How Will You Provide Your CEO's Favorite Reports?

• How will merchants get their merchandise performance reports? Do they require history? Plans? Vendor analysis? Category trending? Contribution to profit?
• Does your marketing department require source code statistics? Does it need figures by channel performance in terms of demand or average order? How about conversion rates for first-time to multibuyers? Reactivation of inactive customer accounts? What about history and plans?
• Is there productivity analysis required for the call center? What about customer compliance and inquiry reporting from customer files?
• What data do you need to provide with reports about picker and packer productivity? How will they feed their departmental productivity and cost systems, which may be manual or spreadsheets?

Be proactive in soliciting specifics on what analysis is required. Collect the requirements, and determine where each analysis will come from in the new system. Get users to sign off on the new system, confirming that it meets their needs. Cost out the time and effort required to provide all of this, and make it a key ingredient in your system conversion work plan.