Summaries, capturing critical information

Summaries capture the important content of any meeting by narrowing down to the critical points. Used for many internal and external business purposes, it reformulates ideas and removes incidental remarks.

Ubiqus offers several types of summaries depending on the meeting needs:

Standard Summary
Brief Summary
Executive Summary

What are the different types of summaries ?

Standard summaries

6 pages per meeting hour

Standard summaries are ideal for:

minutes of disciplinary and grievance hearings
minutes of breakout sessions and workshops
minutes of seminars.

The standard summary uses rewriting and the selection of primary information over secondary information to achieve its page yield

Example of a Standard Summary

52 words

In re-prioritising the capex programme, we have reduced its budget of £2.2 billion by £300 million. From 2006 onwards, it will have prudently returned to a more normal level of £400 million annually. This will allow us to quickly develop sites that we already own if conditions are more favourable next year.

Read the Verbatim Text

168 words

Hi there, everyone. Welcome back from lunch. Hope you enjoyed those excellent sandwiches that were laid on. I’ll take the next question – that is, taking up a question that someone asked earlier. On the capex programme, someone asked about the capex programme – we just re-prioritised it and took £300 million, I think that was the figure, yes, £300 million out of £2.2 billion. We’ve taken some action in respect to 2005, as my statement and the directors’ report make quite clear. Well, we’ve brought the expenditure back. We’ve brought the expenditure back from the year 2006 onwards to a more normal level of about £400 million. It’s prudent – that is just being prudent and sensible. If we see that conditions next year – and we believe that they should be better next year – we believe that because indicators are good – then there are a whole lot of places where we could just go ahead and walk on site tomorrow, because the properties we want to develop, we already own them.

Brief Summaries

4 pages per meeting hour

Brief summaries are ideal for:

informal meetings
minutes of management meeting
meetings where recording is not permitted

Only the information that goes to the heart of the speaker’s message is retained. We discuss with the client beforehand what issues and themes are most important so that these can be brought out in the document.

Example of a Brief Summary

39 words

The £2.2 billion capex programme has been reduced by £300 million and will stabilise sensibly at £400 million annually from 2006. This will allow us to quickly develop sites that we already own if conditions are more favourable next year.

Read the verbatim text

168 words

Hi there, everyone. Welcome back from lunch. Hope you enjoyed those excellent sandwiches that were laid on. I’ll take the next question – that is, taking up a question that someone asked earlier. On the capex programme, someone asked about the capex programme – we just re-prioritised it and took £300 million, I think that was the figure, yes, £300 million out of £2.2 billion. We’ve taken some action in respect to 2005, as my statement and the directors’ report make quite clear. Well, we’ve brought the expenditure back. We’ve brought the expenditure back from the year 2006 onwards to a more normal level of about £400 million. It’s prudent – that is just being prudent and sensible. If we see that conditions next year – and we believe that they should be better next year – we believe that because indicators are good – then there are a whole lot of places where we could just go ahead and walk on site tomorrow, because the properties we want to develop, we already own them.

Executive Summaries

2 pages per meeting hour

Executive summaries are ideal for:

European Works Council (EWC) meetings
meetings that last several hours
meetings where summaries are to be published online

This is an enhanced outline of the meeting, perhaps closest to what is known as ‘minutes’. This type of report is normally guided by the interests of the client to include certain information.

Example of an Executive Summary

29 words

The £2.2 billion capex programme is down by £300 million and will stabilise at £400 million annually from 2006, potentially allowing for rapid development of our sites next year.

Satisfied clients who don’t hesitate to tell us so

Looking for something with a bit more detail?

If you’d like a document with more detail than a summary, Ubiqus also offers report level documents such as Full Transcript, Revised Report and Verbatim.