Report Writing Course

As your career grows and advances, you will be asked to write reports - these may be proposals for new ideas, evaluations of an initiative or a recommendation for a new service or product. Your organisation will expect a professional and well-written document to base important decisions upon. Imsimbi will teach you all the skills and techniques you need to know to write just such a report: clear, concise, balanced and informative. You will understand what needs to be written, how it should be written and what structure and format you should use for different kinds of reports.

The course has been carefully designed to follow an established and successful process. Complex concepts are clearly explained, obstacles are identified and you will be taught useful tools and techniques to overcome them.

UNDERSTANDING TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES
We will take you through the tools available to you, so that you may deliver professional results on a consistent basis. You will be able to explain the benefits of your process to anyone in your organisation.

TECHNICAL REPORTS: THE HOW AND WHY
You may be required to write a technical report - we will detail all the activities associated with such reports. These may range from an analysis of customer complaints or inefficient processes.

THE VALUE OF REPORTS
You will understand what makes a report valuable, practical and useful and why a report needs to be factual and accurate.

WHAT GREAT REPORTS SHOULD HAVE
Not all reports are equal - you will learn the importance of quality dimensions, why data and information must be reliable and valid, which information to use and how to map that information into a compelling report format.

TOTAL QUALITY AND HOW IT RELATES TO REPORTS
Applying the definition of Quality - Conformance to Requirements - is essential to great reporting. You will also learn how to apply this in the daily execution of your duties and how the cost of Quality affects your business.

REPORT WRITING LEVELS
The usefulness of reports in some organisations may be based upon the degree - level - of the maturity of the organisation and the importance that is placed on reports. We will take you through these levels and explain how they influence the quality of the report

DATA AND INFORMATION
Reports to need to contain information and data must be used as a basis for that information. You will be guided on how to gather data and turn it into useful information. In addition, you will understand such information is most usefully applied.

INFORMATION MAPPING
Once you have all the information you need for your report, you need to know where and how to use it and place it in your report. This will ensure that your reports are always easy to read, easy to understand and easy to access.

• The functions of communication
• Barriers to effective communication
• Report writing skills - Sentences; tips on joining words and punctuation
• Some common report writing faults to avoid
• Writing good paragraphs
• Transitions and ordering the parts
• Overcoming writer's block: subjectivity; objectivity and bias
• Writing of: project proposals and technical reports
• Project progress report template
• Revising and editing
• Writing and improving the quality of business and technical reports.
• Compile technical reports ensuring content and format are appropriate.
• Discuss the focus of the report - deciding on correct content.
• Meeting reporting deadlines.
• How to select, format, structure and layout reports: including headings, bullets and numbering.
• Ensure the document sequence is logical and meaningful.
• How to present information differently: text, graphs, tables, flow charts and diagrams.
• Organising and structuring a technical text appropriately.
• Presenting the same information in different ways.
• Technical reports
• General reports
• Report checklists
• Topic or subject matter
• Purpose of the report
• Scope of the report
• Section identification systems
• Referencing
• Table of contents
• Stages of report production
• Structuring the report