IF YOU HAVE COUSEHERO YOU CAN FIND THE SOLUTION

Executive Summary

Of the thousands of patients who receive hearing aids or cochlear implants, many continue to have trouble hearing in certain settings, especially those with background noise. After installing a device or implant, clinicians need a way to test how well their patients can hear in typical noisy settings. Tests can make a big difference for children, in particular, because early intervention can prevent or minimize educational deficits due to hearing loss.

Current tests are designed as pure tone tests and require a soundproof booth and audiometers to generate the tones. Although pure tone tests assess basic hearing loss, they do not evaluate how well a person can understand language and detect other sounds outside of the booth.

Crown Medical proposes to spin off its auditory medical device offerings into a new auditory testing device business named Crown Auditory Testing. Crown has developed software that quickly and reliably tests hearing in environments where a patient lives and works and then adjusts the patients hearing device for optimal hearing.

Objectives

Crown Medical has four major objectives in creating a new auditory testing device company.

• Management team
  • Hire people with skills and knowledge in medical auditory testing.
  • Establish a horizontal management structure to encourage collaboration.
• Sales and marketing
• Design and carry out a sales strategy.
• Establish awareness of the new auditory testing product.
• Product development
  • Use agile project management techniques to introduce the new product on time.
  • Create quality standards for testing and support.
• Customer service
  • Train sales staff and clinicians on using the new testing device.
  • Use current customer relationship management software.

Company Background

2011: Crown Medical founded as a medical device company.

2019: Software division expands to develop proprietary testing engine.

2015: Crown Medical acquires AudioVeritt, a hearing aid manufacturer.

2014: Major universities become formal research partners of Crown Medical.

Start-Up Costs

The following table summarizes the start-up costs for the new company.

Expense Type	Requested Funding Total Amount
Conferences and travel	$10,000	$14,000	Difference provided by owners
Insurance	$5,000	$5,250
Legal	$20,000	$25,000
Online presence	$20,000	$25,000
Property and equipment	$30,000	$32,000
Sales and marketing	$30,000	$36,500
Software development	$50,000	$55,000
Total Requested:

Ownership

Crown Auditory Testing will be a privately held, limited liability corporation (LLC) with Dr. Lucille Greene as an owner. Anticipating that investors and talented managers will want to participate in ownership, Dr. Greene will own no more than 40 percent of the shares.

Roles and Shares

Owner	Role	Share
Barbara Daley	Software developer	8.5%
Dr. Lucille Greene	Chief scientific consultant	40%
Fred Khatri	Software developer	7.5%
Michael Linde	Marketing	5%
Natalia Cassini	Operations manager	5%
Yuan Choi	Marketing	10%

For More Information

Contact Michael Linde at m.linde@crown.cengage.com.

Number of words: 413

• PROJECT STEPS

1. As an executive assistant at Crown Medical, a medical device manufacturer in Cleveland, Ohio, you are drafting a business proposal for a spin-off business focusing on a system for performing accurate hearing tests. The proposal must contain 1000 words or less. On page 1, expand the character spacing of the paragraph "Executive Summary" by 2 point to call attention to the heading.
2. Format the bulleted list in the "Objectives" section as follows to make the list more logical and attractive:
   1. Demote the two bulleted items after the "Sales and marketing" item ("Design and carry out" and "Establish awareness") by one level.
   2. Change the color of the bullets to Aqua, Accent 5 for the four first-level bulleted items ("Management team", "Sales and marketing", "Product development", and "Customer service").
3. Sort the four paragraphs in the "Company Background" section in ascending order by paragraph.
4. On page 2, split and merge cells in the "Start-Up Costs" table and insert a formula as follows to make the table easier to interpret:
   1. Split the cell containing the text "Requested Funding Total Amount" into 2 columns and 1 row.
   2. Insert a formula in cell B9 (the cell to the right of the "Total Requested:" cell) that sums the values above the cell.
   3. Merge cells B9, C9, and D9 (the three cells to the right of the "Total Requested:" cell).
5. Format the "Start-Up Costs" table as follows to improve its appearance and usefulness:
   1. Change the top and bottom cell margins to 0.04 for all cells in the table.
   2. Shade row 1 (the header row) using the Aqua, Accent 5, Lighter 60% shading color.
   3. Change the direction of the "Difference provided by owners" text so that it reads from top to bottom.
   4. Resize column A to fit the cell contents using AutoFit.
6. Format and sort the table in the "Roles and Shares" section as follows to make the table more useful as a reference and to coordinate with the "Start-Up Costs" table:
   1. Sort the table in descending order by the numbers in the "Share" column without sorting the header row.
   2. Change the color of all the table borders to Aqua, Accent 5 to match the color of the "Start-Up Costs" table.
   3. Distribute the rows in the table.
   4. Change the width of column C (the "Share" column) to 1.35".
   5. Align the percentage amounts in the "Share" column using Align Center Right.
7. Format the shaded "For More Information" section at the bottom of page 2 as follows to set it apart from the rest of the document:
   1. Change the indentation of the two paragraphs ("For More Information" and "Contact Michael Linde") to a 0.5" Left Indent.
   2. Format the heading text "For More Information" in Small caps to distinguish it from other headings.
8. Update the field after the "Number of words:" text to accurately reflect the number of words in the document.
9. Insert a Draft 1 watermark to emphasize that the document is being developed. [Mac Hint: Insert a Text watermark using the Draft option. Change the Transparency to 50% and the Orientation to Diagonal.]
10. Add a cover page as follows to create a professional opening page for the document:
    1. Insert the Slice (Dark) cover page.
    2. Type Crown Auditory Testing as the document title.
    3. Type Business proposal as the document subtitle.

Your document should look like the Final Figure on the following pages. Save your changes, close the document, and then exit Word. Follow the directions on the SAM website to submit your completed project.

Note: The word count is intentionally blurred.