Most Investor Relations departments are trapped in a cycle of “producing outputs to a timetable”: results, PowerPoints and Q&As. But the underlying infrastructure is often held together by duct tape.
Companies that treat IR as a cost-centre production function will fall behind those who position it as the strategic owner of corporate intelligence. Here is my 3-phase roadmap:
Phase 1: Make written IR products work properly on screen
– The problem: Most stakeholders consume information on screen, yet we still produce many “written products” as if they are going to be printed on A4 paper, with dense pages and two long columns.
– The future: A radical user-needs review, then redesigning how materials like strategy, ESG and financial data are displayed so that they are easy to navigate, easy to scroll, and easy to find.
Phase 2: Stop relying on spreadsheets as the source of truth
– The problem: IR runs on spreadsheets scattered across teams, which are hard to find, hard to hand over or understand when people leave, inconsistent, and awkward for trend analysis and graphing.
– The future: Partner with Finance and IT to create validated datasets (single sources of truth, data lakes, governed databases, whatever term fits) that are critical for credibility and auditability.
Phase 3: Reimagine reporting as an interactive, connected set of outputs
– The future: Once foundations are solid, move beyond static PDFs. Create linked documents with drill-down capability, historic trends, and consistent definitions. Give stakeholders a reporting experience that actually helps them understand the business.
Done well, this reduces friction for readers, improves credibility, and makes every reporting cycle easier because the data and structure are already in place and validated.
This is not a quick win. It is a multi-year build. It is a way for IR to move from a reactive output-producer to a strategic function.
If you’re ready to move past the PDF and the spreadsheet maze, I would love to chew over how this could work for your department. Drop a comment or send me a message.