Quarterly Business Briefing

About this template

The reporting copy is already in place

Twelve slides laid out for quarterly reporting, and the sample text is written for it too. The agenda runs quarterly review, target attainment, results by division, key issues, budget spend and next quarter, and the three dividers are quarterly review, results by division, and analysis of missed targets. So there is no relabelling to do — the work is replacing the figures with your own and filling the gaps. Structure: cover, agenda, three dividers with three body slides, a last-quarter-against-this-quarter slide, metrics, a trend chart and a closing slide.

The agenda and the dividers do not line up

Only the quarterly review appears in both lists. Analysis of missed targets is not in the agenda at all, while target attainment, key issues, budget spend and next quarter have no slides. Reconcile the two before you present: either cut the agenda to the three sections that exist and handle budget and next quarter on the metrics and closing slides, or duplicate the divider-plus-body pair three times, which takes the deck to eighteen slides. An agenda line with no slide gets asked about in the Q&A.

The 01/03 counters cap you at three items

Each body item carries a counter, so a fourth item means editing every one of them. The defaults are attainment summary, the metric that moved most, and last quarter’s action items; then 104% of the sales target, defect rate down to 0.8%, and rising volume in support; then root causes for three missed targets, internal versus external factors, and the recovery plan with an owner. A development team might write: 10 of 12 planned releases shipped with 2 carried over; 3 incidents with average recovery of 42 minutes; QA hiring slipped, pushing verification by two weeks. Do not leave a line like “rising volume” without a number — it will be the first question asked.

The four cards are tied to the body slides

The metric cards read 104% attainment, 92% budget spend, 3 missed targets, and a 0.8% defect rate; three of those repeat values from the body slides, so edit them together. The 104% needs care: on the body slide it is explicitly the sales target, while the card is labelled only “attainment” and will be read as company-wide. Put the scope and the period into the card label, which also lets the next quarter’s deck be read alongside this one.

Why the bars start with last year’s Q4

The chart holds last Q4 at 132, then 118, 146 and 161. Including the previous year’s final quarter makes the post-peak dip in Q1 visible. Keep that shape and roll the window forward each quarter. The label “last Q4” becomes ambiguous once the year turns, so write the year out. Where the series dips, leave it and put the cause on the review slide.

Cover and closing

The cover carries decorative labels and a REPORTS marker; replace them with the division and the quarter, or delete them. Replace the closing line with the single most important task for next quarter, and add the owning team and the date of the next report.

Why quarterly reporting spins in place

• Listing only wins, which leaves your resource request unsupported.
• Corrective actions without an owner, a date and a number.
• Leaving the sample figures on slide 9 (92% to 108% of target, open issues down from 12 to 4) instead of your own quarter. Numbers that disagree with the three body slides stop the briefing dead.
• Leaving the “last quarter’s action items” line blank, which makes the previous meeting pointless.