2.5.1: What Informs the Design of Business Documents

• The design of business documents is influenced by the purpose, audience, content, availability of resources and business function.
• The purpose of the document will either be to inform, confirm, apologise, thank or persuade. The purpose will affect the design, for example an advert will be to persuade and will focus on the benefits and features of a product.
• The audience of the business will either be internal or external, which will impact the formality. If the audience is internal, it will likely be informal, whereas if the audience is external, communication will be more formal.
• The business function will influence the design as different functional areas have different things to communicate. For example, marketing needs to communicate in a way to attract customers whereas human resources deals with sensitive matters and need to communicate in a formal way.
• Content that needs to be communicated will impact the design, whether it is qualitative or quantitative data. Qualitative data will need carefully explaining with a focus on language, grammar and vocabulary. Quantitative data will likely be communicated through graphs.
• The availability of resources impacts the method of communication and the design of documents. For example, if communication is virtual it may require equipment and software that may not be available. This also involves the budget, which can restrict the availability of resources and therefore impacting the design.