Signs are emerging that printed non-financial reports are making a
comeback after a period of company experimentation with web-only
publication.
GlaxoSmithKline, BT and Hewlett Packard are among companies to have
revised their publication strategies, drawing back from web-only
reporting to produce a printed version. GSK and BT both now produce
short printed summary reports, while HP is creating a brief ‘customer
report’ summarizing information it provides online.
Roger Cowe, a director of the UK-based Context consultancy, which draws
up non-financial reports for several multinationals, said that
after an initial rush to html- and pdf-only publishing, many businesses
have realized the benefits of a print version.
‘Web-based reporting was a bit of a blind alley for many companies,’ he
said. ‘Every company has to think about its own needs, so there isn’t a
model which applies across the board. But everyone needs something in
print – to hand out, to send out or to leave with people.’ Cowe said
this was true even of online reports, which readers often wanted to
print out. ‘The web is great for background material, but online
documents seem best as pdf,’ he said. ‘If people are going to print
something out, best to design it so it works in print.’
At a feedback session on Nationwide Building Society’s corporate
responsibility report last month, most stakeholders said they had
printed out the document in preference to reading it on screen. Mike
Tuffrey, director of the Corporate Citizenship Company, which ran the
session, said companies were finding ‘real limitations’ to the
online-only approach. ‘Web sites are great for giving detailed
information to multiple specialist audiences anywhere in the world. But
without a content printout, you can’t easily discuss reports in
meetings. Many of our clients are now producing short printed documents
with a summary or highlights, as well as a longer pdf. The difficulty
is deciding what to include, as the range of audiences is wide.’
Andrew Taylor, Ford Motor Company’s corporate citizenship director, told EP
his organization had opted for a printed document every two years. ‘We
decided to have online reporting on a continuous basis but recognize
that we can’t just report on the web,’ he said. ‘NGOs will analyse our
online stuff to death, but politicians, for instance, tend not to look
at anything on the internet, so it makes sense to have a slimmed-down
printed document every two years that we hand out to relevant people.’
Cowe said his ideal would be ‘a brief web report with background
material for those who really want to delve, a longish pdf and a short
printed document’.
