Integrated corporate reporting is becoming increasingly complex: different standards, software and languages make the annual report a huge project. Different departments have to work together, key figures have to be recorded and checked for accuracy and success stories from the company have to present the company well with multimedia storytelling. And finally, the different readers of annual reports have different reading habits - so the report has to be just as convincing on an analyst's screen as it is on a journalist's smartphone. To make this easier, RYZE offers an effective tool: the RYZE Reporting Hub.
Reducing complexity in the preparation process of annual
reports
Companies - especially international corporations - often have complex business models and globally distributed business units, which make the preparation of annual and sustainability reports time-consuming. One of the challenges is to collect and analyse data from various sources. The abundance of information can slow down the process and make it difficult to gain meaningful insights. Companies must also ensure that their reports comply with legal regulations and accounting standards. Compliance with these regulations requires accuracy and can lead to a complicated process.
Furthermore, annual reports are not just a mere fulfilment of a legal obligation. Shareholders, journalists, analysts and other interested parties want to get an accurate picture of the company through the report. They pay attention to various details and are more or less adept at reading balance sheets and assessing developments within the company.
The art of a good annual report is therefore to translate complex information into clear and accessible language that meets the needs of the reader. The aim is to reduce complexity in the creation process. This is precisely why the RYZE Reporting Hub was developed.
Reporting is becoming increasingly complex!
Trendmonitor DAX40 2023: the reporting trends of the DAX 40 companies
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Reporting tool with important interfaces for working more efficiently on annual reports
The Reporting Hub automatically creates annual and sustainability reports from key figures in accordance with common standards as full HTML reports and as interactive PDFs. As a web-based tool, the hub enables targeted searching and filtering of information so that users are shown exactly what they need. This makes searching through large annual reports quick and easy. These are functions that are often underutilised or not used at all, as our current trend monitor, which examines DAX 40 annual reports, shows: While all DAX companies publish their reports as PDFs, only 60 per cent use online annual reports. It is therefore not possible to simply adapt the reports to the respective needs of the users.
The Reporting Hub is also characterised by its good integration into existing workflows. Data from disclosure management systems such as Workiva or SmartNotes can be imported directly. This means that there is only one data source, which drastically reduces the susceptibility to errors and simplifies the updating of data, as changes only have to be made in one place. The data is automatically transferred to automatically generated annual reports or to the landing page of a company website. Templates can be defined so that the report matches the design specifications exactly and can be clearly assigned to a company.
Company stories from editorial systems can also be integrated. This means that editors can work in their familiar environment. Content created for the company website, for example, can then be incorporated into the annual or sustainability report. Content from the reports can also appear on the website via editorial systems such as Ecoma. This means that the Reporting Hub is able to import and export articles, minimising the effort required for adaptations. The tool also facilitates the simultaneous publication of stories from the company, which can be publicised at the same time as the report is published. Cross-references between the report and content on the website also make it possible to experience the company as a whole; the annual report no longer stands on its own as an individual work, but is seamlessly integrated into the presentation of the company.
We will soon be shedding light on the interaction between RYZE Reporting Hub and our content management system Ecoma in a separate blog post.
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