business case assignment

About Industries

Students may find useful information about companies, organizations, markets, and industries in a number of different online locations.

Biz.Yahoo http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/ and Reuters http://www.reuters.com/finance/global-market-data offer corporate profiles, overviews of industries, lists of companies competing in the same industry that in turn link to profiles, news related to specific industries and companies, financial data, tools for benchmarking financial performance, profiles of corporate executives and directors and information on ownership structures. Along with this, they often identify key regulators and professional and industry associations for each industry. Profiles of many companies competing in Canadian industries can be found using the key search function found on Industry Canada’s http://www.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/ccc-rec.nsf/en/Home web site.

How might the most recent information about an industry or company be obtained? Why not try the keyword search capabilities of news aggregators such as Google (http://news.google.com) or Yahoo (http://news.yahoo.com).

A number of information sources do a very good job of offering clear descriptions of industries. High Beam Business http://business.highbeam.com/industry-reports, Plunkett Research http://www.plunkettresearch.com/, Value Line http://www.valueline.com/Stocks/Industries.aspx, Statista http://www.statista.com/topics/ and Franchise Help http://www.franchisehelp.com/industry-reports/industry-information/ are free sources but focus primarily on U.S or North American industry overviews and industry analysts. First Research http://firstresearch.com/industry-profiles.aspx offers the first few paragraphs of their industry profiles for free as well. Examples of Porter Five Forces overviews of a dozen industries may be found in The Industry Handbook available from Investopedia http://www.investopedia.com/features/industryhandbook/. The overviews also include key ratios and terms for the industries being examined. Of interest as well is Hoovers. Although a pay service http://www.hoovers.com/industry-analysis/industry-directory/a-z.html, it offers a brief summary paragraph describing the competitive landscape of industries of interest. Markets and Markets through its websites, offers business research reports. http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/. Typically for each report, three or four summary paragraphs are offered for free. Market Size blog offers selected insight about, the size of markets in its blog. http://www.marketsize.com/blog/ . Finally, Mordor Intelligence allows users to download a free industry report. https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/

Findlaw is a website http://public.findlaw.com/ that offers a searchable database of U.S. court cases, lawyers and articles related to legal issues.

Industry associations are an important source of information. These will often describe the industry, offer insight into the key issues from the point of view of members or companies operating in the industry, and identify trends and policies. How are the industry players trying to change the competitive landscape? What issues do companies in the industry have in common? In Canada, of use is the Directory of Trade and Business hosted on the Industry Canada website, http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ccc_bt-rec_ec.nsf/eng/h_00001.html. allows users to search for industry associations in Canada and the U.S.

Many observations can be made about industries and their make-up. If one wanted to map out some of the companies that could fit on the value chain of a regional industry, how might these companies be identified? For instance, if you were interested in identifying companies that made and distributed door handles or hammers? Depending on the ultimate market served these might be suppliers for some companies in the chain or manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, service providers or customers for others. In Canada, you might have an interest in using the online trade directories such as the Canadian Trade Index, http://www.ctidirectory.com/, Frasers http://www.frasers.com and Thomas Net http://www.thomasnet.com. For the U.S. market, an example of a broad category trade directory is Manta http://www.manta.com/mb

Spider Strategies http://www.spiderstrategies.com/kpi/ and Klipfolio http://klipfolio.com/resources/kpi-examples offer examples of industry key performance indicators (KPI) sorted by Department (HR, Finance, Marketing, Sales, I.T. and Customer Service) and by twenty different Industries. It suggests the use of these metrics when building company specific balanced scorecards. In other words, these lists of KPI help managers figure out what to measure when seeking to building successful companies.

Government as Regulator and Source of Information about Industries and Companies

Government regulators and departments are excellent sources of information about companies and industries. They are often a source of industry data and statistics, rules and regulations regarding how businesses or operations should be conducted. They often identify companies or individuals that are not necessarily playing by the rules and they provide access to the ideas of companies or individuals that seek through proper channels, to alter the rules of conduct in an industry. In most instances their overarching objective is to ensure safety for citizens and transparency and fairness for investors, consumers and other industry stakeholders. In the context of North America, to say that there are many government agencies involved in overseeing activities tied to commerce would be an understatement. Links to current Government of Canada Departments, Agencies, Crown Corporations, Special Operating Agencies and other related organizations are available through the following website. https://www.canada.ca/en/government/dept.html. The Federal Register website https://www.federalregister.gov/agencies links to the many U.S. agencies.

A typical company’s activities would be affected by a number of different regulators. In most cases some are more important than others. It is beyond the scope of this discussion to describe each and every regulator. For an idea as to what regulators do, consider the following. Regulators can help inform consumers and investors about specific concerns related to companies and their products and services. In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration www.fda.gov handles issues related to food, drugs and cosmetics. The Consumer Product Safety Commission www.cpsc.gov deals with product recalls. Many of these recalls apply to Canada. Indeed, in Canada recalls related to Food, Consumer Products, Vehicles and Health Products can be searched using a search tool on the Health Canada website. http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ahc-asc/media/advisories-avis/index-eng.php. The Environmental Protection Agency www.epa.gov focuses on the environment. To examine regulated sites and compare with others do consider this EPA search tool. http://epa-sites.findthedata.com/ For identifying companies or individuals associated with financial reporting transgressions, the search tool on the Securities and Exchange Commission web site www.sec.gov would prove helpful. In terms of a national body, there is no Canadian equivalent to the SEC as responsibility lies with regulators in each province. Health Canada and Environment Canada would serve as the equivalents in Canada to the FDA and the EPA. Two other government sites worth considering are the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission http://www.eeoc.gov and the Occupational Safety Health Administration http://www.osha.gov. Both offer databases that can be searched by company name to discover workplace equity or safety violations. The Canadian equivalent is the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety. Although it does not offer a searchable database that keeps tabs on companies, the site http://www.ccohs.ca/keytopics/ does offer information about regulatory standards for workplace hazards, health workplaces, chemical and product safety workplace violence and ergonomics. Another important regulatory consideration is how products are transported. Being it over water, by pipeline, on roads, by truck, train or by air, companies need to follow the rules. One U.S. government page links users to the various agencies that oversee these important functions. https://www.transportation.gov/regulations/other-links. These agencies include the Federal Railroad Administration, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada http://www.bst-tsb.gc.ca/eng/index.asp offers databases for rail, marine, air and pipelines that users can search for concerns related to specific companies.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. http://www.bls.gov offers insight about industries from the perspective of occupations. At least one database from this government agency is important and it is the Occupational Outlook Handbook http://www.bls.gov/ooh/. What they do, work environment, pay, job outlook and reviews of similar jobs are among the topics covered for each of the 800 profiled occupations. The handbook also categorizes by occupation groups enabling analysis of similar or related jobs found in the same industry. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also offers a database labeled Industries at a Glance http://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag211.htm.

If your interest is corporations whose shares trade on U.S. stock exchanges, then try the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) www.sec.gov web site. If the company is large, then another way to access insight is to examine the annual reports (10K) or business plans (S1) filed by publicly traded companies to the SEC that also happen to be competitors of the company in question. These annual reports and business plans will list risk factors and often competitors and key suppliers. They will often also describe the general business environment. Much of this information may apply equally to private sector competitors. Depending on the make-up of the financial statements for the publicly traded competitors, some of the ratios and margins may offer insight about the performance of the private firm. As noted in a paragraph below, although not a regulatory agency, SEDAR http://sedar.com is the online repository of the financial documents of Canadian firms whose shares trade on Canadian stock exchanges.

For small and medium sized private enterprises, there are a number of databases that can help analysts understand their financial picture. Industry Canada offers access to Canadian Industry Statistics. It enables analysts to access information using a search tool labelled Statistical Data by Industry where industries are broken down by NAICS code http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cis-sic.nsf/eng/home?Open&src=mm2. In this instance Financial Performance Data for each industry lists average profitability, revenues and expenses. Industry Canada Financial Performance Data http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/pp-pp.nsf/eng/home is a related tool that allows an analyst to create a report driven by NAICS code that provides industry average derived income statements, balance sheets and financial ratios for lower, mid and higher quartile performing companies. For U.S. firms, BizStats http://www.bizstats.com/industry-financials.php provides profit loss statements for a large number of industries organized by a corporation or sole proprietorship and size.

As noted above, there are many different ways to look at an industry. One approach that is often overlooked is related to the patent profiles of industry competitors. Understanding patent activity can help analysts identify industry competitors, new technologies on the horizon, acquisition targets, companies with upward momentum, key researchers and key technologies driving new innovations among other things. The Canadian patent regulator, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIP0) http://www.cipo.ic.gc.ca and its American counterpart, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) http://www.uspto.gov have created databases that are relatively easy to search. The USPTO separates patent applications from assigned patents allowing searchers to understand where efforts are headed and who owns existing technologies respectively. For patent applications, focusing in on specific patent classes allows one to understand which companies might be in races to develop specific technologies or drugs. Patents summaries in the USPTO site are especially helpful for assigned patents. For each patent, the summaries list the patents that the inventor(s) have used to develop the invention as well as companies or assignees who have used this patent. This offers an important glimpse into who might be competitors or alliance partners as well as companies that might potentially form an ecosystem. Commercial sites such as Google Patents http://google.com/patents and Patent Genius http://www.patentgenius.com have simplified the task even further. Google has simplified the information displayed for each patent while Patent Genius allows easy searching by inventor name, industry and product/or technology and date foregoing the need to know the industry code or patent classification. Patent Buddy http://www.patentbuddy.com is a final means to access U.S. patents. It is especially helpful when seeking to understand patent races.

Finally if market segmentation is of interest, Statistics Canada offers Census Profiles of Communities http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/dp-pd/prof/index.cfm?Lang=E . The United States Census Bureau through its American Fact Finder application http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml# or its Quick Facts application http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/00 offer easy to access demographic profiles of states, provinces, counties, cities and towns across each country.

About Companies

Understanding the origins of a company or its history can often be helpful in understanding why it behaves as it does. Funding Universe offers histories of companies sorted by alphabetical order. http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/ . Most large companies started small at some point. Crunch Base https://www.crunchbase.com/ is a site that enables users to learn who is investing in smaller companies, which companies are receiving funding, which firms are being acquired and who is doing the acquire. The focus of this site is the world of start-up companies.

High level summary information about the web presence of a company or product can be explored through a number of site. Google Trends https://www.google.ca/trends/ allows the curious to explore web interest in a particular product or service over time, by region and by related search. Alexa.com http://www.alexa.com/topsites enables individuals interested in a company website to learn a number of things. Where do its visitors come from? Where do these visitors go on the site? What sites link to the site? How popular is the site? Are there many unique visitors? What are the bounce rates, daily page views, and how much daily time is spent on the site? (Free for top 500 sites. 7 day free trial for others). Similar Web https://www.similarweb.com/ allows users to choose a company website and that of a competitor and compare through analysis the online traffic to their sites.

For companies whose credit is rated a number of options are available to access free reports. Moody’s https://www.moodys.com/page/lookuparating.aspx. allows 24 hour free access with sign up Dominion Bond Rating Service http://dbrs.com/ offers a free trial with sign up and Dun & Brad Street http://www.dnb.ca/ offer 30 days free trial with a sign up. Interestingly, for companies whose shares trade on the NASDAQ, one can access a risk profile of that company using http://www.nasdaq.com/investing/risk/riskgrade.aspx.

About Company Culture

When exploring a company's culture, remember, rarely will a company say anything negative about its work environment. Companies seek to portray a positive image. Their espoused work culture will be communicated by a number of means including their mission, vision and value statements, their job ads and the speeches and presentations delivered by executives. If the company is publicly traded, this information should be found on their website. If a private company, some of it may be found there. If you are serious about trying to learn about a corporate culture, you will want to balance what is communicated by the company with other observations. The easiest way of doing so is to talk to a number of existing and former employees as well as consultants or government officials who have worked for or with the entity. Unfortunately, we are not always able to talk to these individuals and may be dependent upon secondary sources of information. If that is the case, there are other ways of getting a feel for a work environment and they include doing a key word search for stories using a news aggregator such as Google News, http://news.google.com reading company reviews in sources such as Glassdoor http://www.glassdoor.com/reviews/, or Indeed.com http://www.indeed.com/Best-Places-to-Work or Career Bliss, http://www.careerbliss.com and exploring industry focused job profiles found in databases such as the Occupational Outlook Handbook of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics http://www.bls.gov/ooh/. Description for occupations in an industry under the headings of “What they do”, “Work environment”, “Pay”, and “Job outlook” are often helpful allowing observers to understand what employees in the company do. This can be important. The behavior of individuals trained in a profession will be influenced by their training and the code of conduct of the profession. On the other hand, minimum wage work environments can often be characterized by high turnover making it difficult for a company to instill a lasting culture in all areas of the company. Finally, some company work environments where a union is present, or where offices are located in different geographic regions, may be characterized by more than one work culture. Researchers might also consider glancing at CSR Hub, http://www.csrhub.com which offers a searchable company and industry CSR (corporate social responsibility) and sustainability ratings and information database. Where might one look for gossip or rumours about an industry or the public corporations found within that industry? Why not follow the online conversations in discussion forums found on sites such as The Motley Fool www.fool.com but do take the insights with a grain of salt. For companies located in the U.S. one site, Rip Off Report http://www.ripoffreport.com offers a searchable database of consumer accusations of rip offs along with company response to such allegations. On the other hand, Good Guide http://www.goodguide.com/ offers scientific reviews of consumer products.

RankaBrand.org https://www.rankabrand.org/brand/search

Ethical Consumer.org http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ethical-company-ratings.aspx

Along with Career Bliss http://www.careerbliss.com/salary/and Glassdoor http://www.glassdoor.ca/index, Simply Hired http://www.simplyhired.com/salaries.html and Salary Explorer http://www.salaryexplorer.com/ are other sites that offer insight into industry and company salaries. World Salaries, http://www.worldsalaries.org hosts the International Average Salary Income Database, one that offers an international comparison of average salary for various professions, and an international comparison of average personal income & expenditure

International Dimension of Business

An important influencer of corporate culture is the nation within which a business unit resides. It is reasonable to assume that for a Japanese company, the business culture permeating its head office in Osaka, Tokyo or Kyoto, may not perfectly carry over to its offices in England or Germany or Brazil. The same can be said for a company whose headquarters can be found in Houston, Texas. Despite the most sincere of efforts, its work environments in Calgary, Perth, and London may differ quite considerably, even with a shared common language.

Cultural dimensions of different countries, as highlighted by Dutch management scholar, Geert Hofstede, http://geert-hofstede.com/countries.html, national communications characteristics as developed by fellow Dutchman, Franz Trompenaars http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/seven-dimensions.htm and country culture profiles created and made available to the public by the government of Canada http://www.intercultures.ca/cil-cai/countryinsights-apercuspays-eng.asp or http://www.intercultures.ca can quickly help an analyst understand differences in business cultures. These differences will need to be managed by any company seeking to develop shared understanding and practices among its workforce. Another excellent source of information are country reviews found on the website of World Business Culture http://www.worldbusinessculture.com/.

The are other ways to describing or picturing a country or international market. Global Edge, a creation of the Broad School of Business of Michigan State University, http://globaledge.msu.edu/global-insights is slightly different. It offers profiles of countries and global industries with a focus on risks, trends, events, and trade statistics. The Business Anti-Corruption portal offers a portrait of how well a country is governed relative to others

http://www.business-anti-corruption.com/country-profiles.aspx. For investor focused risk profiles of countries, one interesting source is the website of A.M. Best http://www3.ambest.com/ratings/cr/crisk.aspx. The OECD offers its own country risk profile classifications http://www.oecd.org/tad/xcred/crc.htm. Another interesting search tool is Doing Business http://www.doingbusiness.org/ Funded by the World Bank it is a searchable database that measures and compares business regulations for local companies in 189 companies. Global-Rates http://www.global-rates.com/ offers interest rates from countries around the world.

The World Bank has created an index of global social governance indicators that can be used to compare one country others http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index.aspx#home. The Natural Resource Governance Institute offers rankings of countries according to a number of different dimensions http://www.resourcegovernance.org/countries.

Numbeo provides current and timely information on world living conditions including cost of living, housing indicators, health care, traffic, crime and pollution. http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/. Searchable by country Nation Masters http://www.nationmaster.com/ offers a large set of statistical data on many different topics.

Other aspects of a country are important. The World Health Organization (WHO) offers country health profiles that enable visitors to build awareness of possible health risks such as Malaria, Turbculosis, HIV etc. http://www.who.int/countries/. The U.S. Geological Survey provides country mineral profiles. Does a certain country possess large quantities of commercially viable rare earth minerals? Is it naturally endowed with vast bodies of lithium or nickel cadmium used in batteries? These are important natural resources and the geological survey can help determine if this is the case http://minerals.er.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/country/. What are the renewable or non-renewable energy resources of a country? Is it oil, natural gas, hydro-electric sources or is wind or solar? The U.S. Energy Information Administration can help paint a picture of a country in this regard through information found on its website, http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/contents.html. Is a country prone to natural disasters? If yes, what are they and where and when do they typically occur. Prevention Web http://www.preventionweb.net/english/countries/ is portal that offers country specific information that helps to answer these questions.

Finally, some other interesting information sources are as follows. Find the data, http://FindTheData.com is a unique collection of datasets on everything from state birds and popes to dinosaurs and serial killers. It focuses on bringing facts to the world of geopolitics, economics, geography, defence and culture. IndexMundi is a data portal that gathers facts and statistics from multiple sources and turns them into easy to use visuals. http://www.indexmundi.com/. There are other interesting tools available for understanding business activity. World Freight Rates http://worldfreightrates.com/freight offer an interactive online tool to help gauge the costs of shipping goods via ocean, rail, air, truck or break bulk to locations around the world. Included in the calculations are commodity type, load type and whether the goods need to be refrigerated or are hazardous in nature.

International Business Websites

EPA.gov

Sedar

Sec. gov

Edgar 10-k

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