Start With Questions, Not Data

Most reporting fails not because of poor data, but because of poor alignment with business purpose.

All too often, we see teams start by asking “what can we show?” rather than “what do we need to know?”

At Flock, we believe reporting should start with business questions. Specifically:

• What decisions need to be made?

• Who needs to make them, and when?

• What’s stopping them from making those decisions today?

From there, you can identify:

• The right metrics to track

• The right timing and frequency

• The right delivery method (dashboard, report, alert, or conversation)

This flips reporting from being data-first to decision-led—and that’s where value lives.

Microsoft emphasises this approach in its official Power BI guidance by recommending alignment of architecture and semantic models to business use cases rather than purely technical outputs.

So before you open your reporting tool, ask: What is the business question we’re trying to answer?