Consultancy services are an invaluable tool to any company seeking expert guidance pivotal to the company’s growth. Consultants have analytics, graphs, dashboard, and other tools of the trade at their disposal to outline businesses’ inefficiencies and ameliorations. However, all top-line consultants employ a consulting report to compile all the findings of a particular issue to the client.
A consulting report can make or break your career. We delve into the best practices to ensure you deliver well-pieced and actionable reports.
What Is A Consulting Report?
A consulting report is a detailed document that outlines the findings of a company’s issues and how they affect the business. Consultants prepare consulting reports for clients who can’t perform research in specific fields and offer recommendations. The document contains specific findings and actionable recommendations.
What Is A Consulting Report Template?
A consulting report template is a predesigned fillable document that saves you the hassle of designing a consulting report from scratch. Standard templates contain assigned sections that you fill with details of your report.
Tip: Consulting reports are client-specific, and so should your template be. The key to finding a template that meets your client’s needs is selecting a standard template, tailoring it to clients’ needs, and running with it.
There are numerous templates available from various web platforms. Ensure you use template-friendly browsers such as Safari browsers.
Consulting Report Templates & Examples
Why Create a Consulting Report Template
Provide solutions to your client. With a consulting report, you can provide diverse solutions to your client that they can choose from. Businesses love consulting firms that provide actionable solutions.
Help businesses in the decision-making process. Businesses rely on consulting reports to obtain insightful information when they don’t have the expertise to source the information. Well-written reports form the basis of value chain analysis, among other business development plans.
Consulting reports offer accurate analysis of the client’s issues with verified data and tractable information. The analysis should be spot on and without any unnecessary jargon.
How a Consulting Report Example Can Help You
Consulting reports examples give insightful information you can use to design your report. Even better, experts use the report’s examples as templates for their reports.
However, remember to tailor each template to your client’s needs.
How to Create a Consulting Report
A consulting report is highly dependent on the content of the document. While there may be standard analytics you may employ as a consultant, you have some wiggle room when it comes to writing a report. However, do not create a vague and ambiguous report as it could jeopardize your career.
Here is how to create a succinct and on point report:
Design a spot-on cover page
The cover page should serve as a brief introduction to your client. Even if they know you keep your cover page professional by including:
- Name of the company
- Name of the client
- Name of the report
- Name of the consultant
- Date when you deliver the report
Table of contents
You can design the table of contents after you finish the report. Enlist your table in sequential order.
Executive summary
Most management cadres do not read through the whole report. The executive summary is an on-point description of your report’s main findings and recommendations.
Tip: Use visual effects such as charts to show correlations between your findings and recommendations, among other data points.
Background section
The background section is an acknowledgment of the client’s initial information. Why should you include it?
A well-written background section states the problem of a particular project, who commissioned the project, the project scope, initial assumptions, author of the report, and the research methods employed.
Write the analysis
The analysis section is the bulkiest section of your document. You will write all your findings, statistical data, and interpretation of the data linking it to the problem or issue at hand. Remember, you need to go into the details and describe every issue. Assign subheadings to ease client navigation through your report.
Enlist recommendations
Provide alternative solutions for the client’s problems. Enlist the actionable plans for each problem and state how they will affect a particular aspect of the client’s business or company operations. Use bullets for a better visual effect.
Conclude your report
Sum up all the findings and the recommendations and provide key takeaways. Do not make the conclusion lengthy. Two paragraphs are maximum.
Include the appendix (optional)
You can include the appendix to list references and relevant info supporting your report. The appendix is optional, and some high-level consultants do not include it.
Consulting Report Format
The basic structure of a consulting report format is:
- A title page that captures basic client and consultant data
- Table of contents
- Executive summary
- Introduction
- Analysis
- Recommendation
- Conclusion
- Appendix (optional)
Tips for Writing a Consulting Report
Some useful tips to even better your report are:
- Create an evocative title page.
- Make the report flow logically.
- Stay concise and focused on the client’s problem(s).
- Use a header and a footer for your contact information on each page.
FAQs
A consultancy report is meant to offer definitive findings and actionable recommendations to a client. A client who has limited skills in a particular field usually hires a consultant to seek directives on issues in the particular field.
A consulting report consists of a brief introduction, the executive summary, analysis, and recommendations. The analysis section is the bulkiest of the report.
It all depends on the issue, scope of analysis, findings, and recommendations. However, we can tell you not to make the conclusion longer than two paragraphs for a good report.
Enlist the main takeaways and a summary of the findings. Link the analysis and recommendations to the problem.
Conclusion
Consulting reports are the sieve that separates average consultants from top-level consultants. You may have excellent analytical and consultancy skills, but writing is not your forte. Keep calm. Follow this guide to create effective consulting reports for your clients and show them why you are the best.
