Report on Consultancy Project: Suggestions for Action

You will submit an individual report which is the culmination of a consultancy project with suggestions for action. You must justify your approach to the management of the project and data collection and take into account corporate accountability, ethics and professionalism and any organisational constraints in developing your conclusions and recommendations.  The word count includes everything from the Introduction to the Conclusion.

Proposed template for the report (but you must make your report specific to your case study organisation and your findings):

Executive Summary

This should be 200-300 words and should give a summary of the whole report.  Don’t write it until you have completed the rest of the report.  This is not included in the overall word count.

Contents Page

1.Introduction (5% of the mark) approx. 250 words

-Introduce the organisation, explain what it does and why you are interested in it.

2. Situational Analysis of Case Study Organisation, and Problem Identification (20% of the mark) approx. 1000 words

-Show use of business analysis tools eg SWOT, PESTLE, Porters etc

-Show appropriate, logical analysis of secondary data including industry trends.

-Explain the various issues identified by the situational analysis.  If there are a number of issues, you should focus mainly on 1 or 2 key problems and justify how you know they are a problem.  Your primary data collection could go here if it helped you to identify the problem (for example you got customer or stakeholder views/input).

-Please note that you can use some of the work you submitted previously for the first part of this module, but you will need to reduce it and make sure it clearly leads to the identification of the problem.  If you had tables in your previous work, make sure they are moved to the appendices in this work.

3.Options (20% of the mark)

-Show awareness that there are a number of possible approaches.  This section would include an assessment of the various approaches and justification for the approach chosen.  You should choose an appropriate model/theory (eg Cost Benefit Analysis, Business Case) to assess the options and justify your decision on what the organization should move forward with at this point.  This section could also include primary data, showing how it contributed to the selection of the appropriate option.  Risk Assessment and Stakeholder Analysis may also be used here as tools to justify the option chosen.

4.Specific Project and Detailed Plan of Action (40% of the mark)

-Explanation of the overall project including the Detailed Plan of Action (use of appropriate tools or the principles of the appropriate tools - WBS, CPA, Gantt chart, Resource Planning charts).  This section would include aim and objectives, risk assessment, stakeholder analysis, and a detailed plan of action to enable the organisation to understand exactly what action is required.  The actual tables and charts should be in the appendices and you should use this section to explain what tools you used, why they are appropriate and what you found out by using them.

-Include references (from good textbooks in the library or on the online reading list on BlackBoard) for the models/theories/tools you use eg SWOT, CBA, WBS, Risk Assessment Matrix.

-Include references from Research Methods books to justify why you used questionnaires and/or interviews.

-Include references for any websites/online databases where you sourced secondary data eg for information about the business sector or the demographics of the area.

-Don’t forget to include a reference for the organisation’s website or any review sites you used.

-List each appendix with number and title in the Contents list.

-Include tables and charts used for analysis and project planning eg SWOT, PESTEL, WBS, Gantt Chart, Risk Assessment.

-Include a copy of the Questionnaire and/or Interview questions.

-Include a spreadsheet of Questionnaire results.

-Include a transcript of 1 interview.

Note on presentation

In addition, 10% of the mark will be given for presentation and communication in the report, for example flow, style, structure, spelling and grammar, referencing.  The report should be in Arial 11 or 12 point and 1.5 spaced.