Report and Proposal Writing/Crucial Communications Course

For effectiveness in business communications, this course focuses on making managers to:

• Become highly skilled in the use of English Language
• Write memos, letters, reports, proposals excellently by presenting contents with mechanical precision
• Organise thoughts clearly before writing
• Know the techniques of outlining, drafting and revising written messages
• Practice writing reports with graphical presentation of data
• Prepare proposals with project management value proposition
• Pay attention to spellings and punctuations.

Course Contents

DAY ONE

Writing Guidelines

• Essence of effective business writing
• Planning the writing
• Organizing thought before writing.

Prewriting and Planning

• Establishing purpose
• Clarifying readership
• Researching for facts.

Doing the Writing

• Word usage
• Common errors in our use of English by Nigerians
• Word economy.

The Business Writer’s Attitudes

• Simplicity and conciseness
• Confused words
• Outdated expressions
• Opinion words and expressions
• Look-alike words.

Common Writing Problems

• Problem with Clichés
• Parallelism problems
• Misplaced modifiers
• British v. American English.

DAY TWO

Attention to Grammar

• Verb exercises
• Noun and pronoun exercises
• Spellings
• Punctuations
• Editing techniques
• Formatting the Writing
• Style and tone
• Paragraphs
• Headings.

Letters

• Salutation
• Body of letter
• Complimentary closure.

Email Guidelines

• The recipients
• Keeping it short
• File attachments
• Plain texts.

Writing Minutes of Meetings

• Minutes   - what it is, what it is not
  • The Importance of Minutes
  • Types of Minutes
  • Minutes Format
  • Steps to Effective Minutes
  • Qualities of Good Minutes.

DAY THREE

Types of Report

• Information/investigation report
• Progress Report
• Formal Reports
• Informal Reports
• SOPADA formula
• The “Need-to-know” v. “Nice-to-know” reports
• Executive Summary:
  • The Purpose of an Executive Summary
  • Main Stages and Techniques of Summarization
  • Types of Summaries
  • Qualities of an Effective Executive Summary

Writing Minutes of Meetings

• Minutes   – what it is, what it is not
• The Importance of Minutes
• Types of Minutes
• Minutes Format
• Steps to Effective Minutes
• Qualities of Good Minutes.

Types of Report

• Formal
• Informal
• Technical
• Commercial.

The Purpose of Business Reports

• Inform
• Explain
• Sell
• Persuade
• Instruct
• Advise
• Explain
• A Research outcome
• An Information
• An Experience.
• An Analysis

Planning the Report

• Establishing purpose
• Establishing readership
• Researching customer needs
• Planning, Writing and Editing
• Focusing on subject matter.

Writing the Report

• The “Need-to-know”  vs “Nice-to-know” information
• Organizing thoughts clearly before writing.
• Selection of the most appropriate main message
• Structure

Introduction

• Body of report
• References
• Bibliography (as necessary)
• Appendices (as necessary).

Contents and Form

• Chronology
• Functionality
• Outlining, drafting and revising techniques.

Packaging the Report - Data reporting and conversion to graphs

• Data analysis
• Applications of Excel formats
• Graphic presentations
  • Bar Chart
  • Pie Chart
  • Line Chart
  • Frequency Distribution
  • Frequency Polygon
  • Scatter Diagram

DAY FOUR

Proposals Outline

• Our Understanding of your requirements
  • Our Point of View
  • The Proposed Project
  • Objective and Scope - Objectives, Covered Areas, Minimizing risks that could hinder successful completion of project
  • Methodology - Integration and linkage between various components of work to deliver maximum value
  • Approach - Phases of Project and duration, Teaming Approach, Our requirements, Knowledge transfer
  • Schedule and Releases – Rationale of Phases/releases. For example, there will be a pilot test to generate excitement and communicate success, followed by a major Release to minimize the change impact and build ownership.
  • Major Work Activities
  • Key Deliverables

• Resources – Resources requirements from your company and ours, their availability (full/part time) and duration on Project
• Project Team Structure

Our Value Proposition - What we have to offer:

• Operating environment
• Methodology/experiences
• Commitment
• Relevant previous work done
• Solutions tailored made for organization
• Provision of pragmatic, practical and easy to understand approaches suitable for company
• Transfer of skills and knowledge to Company’s resources.
• Fee Arrangement
• Credentials
• CVs.