What is a Formal Business Report& How You Can Write It?
A formal business report is an interesting document, containing summary and end-to-end analysis of a particular situation, issue or fact. This report is basically drafted to overcome a blunder or critical business situation that requires improvement or betterment.
This report helps you to tap as many possible solutions as you can, identifying and weighing up the cost and advantages of every solution.
In essence, you can prepare it for the following reasons:
· To drive to potential and existing solutions to an issue, situation, or problem
· To execute changes as per business management theories for measuring which solutions are the best to apply
· To figure out possible solutions, evaluating and analysing skills& performance of various backend operations
· To reach a conclusion in respect of a business problem
· To determine the future course of action via intelligence
Types of Business Reports
The reports are generated corresponding to the business requirements, needs and situation. Here is a roundup of the most common ones:
Informational Reports
It is a composition of objective information on something. It doesn’t need to an in-depth analysis to be put there. Nor does it need any recommendations or explanation. What all it consists of it unbiased fact or statistical information to generally know about, which is an interest area of all stakeholders, board of directions and officers.
Analytical Report
This report uses qualitative and quantitative facts to analyse& measure the effectiveness of a strategy or performance of a process. The idea behind it is to promote data-driven decisions, which often lead to flexible ideas or strategies that are really effective when implemented in the real time. It aims at making important decisions upon thoroughly analyzing the company’s situation in the present and past scenarios
Research Report
A research report is the most comprehensive document, which explains why you should opt in a particular strategy or breakthrough or process. Generally, the entrepreneur or stakeholders want to know about why you need a new launch. To answer this question, a team of experienced researchers is deployed. It drills the related information from various resources like an information report and a detailed analytical report, which play a key role in preparing a compelling conclusive report.
Explanatory Report
As its name suggests, this report is an explanation about a topic or issue or situation that is understandable. It represents all ongoing use cases, challenges, research methods & results, sample size and many more aspects about a researched topic/situation. The summary of all findings make it unique.
Progress Report
It is a document that displays details on how much progress you have achieved towards a goal in your business. One needs to put what activities have been carried out, how many tasks are completed and milestones you have reached. In short, it conveys all updates about the on-going project that its stakeholders want to know. It can be any weekly report, explaining how many records you have researched in a BPM company, for example.
Before you start writing a formal business report, you should keep these tips into account:
· Plan Before Writing
Before compiling what you have researches, create a blueprint of your plan. It should be split into various segments so that you can make it easy to read and study. Keep the end result or goal in the core of the reporting ideas.
· Go through Existing Formats
Each company follows a unique format to prepare reports. Check the one that was previously prepared in-house. You can ask the concerned person about the specific format that he/she uses for a professional report.
· Put the Header
You can call it caption or title of the report. It should resonate with the body of the report. Keep it concise and simple to put in the beginning. If want, you can mention the name of who prepared it on what date.
· Write Table of Content
The table of content displays all titles and authors with page numbers. A smart and professional report writer writes it at the end when the entire report is ready with the necessary explanation, stats or whatever.
· Add Summary
Each report consists of a short gist or summary of what it has. It briefs readers about what your findings are with a conclusion. Like table of content, it should also be written at the end because you have to draft it while keeping all points in mind. Include only main points to smartly draft it.
· Define a Purpose
The purpose or motto defines why you write the report. The introduction should have a clear mention of it together with the background on the subject.
· Choose Your Methodology
The report should have understandability. You can use either a qualitative or a quantitative method or both. Eventually, it should represent your voice on the findings, analysis or whatever your goal is.
· Put Findings/Stats
Findings are the evidences that support your research or recommendation. So, it is crucial to have this segment. While mentioning, define captions, sub-titles and numbered segments. Use data visualization technique to present your findings in graphs, charts or any other pictorial format.
· Conclude
This section is dedicated to your assessment, as what your findings point at to do. Let’s say, for a goal to achieve, you should integrate all possible actions to measure. Enclose suggestions about how it is going to impact the business.
· Add a Bibliography and Appendices
This section is reserved for the sources that you have accessed for generating the report. These can be books, magazines, online reports, articles or any other thing. List them down in a sorted manner, which may be questionnaires, maps, notes, summaries, charts, tables, illustrations and others. Give a title to each integrated main point and other documents with a letter so that you can reference them clearly in the report.