Page 273 - Writing Winning Business Proposals

264 Appendix C

Proposal to ABC Company page - 11
February 29, 2XXX
Appendix A: Methodology
Below, we explain in more detail the five major tasks contained in the methods
section.

Task 1: Confirm ABC’s Long-Term Product Forecast
Although ABC already has a forecast by product line, we believe that the
engagement must be conducted with Consolidated constantly in mind. Since
Consolidated must release the necessary capital funding, they must be convinced of
the engagement’s rigor and robustness. For that reason, we believe that the forecast
must be confirmed by an independent third party. Therefore, we propose to work
with ABC’s marketing management to confirm or modify the long-term forecast by:

◉ validating ABC’s current overall market forecast
◉ validating ABC’s market share and your geographic and product-mix
projections

The consensus market forecast developed in this task will represent the best
thinking of your marketing group and the Paramount team. The forecast, used with
various manufacturing data, will enable the engagement team to develop future
resource requirements over time.

Task 2: Determine Total Factory Resource Requirements at Alternate
Forecast Levels
An important task of the engagement team will be to use the existing base of
production resources (floor space, equipment, and staffing) and modify that base
so that it can accommodate the additional future production demands over time
indicated by the confirmed market forecast. First, however, the team will carefully
evaluate that base to identify improvements or eliminate inefficiencies that might
exist today. We don’t want ABC to risk adding too much or too little capacity.
This risk can be avoided by first establishing a proper base, a “current-improved”
base, from which to project future resource requirements. All this will be critical,
because determining future needs involves far more than simply an arithmetic
extrapolation of today’s activities.

We were very much impressed during our walk-through of your main
manufacturing facility. You should know, however, that in nearly every similar
engagement, we have been able to recommend methods for better utilizing
currently available space, thereby making space available for additional equipment
to add to manufacturing capacity. To provide additional capacity and/or space