BUSINESS REPORT PROPOSAL

Business proposals are persuasive documents with the following objectives:

1. Explain why the work need to be done
2. Identify what work needs to be done
3. Inform the reader of the benefits of the proposal
4. Persuade the reader that you are qualified to accomplish this job
5. Gain resources (if needed) and permission to proceed with the job

A strong proposal has an attractive, professional, inviting appearance. The information should be easy to access and have good substance with technical detail (level of detail is determined by the purpose of the proposal).

For this first of the three imperative assignments, you will be writing a proposal to propose doing research to find solutions for the situational topic you selected last week for your business report. The goal of this persuasive proposal is to show the reader that there is a clear need to use business resources to research possible solutions to the stated problem. You must make it clear that the benefits of doing so will outweigh the costs. The argument can be made by using facts from research to support the narrative in the introduction. The conclusion is the final opportunity to show what the business will be receiving. In total, the proposal is also a sample of your ability to research, analyze, and present conclusions effectively.

• To begin, you will complete secondary research on background information on the problem you have selected to address. Pulling multiple sources and using a minimum of four sources to share with your reader what business overall is experiencing in the problem area. This section should paint the picture of how business as a whole is experiencing the problem; it should include specific narration, statistics, and/or examples.
• When citing the sources within this section, be sure to use the text note (author, date) method. Use (author, date) at the end of the sentence for paraphrases and (author, date, p. 3) for direct quotes. It is essential that you give credit to the source where you obtained the information/data. See reference materials on the Time line for methods to cite sources using APA Style.
• Next you will delineate the specific problem that your company is facing. You may make up a particular company (Princess Inc., Monte Carlo Cappers, etc.), use an actual business, or gear the proposal/report toward a type or category of business (for example, small clothing retail or fast food restaurant franchise).
• Following comes the most important section (Purpose and Scope) where the purpose statement for the report—what the report plans to accomplish. For example: The purpose of this report proposal is to research possible strategies to increase the day-time sales revenue of the Purple Cow Ice Cream Shop. This section continues by adding specifics on the scope of what will and will not be included in the research. Explain what areas or solutions will be researched.
• The next section, procedures, will delineate what type of sources will be used and how and where the research will be done. Be as specific on this as you can so as to garner confidence in your research proposal.
• The concluding section will be more generic in the proposal as the research has not yet been done. Make statements like the research on the data discovered about the solutions will be analyzed and presented in a logical and visually understandable manner and a recommendation for company action will be presented based on the analysis. (See the example for how this should be done in the sample proposal on the Timeline.)
• Last, request approval to move forward with this proposal to research the solutions and write the report. You’ll note that the organizational approach for this proposal is the indirect approach.
• hanging paragraph (first line at left margin and all other indented ½ inch) in APA arrangement. Alphabetize the listing by the first word.
• Number pages according to the sample.
• The reference page should be arranged according to APA Style. See the reference materials on the Timeline for creating reference pages.