Part I: Environmental Analysis. Due: Feb. 14.
Part II: Product and Services Due: Mar. 7.
Part III: Markets and Market Share Due: Mar. 28.
Part IV: Financial Analysis and Recommendation Due: Apr. 18.
Presentation: Poster Session. Due: Apr. 25.
Opportunity to Revise Project (Optional) Final Due Date: May 2Overview.This handout describes one of three options for the term project assignment (The other two are Planning a Special Library and Writing a Business Plan) The intelligence analysis involves a series of short summary and comparison papers based your examination of published evidence relating to a study of three or four companies in a given industry. Each part is to be turned in separately and will be treated as a draft with an interim grade assigned to it. An option described below provides an opportunity for you to revise the whole project at the end of the class.
This analysis may be done individually or, preferably, in a team of two (possibly three) people. If the latter, unless there is overwhelming evidence to do otherwise, both individuals will receive the same grade. I don't have a sample to show you so you have some leeway in the appearance of your final report. For a context, assume that an investment bank has asked you for an analysis of a set of 3-4 companies with the intention to invest in the company that you recommend as the best in this industry group. The bank will be interested in any new products or services each company is planning or introducing, what market strategies each is using or contemplating, what financial and other resources the companies have and what each company's overall strategy is (e.g., market leader, niche occupier, cost competitor, etc.).
Selection of Companies. The selection of which companies to choose is entirely up to you. You probably will want to begin with an industry and then select the leading companies within that industry. Your task will be easier if you select domestic, publicly traded companies as there will be more easily available information. My suggestion is to select companies who are manufacturing products or offering services that you are personally interested in.
Once you have identified a few possibilities, check Value Line or Standard & Poor's. Both sources provide industry overviews and then entries by companies in the industry with summaries of historical information, current products, and lots of financial information (useful for the last part of this assignment).
You are to write each section of the analysis in the form of a consultant's report (typically 3-5 pages for each section) with evidentiary support (citations) to back up by assertions.
Part I: Environmental Analysis.
To demonstrate your understanding of the context in which our group of companies operates, investigate the industry. Some aspects you may want to include in your report include:
- the characteristics of the industry and the position of the selected companies within that industry
- the important competitors in addition to your selected companies and the basis for competition
- the history, tradition, mission of each of your companies
- a summary of the strategic plans for each company (often found in the chairman's letter in the front of the most recent annual report)
- an overview of the types of products and services currently offered and the markets the companies operate in
Your report can be in narrative form or as text interspersed with a series of bulleted points. An executive summary is always useful for a consulting report.
Part II: Products and Services.
It may be valuable to describe the company requirements for physical plant, personnel, and strategic alliances in the manufacture and distribution of the products. You will want to scrutinize the company's web sites and evaluate them in terms of ease of navigation and informativeness about products and services.
In this section, please examine each company's product/service line in detail and look for announcements or clues about what new products/services are in the pipeline. Provide as much detail on the new offerings as you can glean. If a line of products have several different offerings depending on whether it is targeted for different geographical sectors or other differentiated markets, it will be of interest. How the product is sold and what methods of distribution are used should be included as well as the technical specifications of the product and the branding posture of each company.Part III: Markets and Market Share. .
Describe the primary markets for the company's existing products and services. Determine as best you can whether each of your companies are seeking new markets or planning to sell more products/services to the same markets, or considering partnerships, mergers, or takeovers of another company in order to address market positioning. A sample of some of the advertising for the products and services each company offers and the various outlets (TV, radio, magazines, web, etc.) might be analyzed as well. Does the company have a loyal customer base? How do they price their products and services? What public relations efforts do they pursue? Determine the market share of each company for its principal products and services in order to show the relative positions of each company. Are there other performance measurements used in the industry that might help in determining how well each company is doing? Summarize your findings for each company and provide an overall comparison.Part IV: Financial Plan and Management Team.
In this section, you get to run the numbers. If your companies are publicly traded, stock market reports like the two listed above and many other sources of financial information found on the web as well as in a study of recent annual reports will provide the background information you need. Some of the information you will want to find includes (but isn't limited to) the following:See if the numbers help you to understand each company's strategy.
- the capital structure of the company (debt vs common and perferred stock and total market capitalization)
- quarterly revenues and earnings per share over the past 3-5 years
- earnings contributions of various major sections of the company (by product/service line if you can find it)
- average annual amounts spent on advertising and on research
- any information on per product sales you can find
Investigate the top management team in the business press. Of most interest will be the CEO, his/her background and years with the company, his/her statements about direction of the company and assessments by others of his/her performance.
Once you report all this information, end your competitive intelligence analysis with a recommendation to the investment back about which of the companies is the best bet to invest more money in and why you arrive at this conclusion.
Poster Session.
As a way of showing the rest of the class how you have developed your analysis, create a poster with information about your project. This can be a simple affair on a piece of poster board with the name of the companies, their current and planned products/services, their marketing approaches and financial comparisons. You may want to include some tables or graphs to show your comparisons. The poster can be as elaborate or as simple as you wish as long as it conveys the flavor of your project.Bring your poster to class on Apr. 25 and be prepared to stand beside it to provide an overview and to explain one or more particular features that you think are noteworthy to other members of the class.
Final Revision.
You have the opportunity of revising one or more sections of your analysis before turning it in for a final grade. Whether you make any revisions or not is entirely your choice. You will only improve your grade by doing so.
Revised 1/02/01.
If you have questions, please email Evelyn Daniel.
