Each student will write a company profile of a company of choice except CitiGroup. The company profile is to be between 10 and 15 double-spaced pages (use APA style), not including appendices and bibliography. You are to use citations in the text. Think about the key areas in the core: Management, Marketing, Economics, Quantitative Analysis, MIS, and Accounting. A good business analysis will hit on all of these areas. It is to include:
- the mission and vision
- short history of firm
- major competition
- market position what problem is it solving, who are its competitors, how is it doing in comparison to its competitors, what can it do better, what can it capitalize on
- apparent strategy which of the strategies that we discussed is it following, is that a good strategy for it, why do you think that
- critical factors for success in the industry how do companies become successful in the marketplace, what has made it successful in the past or, if its not successful, what should it have done to be more successful (note this is the only place in the paper where youre allowed to unspill the milk!)
- Management Information Systems what systems does the company use and how do those systems add to or detract from the companys success? How does technology impact the company?
- SWOT — what does it do well internally, what does it do poorly internally and what internally can it fix, what opportunities does it have externally and what threats to its existence appear in the external environment?
- Performance analyses (various topics) of the company financial and other. Note, analyses mean ANALYSES WITH EXPLANATIONS, not just numbers strung together.
Your conclusion would be whether the strategy is successful or not (with appropriate reasons for each) and any comments and recommendations (including why). Upload your business analysis to Safe Assign on Bb by clicking the link provided for Business Analysis Paper and Business Analysis Presentation. An excellent student business analysis is provided in below. Note as you do, however, that it did not require an MIS analysis as yours does. Look under this assignment and you will find a Business Research Guide and Internet Sites for Business Research. Also go to the ECSU Library web site, click on Online Resources, checkout ABI/Inform and other business research databases (e.g., Hoovers) available to you. Make sure that you download a 10-K report or an Annual Report for your corporation. This is a legal document and should not include any hype by the firm. You should be citing from this in both your presentation and your analysis document. I also strongly suggest that you download a company report (generally available from the companys website, and yes, they generally have some hype and paint a pretty picture of the firms future). You should also be citing from this document in both presentation and analysis. I am available for help on your topic and report.Blackboard has the rubric that is being used to evaluate these papers. Business strategy courses often refer to the Fortune 500 ranking within Fortune magazine. These are large firms and are important in the U.S. economy. However, most of the attention is given to the top 50 or top 100. There is more information available on the Fortune 500 (defined by Fortune magazine) companies. Success of the firms from this 500 group may depend on the changing business/political/financial/ international/technical environments.Remember, for this paper you are not just reporting facts, you are also providing ANALYSIS and SYNTHESIS of the facts you have uncovered. This means you need to explain both what the analysis says and what that means for the company. I also want you to anticipate how the changing environments (mentioned above) will or could challenge, help, or hurt these firms. Yes, you will be dealing with the unknown; but this is what your challenge will be in your decision making in an increasingly faster and more complicated business environment. That is part of management. Each of you will do a power point presentation of your project. The presentation should provide insights about how relevant theories can be applied to problems in real organization. Be well organized, coherent, and attract and maintain the attention of the audience. Each of you will have 15 minutes each to present to the class.
