Smart Labs^TM

Research that powers our ethos

The importance of rigorous research

What does 25 years of research look like at The Annual Report Company? Since our inception we have continued to study key areas in annual reporting, both through Smart Labs – our research arm – and in collaboration with various universities. For annual report preparers who come under our wing this means that we already have many of the answers they are looking for.

For example, in 2014, 15 years after producing our very first comprehensive end-to-end online HTML annual report for a client, we conducted a global survey of listed companies – some 41,300 entities across 109 countries – and studied their annual reports for the reporting periods 2010-2012.

Our research helped annual report preparers to come to their own conclusions about whether or not their company’s key stakeholder groups would benefit from an online annual report. We have seen a slow but steady rise in HTML reports since our results were published.

Many companies have a plethora of other priorities that precede annual report preparation. We conduct the research that they lack the time or resources to do for themselves – in areas that range from annual reporting methodologies to annual reporting channels.

One of our key research projects to already have come to fruition is our own Smart Integrated Reporting Methodology^TM. While integrated thinking has revolutionised business models, our approach and methodology show the way for effective integrated reporting.