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Strengths:
Integration of CR?issues
Strategic content
Weaknesses:
KPIs
Business overview
Integration of corporate responsibility information is a common theme among the retailers this year and M&S doesn’t buck the trend.
Social and environmental issues are weaved throughout the business review - and presented as key aspects of the business. The business review also contains plenty of strategic content, grouped under three areas of focus: product, service and environment.
Provided in an interesting and accessible manner, the strategic content includes details about how M&S is approaching the year ahead.
The weakest area of the report is its KPIs. Although three are identified early on, these lack further explanation, while many of the figures related to corporate responsibility lack previous years’ data for comparison.
The business overview might also be enhanced by a graphical representation of the divisional breakdown - but this really is a minor criticism of a good report. Even an index is included for ease of navigation.
Online:
M&S offers the front section of its annual review in HTML, while the board, summary reports and financial review are available as PDF downloads. The review opens within the retailer’s website and its navigation is slightly unusual – once in the business review, the navigation bar is confined to that section only. More positively, each section can be downloaded as an audio file.
The corporate comparison resource
Print