WHAT A IS REPORT? SUMMARY OF FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATION

Written reports are documents which present focused, salient content to a specific audience. Reports are often used to display the result of an experiment, investigation, or inquiry.

The audience can be the public or private, an individual or the public in general. Reports are used in government, business, education, science, and other fields but we will focus on the business aspect about report.

BUSINESS REPORT

Business reports can be regarded as business letters written and sent within the company, or to groups in the corporate family such as share owners. A business report, like a business letter, is usually written with the idea of helping to solve a business problem.

A business organization has goal and objectives that it is constantly striving to attain. By providing its customers with a service and /or a product, the organization seeks to meet these objectives, not the least of which is profit.

Reports are an essential communication tool of management in the attainment of these goals and objectives. Reports are used to communicate with both internal and external public. Internal and external public means employees and non-employees people with some interest in the company.

Reports, then, can be considered as business letters containing data and information needed to help solve a business problem that are written within the company. Reports for external public are not too different from those for internal public.

Business reports are mainly those that are encoded and decoded within the company; emphasis is on the communication of ideas that will help solve problems and enable the company to meet its objectives. Although business reports must be well written, literary style is not important nor is there any attempt to entertain.

One of the most common formats for presenting reports is IMRAD: introduction, methods, results and discussion. This structure is standard for the genre because it mirrors the traditional publication of scientific research and summons the ethos and credibility of that discipline.