A report is a textual work (usually of writing, speech, television, or film) made with the specific intention of relaying information or recounting certain events in a widely presentable form

Presentation

Presentation is the practice of showing and explaining the content of a topic to an audience or learner. Presentations come in nearly as many forms as there are life situations...

.

Written reports are documents which present focused, salient content to a specific audience. Reports are often used to display the result of an experiment, investigation, or inquiry. The audience may be public or private, an individual or the public in general. Reports are used in government, business, education, science, and other fields.

Reports such as graphics, images, voice, or specialized vocabulary in order to persuade that specific audience to undertake an action. One of the most common formats for presenting reports is IMRAD

IMRAD

- The basic structure of a scientific paper :The IMRAD structure is currently the most prominent norm for the structure of a scientific paper. IMRAD is an acronym for Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion...

: Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion. This structure is standard for the genre because it mirrors the traditional publication of scientific research and summons the ethos and credibility of that discipline. Reports are not required to follow this pattern, and may use alternative patterns like the problem-solution format.

Additional elements often used to persuade readers include: headings to indicate topics, to more complex formats including charts, tables, figures, pictures, tables of contents, abstracts, summaries, appendices, footnotes, hyperlinks, and references.

Some examples of reports are: scientific reports, recommendation reports, white papers, annual reports, auditor's reports, workplace reports, census

Census

A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...

 reports, trip reports, progress reports, investigative reports, budget reports, policy reports, demographic reports, credit reports, appraisal reports, inspection reports, military reports, bound reports, etc.

Enterprise/Client reporting

With the dramatic expansion of information technology, and the desire for increased competitiveness in corporations, there has been an increase in the use of computing power to produce unified reports which join different views of the enterprise in one place. Termed Enterprise Reporting, this process involves querying data sources with different logical model

Logical data model

A logical data model in systems engineering is a representation of an organization's data, organized in terms of entities and relationships and is independent of any particular data management technology.- Overview :...

s to produce a human readable report—for example, a computer user has to query the Human Resources

Human resources

Human resources is a term used to describe the individuals who make up the workforce of an organization, although it is also applied in labor economics to, for example, business sectors or even whole nations...

 databases and the Capital Improvements databases to show how efficiently space is being used across an entire corporation.

Enterprise Reporting is a fundamental part of the larger movement towards improved business intelligence

Business intelligence

Business intelligence mainly refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by associated costs and incomes....

 and knowledge management

Knowledge management

Knowledge management comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences...

. Often implementation involves extract, transform, and load

Extract, transform, load

Extract, transform and load is a process in database usage and especially in data warehousing that involves:* Extracting data from outside sources* Transforming it to fit operational needs...

 (ETL) procedures in coordination with a data warehouse

Data warehouse

In computing, a data warehouse is a database used for reporting and analysis. The data stored in the warehouse is uploaded from the operational systems. The data may pass through an operational data store for additional operations before it is used in the DW for reporting.A data warehouse...

 and then using one or more reporting tools. While reports can be distributed in print form or via email

Email

Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...

, they are typically accessed via a corporate intranet

Intranet

An intranet is a computer network that uses Internet Protocol technology to securely share any part of an organization's information or network operating system within that organization. The term is used in contrast to internet, a network between organizations, and instead refers to a network...

.

See also

• Customer Relationship Management
  Customer relationship management
  Customer relationship management is a widely implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing,...
  
  
• Data quality
  Data quality
  Data are of high quality "if they are fit for their intended uses in operations, decision making and planning" . Alternatively, the data are deemed of high quality if they correctly represent the real-world construct to which they refer...
  
  
• Enterprise Application Integration
  Enterprise application integration
  Enterprise Application Integration is defined as the use of software and computer systems architectural principles to integrate a set of enterprise computer applications.- Overview :...
  
  
• Enterprise Resource Planning
  Enterprise resource planning
  Enterprise resource planning systems integrate internal and external management information across an entire organization, embracing finance/accounting, manufacturing, sales and service, customer relationship management, etc. ERP systems automate this activity with an integrated software application...
  
  
• Decision Support System
  Decision support system
  A decision support system is a computer-based information system that supports business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs serve the management, operations, and planning levels of an organization and help to make decisions, which may be rapidly changing and not easily specified in...
  
  
• Global Reporting Initiative
  Global Reporting Initiative
  The Global Reporting Initiative produces one of the world's most prevalent standards for sustainability reporting - also known as ecological footprint reporting, Environmental Social Governance reporting, Triple Bottom Line reporting, Corporate Social Responsibility reporting...
  
  
• Management Information Systems
• Grey Literature International Steering Committee
  Grey Literature International Steering Committee
  The Grey Literature International Steering Committee was established in 2006 after the 7th International Conference on Grey Literature held in Nancy on 5–6 December 2005....
  
  International guidelines for the production of scientific and technical reports

External links

• A Guide to Enterprise Reporting
• GLISC - Guidelines for the production of scientific and technical reports
• DynamicReports, an open source Java API reporting library
• Reporting Software Tools Independent Review and analysis of reporting tools