Writing Effective Business Reports

Before you start

Before you even begin to research the report, be certain you and whoever has commissioned
the report are clear and in agreement on the topic, scope, and objectives of the report. If this is
a large project, perhaps for a client, consider a written summary or statement of objectives to
ensure the target is clear.

What are the report commissioners expecting as an outcome –

do they want some background information on a problem or issue that their business faces, or
are they looking for an in-depth analysis with conclusions and recommendations fully costed
out?
Consider what your key objectives are? What do you need to achieve? Who will be reading the
report -What will their background and knowledge be, and how much will they know about the
topic? What background information will they need to appreciate the contents in their full
context?

Importance of structure
A Business Report needs to fulfil a number of functions. It needs to be easy to understand, and
in particular easy for the reader to access just the information they need.

Some readers will read the whole report, others will want to just skim it, and still others will want
to access just the summary, or just the information they need.

For these reasons a report needs a structure.

We have already discussed a structured report in our module on Developing a Business Plan,
which you may want to revisit and review.

Developing a Business Plan

This covers a proposed structure for a Business Plan.

Structure
The exact sections to be included will vary depending on the type of report – It may be financial,
technical, or commercial, each of which may require different sections.

The objective is to allow the report reader to quickly access the information they need without
having to read the whole report. They may decide from the sections they read whether to read
(or in some cases, buy) the whole report.

Allow time for report production

If you are new to writing reports, and to some extent if you are experienced too, the production
of a well thought out report will probably take longer than you think. The content is important,
but you, and your report, will be judged as much by the presentation as the content. So allow
plenty of time for the report production, and pay attention to the details

Report sections and subsections

If a report is more than a few pages long it benefits from a cover page stating the title of the
report, the author’s name and the date of the report.

Then there should be;-

 Table of Contents
 Executive Summary or Overview
 Introduction
 Body of the report , divided into sections
 Conclusion
 References
 Appendices
We will review each of these sections in turn in the next module