the rest of us haven’t even thought to look for yet. You want software that lets you do whatever you want to your data.
You want the report that makes you rethink everything.
Conclusion
Reports can make a break or business. That’s why you shouldn’t compromise on reporting when it comes to your course.
Never settle for less than the best.
Build the reports you need to make your business thrive.