Writing a Business Report

Before you put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard, it’s important that you analyse exactly who you’re producing the report for. Is it for people who are expert in your field? Or is it for readers who won’t understand all the specifics, but want a general view of what’s important to them? For instance, if you’re talking about software to people in the IT department, you can go into much more detail than if you’re addressing finance managers.

Jot down what your audience thinks is important – not what you think is important. For instance if you’re presenting to the CFO, you can bet she’ll want to know how much something costs, what it might produce in revenue, whether it makes the job of the finance department easier.

You also need to work out what you’re trying to achieve with your report. It may be for information only. But you might be trying to convince people to back your idea, to invest in a project, or to take a decision. If you want action to be taken, remember that you need to ask for it – and you also need to marshal your arguments so that they lead naturally to the decision.

The next stage is drafting your argument. It’s usually best to start with pen and paper, or a whiteboard, and ‘mind map’ the themes. Put your subject at the centre of the page; let’s say, ‘Buying CRM software’. Draw a balloon round it.

Now add the various sub-headings around it, linking them with a line, like petals of a flower. You might, in this example, put ‘Comparing the different options’, ‘Cost and benefits’, ‘How long to roll out’, and ‘Pilot project’. You can then jot down different sections for each sub-heading, and carry on like this till you have got a clear idea of the scope of your report.

You should now be able to see the structure your report will adopt, and you can refer back to the chart at any stage of the writing. This gives you clarity so that you can ’see the wood for the trees’ and don’t lose your way in the report.

Actually writing should now be simple. Leave the introduction till later – write the detailed sections first. As you write, keep your intended audience and result in mind. For instance, if you are writing for a general audience about a quite tricky technical subject, you may need to introduce paragraphs explaining the technical stuff. You might find it useful to employ analogies – giving your readers an image of what something is like so that they find it easier to understand.

Remember that while a report is mainly made up of words, you can use pictures, charts and tables to add clarity and impact. For instance if you are writing about sales trends in your market, a chart showing the increase in sales for each product area will help your readers retain a grasp of how each area is performing, better than if you just wrote about the subject.

Remember that bullet points can help a reader’s understanding, for instance where you have a list of options or a sequence of actions that need to be taken.

When you have finished writing all the constituent sections, you can now go back and write the introduction and summary. It is always much easier to write the summary last – you’re now in full command of your material and should have retained a good feeling for what are the most important points.

Once you have written the report, you’re not finished. You need to proof read. This means going through the whole report and ensuring there are no typographical mistakes, misspellings, or ambiguities. (While a software spell checker can help, you do need to reread the text yourself – spellcheckers don’t catch everything.)  It’s often best to get someone else to proofread for you; they may spot problems such as lack of clarity, unexplained abbreviations, and so on, as well as mistakes.

Note if your sentences and paragraphs have got very long and unwieldy. Generally, if a sentence is more than thirty words long, you need to chop it into smaller sentences. That will make the report much more readable.

If you’ve followed these steps, you should have a report that does the job it needs to do, and looks professional and well written.