Reference / decision checklist
Commercial Reporting Decision Checklist
Use this before adding another dashboard, metric or data integration. The useful question is what decision becomes easier because the information exists.
Decision
- Which recurring commercial or operating decision should this report make easier?
- Who actually makes that decision and how often?
- What action could change because the signal exists?
Definitions
- Do lead, qualified, active, won, lost, customer and other important states mean the same thing across teams?
- Can a new operator understand how each state is entered and exited?
- Are definitions written before charts are designed?
Sources
- Where does each minimum useful signal come from?
- Is there one reliable identifier connecting the states that need to be connected?
- Where do systems disagree, duplicate or lose context?
Ownership
- Who owns the underlying process, not merely the dashboard?
- Does every important exception have a visible current owner?
- Can management distinguish shared visibility from actual responsibility?
Thresholds + exceptions
- What condition should trigger attention rather than simply change a chart colour?
- Is the response to an overdue, stalled or abnormal state explicit?
- Can the team see when evidence is missing or data quality is too weak for a confident decision?
Cadence + attribution
- When will the same decision signals be reviewed consistently?
- Are first-known source, qualification and commercial outcome connected where the identifiers support it?
- Is partial or probabilistic attribution labelled honestly instead of presented as complete certainty?
A clean checklist does not prove perfect data or complete attribution. It tells you whether the reporting system has enough definitions, ownership and evidence to support the decision it claims to support.