WHEN DESIGNERS WRITE

THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC HAS SHAKEN UP THE WAY MOST OF US DO BUSINESS. YOU’D BE HARD-PRESSED TO FIND ANYONE WHO HASN’T BEEN AFFECTED IN SOME WAY AND WHO IS NOW TRYING TO FIGURE OUT THE BEST WAY TO APPROACH THE NEW BUSINESS LANDSCAPE. With a view to demonstrating an organisation’s approach to operating across a [...]

YOUR INTEGRATED REPORT MAY VERY WELL PUT YOUR STAKEHOLDERS TO SLEEP. HERE’S A GUIDE TO KEEP THEM GLUED TO THE PAGE. It comes but once a year and for most organisations it’s a chore best given to the bookworms down the passage. But it’s an expensive exercise and a prime marketing opportunity missed if it [...]

BRINGING TOGETHER TRAINING AND PUBLISHING TO HIGHLIGHT THE IMPORTANCE OF INTEGRATED REPORTING It’s not enough anymore to just have a well-designed integrated report. Annual and integrated report publishers Blue Apple have teamed up with consultants Environmental and Sustainability Solutions (ESS) to help companies and organisations produce reports that not only tick the boxes, but tell [...]

HOW THIS PANDEMIC WILL FORCE US TOWARDS INTEGRATED THINKING Scenario planners, economists and anyone with a platform will tell you that business as we know it will never be the same again. It’s too early to tell the effect that the COVID-19 pandemic will have on the world economy as a whole, but we know [...]

Annual reports are so last year. Merely reporting on your numbers and how the business impacts its shareholders used to be pretty one-sided. Enter Integrated Reporting (IR). While IR has been around since 2002 when a Danish CEO of Novozymes decided to report on the integrated financial, environmental, social and economic significance of his business; [...]

OR ARE YOU JUST TICKING THE BOXES? Where the good ol’ annual report was used to show off your performance, your profits (sometimes at any cost) and your way forward, integrated reporting is how you do it with heart. It’s mostly as a result of a conscious need for improvement of relationships between stakeholders, our [...]

HANDS UP WHO WANTS TO DO THE INTEGRATED REPORT THIS YEAR? Integrated reporting comes but once a year (for most). For some that’s a dreaded period of ‘where do I start’ but a necessary evil. It reared its head in 2010 and has become a broad-based framework for business and investment decisions that are long-term, […]

REFILOE HOOHLO-ZEPHYRINE BELIEVES THAT ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS IS THE KEY TO A WINNING STRATEGY It’s become increasingly evident that for a brand to have heart, it needs to display bravery, guts, or as we say in seSotho: ‘Sebete’. This means not being scared to ask the right questions. Information is king after all. In […]

BLUE APPLE’S TANYA LOGAN ROLLS UP HER SLEEVES TO FIND OUT IF SHE CAN TRUST THE RESEARCH I am the grandchild of a Croatian grandfather who came to the country in his 30s, married a South African Croatian woman and spent the rest of his life trying very hard, but without much success, to learn […]

BIGGER PICTURE REPORTING MAKES GOOD BUSINESS SENSE  Companies listed on the JSE, SOEs, NGOs and other acronyms who use other people’s money, issue an integrated report at the end of their financial year. Because it’s a requirement. But even if it wasn’t mandatory, would South Africa’s leading corporations go through all the trouble of putting [...]

TURN THE ELEPHANT We don’t recommend performing an appendectomy unless you’re an actual surgeon. You probably shouldn’t take an F1 car around the track at 200km/hour unless you’re a real F1 driver. And, unless you’re a structural engineer, don’t even think about building a tensegrity bridge. It’s an age-old point and you probably think we’re [...]

TACKLING THE MONSTER INTEGRATED REPORTING WORKSHOPS HELPS YOU DEFEAT IT BIT BY BIT It’s early in the year – the perfect time to think about ticking that report off your list. Before you know it, you’ll be up to your eyeballs in projects, plans and all sorts of mayhem, so this may well be your [...]

Choosing a designer for your integrated report the easy part. It’s knowing what to put in it that stumps many South Africa is renowned as the world-leader when it comes to integrated reporting. This is no doubt due to strides our very own Mervyn King has taken in the field of corporate governance over the [...]

If you’re on your toes today the error in the headline will have jumped right out at you. But don’t just gasp in horror, ensure it doesn’t happen to you. If seeing a mistake in print makes you cringe you might be tempted to put it down to professional experience, but don’t be too hasty. [...]

Integrated reporting by numbers. Most corporates already apply King III principles and soon King IV will replace King III in its entirety. One of the main changes from III to IV is the ‘apply and explain regime’. One of the key objectives of this revised manner of reporting is for stakeholders to be able to [...]

Annual report time rolls around with perfect regularity… whether you like it or not. And there’s no getting around the fact that it’s a huge, time-consuming, often exhausting task. As Julie Andrews sings in The Sound of Music, “Let’s start at the very beginning.” Because we all know it’s a very good place to start. [...]

Every organisation has an overabundance of information itching to find to its way into your integrated report. One of the most difficult challenges any compiler faces is deciding what to put in and how much of it to include. It’s tempting to just include everything you get your hands on – that way everyone in [...]

It’s more than just about the numbers these days. Integrated reporting was recommended by King III back in 2009 and is a JSE-requirement for listed companies. Long gone are the days of turning out a document where your biggest concern is that the digits align on the financials. Today you need to worry about the […]

With the rise in all things digital, it’s not surprising that an increasing number of companies are choosing to release digital reports. Aside from the flexibility that these reports offer, they are able to engage users in a more interactive and creative way than ever before, not to mention the immense saving on the high […]

So you’ve been tasked with compiling an integrated report for your company. The question is where do you even begin? click to enlarge It can be a daunting task. How can you be sure that your report is really integrated and not merely a bunch of facts and figures crammed together into one document? Says […]

The days of big budget annual reports are numbered. So what are the options? Tanya Logan, Blue Apple With a watchful eye on government and private sector spending and the birth of the integrated report, less is more these days. It shows a certain responsibility to shareholders to not blow the budget on glossy doorstops. […]