Most likely, the process of preparing the report starts like this: somewhere in January an accountant or a financial director comes to the general director and by the way says: “We need to prepare the annual report in a new form. We need somebody to paint it beautifully”.
No need for illusions: somebody will have to prepare this report. And sooner or later the leading vertical, stumbling upon the excuses of lawyers and financiers, will choose the victim-performer – will come to terms with the figure of a publicist. Well, or a marketer.
In addition, there is another reason why this report needs to be done by a publicist. The management report doesn’t have a strictly defined form. It should reflect non-financial information, important for existing and potential clients, partners. There is an opportunity for creativity in this report. In order not to do everything at the last moment and not to miss a great chance to demonstrate your advanced approaches to business, report this good news yourself and organize the process.
So, what to do?
You need to start with boring things: to understand what should be in the report, to understand the scope of work, to make a plan for training, to convey the need to convey the company’s employees (and without their participation to make the annual report – a serious document – is unrealistic and dangerous).
But first, it is worth understanding what it means to “make an annual report”. And also to understand, what benefit to the PR manager?
Ok, what is an annual report?
An annual report is like a book about a company. It is important to understand that it will be used by clients, partners, creditors, competitors, shareholders and society to judge the company. In the West, serious companies have for many years now necessarily prepared reports that reveal their internal cuisine, policies and positions on issues important to society.
Okay, so what should be the next step?
Get down to planning. You need to plan enough time to dive into the topic of annual reports to determine the structure, style and appearance of the report. If you have never prepared a report before, it will take time to look at other companies and plan your own.
Once you have decided on the structure and agreed on it with your bosses, you should start gathering the information that you want to show in the report. Some of the necessary data in the PR department will probably already be there, but some will need to be requested from colleagues in other departments.
Before this stage, you should inform your colleagues in advance about the importance of the report project and the fact that they will have to provide you with data without which you will not be able to issue the report.
Pay attention to this stage of preparation, because practice shows that many people in the company will not want to spend their time preparing data, arguing that they already have enough other work to do. So you will have to write some of the material yourself. WriteMyPaper4me can help you with this.
The management report will have to show:
– the organizational structure of the company and what it does;
– financial results of operations;
– liquidity and liabilities;
– the company’s impact on the environment;
– personnel policy;
– risks to which your company may be exposed and how it reacts to them;
– financing of research and innovations;
– financial investments;
– development prospects;
– data on corporate governance.