FREE ESSAY ON COMUNICATION ANALYSIS

COMUNICATION ANALYSIS

This report will give a greater understanding of the information needs of a business. I
will be looking at the: -
 Material Flow and Information Flow
 The annual report
 Information needs
For this, I will be using Bathtoys Ltd, to give an example of what information is
required for the annual report.
1.0 Overview of Communication in Business
A business has to have a defined flow of information, either internal or external to the
business. In addition, the business needs to be co-ordinated, so that the right people
get the correct information and at the right time for the profitability of the company.
The information within the company needs to be collected to show the shareholders and
Companies House (the government) what the company has been up to over the year since the
last annual report.
1.1 Design of Information Flow
Find Customer Wages
Customer
2.0 What information needs to be Stored
For the annual report you need to collect information over the year, and summaries the
information for the report. This report will inform the shareholders and the government
were the managing director has guided the company over the past year. It will show were
the management has spent money, and were money has come in to the company. This is the
type of data the company needs to collect, were it comes from and the reason it is
collected: -
 The finance department needs information on what money is in the bank now - this
information comes from the bank, it will indicate the viability of the company.
 The finance department also needs to know what the financial situation was the
same time last year - this information comes from the annual report made the previous
year, it will show if the company made more profit over this year. This indicating the
strength of the company.
 The sales department collects information on the money coming in from sales of
the plastic ducks - this information is taken from the sale of the ducks, which has been
stored on computer over the past year. This method enables sales and finance to have free
access to the same information. You use this information to create a chart (profit and
loss), which shows the strength of the company.
 The purchase department collects information on the total cost of purchases of
supplies and equipment over the year - this is summarised from the weekly/monthly orders.
Used in the profit and loss chart.
 The finance department collects information of the amount of wages, rent,
electricity, and tax the company has paid over the year - this is taken from the amount
the bank has released to pay these payment requests. Used in the profit and loss chart.
 The net profit will indicate what the company has made over the past twelve
months, this is summarised from the above.
This information will show the profitability and viability of the company. And if the
money that the shareholders invested in the company - by buying the shares the company
placed on the market - are still worth what they paid. 
2.1 What to do with the Information
This information is collected together for the use of the shareholders; they can see if
the company is being run to a satisfactory level and take action if it is not. One of the
actions they can chose if the company is not heading the way they would like is to demand
changes in the management of the company i.e. fire the managing director.
The annual report can indicate to the management if what they said they were going to
accomplish in the last annual report is what actually happened, and if not it should
indicate what went wrong.
3.0 Why use a manual system to construct the reports
Firstly it is to ensure that there are no mistakes with any part of the annual report.
There is no sensitive information that anyone can use for the benefit of other companies,
shareholders do not own shares in one company and could decide to give the information to
your competitors. There are multiple reports, one for the shareholders, another for
Companies House and the management of the company (to show were they can improve the day
to day running of the company) all using the same information, but edited to give only
the information they require. Another advantage is you can personalise the reports,
making them more interesting to the person reading the report. By butting logos and using
the readers name.
Conclusion
The information within a company needs to be collected for the annual report, but it must
be organised and you can not just give every bit of information to everyone. If you do
not have a set operational structure for the collection of the information you my lose
information. And this could lead to some embarrassing questions from the shareholders and
Companies House. This information must be used to the advantage of the company, building
on what you learnt from last year's report.