Business Report Writing
A perfect business report should be precisely structured, concise, and easy to understand for the target audience. As the name suggests, business reports must provide data followed by critical analysis to assist Senior management, Investors, or Business teams in making official decisions.
Business Report Structure:
Organizations have different requirements based on their projects. They need a business report with a general understanding structure and conclude it after the meeting. Business Report Writing follows the below structure:
Title
The title should say what the report is about. Your name and the date you will be giving to the report can also go on this page.
If the report is long, you should list the parts that make up the whole thing. In this section, write down the chapter and section names. For each row in the table of contents, you should also put a page number in it.
Always include an executive summary that says what the report is about and why it's important to write one. If you write a good summary, it should briefly talk about how the report came to be, what problems it was trying to solve, and how it came up with a solution for them. It should also say how it came up with the report's limitations and how it made assumptions. This is generally done at the end of the report writing process, but it is put first for senior management, who may not have time to read the whole thing.
Background
Give some background information and explain how this report came to be in great detail so that people can understand what was happened. People who read this section will figure out what they can expect in the following chapters.
Sources
It's essential to discuss the method of getting information and its flaws in-depth. You can also talk about how to get around the information problems.
Findings
When you make your findings, you should provide enough evidence to show that you did your research properly.
Recommendations
To justify your recommendations, you may also include opinions of industry experts, consumer reports, statistical data, and your observations. Remember that while your business report's objective is to provide the best solution to a business problem, you may include an analysis of other options available and prove them otherwise. You can also help the reader in pointing out further readings, if including them in your report is impossible.
Conclusions
This section lists the significant inferences drawn from the findings and proposes recommendations. It sums up what you know about the current situation and comes up with a plan of action based on your observations and findings.
References
The reference list in alphabetical order lists all the resources you used to write your report. Books, online periodicals, and articles that helped you write the report should always be included in your report.
Appendices
You can use an appendix to group similar items together at the end. Any important material/supplementary information for discussion can be included in the appendix and referred to from the report. APPENDIX may be used to refer to a single appendix. It's okay if you have more than one APPENDIX added. You can call them APPENDIX A, and so on. Also, appendices should appear in the order mentioned in the report.
Keep the Following Things in Mind While Writing The Business Report:
- Grammar, spelling, and facts should be accurate.
- Use a consistent voice (Active or passive).
- Every college/organization may have its report format, and it is always better to use the format suggested by your organization.