Jon Rowden, director at Reportl, encourages reporters to take advantage of this new technology that will help expand the world of news consumption.

Corporate reports, especially annual reports, are a window into the workings of a company. They are also a way for anyone, including investors, to form an impression of what lies further beyond, what’s visible through the window. Reporting matters and the chances are that if you are reading Communicate magazine, you already know why.

The practical delivery of reporting is one of the most complex challenges around. So many roles, rules, perspectives, dependencies and interactions.  Moving parts aplenty, all done to a tight deadline. 

I’m Jon Rowden and have worked in reporting for quite a while in a variety of roles involving preparation, auditing and rule-making. I’m now with the specialist reporting agency Friend Studio and a director of Reportl Ltd. Reportl is digital-led software that is transforming the way reporting is created and delivered to make it more usable. 

Here’s what I’ve learned from these various vantage points. Everyone involved, whatever role they play, wants things to go well.  Now granted, that’s not an earth-shattering insight, but I’d go further - they want the process to resemble an ocean-going cruise liner. Serene and inexorable progress towards a definite destination. This requires planning, measured urgency and a collective feeling that “We’ve got this covered”. 

Reporting teams also relish making significant improvements that make a difference.  When asked to summarise what they achieved during an annual report process, how many of us want to say “The same as last year”? 

External events, surprises, acquisitions, disposals and new rules can act to make complex choreography even more challenging. Stuff happens and there’s no guarantee that doing the same thing delivers a similar outcome.  

The best teams bring a sense of challenge and energy to each reporting project. Where can improvements be made? What are the best reporters doing? What requires a fresh approach?  That’s healthy. 

This article suggests looking at your reporting process. Is it fit for the digital and AI age we have entered? For many, the closing stages of the process are stuck in an old print-based paradigm.  Designing with InDesign software produces a great looking printed annual report, but the conversion to PDF and then to XHTML format, creates late headaches, errors and data quality challenges. Then the report’s usability problems kick-in.

These days most people consume most information on screens, especially their phones. And they expect AI to do their heavy lifting. A print-first reporting process buries information within PDF documents, making content and data harder for AI to find and understand.

Reportl’s digital-first approach cuts through this. Reports are prepared in HTML, ensuring that all information is discovered and understood by AI. With Reportl, there’s no error-strewn PDF conversion. All the final formats (Web, Regulatory Filing, PDF, Print, RNS Press Release) come from one system, engineered for corporate reporting. Information is added once, all updates are controlled. There’s an audit trail and common content is linked across the various output documents. With the annual report placed online as webpages, AI can find and read the information easily, delivering more reliable, trusted analysis. 

Reportl applies the process anyone would do if starting with a blank sheet of paper, rather than trying to bolt-on digitisation to the traditional process. 

If the above resonates and you are looking to improve your reporting processes, why not take a look at Reportl.com, and the case studies involving FTSE and US-listed companies that have already made the switch. I hope you agree that the reports create a striking impression - they have been winning awards. User analytics tell us that most stakeholders are more attracted to this digital-first approach.