solved Activity: Â Activity 12.25, Justification/Recommendation Report: Speedier Service at Stellat

Activity:
 Activity 12.25, Justification/Recommendation
Report: Speedier Service at Stellato Family Pizza on page 457 of the
Guffey textbook.  After gaining an overview of the assignment,  begin the project by creating a Work Plan, similar
to the Work Plan described on page 383-385 of the textbook.  A template for the Work Plan is provided
below.
Students are to complete the section of the assignment
titled Your Task on page 458
of the textbook.  The Your
Task section explains that you are  to provide recommendations and conclusions to
Mrs. Stellato about her business.  To
successfully complete this project, in addition to the memo required, students
will provide visual aids, to tabulate and analyze data, and include effective
graphics to clarify data, create visual interest, and to make numerical data
meaningful. 
Grading
Activity. Up to 50
points and can be earned by successfully completing the project. 
Activity 12.25
· 
Justification/Recommendation Report: Speedier
Service at Stellato Family Pizza* (Obj. 5)
You
work for Carmine Stellato, the owner of Stellato Family Pizza, a small, casual
pizza shop he founded 33 years ago. Its signature items are eight-inch-diameter
individual pizzas. The pizza shop also serves mozzarella sticks, wings, and
assorted beverages.
The
pizza shop is located in the warehouse district of Indianapolis, where it
originally served truckers who delivered their meat, fruits, and vegetables in
the middle of the night and then whisked off to the next city. Truckers loved
the satisfying and filling pizza because
it provided them with lots of energy on those tedious
late-night runs. Later the pizza shop caught on with the nightclub crowd and
with students who studied late. The shop opens at 10 p.m. and closes at 6 a.m.
The
concept was a resounding success. However, success brings competition. Three
imitators opened their pizza shops within a five-mile radius of Stellato Family
Pizza. You know that the family has been using the same delivery system for
years, and you know service could be faster. You also notice that new pizza
shops are receiving orders via smartphones.
The
current system at Stellato’s begins with a counter clerk recording the
customer’s order and table number on a ticket. The customer pays, and the counter
person gives the order to the pizza makers. The pizza makers remove the dough
from the refrigerator, shape it, add the sauce and other ingredients, put the
pie in the oven, and remove it from the oven when baked. The counter clerk then
takes the order to the customer’s table. Stellato Family Pizza has three
counter clerks, two pizza makers, and one cash register that the counter clerks
share. It takes two minutes to prep a pizza before it can go in the oven. The
pizza shop uses an outdated Rankin Model
D85 pizza deck oven, which cooks a pizza in seven minutes.
You
think the entire system is inefficient, and when you discuss the problem with
Mr. Stellato, he says, “Although the original ways are familiar to me, I see
that the time for improvement has come.”
You
suggest observing the three competitors’ systems of serving customers to
understand why their service is faster. Currently, the average time it takes a
customer to receive an order at Stellato Family Pizza is 16 minutes. The
following are notes from your observations of the competitors.
DeNunzio
Pizza
· 
Similar menu
· 
Orders are taken using an electronic system that includes the
customer’s number
· 
Customers pay immediately
· 
Customers pick up their orders after their numbers have been
called
· 
Two counter clerks at one register; two
pizza makers
· 
Preprepared dough; prep time: one minute
· 
One state-of-the art Elite
Chef Model BFE-28 convection oven—five minutes to cook a pizza
· 
Average time a customer waits to receive an order: ten minutes
Capriotti’s
· 
Similar menu
· 
Order takers call out the menu item as the order is taken
· 
Customers pay immediately
· 
Customers wait at the counter
to pick up their orders
· 
Three counter employees at three registers; two
pizza makers
· 
Preprepared dough; prep time: one minute
· 
One state-of-the art Elite
Chef Model BFE-28 convection oven—five minutes to cook a pizza
· 
Average time a customer waits to receive an order: eight minutes
Hip Hop
Pizza Shop
· 
Similar menu
· 
Tickets are used to record the customers’ orders
· 
Customers pay immediately
· 
Counter staff employees take the order to customers’ tables
· 
Three counter staff employees, two pizza makers, and one cash
register
· 
Pizza prep the same as Stellato Family Pizza: two minutes
· 
One DeLong Model FC30 pizza deck oven—six minutes to cook a
pizza
· 
Average time a customer waits to receive an order: 15 minutes
Your Task. Now it is
up to you to analyze the data you have collected. In a short memo report to
Carmine Stellato, present your findings, discuss your conclusions, and make
recommendations, including a recommendation on how Stellato’s might gain a
competitive edge by enabling its customers to use some of the most recent
technology to order their food. You may want to present the data using visual
aids, but you also realize that you must emphasize the important findings by presenting them in an easy-to-read list.
11-2cPreparing a Work Plan Pages 383-385 Textbook
After analyzing the
problem, anticipating the audience, and factoring the problem, you are ready to
prepare a work plan. A good work plan
includes the following:
· 
Statement of the problem (based on
key background/contextual information)
· 
Statement of the purpose including scope with limitations and
significance
· 
Research strategy including a description of potential sources
and methods of collecting data
· 
Tentative outline that factors the problem into manageable
chunks
· 
Work schedule
Preparing a plan
encourages you to evaluate your resources, set priorities, outline a course of
action, and establish a schedule. Having a plan keeps you on track and provides
management a means of measuring your progress.
A work plan gives a
complete picture of a project. Because the usefulness and quality of any report
rest primarily on its data, you will want to develop a clear research strategy,
which includes allocating plenty of time to locate sources of information. For
firsthand information you might interview people, prepare
a survey, or even conduct a
scientific experiment. For secondary information you will probably search electronic
materials on the Internet and printed materials such as books and magazines. Your
work plan describes how you expect to generate or collect data. Because data
collection is a major part of report writing, the next section of this chapter
treats the topic more fully.
Figure 11.6 shows a complete
work plan for a proposal pitched by social marketing company BzzAgent’s
advertising executive Dave Balter to his client Lee Jeans. A work plan is
useful because it outlines the issues to be investigated. Notice that
considerable thought and discussion and even some preliminary research are
necessary to be able to develop a useful
work plan.
Figure 11.6Work Plan for a Formal Report
© Cengage Learning 2015
Although this tentative
outline guides the investigation, it does not determine the content or order of
the final report. You may, for example, study five possible solutions to a
problem. If two prove to be useless, your report may discuss only the three winners.
Moreover, you will organize the report to accomplish your goal and satisfy the
audience. A busy executive who is familiar with a topic may prefer to read the
conclusions and recommendations before a discussion of the findings. If someone
authorizes the report, be sure to review the work plan with that person (your manager, client, or professor, for example)
before proceeding with the project.
Chapters
Identifying
Secondary Sources and Conducting Primary Research
Learning Objective3
Locate
and evaluate secondary sources such as databases and Web resources, and
understand how to conduct credible primary research.
Research,
or the gathering of information, is one of the most important steps in writing
a report. As the philosopher Goethe once said: “The greater part of all
mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand
their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor
on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut.” Think of your report
as a tower. Because a report is only as good as its foundation—the questions
you ask and the data you gather to answer those questions—the
remainder of this chapter describes the fundamental work of finding, documenting,
and illustrating data.
Chicago
is the “Windy City” and New Orleans is the “Big Easy,” but what is Glendale,
California? Boring. That’s what municipal
branding firm North Star Destination Strategies found after conducting a
yearlong study on the inconspicuous
neighbor of Pasadena and Burbank. To improve Glendale’s image, North Star
recommended that city council leaders adopt “Your Life. Animated,” a
marketing-and-development campaign designed to rebrand Glendale as the home of
DreamWorks Animation, the creative studio behind such delightful movies as Shrek and Kung Fu
Panda. Which type of research data would be best at helping cities
evaluate their strengths and weaknesses?
Figure 11.6 shows
a complete work plan for a proposal pitched by social marketing company
BzzAgent’s advertising executive Dave Balter to his client Lee Jeans. A work
plan is useful because it outlines the issues to be investigated. Notice that
considerable thought and discussion and even some preliminary research are
necessary to be able to develop a useful
work plan.

Figure 11.6Work Plan for a Formal Report
© Photos 12/Alamy
As you
analyze a report’s purpose and audience and prepare your research strategy, you
will identify and assess the data you need to support your argument or explain
your topic. As you do, you will answer questions about your objectives and
audience: Will the audience need a lot of background
or contextual information? Will your readers value or trust statistics, case
studies, or expert opinions? Will they want to see data from interviews or
surveys? Will summaries of focus groups be useful? Should you rely on organizational data? Figure 11.7 lists five forms of data and provides
questions to guide you in making your research accurate and productive.
Figure 11.7
Gathering and Selecting Report Data

Form of Data

Questions to Ask

Background or historical

How much do my readers know about the
problem?
Has this topic/issue been investigated
before?
Are those sources current, relevant, and/or
credible?
Will I need to add to the available data?

Statistical

What or who is the source?
How recent are the data?
How were the figures derived?
Will this data be useful in this form?

Expert opinion

Who are the experts?
What are their biases?
Are their opinions in print?
Are they available for interviewing?
Do we have in-house experts?

Individual or group opinion

Whose opinion(s) would the readers value?
Have surveys or interviews been conducted on
this topic?
If not, do questionnaires or surveys exist
that I can modify and/or use?
Would focus groups provide useful
information?

Organizational

What are the proper channels for obtaining
in-house data?
Are permissions required?
How can I learn about public and private
companies?

© Cengage Learning 2015
11-2aAnalyzing the Problem and Purpose –
Page 381 of Textbook
The first step in writing
a report is understanding the problem or assignment clearly. For complex
reports, prepare a written problem statement to clarify the task. In analyzing her
report task, Emily had many questions: Is the problem that Pharmgen is spending
too much money on leased cars? Does Pharmgen wish to invest in owning a fleet
of cars? Is Joshua unhappy with the paperwork involved in reimbursing sales
reps when they use their own cars? Does he suspect that reps are submitting inflated
mileage figures? Before starting research for the report, Emily talked with Joshua to define the problem. She learned
several dimensions of the situation and wrote the following statement to
clarify the problem—both for herself and for Joshua.
Problem statement: The leases on all company
cars will be expiring in three months. Pharmgen must decide whether to renew
them or develop a new policy regarding transportation for sales reps. Expenses
and paperwork for employee-owned cars seem excessive.
Emily further defined the
problem by writing a specific question that she would try to answer in her
report:
Problem question: What plan should Pharmgen
follow in providing transportation for its sales reps?
Now Emily was ready to
concentrate on the purpose of the report. Again, she had questions: Exactly
what did Joshua expect? Did he want a comparison of costs for buying and
leasing cars? Should she conduct research to pinpoint exact reimbursement costs
when employees drive their own cars? Did he want her to do all the legwork,
present her findings in a report, and let him make a decision? Or did he want
her to evaluate the choices and recommend a course of action? After talking
with Joshua, Emily was ready to write a simple purpose statement for this
assignment.
Simple statement of purpose: To recommend a plan that
provides sales reps with cars to be used in their calls.
Preparing a written
purpose statement is a good idea because it defines the focus of a report and
provides a standard that keeps the project on target.
Preparing a written
purpose statement is a good idea because it defines the focus of a report and
provides a standard that keeps the project on target. In writing useful purpose
statements, choose action verbs telling what you intend to do: analyze, choose,
investigate, compare, justify, evaluate, explain, establish, determine, and
so on. Notice that Emily’s statement begins with the action verbrecommend.
Some reports require only
a simple statement of purpose: to investigate expanded
teller hours, to select a manager from among four candidates, to describe the
position of accounts supervisor. Many assignments, though, demand additional focus to guide
the project. An expanded
statement of purpose considers three additional factors: scope, limitations,
and significance.
Scope and Limitations. What issues or elements
will be investigated? The scopestatement prepares the audience
by clearly defining which problem or problems will be analyzed and solved. To
determine the scope, Emily brainstormed with Joshua and others to pin down her
task. She learned that Pharmgen currently had enough capital to consider purchasing
a fleet of cars outright. Joshua also told her that employee satisfaction was
almost as important as cost-effectiveness. Moreover, he disclosed his suspicion
that employee-owned cars were costing Pharmgen more than leased cars. Emily had
many issues to sort out in setting the boundaries of her report.
What conditions affect
the generalizability and utility of a report’s findings? As part of the scope
statement, the limitations further narrow the subject by focusing on
constraints or exclusions. For this report
Emily realized that her conclusions and recommendations might apply only to
reps in her Kansas City sales district. Her findings would probably not be
reliable for reps in Seattle, Phoenix, or Atlanta. Another limitation for Emily
was time. She had to complete the report in four weeks, thus restricting the
thoroughness of her research.
Significance. Why is the topic worth
investigating at this time? Some topics, after initial
examination, turn out to be less important than originally thought. Others
involve problems that cannot be solved, making a study useless. For Emily and Joshua the problem had significance because
Pharmgen’s leasing agreement would expire shortly and decisions had to be made
about a new policy for transportation of sales reps.
Emily decided to expand
her statement of purpose to define the scope, describe the limitations of the
report, and explain the significance of the problem.
Expanded statement of purpose: The purpose of this report
is to recommend a plan that provides sales reps with cars to be used in their
calls. The report will compare costs for three plans: outright ownership,
leasing, and compensation for employee-owned cars.
It will also measure employee reactions to each plan. The report is significant
because Pharmgen’s current leasing agreement expires March 31 and an improved
plan could reduce costs and paperwork. The study is limited to costs for sales
reps in the Kansas City district.
After expanding her
statement of purpose, Emily checked it with Joshua Nichols to be sure she was
on target.

Getting Started:
Read
chapters 11 and 12 in the textbook
Read the
Activity 12.25 on page 457
Review the
Work Plan information on pages 383-385
Analyze the Problem
and the Purpose of the scenario provided (this will be identified on the Work
Plan) Reference page 380-381 for assistance.
Review and
complete the Work Plan template
Analyze all
the information provided in the Activity
Decide on
the conclusions and recommendation
Create
effective graphics to tabulate and analyze data, and to clarify data, create
visual interest, and make numerical data meaningful to the audience.
write an
informational report with graphics providing the recommendations, conclusions.
Note: Please read chapter 11 and chapter
12 in its entirety.  There is much
valuable information provided in the chapters
in terms of writing the report, drawing conclusions and recommendations and
including graphics.  You may find other
elements such as a yard stick report that may help deliver your message. 
Work Plan
Stellato Family Pizza
Statement of Problem
Statement of Purpose
Research Strategy
Tentative Outline
Work Schedule with Dates
Note: The work plan is due (TBA) prior to the final project, but is not included with the
final submission of the paper.

Rubric Business Report

Poor
0 pts

Fair
5 pts

Good
8 pts

Excellent
10 pts

Analyzed Data

Poor
Students showed little understanding of the data provided and made no attempt
to utilize data to draw appropriate conclusions and recommendations.

Fair
Students had some understanding of the data provided.  Students attempt to identify trends to draw
conclusions and recommendations from the data, but there are inaccuracies.

Good
Students are able to understand data provided and identify trends to draw
conclusions and recommendations from the data.  Students select visual methods of
presenting data.

Excellent
Students are able to identify trends and draw suitable and accurate conclusions
from the data.  Students selected
suitable visual methods of presenting data.

Conclusion

Poor
Does not summarize data with respect to
problem statement.  Does not discuss the impact of t data provided.

Fair
Some integration with problem
statement.  Discussed impact of data
provided

Good
Strong review of key conclusions.  Strong
integration with problem statement. 
Discusses impact of data provided

Excellent
Strong review of key conclusions.  Strong
integration with problem statement. 
Insightful discussion of impact of the information provided.

Recommendation

Poor
Simplistic statement of content. Approach to the recommendation is not
evident or not well represented. Recommendation
is unsupported or represents poor decision making.

Fair
Development of content is incomplete or unclear. Lacking discussion of
findings. Recommendation is based on too little information.

Good
Development of content is adequate. Information is clearly presented but may
be better organized and presented.  Recommendation is reasonable.

Excellent
Full and rich development of content including problem, background.  Tables and charts clearly and accurately
represent data gathered to support findings. Recommendation
is well supported and represents critical thinking skills.

Graphics

Poor
No
graphics are used to
present data
analysis and results.

Fair
Some graphics are used to
present data
analysis and results for
data sources.  The visual aids were
limited or ineffective.

Good
Graphics are used to
explain the relationship between data.  

Excellent
Provides
visual aids, to tabulate and analyze data, and include effective graphics to clarify
data, create visual interest, and make numerical data meaningful.

Organization/Formatting/Conventions

Poor
Attention to formatting is not apparent.
Does not
use APA format guidelines.

Editing and revising not apparent.

Fair
Formatting was not in a logical sequence. No headings or sections are shown.
Lacks a professional appearance.

Multiple or repetitive errors interfere with readability
of the document.

Good
Generic headings are used. The document is readable
but some information in long paragraphs could be placed in tables or charts.

Grammar, spelling and punctuation
errors are found, but do not interfere
with the meaning or readability of the document.

Excellent
Logical outline format or section headings are used to make the document
readable. Well-crafted tables, charts or graphs are used where appropriate.
Appearance is high quality and professional.

Free of all grammar, spelling and punctuation errors. Professional writing style is utilized.