HELP! I am starting my part C of of RAP and I am stuck!

Hello elmaestro ,
Part C (3) is the most important part of the rap and is the main determinant of your grade, therefore it must be well done.

Ideally, it should be structured as follows:
1.business analysis( Your Swot, Pestel, 5 forces)
2.Financial analysis ( your ratios, and possible kpis)
3.Limitations of analysis (if any)
4.Conclusions and recommendations (conclusions are mandatory and should have a comment to satisfy each of your research objectives. Sound and well thought out Recommendations are a good bonus)

Now, the financial analysis is not to be thought of in isolation to the business analysis. The results the company has achieved have been very much influenced by the business analysis and strategic approach of the company, therefore this should be used in explaining the ratios.

how has the company capitalized on its strength of strong management team, who where able to implement cost cutting policies that resulted in reduction of expenses and ultimately higher profit margins?

Does the company have a risk seeking culture driven by its mission, which encourages borrowing of funds that has resulted to higher debt ratios?

I don’t know how far you are in your Acca journey, but it will be good to try and approach this from performance management aspect. The ratios which are kpis are linked to the company’s strategy. As a result, the financial analysis is directly influenced by the business analysis.

Regards your other query, any information gotten from the company website or annual reports is internal, while information gotten from other sources is external. This definition makes external news reports, press release, articles, interviews of key company staff, company statistics etc from other sources excellent for referencing.

I don’t know what your research objectives are but it may be worth focusing only on swot and pestel as the two models are sufficient for the business analysis, the 5 forces is often tricky to incorporate in topic 8 and in some cases the word count limitations may hinder its application.

As pestel analysis is an external analysis, it would typically* not contain any internal sources. you should be guiding your explanations in respect of the template the model provides. For example, p for political, political instability could be explained here with reference to what is going on in the country your company operates in.

For SWOT, the SW are viewed from an internal perspective, however that is not to say that there are not any external sources to support this. If for example the company has a “strong brand presence ” as a strength, explain this, paraphrase and reference to news report(s)/ article(s) that highlights this.
The OT part of the model on the other hand, should be linked to your pestel, and should be explained similarly.

Read the CEO’s and directors report over the period of consideration and a year before as @trephena suggests, to get an idea of the company and its industry.

Research and learn proper referencing methodology, as your statement about modifying words leads me to believe there is a gap in your knowledge.

Internal sources of information should be used sparingly, if possible only in cases where they are to be supported or validated by external sources.

Make sure you refrence that the figures in your graphs have been take from the annual reports.