Stakeholder Summary Report

Goal description

The goals of this analysis is to help leaders and managers in the development of strategies and making decisions or recommendations for the improvement of business performance. This analysis aims at reporting and analyzing ways to build a business report. Business leaders can rely on summarized business reported for troubleshooting by predicting worst case scenarios, finding solutions to the issues faced by an organization currently, and reviewing the best practices that will enable the business to thrive by making comparisons with other organizations within the same industry.

Estee Lauder 2020 Year in Review Report

Estee Lauder Companies, Inc. is a manufacturer of products that include fragrance, skin care, hair care, make up, and other ancillary products and services. The 2020 Estee Lauder report gives an overview of their distribution strategies in their retail operations, customers, financial information, and their code of conduct and adherence to corporate governance guidelines (Black, 2016). Their business report gives information about their notes to consolidated financial statements such as the balance sheet, cash flow statement, and income taxes across their biggest four business segments; makeup, hair care, skin care, and fragrance. The report meets is expectations by giving a detailed review of the company’s financial position, based on their credits and debits. The best quality of the report is its focus on detail. The report covers every detail of Estee Lauder Companies, Inc. The worst quality of the report is its limited use of visual representation of information.

Content structure

The report does not start with a general introductory paragraph but starts with a paragraph providing cautionary note regarding risk factors and forward looking information. The report is organized in five parts. The first part is the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Form 10-K compliance brief. The second part of the report focuses on the internal business affairs, legal activities, and safety disclosure in the first part. The report then analyzes the external market conditions, financial statements, controls and procedures and supplementary data in the third part. The fourth part focuses on the company’s stakeholder information, the executive operations, compensations, and relationships. Lastly, there is the Form 10-K Summary, exhibits, and financial statement schedules in the fifth part.

Assessment on the use of non-data related images

Estee Lauder use of non data related images is merely decorative. The images are however not prevalent in the annual report. One such case is the use of non data related images that represent the logos of ompanies that Estee Lauder has acquired, subsidiaries, or is partnering with. The logo images are merely decorative to pull the audience’s attention. For my report, the use of images for explanations will be prevalent.

Analysis of the use of Data Visualization

The report uses images especially when making comparisons of the business products with previous years, for example, through net sales by product category for the hair care, fragrance, makeup, and others. There is also the use of images like line graphs to illustrate cumulative performance over five years while comparing Estee Lauder with the SAP 500 and SAP consumer staples (Estee Lauder Annual Report, 2020). In general view, there is little use of images in the report which is a bit disappointing since visual appeal draws attention to detail.

Summary of findings

From the business report of Estee Lauder, it clearly shows the importance of giving information in detail. The audience will be able to understand the position of a company through detail. The importance of visual representation of data, which lacks sufficiently in the report is also emphasized to prevent boredom.

References

Black, E. L. (2016). Financial reporting of performance measures. Revista Contabilidade & Financas, 27(70), 7-11.

Estee Lauder Annual Report (2020). Journal of Financial Economics, 74(2), 209-235.