What’s wrong with this report?
You’re staring at a report that shows 300 contacts meeting certain criteria; but you know it should be 303.
Three contacts are missing.
What's wrong with this report?
The short answer is: it's a trick question. There's not yet enough information to know.
Are the criteria really correct?
Is there a bug in the report?
Are those three contacts missing important data?
Are you just using the wrong report?
I hear from clients with problems like this pretty often.
Yesterday, for example, a client reached out with just this situation.
The difference was, this time she had already thought it through carefully, and identified the three contacts who were missing important data.
Now we can focus on the real problem. Not, “What's wrong with this report?” but, “Why is that data missing?”
Here's the thing:
Problems will come up. That's life.
And the symptoms won't always show up exactly where the problem is.
By stepping back and thinking through the possible causes of those symptoms, you can avoid wasting a lot of time trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist.
All the best,
A.