WRITING BUSINESS REPORTS

WRITING BUSINESS REPORTS

Business reports carry information from those who have it, to them who need it and have emerged as integral part of modern management tools for decision-making and action-taking in large corporations. They contribute significantly to better decision-making and carrying business forward on the path of growth and expansion.

Reports may be oral or written, informal or formal, statutory and non-statutory, routine or special, informative or interpretive, problem-solving or fact-finding, performance or technical and may be prepared by individuals, teams or committees.

Business reports should aim for accuracy of facts, brevity and clarity; they should be free of grammatical mistakes and have objectivity in recommendations. They should have unity, cohesion, precision, reader-orientation, relevance and be couched in simple language.

Written business reports provide record for senders, receivers and other users; they are thought out well before they are written and submitted. Receivers can go through them several times and construct better response(s). Limitations of written business reports are that there is no immediate feedback to senders, no personal contact with readers who are not able to ask questions for clarifications and once submitted, their contents cannot be adjusted.

For preparing better business reports, writers must know the purpose, visualize the readers, choose ideas, collects facts to back them, organize ideas in the most effective sequence and finally writing, rewriting and rewriting …… to improve their readability and salability.

Organizations should standardize the formats of their business reports incorporating the title page, acknowledgement, executive summary, table of contents with page numbers in the beginning and appendices, bibliography at the end of the reports. The format of the main body of the business reports may be varied to suit the type of the report and other specific needs of business.