Writing a Business Report
Tips on How to Write a Business Report: Internal communication within organizations can be really effective. When you communicate more with your employees and managers, this can help build trust and respect in your company. It will also help to reduce internal politics which is very common in the business environment. If you are serious about improving communication within your organization using business reports can be good start. What is a business report? Reports can be used to address a specific issue or problem within an organization. It is usually necessary when critical business decisions need to be made. It can be used to show strategies and the overall business performance.
If you are writing up a report you have to make certain that you are providing in-depth analysis of the situation. This will give the reader every detail he or she needs. That will allow them to make important decisions which at times will determine whether or not the organization succeeds. When writing a report the first thing you need to do is to plan out your report. You have to know what the purpose of the report is. Who are readers of the report? What are the report’s main messages? How will the report be structured?
A business report can be broken up into 9 parts, the cover letter or memorandum, introduction, conclusions, references and appendices, title page, executive summary and recommendations, findings and discussions, table of contents. All these are what you can use to create a report, if you feel a bit intimidated. You don’t need to worry because you don’t need to have all of those parts listed above. You just need to include the mains ones which you think is useful. You can see each one in more detail below.
How to Write a Business Report and What to Include:
Cover letter or memorandum
This is used to introduce the report to the receiver. If it’s an internal report you can write a memorandum. If it’s an external report you can write a cover letter. You must state the purpose of the report and remind the receiver that they have requested the report in the first place.
Title page
Your title page must give a brief but descriptive introduction of the report. Make sure that it includes the date of when it was completed, submitted and your organization’s information.
Executive summary
This should help the reader to quickly grasp the report’s purpose and conclusions. You can also include the key recommendations in it as well. The main point of the executive summary is to give the reader a feel of the report and its conclusions.
Table of contents
The table of contents basically shows the pages for the different sections that are going to be in the report. Make certain that the headings and sub-headings relate to the content they are about to see.
Introduction
For the introduction you are going to give the reader a brief context of what they are about to get in the report. Reports can be really boring, try and make it interesting to set the stage for the rest of the report. It should include the problem or issue you are going to report on. You must give them a preview of the report’s structure. You can also state the questions the report is answering.
Conclusions and recommendations
What is a report without a conclusion and recommendation? These are really important parts of a report. The conclusion summarizes everything that you’ve found. To create good conclusions make certain that the conclusions are related to the information at hand. This will reduce later headaches later on. You don’t want to write a conclusion where there was no evidence in the report of why it was necessary.
Recommendations
The recommendations usually state the changes that are needed to be made. These are actions that the reader or persons in the organizations must do in order to get the problem solved. To write a good recommendation you must present each solution beginning with a verb. Arrange them in order from most important to least important. Also see to it that those recommendations are related to the content.
Findings and discussions
This section of the report is where you are going to discuss and interpret the information you’ve found. Ensure that it is properly analyzed and your evidence supports your conclusions.
References
References are where you are going to list the source of your information which helps to build up your report.
Appendices
This can be optional but if you want to provide detail on the process or analysis you went through while developing your report you can put it in your appendix. If you want to also provide additional information which couldn’t fit in the report. Well you can put it in the appendix.
If you have implemented the information above, you will create a great structured business report in no time. Overall a business report is a very important strategy you can use to communicate business strategy and issues in your organization. This can help you to bring in a new field of communication in your organization. Where you all can share ideas, talk about issues and discuss conclusions.