| Course | MT299 Associate's Capstone in Management |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 3 |
| Paper type | Organization profile |
| Length | About 870 words, 6 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | BS in Business Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for MT299 Unit 3
Eight People, One Van, One Cooler: A Unit 3 Organization Profile of Hartwell Florist at Its Actual Size
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
MT299: Associate's Capstone in Management
Unit 3 Organization Profile
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Hartwell Florist, its history, people, figures and competitors are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.
Ownership and History
Hartwell Florist was founded in 1988 by Ray and Linda Hartwell in a rented space on a commercial street in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In 2004 they bought the building it now occupies, a former bakery with a storefront, a design room behind it and a walk-in cooler installed when they moved in. Their daughter took over as owner in 2016 and runs the shop with a manager. There is no board, no written mission statement and no formal strategy document; decisions are made by the owner, usually after talking with the shop manager and the lead designer. The profile describes that structure as it is rather than inventing a corporate one. The figures come from the owner, the point-of-sale reports and the author's own observation, the three sources Saunders et al. (2019) suggest combining when describing a small organization.
People
Owner: about 50 hours a week; buying, finances, large wedding accounts
Shop manager: 40 hours; staff schedule, daily orders, the wholesaler relationship
Lead designer: 40 hours; arrangements, the design room, quality
Designer: 36 hours
Two part-time designers: about 20 hours each, more in peak weeks
Driver: 30 hours; deliveries in the van
Counter clerk: weekends, about 16 hours; the author of this profile
Eight people in all, about 252 regular hours a week.
What the Shop Sells
Annual sales are about $540,000, split roughly as follows:
Sympathy work, funeral arrangements and standing sprays: about 31 percent
Weddings and events: about 22 percent
Walk-in and phone orders: about 24 percent
Website orders: about 14 percent
Relay orders through wire services, from other florists' customers: about 9 percent
Sympathy work is the largest and steadiest line. It arrives without warning, often with a day's notice, and the shop's reputation depends on never turning it away. Weddings are booked months ahead and bought to a count.
The Year
The shop's year has five peaks: Valentine's Day, the busiest single day; Mother's Day, the busiest week; prom season in April and May; fall weddings from September to October; and December, with holiday centerpieces and parties. Between peaks, the shop runs on sympathy work and walk-in trade. A year calendar marks each peak and the weeks the owner hires extra designers.
Purchasing and the Cooler
Fresh-cut flowers come from a regional wholesaler whose trucks deliver on Mondays and Thursdays. The shop has a standing order for each delivery, adjusted by phone for peak weeks and weddings. Flowers go straight into the walk-in cooler behind the design room, a 10 by 12 foot box built in 2004. Designers pull stems from the cooler as orders arrive. Heizer et al. (2020) note that perishable goods need storage conditions and rotation rules as much as ordering rules, and the shop has neither written down. Unsold flowers that wilt go to a compost bin behind the shop, emptied every Monday.
Competitors
Two grocery chains in town sell flowers from floral counters, at lower prices for bunches and simple arrangements. A national online florist sends relay orders to local shops and competes with Hartwell's own website. One other independent florist, about two miles away, competes for weddings and sympathy work. Hartwell's advantage, according to the owner, is the quality and reliability of its sympathy work and its relationships with three funeral homes.
Systems
The shop uses a florist point-of-sale package that records sales by category and handles wire-service orders. Large orders and weddings are also written in a paper order book kept at the counter, a habit the owner keeps because the system once lost a wedding order. Purchasing is tracked through the wholesaler's invoices, filed by month. There is no inventory system; the shop manager knows what is in the cooler by looking.
The shop knows to the dollar what it sells and has no record at all of what it throws away.
Finances in Outline
The owner shared figures in outline rather than a full statement. Fresh-cut flowers cost about $128,000 a year, the largest purchase after wages. Wages and payroll taxes are about $230,000. Rent is not a cost, since the family owns the building, but property taxes, utilities and the cooler's power are about $38,000. The van, insurance, wire-service fees and the point-of-sale package make up most of the rest. The shop is profitable in a normal year but has little cushion: the owner described a slow January as the month she worries about payroll.
What the Profile Means for the Project
Three features of the business shape the waste question. Sympathy work requires a reserve of white and green flowers ready at short notice, so some unsold stock is deliberate. The fixed Monday and Thursday deliveries mean ordering mistakes last for days. And the absence of an inventory record means the first step must be to count. Scarborough and Cornwall (2019) observe that small businesses often have detailed sales data and little operational data, which is exactly Hartwell's situation.
References
Heizer, J., Render, B., & Munson, C. (2020). Operations management: Sustainability and supply chain management (13th ed.). Pearson.
Saunders, M., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2019). Research methods for business students (8th ed.). Pearson.
Scarborough, N. M., & Cornwall, J. R. (2019). Essentials of entrepreneurship and small business management (9th ed.). Pearson.
Reading the MT 299 Unit 3 instructions
Unit 3 asks for a profile of the organization the capstone studies. Typical prompts list ownership and history, structure and staffing, products or services, customers and markets, competitors, operations and systems, and a financial outline, followed by a link back to the project's problem. The purpose is practical: every later unit will rely on these facts, so they need sources and should stay consistent from here to the final report. Instructors expect the business described as it really is, which for a small firm means owner decisions rather than an invented hierarchy. Figures may be rounded or given as ranges when an owner prefers privacy, as long as each is attributed. Three to five pages with headings is a common length, usually with a short staff list or sales mix and a citation or two from small business or operations readings.
How this MT299 Unit 3 example is built
The florist profile moves from history to people to sales, then to the year, purchasing, competitors, systems and finances. Ownership is told in a few sentences, ending with the plain statement that there is no board or written mission. A staff list gives each role its hours and duties, totaling eight people. Sales are split into five lines, and a margin note explains why sympathy orders are both the largest and the least predictable. A paragraph on the year names the five peaks. The purchasing section describes the Monday and Thursday trucks and the 10 by 12 foot cooler, citing Heizer on storage rules for perishables. Systems reveal the key gap in a highlighted line: sales recorded to the dollar, discards not at all. Finances show flowers as the largest cost after wages, and the closing section names three features the project must respect.
Where the points sit in the MT299 Unit 3 rubric
Profile rubrics usually score accuracy, completeness against the listed elements, relevance to the project and presentation. Completeness is the easiest place to gain or lose marks, so each element in the prompt should have its own heading even when the answer is short. Accuracy credit depends on sources: graders want to know whether a figure came from the owner, a report or the student's observation. Relevance is where strong profiles separate themselves, by connecting facts to the problem rather than listing everything known about the business; the florist's sales mix matters because sympathy work forces a reserve of stock. Instructors also reward honesty about what does not exist, such as a missing strategy document. Consistent numbers that will carry into later units, clean tables or lists for staff and sales, and APA citations for the small business and operations texts round out the marks in most sections.
MT299 Unit 3 help: mistakes that cost points
Profiles lose marks most often by inflating a small business into a corporation, complete with a mission statement the owner never wrote. A related mistake is copying the company website's marketing language instead of describing operations. Some papers spend pages on competitors and leave out the internal detail the problem analysis will need, such as purchasing rhythms or systems. Others present figures with no source, or change them in later units, which graders notice in the final report. Skipping the link to the problem leaves the profile reading like a brochure. Before drafting, collect the handful of figures you can confirm, staff and hours, a rough sales split and the largest costs, and note who gave you each one. If the owner shares only part of the picture, describe that part accurately; a profile written from limited but honest facts can be shaped around what you have.
Get an MT299 Unit 3 example written to your instructions
Share what you know about the business, even rough figures, along with the profile instructions and rubric. A custom profile holds that organization to its true scale, with no invented departments, and keeps the facts your problem statement will need. The first request costs nothing; 24-48h is the usual turnaround. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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MT299 Unit 3 questions, answered
What if the business has no mission statement?
Say so and describe what the owner actually tries to do. Many small businesses never write one, and inventing a statement for the profile misrepresents the organization. A sentence summarizing the owner's stated priorities, attributed to a conversation, gives the reader the same orientation honestly. Some instructors appreciate the candor more than a polished statement that did not exist.
How precise do the figures need to be?
Rounded and labeled is usually enough. Revenue to the nearest ten thousand, staff counts and hours, and a rough sales mix give the analysis what it needs. If the owner prefers privacy, ranges or proportions can replace amounts. State the source of each figure, and keep the same numbers in every later unit so the project stays consistent.
Should competitors be analyzed in the profile?
Briefly, and only as they matter to the problem. A florist's profile might note the grocery counters that set price expectations, while a full competitive analysis belongs elsewhere or nowhere in an associate capstone. Profiles that spend pages on rivals often shortchange the internal detail the rest of the project depends on.
Where can I find a free MT299 Unit 3 sample paper?
The whole MT299 Unit 3 organization profile is printed on this page. It describes a composite eight-person florist through its staff hours, five sales lines, delivery schedule, cooler, competitors and costs, and ends with what those facts mean for the waste project.
Does the MT299 Unit 3 profile need an organization chart?
A chart helps when the organization has layers, but an eight-person shop is clearer as a staff list with hours and duties. The florist sample uses that list and states that the owner decides after talking with the manager and lead designer.