Assignment Overview - Write A Situation Analysis for Your Paper Before you can identify, describe or research problems in any company, you must first develop a solid understanding of that company as c

BA 301 – Research & Analysis of Business Problems

Homework Assignment #1

Format/Requirements

• Submit this assignment in the appropriate Canvas submission folder by the due date

• Format: use Times New Roman, 12-point font, 1-inch margins, length: 2.25 to 3 pages

of text

• Follow the instructions below to write 2 sections titled “Internal Performance” and

“Industry Performance”. This homework assignment should be in prose format (not in

bullet format) with paragraphs.

• As opposed to the final paper, this assignment should be single-spaced.

Assignment Overview - Write A Situation Analysis for Your Paper

Before you can identify, describe or research problems in any company, you must first develop a solid

understanding of that company as context for further analysis. The following are just a few of the

questions you might want to answer as you are doing your research on your company: Do they have

mission or vision statements, and if so, what are they? Who are their critical stakeholders and how are

these stakeholders prioritized by the company? Are they currently financially strong? What is the

competitive environment? Do they operate in a regulated environment? Does your company have a

positive or negative public perception? etc

Use the library databases (e.g., IBISWorld, Business Insights, Mergent Online ,etc), company filings

(e.g., 10K/annual and quarterly reports) and general internet reserch to provide an overview and summary

of your company’s current situation. Finding and reviewing a SWOT analysis from a reputable source

would be an important part of this analysis. Organize the assignment into the following sections:

1.) Internal Performance - This section should start with a critical analysis of the company’s

strategy, as well as the company’s mission/vision/values statements and stakeholders. You should

also thoroughly analyze the company’s performance indicators such as financials (i.e. revenue,

profit, revenue & profit growth, margins, etc), debt levels, historical stock performance,

innovation (patents), and legal issues. For such financial analysis, multiple time points are better

than one (at least 3 years of financial data). Use charts and tables, where possible, to summarize

the data.

2.) Industry Perspective – In what primary industry does your company operate? What is the

outlook for that industry (% growth rate, size in $ terms, industry drivers and any external

influences on the industry, etc)? How is your company performing when compared to its

competitors? Identify and gather market share and financial performance data for the top three

competitors, at least. This should include information such as market share, profitability, gross

margins, etc. Use charts and tables where possible to summarize data. IbisWorld is a great source

of data for this section.

This analysis should be no more than three pages in length (should be anywhere between 2.25 to 3

pages). You need to be concise and direct. You will likely initially write 4 to 5 pages for your first draft

and spend time editing so that only the most crucial information remains in an organized, clearly

articulated format. This is not just a regurgitation of your research, it’s a synthesis and critical

analysis of all that you’ve found. Every sentence should deliver some kind of meaningful

information. If you have charts and tables (and you probably should), these are not included in the page

count. There is no room for fluff. In addition, include a page of sources (at least 5 different sources).

If you do a great job on this, it will provide the basis for the first section of your final paper. Again,

please single space this assignment. The final paper should be double-spaced.

Remember, this assignment should provide the reader (me) a clear indication that you understand the

fundamentals of your chosen company. Probably the best word for describing this assignment is

“synthesis.” Synthesis is defined as “combining ideas”, so this assignment is all about combining all

of the information you uncover from a range of reputable sources into a two to three-page

overview. This will provide an excellent foundation for the rest of your final research paper

Part 2

Questions

1) Now that you have written a Situation Analysis (context & background on your company),

you should have a good overall understanding of your chosen company. Now, using that

information, identify symptoms (gaps) of deeper problems that might be facing the company.

Try to find two symptoms (gaps), and write them down as part of this assignment. Be

specific and use quantitative metrics where possible. The symptoms that you list should

show a "gap" as discussed in class. A "gap" is the difference between the desired and the

actual state. For example, if you find that the company had a profit of $5 million dollars in

the previous year, and their goal was $10 million - this is a gap, or a symptom of an

underlying problem!

2) Once you have identified these symptoms, continue your research and begin a root cause

analysis. In other words - ask why the symptoms occurred. Referring to the “profit”

example in the previous point, think about why they did not meet their profit goals. Perhaps

a new product was not as successful as planned. Note one symptom will most likely have

many possible causes. This analysis is the core of your problem description and is a crucial

component in your research paper, so I would recommend that you spend some time on it.

You won't be able to develop solutions if you have not answered the question "why did these

symptoms happen?".

3) Develop and include a fishbone diagram for one of the symptoms uncovered in #1 above for

your company. The fishbone diagram should include 3 to 4 main causes of the symptom and

then sub-causes for each main cause (similar to what we did in class). The symptom should

go at the “head” of the fishbone diagram. This will be the visual mapping of one of the root

cause analysis you conducted above in #2.

4) If you’ve uncovered symptoms that are completely unrelated in 2) above, pick one as a focus

for your paper. Ultimately, the goal is to uncover one core problem that you will focus on

solving for your research paper. The last part of this assignment should include a clearly

defined and concise problem statement (consisting of 1 to 3 sentences) as discussed in class

which highlights the one core problem you will be using for your paper.

5) For this assignment, you need to make sure to use proper APA citation format (both for in-

text citation and reference page). This is practice for your final paper. I will be extremely

critical of your formatting for this assignment – so follow the APA guidelines.