Reporting is a must for Amazon account management agencies. But, figuring out what data to report on and how to display it in a way that is helpful to clients is no easy task. At QueryStax, we’ve spoken with nearly 70 agencies that specialize in Amazon Account management in the past few months. We have seen agencies that report in every way, from compiling screenshots from Amazon Seller Central to hiring offshore teams to create and send reports to clients. In this article, we’ve outlined the most popular ways that companies are reporting information to their clients.
Manual Report Creation by Account Managers
If your agency is still reporting manually, you’re not alone. Manual reporting, albeit slow and expensive, provides account managers with full control over what information gets sent out to clients and when. However, the pain points associated with manual reporting are extensive. Downloading data from Seller Central is inefficient; restrictions on date selection and the inability to download many reports at once results in account managers spending up to twenty minutes just downloading data (per report created). From there, the data must be processed until it is ready to be included in a client-ready report. Some agencies have teams dedicated to creating reports for clients on a weekly and/or monthly basis.
Although manual reporting may provide agencies with exactly what they need, it’s expensive, inefficient, and likely not a task that employees enjoy. In addition, while many agencies feel obliged to offer reports to maintain transparency with their clients, not all clients appreciate or utilize the insights provided through this painstaking report-making process. Therefore, automating an essential, but the asymmetrically-valued task is critical for agencies hoping to scale while maintaining transparency.
Pulling Data through APIs into Google Sheets, Google Data Studio or Excel
Using the API to retrieve data and pump it into spreadsheets is another popular way that Amazon agencies prepare data for reports. Although automating the data collection process saves account managers from the tedious task of downloading data from Seller Central, there is still extensive labor that needs to go into preparing the data for a report. Pivot tables and extensive macros are a must for any agency that chooses this option.
Internal Development and Dashboards
Some agencies have gone as far as developing internal dashboards. The benefits of building internal dashboards are numerous: agencies have full control over how data is displayed; it automates the process of downloading and processing data, and it makes data more relevant to clients. Custom dashboards provide agencies with full control over how data is displayed and distributed to clients. But building technology internally also comes with significant maintenance costs. One agency described maintenance as “a sometimes-nightmare when format and data changes occur.” Before committing to internal development projects, agencies must understand that they will need to have the resources to support their platform after completion.
What kind of reports should agencies be sending clients?
Our conversations with agencies made one thing clear: there is no industry standard for client reporting, and the vast majority of agencies are creating reports manually. Agencies report on all different kinds of KPIs and display this data to clients in a variety of ways, from screenshots to tables.
When building reports for clients, agencies should put their clients’ needs first. Based on our findings, we recommend including the following KPI categories to provide maximum benefit to clients:
- Sales KPIs: YoY, MoM and WoW Sales figures, Cancellation and Refund Rates, Top Sellers, Sales by SKU Statistics
- Financial KPIs: YoY, MoM, WoW P&L Comparisons
- Inventory KPIs: Shipment Status, FBA vs FBM Statistics
- Customer Insight KPIs: Customer Acquisition, Retention, and Churn
*All KPIs listed above can be built into QueryStax reports. Lists are not comprehensive.
QueryStax provides e-commerce agencies with an automated white-label client reporting solution. Agencies build a report template by selecting from an extensive menu of content options. Once a template is built, QueryStax’s proprietary technology platform sends reports to the agency’s clients on their preferred schedule. QueryStax not only saves account managers time, but it also enables agencies to leverage cutting edge analytics and takes the guesswork out of report creation. Save time, provide better insights, and engage clients with a report they’ll look forward to receiving in their inbox automatically — all with QueryStax’s reporting program.
Sign up for a free trial through querystax.com today or contact us at info@querystax.com to request a demo or a sample report.
