The Proposal:  Communicating to Different Audiences
Thank you for taking the time to read my communication. I am a member of the information technology (IT) department seeking your audience for my proposal to develop a new data dashboard that would assist in the analysis of market and sales data. A data dashboard is an information management tool that provides an interactive centralized means of tracking, collecting, and analyzing key data points and metrics to monitor performance. The proposed dashboard would be customized to collect sales revenue information from different points of sales and display the same in the form of gauges, bar charts, line charts, and tables. From the analyzed data, the marketing team could determine, at a glance, the top products in sales revenue - and the markets on the basis of geography, demographics, or customer behavior - that provide the best opportunities for each product line. This way, the team could conduct informed target marketing towards different markets. The use of the data dashboard would help reduce marketing costs as a percentage of sales as well as the purchases-to-sales ratio, eventually increasing profit margins.

Implementation

The proposed dashboard is user-friendly and relatively easy-to-use. With proper training, members of the marketing and IT departments would be in a position to comfortably apply the dashboard for data analysis within four weeks. It is projected that the personal-use desktop version of the dashboard would initially cost $30,000 to get started, which includes $5,000 installation cost per user for a 10-user requirement and professional services fee of $25,000. Thereafter, we would incur monthly maintenance charges of $5,000 cumulatively for a period of one year. However, the dashboard is expected to realize marketing cost savings of $10,000 yearly as a result of informed targeted marketing.

Conclusion and Recommendations

We recommend that the company considers implementing the proposed dashboard in the coming financial year. The implementation will streamline data analysis, thereby facilitating market segmentation, reducing marketing costs, and increasing profit margins.

B. Fact Sheet Artifact

Ref: Implementation of a Sales and Market Data Dashboard

A growing product line is something that marvels us all and something that we all dream to see because it indicates growth; who wouldn’t want to be associated with a growing organization?

‘What is a Data Dashboard?’ Retrieved from https://www.tapclicks.com/resources/blog/data-dashboard/

On a different note, however, a growing product line, if not properly-managed, could increase costs without necessarily increasing revenues. It is for this reason that we propose the adoption of a new dashboard to assist in the analysis and reporting of sales and market data.

A dashboard is a tool that organizes sales data collected from various point-of-sales in the market and summarizes the same in the form of easy-to-read charts and tables.

From these charts and tables, the marketing team can easily identify the best-performing products by sales revenue and the most promising markets. By adopting the proposed dashboard, the marketing team can easily determine where to focus their marketing efforts, minimizing marketing costs and increasing sales-to-purchases ratio.

Implementation Phases

We all have some role to play in implementation. The implementation of the proposed project will incorporate seven phases. The first phase is the preliminary analysis, where a review is conducted with the relevant teams to identify the problem facing the organization, identifying the possible alternative solutions, and choosing the most feasible solution (Wasson, 2005). This phase also involves conducting a feasibility analysis to determine whether the selected alternative is legally and economically feasible. The second phase is system analysis, where system analysts work with various stakeholders to determine what will be required to develop the new system. Key players are interviewed and procedures documented to understand what exactly the system is supposed to address.

The third phase is the system design, where the system requirements developed in the previous phase are used to create the user interface, database, as well as data outputs and inputs (Wasson, 2005). Fourth is the programing phase, which mainly involves coding carried out by a programmer or...…In recognition of this, the writer is keen to provide all relevant information on the product’s expected benefits and accurate numerical data to guide the reader into an effective cost-benefit analysis

Audience 2

The second audience was a team of employees drawn from the marketing and IT departments. The writer and their audience are at more or less at the same level in the organization’s hierarchical structure.

i) Subject knowledge – the audience has little knowledge on the proposed system. For this reason, the writer uses short paragraphs and graphics to make the information easily understandable to the audience. They also take time to explain how the same will be implemented as it is unlikely that the audience has interacted with such processes before

ii) Position in the organization – the writer and the audience are at the same level in the organizational hierarchical structure. As such, the reader mainly uses informal communication to pass the message across

iii) Personal attitudes – the audience is not directly answerable for the proposed system. As such, their link to the system is weaker than that of the CFO and they perhaps only listen because they are familiar with the writer. Graphics are used in this regard to keep the audience engaged and influence their attitudes towards the proposed system

iv) Reading Style – the audience is mainly made up of skimmers who may only be interested in knowing how the system affects their individual work and their role in its implementation (Cleveland, 2001). This would explain why the writer focuses their communication on explaining the rationale of the proposed system to the specific department and gives a summary of the implementation phases, but ignores the details on how the change affects overall organizational profitability.

v) Type of reader – the audience mainly comprises of secondary readers who are not directly engaged in decision-making. The writer does not, therefore, take time to build a case for the same using numerical data or industry facts as they did with…