Assignment : Business Report

           

Your essay is to be structured and written as a business report

.
It, therefore, must begin with a Management (or Executive) Summary within which you state in stark form (i.e. unsupported by argument) what you are asserting in this report and you must do that in less than two pages.

As already stated above, you begin the main body of the report with some general background on the broad research topic. This introduction will normally end with a brief paragraph outlining the plan of the rest of the essay.

What follow is the specific issues of each individual component which were considered. Each of these individual components can be divided into 2-4 sub-sections if necessary contains an in-depth discussion of the relevant issues based on the existing literature and/or data. You must provide in-text references to your sources.

The last section contains a brief summary followed by a complete list of references that are cited in the text of the essay. Follow a standard referencing method consistently.

Suggested limits are as follows:

· 􏰀 Executive Summary: ideally one page but no more than two.

· 􏰀 Sections 1: Introduction 400-600 words,

· 􏰀 Section 2: Main body of the essay consisting of each of the individual components limit each component to approximately 1,000 words each,

· 􏰀 Sections 3: Conclusions 100-300 words,

· 􏰀 References (5-15 references).

·

Assessment Criteria: 
There are two components of assessment adding to a total possible mark of 25% of the subject:

The Presentation, which is worth 10 marks. Here we assess the quality of the

Presentation NOT the academic quality of the work. Opening Impact, Presentation Technique (incl. Quality of the Slides) and Adherence to the time limit are the key criteria.

· 􏰀 The Opening Impact

· 􏰀 Overall Presentation Technique

· 􏰀 Adherence to Time Limit

The Report, which is worth 15 marks. It is here that we assess the academic quality of your work (including referencing) as well as your ability to correctly structure a business report.

􏰀 The Management Summary


􏰀 Report Structure (TOC, Paragraphs, Sections

And use of Diagrams)

􏰀 Academic Quality (incl. Referencing)

TOPIC

Strategic Planning

General Framework

Discuss Strategic Planning distinguishing it and contrasting it with other planning functions and techniques.

Individual Components

· The use of BCG Analysis in formulating the strategies for the management of a portfolio of 
products or services offered to the market

· Product life cycle as a guide to the management of a portfolio of products or services offered to the market (Take two examples: CISCO’s FLIP camera and the typical electric jug)

· SWOT Analysis and the concepts of ‘fit’ and ‘stretch’

· Porters Competitive Strategies (Illustrate with examples)