Internal Research Proposal for Office Equipment – Instructions
Assume that our office needs new equipment such as copy machines, scanners, tablet computers, smartphones, or an all- in one printer. Do the research necessary to write a convincing internal proposal for me: Dr. Al Santillanes, Vice President. Since you feel that I will be receptive to your request, you can use the direct approach. Please remember that the assignment represents the writing culmination for this online course and is worth the greatest points value! So, do not underestimate its scope by a three-sentence description of the assignment in the textbook. The assignment requires you to use all of your business communication skills that you have been practicing all semester as well as your ability to plan, organize, research, format, compose and evaluate an effective business report. I would strongly recommend that all students attend at least one of the conference calls that I have scheduled during the latter part of the course (see Key Dates, Reading, Exams and Assignments for this semester).
As your vice president, I have asked you to research and recommend a piece of equipment for our office. The selection of the piece of equipment is up to you depending on your interest; however, make it sound like I required the piece of equipment in your direct tone response to my assignment. Since it is an internal proposal, please be sure to select the appropriate format (see Files section with new name).
Also, make sure to properly research your recommendation by comparing, evaluating and providing research sources (cited appropriately in your sources section) for your recommendation. I do not need all of the brochures, technical specifications or photographs as attachments to the report, so please do not include any with the assignment. However, I want to see your sources as you make an informed recommendation to me on the piece of equipment for our office.
Please note that this business report should be three-to-five, single-spaced pages in length, not including the bibliography or reference page. Again, this is very important because the three sentence of the assignment in the textbook may give the impression that the report can be much shorter.
Here is the way that you can achieve the three-to-five-page required page length for this report. While you are required to recommend a piece of office equipment. I would like you to compare three different brands of similar office equipment! For example, if you were recommending a new office printer you need to compare three different brands (say Canon, HP (Hewlett Packard), and Brother) with similar features and with factors such as cost, connectivity, color vs. black and white, etc. Whatever office equipment you select make sure to compare all three similar products with similar features and evaluation factors. The type of office equipment is open to your creative business interests; however, the assignment does have limitations of not less than three pages and not longer than five pages. This is the challenge! Further, please follow the format for the short business report using the Internal Proposal – Memorandum Format in the Model Document 6.2, page 489 of the textbook.
Also, make sure to include a short one-page bibliography or references page (not be be included in the total page length for the body of the short report) that is properly formatted and indicates the sources of your research. Remember to submit the assignment as an MSWord file (see instructions above for Submitting Assignments).