Why Report Writing is an Important in Academic & Business Career

Writing skill is one of the most important factors to be successful in your academic and professional career. Proper writing skill is required to communicate your thoughts and ideas to the intended audience clearly in order to receive the expected response from the readers of your writing. Writing is the most essential form of communications as the oral communications could not be used to answer the academic assignments or reports or to generate various forms of business reports or documents. In fact your writing talent determines the standard of your communication skill and the extent to which you can influence the target audience for whom you have written the piece of text.

Your writing skill will be tested frequently in your academic and professional carrier. When you are continuing your academic life, you have to prove your writing skill, while answering the question in the examinations, while writing the application to the school or the university authority or your teachers, while writing the assignments, research papers, project reports and reports that are required by the universities. Similarly, in your professional life you have to write report to the management, on the accomplishment of works delegated to you, you have to write statutory report or the report reflecting your assessment of any event or business affairs as required by the management or for the staffs subordinate to you.

Writing report is an essential part of your academic and professional life and you require developing an excellent skill in preparing the reports as your entire academic and professional career largely depends upon your ability in writing the reports efficiently and successfully. You can also use services of professional proofreaders for excellent work. However, professional report writing is significantly different from the business report writing because of the fact that the affairs of the business organisation are way different from that of the academic institutions. In fact the academic institutions build the foundation of the writing skills of the students and the students in their professional career learn the style of writing the business report as per the requirement of the business organisations. Therefore it is important to grow the skill of writing an academic as well as, a business report.

In academic career, report writing is required to pursue the examiners or the evaluators to prove the knowledge of the subject along with your analytical ability and the ability to apply the theoretical knowledge to solve the assignment problems or to reflect your own opinion on the assignment topic after extensive research and actuality findings. In academic writing the professors or the lecturers are the audience for which the academic report is being written. The ability of the report writing should be of such standard as to make the professors understand clearly your view points on the assignment topics given and to establish your stance with clear reason. Without being skilled in writing the report, it is almost impossible to convince your evaluator about the quality of your report and subsequently, it becomes almost impossible to get good grade points. 

The report is essential before the professors to judge:

•    Your understanding of the subject topic of the report

•  How you have analysed the entire matter and how you have investigated to reach the conclusion or to find the solution of the problem

•   How you have managed your existing time and how efficient was your research methodology

• Whether you have written the report in proper format as instructed to you

• Whether each paragraphs and the sections of the report are logically sequenced

•  Whether the entire report represents a logical flow and whether your arguments have been logically validated by relevant information, evidences and mathematical and statistical data, if required.

• Whether your report represents your command in language and whether it is flawless so far as the grammar, spelling, punctuations are concerned

• Whether the report is simple enough to understand and has been written in a brief, concise and professional manner.

•  Whether you’re maintaining a proper tone throughout the report and whether it is specifically targeted to the intended audience

• Whether your writing skill is enough to make the report strictly specific to the objective of the report.

In comparison to the academic reports, business reports are written for entirely different purpose. Academic organisations exist to impart knowledge to the students to develop various skills within them, so that they can pursue their intended profession after their academic life is over. The students go to educational institutes to learn and, the core of the academic report is to reflect what the students have learnt. But Business organisations are not meant for educating the employees. 

These organisations produce goods and services according to the needs of the customers and sell those products in the market mainly to earn profit. However there are non trading concerns which are dedicated to the service of the society. But these organisations also either produce some goods or service consumable by the society. In the face of the steep completion, the business organisations continuously try to augment their offerings to the market and every department puts effort to lift their performance. Business report is an essential part of these continuous efforts, as without proper communication within the organisation as well as with the world at large, no business organisation can survive. Business reporting forms the backbone of this communication network.

In fact the report writing process you learn in your academic career will have to be modified when you are writing the same in a business environment. Writing business report properly and following proper format is vital for the proper functioning of the organisation. Only a proper report written clearly and specifically targeted to the intended audience could initiate proper response to accomplish the objective of the organisation. 

Production report, payroll report, sales report, budget report, raw material requirement reports and lots of other reports are continuously generated in a business organisation and each report must be perfectly written to keep the entire business affairs in track. For example if the market survey report is not written properly it would not be possible for the management to judge the expected demand of the products, being offered by the company. If the usual demand and the requirement of the customers could not be apprehended in advance, the manufacture planning is bound to be a faulty one and the company could end up either with a huge stock or could suffer stock out costs, thereby hitting the reputation of the company adversely and giving an opportunity to the competitors to capture the market share. This is a little example to demonstrate why as a professional you have to develop the skill of writing excellent business report, when effective in an organisation.

The business reporting is not meant to reflect your learning before the audience. It is meant to generate report to offer valuable business information as wanted by your managers or as you think to be distributed to your subordinates for proper functioning of the organisation. The business report sometimes have to be written for the laymen and in that case you have to be skilled enough to make the report simple enough to make them understand the report so that they can absorb the direction or information and can utilise the same as intended by the management. 

Sometimes you require preparing a highly technical report for the people who are expert in the field to which the report relates. In writing such a report, you have to demonstrate your skill for explaining the technical points clearly and briefly so that on the basis of your report the company can make and take vital decisions. Your report writing skill should exhibit the versatility while you are in your professional life. You have to know how to vary the report writing according to the character of different audiences; how to write report according to the importance of the issue for which the report is being written and you have to always remember that very often your report, if written properly, could contribute to the development of your organisation immensely.