Narrative Reporting Comes of Age

With the digital economy dominating many business segments today, the value of many organizations goes beyond tangible assets. In fact, nowadays it’s not unheard of for 80% of the value of the company to consist of intangible assets. AirBnB and Uber are perfect examples; leaders in their respective industries, yet they own no assets directly associated with delivering their services. Most of the value of their businesses is held in intellectual property, and in their business strategy and model.  So how can you make sure that an accurate value of the organization is captured and shared?

Traditional Reporting is Falling Short.

Today, most reporting tools are great at disclosing quantitative information, but fall short in the delivery of qualitative information. Most organisations have systems for operational and financial reporting, but often struggle to collect and report on the business narrative to explain those numbers. While organisations are obligated to report in a timely and accurate manner, they also see a need to deliver a level of visibility and transparency that provide stakeholders an understanding to instill confidence in the numbers being reported. 

What is Narrative Reporting?

It is very difficult to communicate things like business strategy, budget justifications, or the cause of certain patterns in the data purely through numbers and graphs on traditional reports. By using a more free-form layout of descriptive paragraphs, narrative reports augment and, in some cases, replace traditional structured content of tables or graphs. Readers find narrative reports extremely useful for understanding not only “what” has happened, but to answer the “who”, “when”, “where” and “why” questions that provide a deeper explanation of the organization’s performance. 

Most people immediately see the value of narrative reporting for external reporting and, sometimes, regulatory reporting. They recognize that for many companies, especially those who's value is tied to intangible assets, narrative reporting is proving vital for helping external readers understand the true value of an organization.  

Are there Broader Audiences for Narrative Reporting?

Upon seeing the power of narrative reporting for external communication, there is a large and growing appetite from internal consumers for reports that present more than just quantitative information to explain the organization’s performance. The richer set of information that narrative reporting brings, enhances communication among the various internal departments, creating an environment of empathy and teamwork, and the desire to pull together toward common organizational objectives.

In subsequent posts, I plan to look deeper into what narrative reporting looks like using three factors – committed people, strong processes, and technology to effectively assemble the prescribed content for narrative reports –  that organizations should consider to successfully implement narrative reporting.