By Dominic Jones
I RECEIVED an email last night from Chris in Gauteng, South Africa. He wanted to buy our online annual report guidelines but didn’t want to become a member to get them.
We only provide the guidelines to members, but there is a way that you can develop your own guidelines with just a little bit of research.
Here’s the reply I sent to Chris:
Chris,
Sorry. But here’s an idea. Go to http://www1.geber.at/serviceseiten/willkommen
Check out their client list and view their latest reports. Honestly, these guys are the online AR pros. No one is better.
You can add IBM and GE to your list and I think you’ve got the best of the crop.
But remember, the research shows that relatively few people make full use of a complete online AR. They mostly focus on the letters to shareholders and the financial statements.
I’ve been suggesting for years that the best approach may be to trim the book down for the Web. Just focus on the letters, the financial and operational review, and the financial statements and the notes.
The fancy stuff should be turned into something else — a Flash corporate profile or even a company profile section that’s updated annually. Seems a shame to bury the expensive photos in an online report that stops getting used after a few weeks.
Since it’s a reference document for analysts and investors, having the financial sections in HTML makes it much easier for them to quickly retrieve information, especially if it has a good scoped search.
Hope this helps and send me links to your work when its done, ok?
So there you go. If you are going to do something more than PDF, then there is only one way to go — and that’s to do it properly.
There are no shortcuts.
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