A capstone is where the separate skills of a course become one piece of work. Here that work is a short business report: the form most postgraduate marketing and business courses use for assessment, and the form many managers use to make decisions. It answers one question for one reader, with evidence, numbers and a recommendation. You have already made most of its parts. Modules 1–5 each gave you a tool, and the Business Report Builder (Business Report Builder) has a section for what each one produced.

Start by choosing the decision. A good capstone decision is real, has two or three genuine options, and matters enough that someone would read a report about it: whether to open a new site, launch a service, take on a contract, change a price or switch a channel. Choose one you can find evidence and numbers for. If you are not working now, a past employer, a business you plan or a local organisation you know as a customer all work; so does Kettle & Crumb's growth decision.

Then name the reader. Dan writes for Maria Costa, who owns the business and will make the decision. Your reader may be a manager, a board, a funder or, for an assignment, a marker playing that role. Knowing who will read the report tells you what they already know, what will worry them and how much detail they need.

Write the decision question next, as you did in Module 3: who must decide what, by when, to achieve what. It becomes the first sentence of your introduction and the test for everything else. A paragraph that does not help answer it does not belong in the report.

The background comes from your Business Model Snapshot (Module 1), but only the parts the decision touches: which building blocks each option would change, and the headline numbers with their source. The marketing context comes from your Strategy & KPI Planner (Module 2): which customer segments the decision affects, which goal it serves and which KPIs would show whether it worked.

Finally, analyse. A short SWOT, plus the two or three PESTLE factors that really matter, gives you prompts; the "so what?" sentence after each entry turns them into analysis. Expect the analysis to change your question a little. That is the process working, not failing: rewrite the question and carry on.

This lesson builds the heart of the report, the part that earns most of the marks: options, evidence and numbers, brought together into a recommendation. Read the worked example later in this module first, to see how Dan does it for Kettle & Crumb, then do the same for your own decision.

Set out two or three options that are genuinely different, and keep carrying on as now as the baseline every option has to beat. Agree your criteria before you judge anything: up-front cost, risk, fit with what the organisation does well, evidence of demand, time to pay back. Writing them down first stops you choosing criteria that flatter the option you already like.

Next, the evidence. Bring across the sources you scored in the Source Credibility Scorecard (Module 3), including the published source you found yourself. Let the scores decide how much weight each source can carry, and say so in the text. A weak source can still appear in your report, as long as you name its weakness and no key claim rests on it alone.

Then the numbers, from the Break-even and Payback Calculator (Module 4). Give each option's set-up cost, annual profit, break-even, margin of safety and payback in one table, so the reader can compare them at a glance, and put the full working in an appendix. Label every assumption, such as a sales forecast you made yourself. Then run one sensitivity check: change the assumption you are least sure of, usually the sales forecast, and see whether the answer survives. The margin of safety tells you in advance how far it can fall.

Now judge. Test each option against each criterion, and notice where the evidence and the numbers point the same way and where they pull apart. A recommendation is rarely "this option wins on every count". More often it is "this option is better on the criteria that matter most, provided certain things are true". Those provisos are your conditions, and stating them is a strength: they tell the reader exactly what would change your advice, and what to watch.

Finish with the recommendation itself: who should do what, by when and why; its conditions; its two or three main risks, with what you would do if each happened; and the first steps. "Go with the contract" is a verdict. "Sign the contract only if it runs for at least 12 months, and review it after a year" is a decision someone can act on.

Now write the report. Use the structure from Module 5, and set a word budget before you draft. For 2,000 words, a workable split is: executive summary 200, introduction 150, analysis 600, options and numbers 550, recommendation, implementation and risks 400, conclusion 100. Draft each section from the matching part of the Business Report Builder (Business Report Builder), and write the executive summary last, when you know what the report says.

Then check it. Leave a day if you can, and work through the Report Readiness Checklist. Fix the high-priority items first: an executive summary that stands alone, a recommendation that says who does what by when, every figure recalculated and consistent, every citation in the reference list, and an honest AI-use statement. Then cut to the word limit and proofread.

Last, look back, then forward. Ask where your report was strongest and where it was hardest: framing the question, judging evidence, the numbers or the writing. Then use the table to choose a next course. Each of the Academy's five postgraduate courses builds on different parts of this pathway, but none requires it: you can enrol in any of them directly. The pathway's certificate records a completion you report yourself; it is not an assessed grade.

Choose for your gaps as well as your interests. If the numbers were the hardest part and you want to plan marketing, Marketing Strategy and Planning gives them more practice. If the business model was where your thinking came alive, Innovation and Change in Marketing builds on it.