From Seventy-One Days to Fifty: Capstone Findings and the Decision in Front of the Owners
Student Name
Master of Business Administration Program, Aspen University
BUS 799: Graduate Capstone
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Slide 2: The Ask
Approve five changes to billing and collections
Fund $18,000 of setup plus $57,680 in yearly costs
Adopt a monthly receivables dashboard
Speaker notes: I want to start with what I am asking you to decide, and then show you why. There are three approvals: the five process changes, the budget to support them, and a one-page dashboard you would review each month. Everything that follows is the evidence behind those three requests.
Slide 3: The Problem in Dollars
71 days of sales waiting to be collected
Each day is about $104,100
Target of 50 days would free about $2.19 million
Speaker notes: We are profitable, yet we draw on the credit line most months to meet payroll. The reason is that we carry about seven point four million dollars in receivables. Closing the gap to your 50-day target would put about two point two million back in our account and save roughly $175,000 a year in interest at our current rate.
Slide 4: Why This Matters Beyond Interest
Faster collection is linked to higher profitability in large firm studies
Cash on hand affects bank limits and bonding capacity
It lets us bid larger work
Speaker notes: Research on more than a thousand Belgian companies found that firms carrying fewer days of receivables tended to earn more (Deloof, 2003). I am not claiming those numbers transfer to us. The point is that what we are seeing is a pattern well known in business, not a quirk of our industry, and that the cash matters for our surety and our bank as much as for interest.
Slide 5: Where the 71 Days Go
Our billing lag: 12 days
Customer review: 18 days; payment after approval: 22
Retainage: 12; rejections and unsigned changes: 7
Speaker notes: I traced every one of the 1,146 payment applications we submitted in the last two years. The pieces add back to the 71 within a day and a half. The number I want you to notice is the first one: twelve days pass after a billing period closes before our application goes out the door. No customer is involved in that delay.
Slide 6: Why Invoices Were Late
Missing lien waivers or backup: 30 percent
Late submission: about 24 percent
Unsigned change orders: about 18 percent
Speaker notes: The controller and I separately coded eighty late invoices and agreed well beyond chance. The top three causes all start inside our company and together explain seventy-one percent of the late invoices in the sample. Customers waiting on owner payments explained about fourteen percent, which is real but not where most of our days are lost.
Slide 7: What Our People Told Us
Billing competes with field work
No firm cutoff; no one owns the deadline
Change work often starts on a verbal go-ahead
Speaker notes: In twelve interviews, project managers were candid that they assemble applications in the evening after site work, and that nothing tells them when it must be done. One of our customers' payables staff explained that a complete application is approved in the first review batch and an incomplete one waits about two weeks for the next. That one sentence explains much of our rejection cost.
Slide 8: Five Changes
Day-five billing cutoff with pre-filled applications
Customer-specific document checklist; waivers requested early
Signed change order before change work; early closeout; collections routine
Speaker notes: Each change is aimed at one measured stage and has an owner. The cutoff and the checklist are expected to recover about twelve and a half days together, most of the target. The change order rule, starting closeout packages at seventy-five percent complete, and a simple collections routine account for the rest.
Slide 9: The Pilot Worked
Two projects, two billing cycles
Billing lag: 11 days before, 4 days during
Four applications, zero rejections
Speaker notes: We tried the cutoff and checklist on two jobs. Lag dropped from eleven days to four, and none of the four applications came back. Project managers said confirming pre-filled quantities took about half an hour instead of two or three hours. It is a small test, so I present it as proof that the changes are workable, not as proof of the full effect.
Slide 10: Costs and Return
Costs: $18,000 once; $57,680 a year
Three-year net present value: about $364,000
Low case at 12 days: about $137,700
Speaker notes: The costs are a billing software module, a half-time coordinator, and training. Discounted at our eight percent borrowing rate, three years of savings minus costs are worth about $364,000 today. If we recover only twelve days, the plan is still worth about $137,700. The first year pays for itself without new borrowing.
Slide 11: Keeping the Gains
Monthly one-page dashboard with owners for each measure
Trigger: two months above 55 days
Cutoff written into project manager expectations
Speaker notes: Improvements fade when attention moves elsewhere, a failure pattern described in the change management literature (Kotter, 1995). So the plan includes a dashboard with a named owner for each number, a trigger that calls the change group back together, and the cutoff built into how project managers are evaluated. The structured, goal-driven method behind this project is designed to end with exactly this kind of control step (Linderman et al., 2003).
Slide 12: What This Plan Will Not Fix
22 days after approval depend on our customers
Their finances drive many payment problems
Recommend a payment-history check at bid time
Speaker notes: I want to be clear about the limits. Research on construction payment identifies other parties' financial strength as central to payment problems (Ramachandra & Rotimi, 2015), and the twenty-two days after approval mostly sit with our customers. That is a contract and bidding question for you, outside this project, and my one suggestion is to review a general contractor's payment history before we bid. Thank you; I would welcome your questions and, I hope, your approval.
References
Deloof, M. (2003). Does working capital management affect profitability of Belgian firms? Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, 30(3-4), 573-588. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5957.00008
Kotter, J. P. (1995). Leading change: Why transformation efforts fail. Harvard Business Review, 73(2), 59-67.
Linderman, K., Schroeder, R. G., Zaheer, S., & Choo, A. S. (2003). Six Sigma: A goal-theoretic perspective. Journal of Operations Management, 21(2), 193-203. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0272-6963(02)00087-6
Ramachandra, T., & Rotimi, J. O. B. (2015). Causes of payment problems in the New Zealand construction industry. Construction Economics and Building, 15(1), 43-55. https://doi.org/10.5130/ajceb.v15i1.4214
How this BUS 799 Module 8 example is structured
Aspen's catalog describes BUS 799 as an individualized, work-related capstone that benefits the organization. Aspen does not publish module deliverables, so check your classroom for the required format. This example leads with the decision, presents evidence in the order a decision maker needs it, reports pilot and financial results with their limits and closes with what the plan will not do.
BUS 799 Module 8 questions, answered
What does BUS 799 Module 8 usually ask for?
The final work in a graduate business capstone is typically a final report or presentation of the project to the organization, covering the problem, findings, recommendations, financial case and next steps. Aspen does not publish module deliverables, so your classroom's instructions govern.
How should a capstone presentation to executives be ordered?
Start with the decision you are asking for, then show the problem in financial terms, the evidence, the recommendations, the costs and returns, how results will be sustained and the limits of the plan.
Should I include what my project cannot fix?
Yes. Stating the plan's limits builds credibility and helps leaders see which decisions remain theirs.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
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