What is Automated Operational Reporting?
Automated Operational Reporting, or AOR, is the practice of generating recurring operational reports directly from the system of record rather than assembling them by hand each cycle. Operational reporting answers what is happening right now. Analytics answers why it happened. AOR is about making the first one stop costing people their week.
The distinction between operational reporting and analytics is the part most teams skip, and it is the part that decides which tool you need. A status report, an SLA scorecard, and a client business review are operational reporting: current state, presented to someone. Trend analysis and root cause work are analytics.
Three things determine whether operational reporting can actually be automated: whether the data is accessible in the system of record, whether the output format is standardized enough to template, and whether delivery is predictable. VividCharts calls these the three Ds, data, design, and delivery.