[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
of issue, e.g. Smith, P.J. Organisational Dynamics in Multinational Organisations, PhD thesis,
University of Liverpool, 20XX.
Appendices
The body of your report should be as short and as interesting as possible, without omit-
ting anything important, so as to keep your readers attention. However, there will be
times when you need to provide long documents or tables of figures to support your
arguments. These will only clutter up the report and, like acknowledgements, spoil the
flow of your argument. If you feel they are necessary, therefore, it is a good idea to men-
tion just the main features in the report itself, but to reproduce the whole document as
an appendix. For example, you might say: You may recall that in his report on the new
computer systems last year, Jeremy Cornwood concluded that some systems would be
better organised on a product rather than a departmental basis (see Appendix A). You
would then reproduce the whole of Jeremy Cornwood s report as Appendix A.
The same principle applies even when you are referring not to a previously issued docu-
ment, but to something you have prepared yourself. For example: A department-
by-department analysis of the company s overheads in the last five years shows a worry-
ing increase in the Systems Department s share in relation to other departments (see
Appendix B). You would then attach your analysis of overheads as Appendix B.
EXERCISE 9
A new Chief Executive has recently taken over at your company or organisation. Write a report
briefing him or her on what your department does and how it operates. If you do not work for an
organisation at present, then write about any organisation of which you are a member a club,
college, school, voluntary organisation, etc.
43
A Guide to Good Business Communication
Incorporating Tables and Charts
No matter how good your command of English, no matter how good you are at writing,
there are times when words and figures are not enough. There are times when, to make
what you want to say quite clear, you need a more visual approach. That is when tables
and charts come into their own.
When planning to use these devices, however, you will need to choose the right format
the wrong choice will make the information more confused, not less. You should also
carefully plan your layout and how you intend to use your space. Are you going to put
tables and charts in an appendix or in the text of your report? Both have their advan-
tages and disadvantages.
Putting charts in the text is a bit more complicated, as you have to import them into
your document. You also need to be sure that all your readers will want all the
information they contain; if some do not, you might be better to mention the main
points illustrated by the chart in the text and put the chart itself in an appendix.
If all your readers are likely to be interested in your charts, it will be more convenient if
they can refer to them while reading your report, which will be easier if they are in the
text, even though it might be more complicated for you.
Of course, if you are using tables or charts in a presentation, then they will appear as
separate slides anyway.
Tables
It is not the purpose of this book to show you how to calculate the figures, percentages,
averages, etc. you may need in your documents or presentations, just to show you some
of the ways in which they can be presented.
The easiest, and perhaps the most common, way to show figures is to tabulate them.
How you present your tables will depend on the information you want to highlight. As an
example, let us consider how you might present a comparison between two years sales
figures, broken down into sales areas. At its simplest, such a table might look like this:
Year 1 Year 2
Sales Value Sales Value
UK £250,000 £270,000
EU £100,000 £110,000
Rest of Europe £30,000 £30,000
USA £70,000 £70,000
Asia £30,000 £40,000
Rest of the World £20,000 £22,000
TOTAL £500,000 £542,000
44
Laying out documents
This is fine, if that is all the information you want to show. Your audience can see immedi-
ately that UK sales increased by £20,000, while Asian sales increased by £10,000. But what
if you want to say something about the relative effectiveness of your sales efforts in the two
markets? Your audience can probably work out that Asia s £10,000 increase is better than
the UK s £20,000. But your job is to make your point easy to understand: if you want them
to make that kind of comparison, you should present your figures in a way that enables
them to do so easily. You could, for example, simply add a column to each of the years,
showing each area s sales as a percentage of the total what is called the profile.
Year 1 Year 2
Sales Value Profile % Sales Value Profile %
UK £250,000 50 £270,000 49.8
EU £100,000 20 £110,000 20.3
Rest of Europe £30,000 6 £30,000 5.5
USA £70,000 14 £70,000 12.9
Asia £30,000 6 £40,000 7.4
Rest of World £20,000 4 £22,000 4.1
TOTAL £500,000 100 £542,000 100
Now you can see that UK sales as a proportion of the total actually fell, from 50 to 49.8 %,
despite the actual rise in sales, and that Asia s increased, from 6 to 7.4%. This could be
vital information when planning further strategies.
Again, that is fine, if that is the picture you want to convey. But sometimes you may want not
only to compare actual figures, but also perhaps to see how much each segment has con-
tributed to the increase or decrease. Using the figures above, you know that the UK s sales
have increased by £20,000. You also know that total sales have increased by £42,000. But
suppose you wanted to compare the UK s share of that increase (its profile of the increase),
with that, say of the EU. This is done by adding three more columns, as shown below.
Year 1 Year 2
Sales Value Prof % Sales Value Prof % Increase Inc % Inc Prof %
UK £250,000 50 £270,000 49.8 £20,000 8 47.6
EU £100,000 20 £110,000 20.3 £10,000 10 23.8
Rest of Europe £30,000 6 £30,000 5.5
USA £70,000 14 £70,000 12.9
Asia £30,000 6 £40,000 7.4 £10,000 33.3 23.8
Rest of World £20,000 4 £22,000 4.1 £2,000 10 4.8
TOTAL £500,000 100 £542,000 100 £42,000 100
45
A Guide to Good Business Communication
Two notes of warning should be sounded at this stage. First, tables should simplify your
document. Only include information that is relevant; do not bore your audience with
long tables of figures, only some of which have a bearing on what you are trying to com-
municate. You would be foolish to use the above table, for example, unless you really
did need to convey the profile of the increase of each area.
Second, make sure that you quote all the relevant figures; do not use just the ones that
prove your point. As Disraeli once said, there are lies, damned lies and statistics , and
there is no doubt that statistics can be, and often are, used to distort and confuse the
facts. Using the above figures, for example, if your agent in Asia asked for an increase in
commission, would you argue that he does not deserve it because he has only increased
his share of the total market from 6 to 7.4%? Or that he contributed only 23.8% to the
year s increase in sales? Superficially, these might seem like good arguments based on
sound statistics. But he has been working from a lower base than other agents, so you
could not expect him to have contributed as much to the overall increase. He would be
quite justified in pointing out that he has increased sales in his area by 33% over three
times as much as anyone else.
If your figures include averages, make sure that the averages make sense. Do not let
unusual items distort them. For example, your company s expenditure in six successive
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]