Annual Reports of a Business

Annual reports of a business deliver data on the status of the organization to stakeholders, shareholders, community, and the media. They are utilized to point out the achievement level of a firm in the previous years. It highlights financial performance, honours awarded, sales increase, and market share gains as well as productivity and profitability increase (Bog, 2015). The achievement reports help to encourage the stakeholders and shareholders in the company participation. They serve as the marketing instrument of the firm through inclusion positive narrative about the company.

Data flow from transaction processing systems to help monitor the factors in annual reports

The formulation of annual reports in a business requires efficient data management. The business needs to install a technology that capture, process/analyse and record the transactions. The firm would use the transaction processing system to produce annual reports based on various types of data elements (Hameurlain, Küng, Wagner, Cuzzocrea & Dayal, (Eds.). 2013). The system would contain computer software and hardware holding a transaction-based application that conducts the daily transaction needed to operate the business. For instance, it would handle data emanating from customer reservations, order entry, sales, employee records and payroll (Bog, 2015).

Essentially, the business would use both the online mode and batch mode in the process of transactions. Online processing mode would help in handling data instantly upon entry. It is beneficial because it usually up to date. On the other hand, batch transaction processing depends on accruing transaction information for a particular time before processing into a batch (Sippu & Soisalon-Soininen, 2015). It would be used to deliver weekly and daily information. The method is quite cheaper than online and it is easier to manage.

The transaction processing actions would include capturing and validating of data, transaction, and database maintenance. Data capturing would takes place through direct data entry (DDE) which is usually used via automation data source. The system would use the electronic data interchange (EDI). The system offers a chance for computers to communication with single data entry (Bog, 2015). The next step entails data validation, which aims to verify the valid values, valid codes, and missing items. The more widespread validation encompasses transaction’s authorization depending on the available inventor and customer record (Thomasian, 2013).

Subsequently, data would also be automatically sorted, classified, and calculated. The TPS classifies incoming data on transaction. They are arranged based on the data item value that exceptionally ascertains each of them. Data retrieval follows which helps in an inquiry transactions. Additionally, required calculations are conducted followed by summarization to generate simple reports in all transactions (Hameurlain, Küng, Wagner, Cuzzocrea & Dayal, (Eds.) 2013). At this point, it is essential to update databases or files in order to facilitate easier management.

The next step entails production of outputs, which are categorized as query responses, transaction document and reports. Transaction documents include purchase orders and invoices (Thomasian, 2013). Query responses, which are usually generated after inquiries. Reports produced would include summary reports, error reports and transactions logs. The dashboard would be made up of electronic data interchange (EDI) contains transaction standards, product identification standards and translation software. For instance, the translation software transforms the entered information into a format that is easier to understand (Bog, 2015). The dashboard would also have telecommunication systems that help to share the reports to partners, shareholders and stakeholders.

The key performance indicators (KPI)

The key performance indicators for the annual reports would include both shareholder KPIs (profits prior to tax, earning per share, EBITDA, dividends per share, debt ratio) and operational KPIs (percentage of trained personnel, sales growth, and online sales as compared to aggregate sales). The annual reports would provide the level of profits prior to taxation in the past three years (Johansen & Plenborg, 2013). The firm would pay close attention to this KPI because it delivers information to stakeholders on the performance and trends. For instance, the underlying profits prior to tax increased by 5 per cent from 2015 to 2017, fundamentally because of appreciation of the US dollar against the Sterling pound. Similarly, the basic earnings per share increased by 7 per cent in the past three years due to improved business performance. They would also highlight the EBITDA, which increased by 3.3 per cent in 2017, which signifies the operating profitability. The dividend per share (DPS) increased by 5 per cent to 13.19 dollar per share in 2017. The net debt for the firm reduced from 67.3m to 21.4M in the past three years (Johansen & Plenborg, 2013).

In terms of operational KPIs, the annual reports indicated that the percentage of trained retail partners nearly doubled in 2017. Moreover, the sales of related services increased by 21 per cent especially in repair and fitting services. The firm can co-ordinate 49 per cent of retail sales of retail sales to consumers as compared to 13 per cent in the previous year. The business also opened seven new branches in Michigan, Chicago, and California (Johansen & Plenborg, 2013). More importantly, the proportion of online sales as compared to the total sales grew by 15.3 per cent as compared to the previous year, which reflected investment in online marketing.

Prototype a dashboard

References

Bog, A. (2015). Benchmarking transaction and analytical processing systems. Springer.

Hameurlain, A., Küng, J., Wagner, R., Cuzzocrea, A., & Dayal, U. (Eds.). (2013). Transactions on Large-Scale Data-and Knowledge-Centered Systems VIII: Special Issue on Advances in Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery(Vol. 7790). Springer.

Johansen, T. R., & Plenborg, T. (2013). Prioritising disclosures in the annual report. Accounting and Business Research, 43(6), 605-635.

Sippu, S., & Soisalon-Soininen, E. (2015). Transaction processing: Management of the logical database and its underlying physical structure. Springer.

Thomasian, A. (2013). Database Concurrency Control: Methods, Performance, and Analysis (Vol. 1). Springer Science & Business Media.