You'll recognise some of these.
None of it means you did anything wrong. It means the numbers were never defined once, or the reports were built in a hurry and nobody went back. Here's what we usually see when the reporting is the problem.
- You ask one question and the reports give three different answers.
- The real numbers live in a spreadsheet someone rebuilds by hand every week.
- Revenue reporting lumps everything together, so you can't see what's actually selling.
- Each team measures the same thing a slightly different way.
- You can't see a deal's status without asking the person who owns it.
- Nobody's sure which report is the right one, so decisions wait.