executive summary research proposal example

3 Effective Executive Summary Examples and Templates

By Status.net Editorial Team on October 16, 2024 — 6 minutes to read

Executive summaries help busy readers quickly grasp the key points of a report or proposal. They give a snapshot of the main ideas without having to read the whole document. A good executive summary tells readers why they should care and what you want them to do. Writing an effective summary takes practice. But with the right template and examples, you can create summaries that get results. This article will show you how to write summaries that make an impact and get your ideas noticed.

Elements of an Effective Executive Summary

An executive summary needs key parts to be useful. Let’s look at what you should include.

Start with your objectives. Tell readers what you want to achieve. This helps them understand your goals right away.
Share your main findings. Pick the most important facts and data from your full report. Don’t overwhelm with details – just the highlights.
Tell readers what actions you think they should take based on your findings.
Keep it short and sweet. Aim for one or two pages at most. You want busy executives to read the whole thing.
Avoid jargon and complex terms. Write like you’re explaining things to a friend.
Include visuals if they help. A chart or graph can make data easier to grasp quickly.
End with a brief conclusion. Sum up your main points and the value of your work.

Tailor your summary to your audience. Think about what they care about most and focus on that.

Executive Summary Templates

Executive summary template #1.

1. Introduction – Brief Overview of the Company – Purpose of the Document

2. Problem Statement – Description of the Problem or Opportunity – Impact on the Business

3. Proposed Solution – Summary of the Solution – Key Benefits

4. Objectives – Specific Goals to be Achieved – Metrics for Success

5. Financial Overview – Budget – Expected ROI

6. Conclusion – Summary of Key Points – Call to Action

Executive Summary Example #1

1. Introduction – Brief Overview of the Company: ABC Corp is a leading provider of tech solutions. – Purpose of the Document: To outline a new customer relationship management (CRM) system.

2. Problem Statement – Description of the Problem or Opportunity: Current CRM system is outdated and inefficient. (Note: In a real summary, you may want to elaborate on specific issues, challenges, and their impact on the organization.) – Impact on the Business: Reduced customer satisfaction and lost sales opportunities. (Note: Consider including detailed findings from research or analysis, as well as any relevant data or statistics.)

3. Proposed Solution – Summary of the Solution: Implement a new, cloud-based CRM system. – Key Benefits: Improved customer interaction, increased sales, and better data analytics.

4. Objectives – Specific Goals to be Achieved: Increase customer satisfaction by 20%, boost sales by 15%. – Metrics for Success: Customer feedback scores, sales figures.

5. Financial Overview – Budget: $500,000 – Expected ROI: 25% within the first year.

6. Conclusion – Summary of Key Points: New CRM system will solve current inefficiencies and boost sales. – Call to Action: Approve the budget and initiate the project.

Executive Summary Template #2

1. Introduction – Brief Overview of the Situation – Importance of Addressing the Issue

2. Problem – Detailed Description of the Problem – Evidence and Data Supporting the Problem

3. Solution – Proposed Solution – Steps to Implement the Solution

4. Benefits – Advantages of the Proposed Solution – Long-term Impact

5. Challenges – Potential Obstacles – Mitigation Strategies

6. Conclusion – Summary of the Problem and Solution – Next Steps

Executive Summary Example #2

1. Introduction – Brief Overview of the Situation: ABC Corp is facing declining customer satisfaction. – Importance of Addressing the Issue: Essential for maintaining market competitiveness.

2. Problem – Detailed Description of the Problem: Long response times to customer inquiries. (Note: In a real summary, you may want to elaborate on specific issues, challenges, and their impact on the organization.) – Evidence and Data Supporting the Problem: Customer satisfaction surveys show a 30% decline. (Note: Consider including detailed findings from research or analysis, as well as any relevant data or statistics.)

3. Solution – Proposed Solution: Implement a new customer support system. – Steps to Implement the Solution: Select a vendor, train staff, roll out the system. (Note: In a real summary, you may want to provide a more comprehensive breakdown of each phase, including key activities, milestones, and responsible parties.)

4. Benefits – Advantages of the Proposed Solution: Faster response times, improved customer satisfaction. – Long-term Impact: Increased customer loyalty and higher sales.

5. Challenges – Potential Obstacles: Resistance to change among staff. – Mitigation Strategies: Comprehensive training programs and incentives.

6. Conclusion – Summary of the Problem and Solution: New system will address current inefficiencies. – Next Steps: Approve budget and start vendor selection process.

Project Proposal Template

1. Introduction – Project Title – Brief Overview – Objectives

2. Background – Context and Need for the Project – Previous Work or Research

3. Project Description – Detailed Project Plan – Scope and Deliverables – Timeline

4. Resources – Budget – Personnel – Equipment and Materials

5. Risk Management – Potential Risks – Mitigation Strategies

6. Conclusion – Summary of the Proposal – Call to Action

Project Proposal Example

1. Introduction – Project Title: New Website Development – Brief Overview: Develop a new, user-friendly website for ABC Corp. – Objectives: Improve user experience, increase online sales.

2. Background – Context and Need for the Project: Current website is outdated and not mobile-friendly. (Note: In a real proposal, you may want to elaborate on specific issues with the current website, user pain points, and the impact on business performance.) – Previous Work or Research: User feedback and competitor analysis. (Note: Consider including detailed findings from the feedback and analysis, as well as any relevant data or statistics.)

3. Project Description – Detailed Project Plan: Design, development, testing, and launch phases. (Note: In a real proposal, you may want to provide a more comprehensive breakdown of each phase, including key activities, milestones, and responsible parties.) – Scope and Deliverables: New website, user training, and maintenance plan. (Note: Specify the features and functionalities of the new website, the format and content of the user training, and the details of the maintenance plan.) – Timeline: 6 months. (Note: Include a more detailed timeline with specific dates, deadlines, and any potential dependencies or risks.)

4. Resources – Budget: $200,000 – Personnel: Project manager, developers, designers. – Equipment and Materials: Development tools, hosting services.

5. Risk Management – Potential Risks: Delays in development, budget overruns. – Mitigation Strategies: Regular progress reviews, contingency budget.

6. Conclusion – Summary of the Proposal: New website will address current issues and boost sales. – Call to Action: Approve the project plan and allocate the budget.

Closing Strong

A strong closing in your executive summary leaves a lasting impression and drives action. Let’s look at effective ways to wrap up and motivate your readers.

Summarizing Key Points

“To recap, our key findings show…”
“The three main benefits of this proposal are…”
“Our analysis reveals significant opportunities in…”
“The core strengths of our team include…”
“This project addresses critical needs by…”
“Our recommendations focus on…”
“The expected return on investment is…”
“Key milestones for the next quarter include…”
“Our funding request will enable us to…”
“In light of these findings, we suggest…”

Call to Action

“We invite you to review the full proposal and provide feedback by…”
“Please schedule a meeting with our team to discuss implementation…”
“We recommend moving forward with phase one of the project…”
“Your approval is needed to begin the hiring process for…”
“We ask for your support in securing the necessary funding…”
“Join us for a demonstration of the new system on…”
“We look forward to your decision on the proposed merger by…”
“Please share this report with key stakeholders in your department…”
“We request your signature on the attached agreement to proceed…”
“Mark your calendar for our next quarterly review on…”

Make your call to action specific and time-bound: this creates a sense of urgency and gives readers a clear path forward.

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How To Write A High-Impact Executive Summary

By Derek Jansen | January 2018

In this post, I’ll deconstruct the often-misunderstood executive summary and show you how to develop a high-impact executive summary for your assignment, research report or even your dissertation or thesis.

So, what is an executive summary?

An executive summary (sometimes called an abstract ) is quite simply a summary of summaries. In other words, an executive summary provides a concise summary of each of your assignment or report chapters/sections . More specifically, it should communicate the key points/insights/findings/suggestions from the following chapters:

Introduction
Recommendations
Implementation (if applicable)
Reflection (if applicable)

I’ll discuss which key points from each section need to be addressed a bit later. On a separate note – if you’re writing an executive summary for a dissertation or thesis, all of the concepts described in this post will still apply to you, however, you’ll include an additional paragraph about your methodology, and you’ll likely spend more word count discussing your analysis findings.

The 4 Important Attributes Of An Exec Summary

Before I discuss what goes into the executive summary, let’s quickly look at 4 attributes that make for a strong executive summary:

#1 – It should be able to stand alone.

The executive summary should be able to stand independently as an informative document . In other words, the reader should be able to grasp your broad argument without having to read the full document. Further reading should be purely for attaining more detail. Simply put, the executive summary should be a “Mini-Me” of the assignment.

This independence means that anything you write in the executive summary will need to be re-stated in the body of your assignment. A common mistake that students make is to introduce key points in the executive summary and then not discuss them again in the document – accordingly, the marker must view the main document as missing these key points. Simply put – make sure you discuss key points in both the executive summary and the main body . It will feel repetitive at times – this is normal.

#2 – It should be written for the intelligent layman.

When crafting your executive summary, its useful to keep the intelligent layman front of mind. What I mean by this is that you should write your summary assuming that your reader (i.e. the marker) will be intelligent but won’t be familiar with your topic and/or industry. This means that you should explain any technical concepts, avoid jargon and explain acronyms before using them.

More broadly, you should aim to make your executive summary as easy to read and digest as possible. The easier you make it for the marker to understand your arguments, the easier it is for them to award you marks for good arguments. To improve the readability of your writing, use simple but professional language, keep your sentences short and to the point, and round numbers off as much as possible (for example, $6.5 million vs $6,543,632). Try the Hemingway App for real-time feedback and recommendations on your writing.

#3 – It should be concise.

Typically, your executive summary should be a one-pager (one and a half pages at worst). To summarise a 3000 – 5000-word document into one page is no easy task, so you’ll need to:

Present only the most important information (key insights, recommendations, etc).
Write concisely – i.e. with brevity and completeness.

To the first point, I’ll explain what the “most important” information is for each chapter shortly. To the second point (writing concisely), there are various ways to do this, including:

Using simple, straightforward language.
Using the active voice.
Removing bloaty adverbs and adjectives.
Reducing prepositional phrases.
Avoiding noun strings.

Does this sound like gibberish to you? Don’t worry! The Writing Center at the University of Wisconson-Madison provides a practical guide to writing more concisely, which you can download here.

On a related note, you typically would not include headings, citations or bulleted/numbered lists in your executive summary. These visual components tend to use a lot of space, which comes at a premium, as you know.

#4 – It should be written last.

Given that your executive summary is a summary of summaries, it needs to be written last , only once you’ve identified all your key insights, recommendations and so on. This probably sounds obvious, but many students start writing the summary first (potentially because of its position in the document) and then end up re-writing it multiple times, or they don’t rewrite it and consequently end up with an executive summary which is misaligned with the main document.

Simply put, you should leave this section until everything else is completed. Once your core body content is completed, you should read through the entire document again and create a bullet-point list of all the key points . From this list, you should then craft your executive summary . The approach will also help you identify gaps, contradictions and misalignments in your main document.

So, what goes into an executive summary?

Right, let’s get into the meat of it and consider what exactly should go into your executive summary. As I’ve mentioned, you need to present only the absolutely key point points from each of your chapters, but what does this mean exactly?

Each chapter will typically take the form of 1 paragraph (with no headings) in your executive summary. So, 5 chapters means 5 paragraphs. Naturally, some will be longer than others (let this be informed by the mark allocation), but assuming one page contains 500 words, you’re aiming for roughly 100 words per paragraph (assuming a 5-paragraph structure). See why conciseness is key!

Now, let’s look at what the key points are for each chapter in the case of a typical MBA assignment or report. In the case of a dissertation or thesis, the paragraph structure would still mimic the chapter structure – you’d just have more chapters, and therefore, more paragraphs.

Paragraph 1: Introduction

This paragraph should cover the following points:

A very brief explanation of the business (what does it do, for whom and where?).
Clear identification and explanation of the problem or opportunity that will be the focus of the assignment/report.
A clear statement of the purpose of the assignment (i.e. what research questions will you seek to answer?).
Brief mention of what data sources were utilised (i.e. secondary research) and any fieldwork undertaken (i.e. primary research ).

In other words, your first paragraph should introduce the business, the problem/opportunity to be addressed, why it’s important, and how you approached your analysis. This paragraph should make it clear to the reader what the assignment is all about at a broad level. Here’s a practical example:

This assignment focuses on ABC Ltd, a XXX business based in XXX, which provides XXX to XXX customers. To date, the firm has relied almost exclusively on XXX marketing channel. Consequently, ABC Ltd has little understanding of consumer segments, wants, and needs. This marketing channel is now under regulatory threat due to XXX. The core challenge, therefore, is that whilst ABC Ltd seeks to grow its market share, it has little understanding of its market characteristics or competitive set, and its sole marketing channel under regulatory threat. Accordingly, the objective of this assignment is XXX. The assignment draws on survey, interview, and industry data.

Paragraph 2: Analysis and findings

In this paragraph, you should discuss the following:

What exactly did you analyse? For example, you might have analysed the macro context (i.e. PESTLE analysis), followed by the meso (i.e. competitor or industry analysis) and then the micro (i.e. internal organisational analysis).
What were your key findings in relation to the purpose of the assignment? For example, you may have identified 4 potential causes of a problem and would then state them.

In other words, your second paragraph should concisely explain what you analysed and what your main findings were . An example of this:

Segmentation analysis, consisting of macro, industry and firm-level analyses, revealed a strong segmentation variable in the form of XXX, with distinct needs in each segment. Macro analysis revealed XXX, while industry and firm-level analyses suggested XXX. Subsequently, three potential target segments were established, namely XXX, XXX and XXX. These were then evaluated using the Directional Policy Matrix, and the results indicated XXX.

From a presentation perspective, you might structure this section as:

Analysis 1, findings from analysis 1.
Analysis 2, findings from analysis 2.
Analysis 3, findings from analysis 3.

Importantly, you should only discuss the findings that are directly linked to the research questions (i.e. the purpose of the assignment) – don’t digress into interesting but less relevant findings. Given that the analysis chapter typically counts for a large proportion of marks, you could viably write 2-3 paragraphs for this. Be guided by the mark allocation.

Lastly, you should ensure that the findings you present here align well with the recommendations you’ll make in the next paragraph. Think about what your recommendations are, and, if necessary, reverse engineer this paragraph to create a strong link and logical flow from analysis to recommendations.

Paragraph 3: Recommendations

With the key findings from your analysis presented in the preceding paragraph, you should now discuss the following:

What are your key recommendations?
How do these solve the problems you found in your analysis?
Were there any further conclusions?

Simply put, this paragraph (or two) should present the main recommendations and justify their use (i.e. explain how they resolve the key issue). As mentioned before, it’s critically important that your recommendations tightly align with (and resolve) the key issues that you identified in the analysis. An example:

Based on the Directional Policy Matrix analysis, it is recommended that the firm target XXX segment, because of XXX. On this basis, a positioning of XXX is proposed, as this aligns with the segment’s key needs. Furthermore, a provisional high-level marketing mix is proposed. The key aspects of the marketing mix include XXX, XXX and XXX, as these align with the firm’s positioning of XXX. By adopting these recommendations, the key issue of XXX will be resolved.

Also, note that (typically) the tone changes from past to present tense when you get to the recommendations section.

Paragraph 4: Implementation

If your assignment brief requires an implementation/project plan-type section, this paragraph will typically include the following points:

Time requirements (how long will it take?)
People requirements (what skills are needed and where do you find them?)
Money requirements (what budget is required?)
How will the project or change be managed? (i.e. project management plan)
What risks exist and how will these be managed?

Depending on what level of detail is required by your assignment brief, you may need to present more, less or other details in this section. As always, be guided by the assignment brief.

A practical example:

A high-level implementation plan is proposed, including a stakeholder analysis, project plan and business case. Resource requirements are presented, detailing XXX, XXX and XXX requirements. A risk analysis is presented, revealing key risks including XXX, XXX and XXX. Risk management solutions are proposed, including XXX and XXX.

executive summary research proposal example

Paragraph 5: Reflection

As with the implementation chapter, the need for a reflection chapter/section will vary between assignments and universities. If your assignment has this requirement, it’s typically good to cover the following points:

What were your key learnings? What were your ah-ha moments?
What has changed in the real world as a consequence of these learnings? I.e. how has your actual behaviour and approach to “X” changed, if any?
What are the benefits and/or disadvantages of this change, if any?

This section is very personal, and so each person’s reflections will be different. Don’t take the above points as gospel.

Time to test it out.

Once you’ve written up your executive summary and feel confident that it’s in good shape, it’s time to test it out on an unsuspecting intelligent layman. This is a critically important step, since you, as the writer, are simply too close to the work to judge whether it all makes sense to a first-time reader. In fact, you are the least suitable person on the planet!

So, find someone who is not familiar with your assignment topic (and ideally, not familiar with your industry), and ask them to have a read through your executive summary. Friends and family will usually tell you its great, regardless of the quality, so you need to test them on their understanding. Do this by asking them to give the details back to you in their own words. Poke and prod – can they tell you what the key issues and recommendations were (in their own words!). You’ll quickly spot the gaps this way, and be able to flesh out any weak areas.

Wrapping up.

In this post, I’ve discussed how to write the all too often undercooked executive summary. I’ve discussed some important attributes of a strong executive summary, as well as the contents that typically go into it. To recap on the key points:

The key attributes of a high-impact executive summary:

It should be able to stand alone.
It should be written for the intelligent layman.
It should be concise.
It should be written last.

The key contents of a high-impact executive summary:

Each paragraph should cover a chapter from the document. For example, In the case of a typical assignment, it would be something like:

Summary of the introduction chapter.
Summary of the analysis chapter.
Summary of the recommendations and/or conclusions chapter.
Depending – summary of the implementation and reflection.

Lastly, don’t forget to test out your executive summary on an unsuspecting layman or two. This is probably the most important step of them all!

If you have any questions or suggestions, we’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch here or leave a comment below.

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Thanks so much for your methodical process and explanation of Executive Summary. It is exactly what I was researching for.

Regards Saane

It’s a pleasure!

This was really helpful with how to structure my assignment.

Thank you so much for the step by step process. It’s so helpful for beginners like me.

Great! This post is very informative and gives clear guidance on to write an executive summary. Thanks very much for sharing this information, it’s very helpful.