Reports are not exclusive to the business field. Reports can be written on various

events, achievements, research findings, academic progress etc.

News Reports

When we talk of reporters, who are the people that come to mind immediately?
Newspaper reporters surely! We will start with these most common forms of public
reports and then proceed to business reports.

Newspapers post staff at different locations in the field to cover events. The news
gathered by reporters is selected and presented to readers in a way in which it will be
interesting and useful to them. Events happen all the time and in all places. The
reporters, the editors in the newspaper office and the readers decide what is
newsworthy.

Activity 2
Read the following newspaper reports and identify the purpose of the reports:

A) Farmer electrocuted
A farmer was electrocuted at his field near his house at Gumma village in RR district
on Sunday. T. Ramesh (42) was trying to put off a transformer connection when he
got electrocuted, according to a police report.

B) Two-Day workshop on women’s health
St. Pious Degree and Postgraduate College for Women, Nagpur, conducted a two-day
workshop on ‘Healthy Women − A Step towards Healthy Society. Interaction with
Neighborhood on August 30 and 31.

Objective
The objective of the conference was to create awareness among women on dietary
habits and health. It attracted about 200 hundred women including faculty members
and students from various colleges of the city. Experts from the National Task Force
for Women in Science, NGOs and scientific bodies delivered lectures on Nutrition,
Health and Diet.

C) Restricting recurrence
Health: Stomach cancer and a common germ

Eradicating a common bacterium after stomach cancer surgery may reduce the
risk that cancer will recur, a new study reports.
The germ, Helicobacter pylori, is also a cause of peptic ulcer.

Japanese researchers studied 544 patients with early stomach cancer. After their
operations, half received an H. pylori eradication regimen, while the others
received standard care. The patients were followed with periodic examinations
over three years to see how many would develop recurrences.

The researchers found that 24 in the untreated group and nine in the treated
group developed new lesions.

After controlling for location and type of tumour, sex, age and other factors, the
researchers conclude that eradication of H. pylori reduced the risk of recurrence
by about 65%.

 What are the kinds of function carried out in an organization? List them here:

………………………………………………………………………………………
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Some of the functions in an organization are listed below along with their purposes.
Compare them with those on your list.

Visits: to know about the location, physical layout of a place or understand the
functioning of a factory or an office.

Inspection: to check whether machinery procured has been rightly installed and
functioning for the purposes for which it was procured, to assess the damages
caused to property for settling insurance claims.

Stock Verification: to physically check the quantity of stocks in a warehouse or
godown.

Feasibility assessment: to assess whether the location of a site is suitable for
setting up a premises there.

Reports can be written on each of the above functions.

In addition to these, the performance of operations within an organization is also
periodically assessed.

Performance Reports: to apprise the company on the functioning of a unit over
a given period of time.

Company Annual Reports: to apprise the shareholders about the activities,
capital investments and net profits of a company.

Sales Reports: to provide information about sales figures region-wise.
Project Reports: to provide information about the achievement of a project
undertaken.

An organization may also conduct surveys Writing Reports in order to gather information on various
matters of relevance to it:

Survey Reports: to gather information about people’s opinions on a service or
product, market needs etc.

Market Survey Reports: to assess market demand for services or products,
collect information about existing products.

Field Reports: to provide information about what is exactly happening in a field
of action.

Opinion Reports: to obtain information on popular opinion related to societal or
business issues.

 In order to be intelligible to the listener the speaker has to pay attention to the

speed of his delivery. If we convey our message at a rapid speed, the listener
may miss its essence or some important links in the sequence. This is likely to
result in a breakdown of communication and a concomitant loss of interest in
what is being said. Very slow speech, on the other hand, could make the talk /
speech/presentation boring. Thus the two extremes would defeat the very
purpose of oral communication i.e., transmitting information and interacting.
When we speak to an audience (present or absent) we need to adjust the speed
depending on the subject matter, the estimated level of the audience, and the
time allotted for the talk / speech / report etc.

If the subject matter the speaker is to talk about is difficult and entirely new to
the audience they cannot afford to speak too fast. They would, for instance,
need to speak slower when talking about a technical subject than they would if
they were talking about a sports event. However, if the audience comprises
highly qualified people, we could speak faster.

Another factor that can be important in determining speed is the listener’s
proficiency in the language used by the speaker. If the level of proficiency is
low the speaker would need to reduce his speed.

Familiarity with our audience can influence the speed of our speech. If we
address an assembly of friends we can speak faster than we would while
addressing strangers. Also, if we have been talking to an audience quite
frequently, we need not speak slowly.

Sometimes the time allotted for a talk/speech/report/presentation necessitates
an adjustment in the speed of delivery. What we want to say must be said
within the allotted time, so we have to speak fast or slow as the case may be.
We would be able to speak at normal speed if the content were to be just
enough for the time allotted.

Three examples:

 Fast
 Too slow
 Normal

Said at a fast pace:

It is often said in high places that engineers exploit the discoveries of
scientists and use them for making profit. It is even implied sometimes that
this is all they do. Perhaps the simplest counter to this is that the pure sciences,
as we now understand them, have a history that stretches back perhaps 200
years (in any concentrated form). Engineering, on the other hand, can be
traced back some 30,000 years when primitive men tied logs together with
reed ropes to make rafts, and soon learned to harness the wind by putting
masts and sails on them.

Said very slowly

Engineering is much more than that. It is concerned with everyday living,
often with survival, especially in its more ancient beginnings. Engineering is
therefore concerned with common sense as well as ingenuity. When it finally
brought affluence, at least to a minority, it was on the first rung of a ladder
that it has been climbing ever since-improving the quality of life for all
mankind. This involves not only harnessing, but controlling, the natural forces
and resources.

Normal speed

For thousands of years the primitive folk we now see as engineering pioneers
never thought of themselves in such terms. There were seamen, farmers,
soldiers and men of a few other occupations who could clearly be identified as
leading quite different kinds of lives. But not until the Industrial Revolution
did entirely new ‘species’ emerge, the men who made machines. They could
be seen to be neither soldiers nor sailors, nor had they anything to do with the
earth itself. They did not build roads, nor bridge rivers, and yet they had skills
in common with those who did.

 Business activities that have evolved in the Internet

environment and are native to it.

The following are some of the business models that fall into above mentioned category:

• Library Model: The web site that offers free information.

• Freeware Model: It provides free software (basic versions may be free) or
open worse software.

• Information Barter Model: Some Sort of exchange of information over the
Internet between individuals and organizations.

• Digital Products Model: Images, movies, animation, audio, text,
certificates and software will be available as products.

• Digital Delivery Model: Takes place when digital products are purchased.

• Access Provision Model: Provides access to Internet from enterprises
called Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

• Web site Hosting and Other Internet Services: Hosting web servers,
e-mail as well as URL and e-mail re-direction services.

 EFT is the computer based system that transfers the money electronically from one

account to another. Sometimes, it is also known as e-cheque. Interbank transfers are
examples of EFT.

Advantages

• Scheduled electronic payment helps in managing delayed disbursements
easily,
• The manual cheque involves the cost of ordering cheques, stamps,
envelopes, visit to bank, etc. But, EFT reduces all such administrative costs.
It requires less labor and simplifies reconciliation of bills,
• Money transfer is faster as transfer is normally done within 24 hours,
• It provides greater control to approve payment by using built in feature of
segregation of duties. Only a password is required to issue payments, and
• Process is secure when compared to cheques as no issue of lost or stolen
cheques arises.

Disadvantages

• It is limited to large companies;

• Risk is involved as the account number added may be incorrect sometimes,
and
• The transactions are irreversible.

 This is also electronic payment system in which money is transferred between the

accounts. It is analogous to net banking. To use PayPal, you have to open a PayPal
account associated to your credit card or your bank account. However, a user can pay
without giving, the credit card number during the transaction. The following is the process
of validating the account particulars:

• Customer gives PayPal account number,
• PayPal transfers small amount to the account,
• Customer confirms the payment amount,
• If correct, authentication is treated as successful, and
• PayPal sends email to both the payment sender and receiver of the
transactions.

Advantages
• Easy to use, and
• No Credit card is required.

 Digital certificates are electronic files that are used to uniquely identify people and

resources over the Internet. They enable secure, confidential communications between
two parties. Digital certificates are issued by CA (Certifying Authorities), such as
VeriSign or Entrust Technologies. A CA is a trusted entity whose main responsibility is
certifying the authenticity of users. There are four types of certificates available:

• Server Certificates: These types of certificates are used by web servers to
identify the company running the server and to allow encrypted SSL
sessions and SET (Secure Electronic Transaction) processing.

• Personal Certificates: These certificates are for individuals who want to
send SIMIME messages and access web servers using SSL and SET.

• Publisher Certificates: These are used by software authors to sign and
identify their release codes so that users will know of tampering, if it
happens.

• Certificate Information: All digital certificates include information about
its owner and the CA who issued it. A digital certificate includes the
following information: Name of the certificate holder and other identifying
information unique to the holder such as URL or e-mail address, holder's
public key, name of the CA who issued the certificate, serial number of
certificate and validity period of the certificate (start and end date).

Public Key Cryptography
Digital certificates are based on public key cryptography, which uses a pair of keys
for both encryption and decryption. With public key cryptography, keys work in
pairs of matched "public" and "private" keys. The public key can be freely
distributed without compromising the private key, which must be kept by its
owner. Since these keys only work as a pair, an transaction done with confidential
public key can only be undone with the corresponding private key, and vice-versa.