In today’s volatile environment, organisations that can articulate their strategic narrative—how they navigate uncertainty, adapt to change, and create value—command premium stakeholder trust and investor confidence.

BWD has long advocated for this strategic approach to corporate reporting. We’ve seen this differentiation in action across our client engagements: strategic reporting drives measurable outcomes through stronger stakeholder relationships, clearer internal alignment, and enhanced competitive positioning. We embed this strategic mindset into every engagement, transforming routine communications into powerful business assets.

A corporate report tells the story of how your business is navigating change to improve performance and returns—a particularly valuable narrative today as the geopolitical and trade environment changes rapidly and unpredictably.

This forward-looking strategic narrative requires distinctly human capabilities—contextual understanding, strategic judgment, and the ability to synthesise complex information into compelling business stories. It is, in my view, a distinctly human story.

Bottom line: Strategic reporting is a competitive differentiator that directly impacts stakeholder confidence and business performance

In recent years, sustainability—which has long been a shorthand for non-financial reporting—has been disrupted, with backlash against the big novelty cheques, photo opportunities and PR style of sustainability reporting that dominated the peak of the sustainability hype cycle. Sustainability strategies that measure success as being ‘number one’ in investor benchmarks have been shown up as failing to correlate with meaningful progress on material priorities like decarbonisation, employee safety, and human rights.

Standards and frameworks have a role in non-financial reporting, providing a common foundation for disclosure that helps investors and other stakeholders compare performance. But standards and frameworks are one ingredient in the reporting recipe, not the only ingredient.

Pro tip: Use frameworks as scaffolding, not as substitutes for strategic thinking about what your stakeholders need to know.

Missing from the AI reporting equation is the strategic insight that stakeholders actually value. Your AI reporting tool will excel at processing existing data—your past reports, performance metrics, compliance requirements. But it can’t capture the tone and tenor of your strategy workshops, the thinking behind key business decisions, or how you’re connecting stakeholder feedback with what you’re seeing in the external environment.

Only you and your business can provide new insights into your performance, priorities and plans.

Here’s what I personally love most about the reporting process: The conversations that happen when you gather content, consider it, combine it, and reflect on strategic priorities. Talking about what was done (and not done), reflecting on the reasons why, collaborating to craft an explanation—these discussions are the essence of strategic reporting.

It’s a process best experienced together, as a group of report preparers and with the leaders, executives and directors who will sign their name to it. Not only does it produce a report—it creates alignment around what happened, what matters, and the path forward.

Executive insight: The strategic conversations behind your report often deliver more organisational value than the report itself—driving alignment, surfacing risks, and clarifying priorities.

That’s not to say there’s no role for AI in reporting—far from it. My argument is that human thinking should drive your reporting, supported by AI to save time and strengthen your outputs. Here are specific ways we feel AI can help report preparers:

• Testing narratives and ideas for counterarguments: Ask your chosen AI tool to play devil’s advocate and poke holes in your drafts. This will make your content clearer and more compelling for your stakeholders, after you’ve done the strategic thinking and captured your judgements in the narrative.

• Collating and consolidating existing information: Distilling information is an AI strength, so leverage your AI tool to bring multiple data sets and information sources together.

• Researching common themes from peer and competitor reports: If you need a refresher on what your peers are saying, your AI tool can scan their reports and summarise key themes on a particular topic, helping you determine how your story can stand out.

Where AI falls short: AI can’t interpret boardroom dynamics, stakeholder sentiment, or the strategic nuances that emerge from leadership conversations. It will evolve, but the need for contextual judgment and strategic insight will persist.

Let AI be your reporting helper, not your guide.

Executive action: Audit your current reporting process to identify where AI can save time without compromising strategic value.