Preparing Comprehensive Formal Reports

Quick reference

• 00:04 If an executive of your company asks you to put a report together,
• 00:09 which examines possible reasons for a problem or
• 00:12 possible solutions to a problem or to help them make a decision,
• 00:16 then you'll need to create a comprehensive formal report.
• 00:20 How you write a report and
• 00:21 what you decide to include in that report is largely influenced by your audience.
• 00:27 You'll need to understand who they are, what they already know, and
• 00:31 what they want to know or need to know.
• 00:35 For this type of report, you'll need the same technical skills that you'd need for
• 00:40 a simple report but you'll also need more.
• 00:42 For instance, you may have to do a company report which will be shared with everyone
• 00:47 in the company, and investors and members of the public.
• 00:51 A report like this is usually full of statistics and metrics, but
• 00:55 let's be honest.
• 00:56 While all these stakeholders may have the right to know, people will be interested
• 01:01 in different elements of the report and to different degrees.
• 01:05 How can you communicate with everyone in the company, and
• 01:08 all the other stakeholders with one report when their interests are so different?
• 01:14 Let's start with reports format.
• 01:16 The key is to think like your audience.
• 01:19 Remember, people are always thinking how is this relevant to me?
• 01:25 So having headings is an easy way for
• 01:27 people to find exactly what they're interested in, or for
• 01:30 them to be able to navigate the report in a way that suits them.
• 01:35 So a formal report will have the following sections.
• 01:38 It should have a cover page, an executive summary, a table of contents,
• 01:44 an introduction, the discussion or body of the report,
• 01:49 a conclusion, recommendations and possibly an appendix.
• 01:56 The cover page of your report should have the title, the author's name and the date.
• 02:02 If it concerns a particular period, and
• 02:05 it usually does, then that period should be included in the title.
• 02:10 The cover should have the company's name and or the logo.
• 02:15 You can download a Microsoft Word template as a starting point,
• 02:18 and then customize that to what you want.
• 02:23 The executive summary of your report should be a maximum of one page.
• 02:27 It's the only page some readers will read and here's why.
• 02:31 It states the issue, outlines the results of your research and
• 02:34 gives your recommendations for the actions that need to be taken.
• 02:38 The executive summary uses bullet points and numbered lists to highlight and
• 02:43 summarize the most important points, so usually, it's written last.
• 02:49 The table of contents will list the main sections of your report, and
• 02:53 the page numbers where they start.
• 02:55 If you have charts, diagrams or tables within the report, these are also listed
• 03:00 at the end of the table of contents in the order that they appear within the report.
• 03:07 The main part of the report starts with the introduction.
• 03:10 In the introduction, you should explain the background and purpose of the report.
• 03:15 You will explain why it's important and how the report is organized.
• 03:20 You should also define any terms that may be industry specific or
• 03:24 topic specific so that you and all your readers will be on the same page.
• 03:30 The body of the report is a discussion and analysis of the data you've gathered.
• 03:35 The body should be divided into sections which will allow
• 03:37 readers to quickly locate what's relevant to them.
• 03:41 So if the report is organized by department or by product names,
• 03:44 then you will arrange sections for each one.
• 03:48 In the body, you will detail how, when and where you conducted the research.
• 03:52 And that will give transparency and more credibility to your conclusions.
• 03:56 Business reports use the passive voice that's usually preferred.
• 04:00 So instead of saying, I downloaded the last 10 years of monthly revenue data,
• 04:05 then you'd say the last 10 years of monthly revenue data was extracted for
• 04:10 the purpose of this report.
• 04:13 Charts are recommended in business reports.
• 04:16 They're useful for people who only want to skim, and for
• 04:19 people who prefer visual representations of information.
• 04:23 Some standard chart types are tables, which are really just lists of values,
• 04:28 diagrams, which generally show relationships or processes.
• 04:33 Line charts are used to indicate timelines and trends.
• 04:36 Pie charts indicate proportions of whole, and bar or
• 04:40 column charts show changes, or they're useful for comparing categories.
• 04:47 Of course, there are specialty chart types that are more useful for
• 04:50 certain types of data.
• 04:52 But try to make sure that reading your charts won't be a chore for your audience.
• 04:57 Charts should enhance and not detract from your overall report.
• 05:01 If you need to explain in detail what the chart is saying,
• 05:04 then probably it's not the best chart for this type of data.
• 05:08 All charts should have a title and a legend.
• 05:11 And you should include a blurb or short description below each chart.
• 05:16 The conclusion section of the report answers the big question,
• 05:19 what did I just learn from reading the body of this report?
• 05:23 Of course,
• 05:24 the conclusion should be supported by evidence from the report itself.
• 05:28 The recommendation section states in plain language what needs to be done.
• 05:33 Here you'll explain what actions should be taken,
• 05:36 putting them in order of priority or sequentially.
• 05:39 There shouldn't be any jargon or flowery language in your recommendations.
• 05:45 Finally, the appendix.
• 05:46 This contains additional tables, graphs, or
• 05:49 diagrams that can be used to supplement your report.
• 05:53 There are lots of uses for formal business reports.
• 05:56 They can be used to present market research, financial reports,
• 06:00 other types of performance reports and even incident reports.
• 06:07 If you're preparing a report that you'll be doing periodically,
• 06:10 then it's important to maintain consistency, so
• 06:13 that your audience knows where to go to find content that's relevant to them.
• 06:18 Pages should also be numbered and
• 06:19 watermarked with the name of the report and the name of your company.
• 06:24 And if you'll be emailing or uploading your report electronically,
• 06:29 it's a great idea to have hyperlinks to each topic, that'll allow
• 06:34 readers to jump to a topic they want by clicking from the table of contents.

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