Assignment Brief
This is Group work prepared and submitted by groups of three persons from within the same seminar class. The number in any group is 3 persons. Submissions of groups with more than three members will not be accepted and marked as FAIL (Unless specifically agreed by your Seminar Tutor).
No student will be allowed to submit work of a company that has not been selected from the list of companies provided for this coursework. Please ensure that you submit work based on the given Company. The list of acceptable companies is provided to you in the first week of seminar by your Seminar Tutor.
Your Seminar Tutor will maintain a list of students’ names together with choice of organisation. This Tutor held list is the definitive record; submitted work will not be assessed if it does not agree with the list.
- Using financial reports and accounts of the organisation analyse the results of the organisation highlighting trends in performance using appropriate and relevant ratios and analysis techniques.
- You will be required to extend your research on financial analysis of the performance of your company to include financial and non-financial performance indicators by designing a balanced scorecard covering four (4) perspectives – analyse the four balance score cards and evaluate of the technique used, and come up with a strategy map.
- Your approach to this task must reflect your ability to carry out research, understanding key principles in financial and performance management and applying these to a case study.
- The outcome of this task should be in the form of a detailed and structured report addressed to the directors of your chosen organisation. You must also include evidence of your research materials including full workings of your financial analysis in the appendix sections of your assignment.
- List of the companies you can choose from:
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- Royal Mail
- Prudential
- Moore Stephen
- Cadbury
- British Air
- Hutchinson
- Routledge
- British Gas
- Southern Electric
- Aviva
- Sage Group
- Pearson
- Unilever
- Ramstad
Assignment Guidelines
Structure
- The maximum word count for the main text excluding tables is 2,500 words. Exceeding the word count will result in deduction of marks by up to 10 %. Only the main text excluding any tables and diagrams counts, this also excludes the contents page, executive summary, list of references and appendix. (Only use tables to show working and the Balance score card)
- The assignment must have a front cover stating:
- Module number and name and seminar group number
- Title of the assignment
- Student names and IDs for each group member
- Submission date
- Word count as defined above
- An executive summary is required (not included in the word count), but this should not exceed 1⁄2 page. A short introduction is required (and included in the word count), even if it is not explicit in the assessment criteria.
- A reasonable number of appendices may be used for relevant supporting information and to demonstrate your calculations and analysis.
- Only Word documents can be submitted through Turnitin, the University’s plagiarism detectionsoftware, therefore you are advised to create tables in Word and not to cut and paste Excel or other software into the document. The marker will not be able to access your spreadsheets and see your workings.
The rubric by which your report will be assessed will be posted separately. It is important that prior to you submitting your work, you read this and objectively assess your response against the rubric. This will ensure that you have done enough to attain the marks you wish to achieve.
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Layout
Your work should be word processed in accordance with the following:
- Font style, Arial, font size 12
- 5 line spacing.
- The page orientation should be ‘portrait’
- Margins on both sides of the page should be no less than 2.5 cm
- Pages should be numbered
- Your name should not appear on the script.
Additional Skills
Attend a Spotlight session as advertised here on Moodle.
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Marking Criteria/Rubric
Please see the Assessment page on the Moodle
