## Deciding on the content of the report

Before you do anything else, you should outline the information you want the report to provide. The following questions can act as a guide in making that outline.

### Stating the purpose

#### What is the overall purpose of the report?

Reports are management tools. Their purpose is to help you quickly grasp the essential elements and relationships found in raw data, to help you make effective decisions. For a report to be effective, it has to present the correct data in a logical way. If it presents the wrong data, or if it presents the right data in a haphazard manner, the report may slow the decision-making process or may even encourage incorrect decisions.

A good starting place in the development of a report is to write out the purpose of the report in a sentence or two. The purpose statement helps you focus on your primary needs, and it gives the report both a starting point and a goal. Here are some examples of purpose statements.

- The purpose of this report is to show monthly and year-to-date sales by sales representatives, compare this year's numbers to last year's, and flag representatives whose sales figures do not meet company standards.
- The purpose of this report is to show sales activity for each item in inventory, and to suggest reorder quantities based on that activity.
- The purpose of this report is to calculate bowling averages and handicaps for each member of the bowling league.

Defining the purpose of the report before you start is a critical step in the overall process.

#### Who is going to read the report?

A single report is often used by many individuals. A detailed, company-wide sales report, for example, may be used by sales representatives, the regional sales manager, the national sales manager, and the Chief Operating Officer (COO).

These individuals will be interested in different aspects of the report:

- A sales representative will use the report to evaluate individual sales performance and compare this performance to that of other representatives in the region.
- The regional sales manager will use the report to evaluate regional representatives and compare the region's performance to that of other regions.
- The national sales manager will use the report to evaluate the performance of regional managers and compare overall sales to the current sales forecasts.
- The COO will use the report to evaluate the performance of the Vice-President of Marketing and the sales department as a whole, and to project such things as manufacturing needs and warehouse locations.

Since each user of the report has different interests, it is important to plan the report so it includes the information each user is looking for.

Seagate Software, Inc. http://www.seagatesoftware.com Please send comments to: techpubs@seagatesoftware.com