Love corporate reporting?

Love corporate reporting? We do...

Here at Jones and Palmer, we love corporate reporting. Love is a strong word, which has a variety of slightly different meanings. So as not to be misconstrued, what do we mean by love? Well here’s the dictionary entry for what is meant by ‘love’;

Main Entry: love

Part of Speech: verb

Definition: adore, like very much

Synonyms: admire, adulate, be attached to, be captivated by, be crazy about, be enamored of, be enchanted by, be fascinated with, be fond of.

Why we love corporate reporting at Jones and Palmer

With over 40 business years and literally hundreds of man years of experience, corporate reporting virtually runs through our veins. We are not some strange breed of hippy Martians who have just landed in the centre of the UK hugging Annual Reports. We are a group of ‘relatively’ young people with a range of experience from academic qualifications to expert hands-on practical expertise. Our inauguration ceremony for new recruits requires them to swear their adoration of corporate reporting on a bible (well, not quite – we only recruit the best, most experienced people who have to be team players to survive at Jones and Palmer)! Whilst the message is serious, we work as a team and have fun along the way. Above all, we try to understand our clients requirements – be they a small cap AiM listed company or a FTSE 100 company, whether they are looking for a simple printed Annual Report, or a FTSE 100 company demanding the complete corporate communications package to produce your xhtml online Annual Report, printed Annual Report and Corporate and Investor websites.

Reasons behind this article

Having recently launched our new corporate brochure, befittingly entitled ‘Love corporate reporting?’ we felt that it might help you to understand our thought process behind the publication in order to better understand our passion for corporate communications. We hope that this might encourage you to talk to Jones and Palmer about how our skills and experience can help to develop your corporate communications (be they small steps or large) and without being a burden on your purse strings! We are cost effective, but not cheap, we focus on value and we most certainly don’t cut corners.

What makes corporate reporting great?

Great corporate reporting is not just about making the business appear good on the outside, that’s just the equivalent of slapping lipstick on a pig. People who have invested, or are considering investing in your business are looking for honesty and integrity and to attract them, you need to communicate effectively. In summary, corporate reporting is all about communicating value and demonstrating effective leadership.

Communicating value

Value generation is the core objective of your business; it’s your ‘raison d’être’. It encompasses the markets you operate in, your human capital, your brand development, your strategic goals, and the execution of your strategy, cost control... and many more factors. The difficult task is how best to communicate this value, without divulging commercially sensitive information. It really is a fine balancing act. You need to effectively communicate value without saying too little or shouting too much.

Demonstrating effective leadership

You need to win shareholder trust through demonstrating effective leadership (or as it’s officially titled, ‘Corporate Governance’). After all, you are managing and running the business on behalf of the shareholders. For example, clarity over how you manage risk – be it organisational, reputation or exchange rate exposure will impact your business in both the long and short-term.

The raft of legislative requirements, enhanced with endless best practice guidelines leaves you with options. Do you prefer to view corporate reporting as an opportunity or obligation? What you can’t do is simply talk the talk without walking the walk – you need to enhance statements with fact.

Our approach

Our approach diagram

As a public-listed company you most likely want to increase liquidity, reduce the cost of capital, attract investors and achieve fair value. (If you don’t want to achieve any of these points it is most likely that you will shortly want to de-list, or should not have listed in the first place!)

Message

In order to achieve this effectively, you will need to convey a compelling investment proposition across all corporate communications to ensure that you are understood as a business. You need to clearly communicate your strategy using key messages and back up your statements using key performance indicators.

Impression

Once you have developed your message, you need to combine your clear, concise narrative with your corporate branding and a ‘dazzling design’ to enhance your investment proposition, in effect, bring your story to life!

Medium

And this story needs to be brought to your target audience – the investment world in the most appropriate medium to suit their needs, be it printed or online. And, above all, your message and corporate branding need to be consistent across all media.

Done well, working in partnership with the right specialists, you can achieve both fair valuation and demonstrate your business as an attractive investment proposition, despite the current economic climate!

Why partner with Jones and Palmer?

At Jones and Palmer, not only do we love corporate reporting, we are also excellent at it, but we don’t often shout about how good, modesty prevails. Our mission, vision and brand values should help to qualify this further. Our mission demonstrates why Jones and Palmer exists, our vision describes where we are going as a business, and our brand values form the Jones and Palmer personality.

This article was written by Heidi Hill (Business Development Manager). We welcome your feedback and thoughts and would love to hear any questions you have.