The ability to prepare a cogent, succinct proposal is one of the most important managerial communications tools that the executive-leader can possess. In order to master this vital skill, you are being asked to prepare a proposal (or recommendation for a proposed course of action or decision) of between 6 pages, exclusive of any charts or graphs and inclusive of any executive summary. Numerous formats exist, starting with Microsoft Office suites and the venerable OWL. Indeed, a simple Google search of formats yields impressive results. As this is a finance course, you are expected to include a budget and other useful fiscal modes and metrics to support your recommendations as well as demonstrate competency with Excel, a basic tool for finance. You should strive to demonstrate familiarity with financial management tools and analytics to support your recommendations, coupled with your narrative and charts or graphs. PPT slides may or may not be used, as you wish. There is no need to create audio recorded PPT slides. Please dont recycle papers from other classes. The assignment context is as follows: From your current or previous workplace, or from a workplace of you which have personal knowledge, select a challenge which has a direct bearing on the performance and/or efficiency of the organization, and which relates to our class objectives within finance. Assume you are drafting recommendations for consideration by your employer’s senior administrative echelon, which you will need to identify. To this end, audience awareness and crafting your proposal to meet the needs of your audience are essential. Your readings for this course and your own life experiences afford many examples of topics. You are to draft a proposal to identify a significant problem, lay out the better options or courses of action available to solve this issue, identify sources of research or evidence considered, select the best (optimal, least worse) course of action and justify its selection and conclude with feedback and implementation concrete steps to ensure your plan is workable. Strive to be realistic, reasonable and persuasive. You will be using budgeting and fiscal management approaches to fortify and support the financial implications of your proposal, among others. You will be evaluated on both the content of your proposal as well as on the cogency and professionalism of the document, for which audience awareness and suitable evidence are key factors.
There are some suggestions for topics that can be addressed in the paper
The Role of the Financial Manager and cash flows
Fundamental decisions in financial management
Balance Sheets and/or market value examples Market value
Explain the difference between cash flows and accounting income
Discuss the difference between average and marginal tax rates
Financial ratios
Dupoint system of analysis
Explain what benchmarks are, describe how they are prepared, and discuss why they are important in financial statement analysis
The Time Value of Money
Future Value versus Present Value
Risk and return
Standard deviation