Business reports are a key aspect of professional life, regardless of whether you are studying business or any other subject. Learn how to write one with us.
A business report or industry report is a document that summarises information about a particular investigation and sets out a series of recommendations or advice for decision-makers.
Business reports can take many forms and are written for different purposes, but they have overarching functions and structures that help the reader find information quickly and explain how the authors arrived at the recommendations proposed.
Most business reports aim to find solutions to an existing problem, summarise the results of an investigation or reasonably speculate and compare competitors on the success of a new project or area of interest for a business or company.
Business reports often contain all, or at least some, of the following sections:
- Title and cover page
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Table of contents
- Executive summary
- Introduction
- Background
- Methodology (if applicable)
- Main body (with subsections)
- Results
- Discussion
- Recommendations
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Appendices
Below are the key elements of a business report explained in further detail:
The executive summary is a very short summary of your whole report.
You need to include:
- A brief summary of the context of your problem/question
- The aim of your report or investigation
- A brief summary of your results
- A brief summary of your recommendations
Top Tip: Write your executive summary last. Try to write 1-3 sentences maximum to represent each of the main sections of your report:
- Introduction
- Background
- Methodology
- Results/Discussion
- Recommendations
The introduction of your report should first link your brief, issue or question to the bigger picture of your sector, industry or company.
Then you should define the key concepts needed for your reader to understand your recommendations and/or explain the context of your company and problem to your reader.
Finally, you should close your introduction by clearly stating the aim and objectives, or the research question you set out to investigate.
Top Tip: Write your introduction towards the end or re-read and edit it once you have finished your discussion.
Depending on your brief or instructions, this could be its own section or be included as part of your introduction.
Regardless, the background section is there for you to make sure your reader has all the information they need to understand why you interpreted your results the way you did.
Good things to include are:
- relevant history of the company or topic
- key literature on the problem/topic
- key concepts and theories you will use to interpret your results.
Not all business reports have a section for methodology but, if possible, within the word count, it is best practice to include one, particularly if you gather new data for your investigation.
Here you should include what methods you chose to investigate your question or gather the data as well as methods used for interpreting the results.
This section is mostly descriptive (you just narrate, step by step, what you did), however, you should include the justification behind your choice of methods. Remember that the point of the methodology is to allow replicability in the future.
Top Tip: Have a research methods textbook or resource with you when you're writing this section. This can help you consider the pros and cons of each method.
This is probably the easiest section to write since all you need to do is describe and summarise your results for your reader.
A key thing to remember in the results section is that it should be easy to find information within it. To achieve this you can use graphs, tables, illustrations, pictures or diagrams, so that your reader is able to find the information that they need at a glance.
Top Tip: Imagine your boss will be going into a meeting with your report but they have not been able to fully read it. They should be able to go to the results section and by scanning the headings, tables and/or images, get the key information they need - even if they haven't had time to read the discussion!
This is the section where you will explain what all those raw results you've just presented to your reader mean for the problem or question you were investigating. Sometimes this section can be combined with the results section.
To write a good discussion make sure you check if your results match the literature you introduced in the background section; explain to the reader anything that could have affected your results; and show how each result affects your client, company or sector, and why that matters.
This is a key section of a business report. Recommendations should be clear, brief actions or considerations your boss/marker/client should take into account before taking the next step.
You can write your recommendations in paragraph form; however, they can often be shown as a list of bullet points.
Make sure your recommendations are actionable and clear. You can also separate them into sections depending on whom they are intended for: your client, company, sector or future investigators.
This section brings all your conclusions together in light of the original question. You can think about it as a ‘bottom heavy’ summary of the report.
If you’re not sure what to include, try to summarise each section of the report into one sentence but expand on the results and conclusions you arrived at in the end. Remind the reader of the key recommendations you have put forward.
This is the section or sections where you can provide your reader with any further details or supplementing information that is too lengthy or tangential to be part of the main body of the report, but which could shed light on your findings or might satisfy the curiosity of a thorough reader.
Here you can include numerical evidence, interview transcripts, more extensive images, etc.