Structure of a WAC Report

FTMBA Trim III

There are many equally effective ways in which a decision report can be
structured and presented. You may have a favourite structure that has
worked well. We, however, insist on the following structure because the
WAC report is an instructional exercise and we would like you to go
systematically through all the processes involved in rational decision
making.

1. Situation Analysis
2. The Problem
3. The Options
4. Criteria for Evaluation
5. Evaluation of Options
6. The Recommendation
7. Action Plan
8. Contingency Plan
9. Exhibits (if any)
Your report should start with a cover page, a letter of transmittal, an
executive summary, and a contents page, in that order. You will find below
a brief description of each of these.
The Preliminary Pages
Cover Page
The cover page ought to contain:
Title of the Report (Title of the Case)
Title of the Course (Written Analysis and Communication)
Name of your Instructor
Your Name, Section and Roll Number
Letter of Transmittal
This is a cover note addressed to the reader of the report (as specified in the
assignment). It gives an overview of the contents of the report and the key
recommendation. If the report is to an internal reader (such as the writers
boss), it may follow the memo format.
Executive Summary
The executive summary (ES) is not a statement merely indicate what you
will find in the report but a miniature report. So ideally it contains the first
six out of the nine parts of a report, shown above. The ES should not exceed
ten per cent of the full report.
Contents Page
As the reports you write for WAC are very short (the word limit is normally
1000, plus or minus 10 percent), there is really no need for a separate
contents page. However, we suggest that you put in a contents page so that
you act into the habit of providing one when you write longer reports.

The Report
Situation Analysis
This is possibly the most important part of your report because the rest of
the report is built on it. It shows you reading or analysis of the situation. It
is neither a description of the situation nor a summary of the case facts. This
is where you zero in on the facts that you consider relevant for decision
making and indicate the relationships that you perceive between those facts.
If you analyze the situation well, you will have no difficulty defining the
decision problem or the managerial challenge faced by the protagonist in the
case.
The Problem
Here you articulate briefly and precisely the problem to which a solution has
to be found or the managerial challenges that has to be met by the
protagonist. It flows from your analysis of the situation. Therefore there is
nothing surprising about different students seeing different problems in the
same situation.
The Options
Once you define the problem, the next step is to generate different ways of
solving it. These are the options available to the decision-maker. The ideal
options are mutually exclusive, that is, if you opt for A, you cannot also opt
for B or C. If, for example, you want to buy a TV set, the options are the
different TV sets available for you to buy. It is obvious that choosing any one
of the TV sets automatically rules out buying any other TV sets.
For good decision-making it is important to generate credible options.
Options that have a reasonable chance of being adopted. This is where your
creativity should help you.
Criteria for Evaluation
Faced with different options, how do we identify the best? By applying
criteria. Criteria are the norms that an option should pass for it to be
adopted as the solution. In the TV purchase example, the norms could be
price, brand, physical size, and after-sales service. These criteria are not
universal; they stem from the analysis of a given situation. Price, for example
may not be a consideration at all in some families while it may be the most
important criterion in some others.
Identifying the best opinion is relatively simple if there is just one criterion.
If there are multiple criteria. You should prioritize them: in other words, you
should indicate which criterion is the most important and which criteria are
less important. If an opinion falls the most important criterion, it cannot be
adopted even if it meets all the other criteria.
The prioritization of criteria stems from the analysis of the situation. You
may need to justify your prioritization unless it is very obvious.

Evaluation of Options
Once you have prioritized the criteria, you apply them to ALL, the options
identified. It is not enough to apply them to one of the most promising
options.

The Recommendation
Now you are ready to make your recommendation. It is the option that has
passed all the criteria you have identified. If none of the options clear all the
criteria, the option that meets most of the criteria, especially the most
important one(s), is the one that you recommend to the decision-maker. If
the options dont pass the criteria, you may want to go back to the analysis
of the situation, generate more options, and repeat the process.
Action Plan
Once you recommend what to do, follow it up with how to put that
recommendation into action. This helps you think through the
consequences of your recommendation and at times forces you to revise it.
A well laid out action plan helps the reader take your recommendation
seriously and adopt it without hesitation. Action Plan is the steps one need
to follow to execute your recommendations.
Contingency Plan
With the action plan, your report is complete. We, however, ask you to go an
extra step. Anticipate things that may go wrong when the recommendation
is put into action. One contingency in the TV purchase example might be a
temporary shortage of the chosen size and brand if the situation analysis had
hinted at some production or distribution problems. You need to suggest
what to do in such a contingency. That is your contingency plan. Your
contingency plan should NOT be adoption of one of the rejected options.
A good contingency plan enhances your report. You shouldnt however, look
for outlandish contingencies just to fill in a slot in the report.
Exhibits
Exhibits are tables, charts graphs, worksheets, and other similar collections
of data which support the argument in your report. Incorporating such data
as running text in the report may make the report unnecessarily lengthy and
less readable. Some reports may not have any exhibits while others may
have several.
If you have any exhibits, keep them brief, explanatory titles and number
them according to the order in which they are referred to in the body of the
report. If you have only one or two very small exhibits, you may put them in
the body of the report, close to where they are referred to. But if the exhibits
are long, place them at the end of the report in the same order as they have
been referred to. Your decision on where to put the exhibits should be based
on readability.
Dont put discussions, analysis, and interpretations in exhibits; these should
be a part of the main body of the report. Dont put in orphan exhibits either-
tables and charts that are not referred to in the body of the report.