IBCS WITH SUCCESS - How business can benefit from standards for the conceptual and visual design

IBCS WITH SUCCESS - How business can benefit from standards for the conceptual and visual design of reports and presentations?

People and organizations in various disciplines benefit from their respective notation standards: consider musicians, geographers and engineers, just to name a few. A composer never has to devote time to simply understanding another composer’s musical notation, nor an engineer a colleague’s drawing notation — for them such additional effort is inconceivable. 

Only business management, it seems, is still afforded the luxury of company specific, or nonexistent, notation standards. The downside being not only additional effort, but, worse still, bad decisions based on incomplete or misleading information. That’s why Rolf Hichert developed the HICHERT®SUCCESS set of rules for better transparency in formal communication written for business, such as management reports and presentations. From this set of rules the IBCS notation standards evolved, which various large corporations and public authorities such as Swiss Post, SAP, KPMG, and the German Military have already adopted. At the end of 2013 the IBCS notation standards were transferred to the non-profit International Business Communication Standards (IBCS) Association for promulgation, maintenance, and further development.

The advantages of notation standards in business communication are evident: deeper analytical insight means better decisions; faster analysis and decision making; less time and money spent not only creating interactive dashboards but also analyzing and understanding reports and presentations. The greater the organizational scope of application (e.g. my report - my department - my company - the whole world), the greater the benefits of notation standards. For this reason we must strive to make IBCS a truly worldwide standard in all fields of business communication. International Business Communication Standards will help decision-makers across the globe understand internal and external reports and presentations better and faster, without ambiguity.

The text is authored by Rolf Hichert and Jürgen Faisst.