Dashboards on-the-go works better for managers

One of the banking clients that I was managing had close to 750 plus reports generated daily for MIS purpose. I asked them a question - how many are read? The answer was not known to anyone. Banks typically have operational reports, mid-management reports and executive dashboards which are printed daily, weekly and at regular intervals. These reports not only add onetime costs for the developments to the banks but also consume related direct, indirect costs. Printers are not free, ink costs, paper costs are rising too. Overall maintenance of this hardware is an additional overhead and so on. The point is, despite of all this, how many really have the time to read each of the reports printed and presented on their desks? Legacy could have caused tradition of printing everything and keeping it handy as evidence. But with most of the systems based on the four eye principle, need for such print outs and someone checking them next day has gone down substantially.

There can be a better way to manage some of the basic reports. To begin with, profile like a branch manager is mostly interested in knowing the closing position of deposits, advances, cash, profit / loss, number of new customers on boarded and may be number of accounts closed previous day. This information is generally printed in the form of a daily trial balance or balance sheet, product reports etc. running into at least 15~20 pages. However this information as a templatized sms can easily be texted to the branch manager’s mobile. Regional head may need a consolidated position in the regions and the idea still works. Executives may ask for a little more and getting there shouldn’t be a big problem. But a daily push of such information still becomes a handy option.

Most of the banks have mobile banking / mobile alerts infrastructures ready. Adding this feature shouldn’t cost much to the bank when they can save on various costs and pay probably a few cents for such a message.

More than costs, ease of access to information is a bigger consideration. Data is always handheld, anywhere, anytime. You don’t need a smart phone even to read an sms. Just a basic phone works well for this service.

This does not mean banks will be in a position to get away with reports. However this has a potential for reducing the number of reports printed to a certain extent. The most important step is to make the idea work.