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Thing is I have limited my part 1 and part to but during sales and ratio analysis in part 3, I went a little overboard. I have done the business analysis of my chosen company using SWOT and I’m already at 6600 word count, that excludes the contents page. I was wondering if just SWOT was enough? Because my SWOT analysis is quite rigorous, its not like superficial so I was wondering if that was enough? I wanted to leave the remaining words for the conclusion, recommendations and the contents page. Thanks in advance
The one thing students don’t tend to ‘get’ is how a company’s financial performance is the result of strategic decisions made by the Board. These strategies are based on the company’s business environment largely but NOT exclusivity the things where it has a competitive advantage or sees an opportunity (so the SWOT).
However ere are factors that are beyond the control of the company from its external environment e.g. government policies, economic and social trends etc (e.g. PESTLE factors) that may also impact strategies.
The financial analysis needs to show how such factors through management decisions have affected performance -this is the essence of evaluation. Therefore although you may possibly omit the PESTLE itself from your report don’t ignore it completely.
Ratio calculations are just that -on their own they are not evaluative – they merely ‘describe’ a trend. Evaluation -which is the key to passing should look at the above and link the trend to business environment factors as much as possible.
I would suggest you look at your commentary on sales etc. and ask yourself – am I merely ‘re-iterating what the graph says and “throwing’ numbers at the marker or am I really explaining performance in terms of environmental factors? If the former, then remove most of it as it is not evaluation. If you are evaluating then fine, and possibly if there really are no words left for your PESTLE then you could include it as an appendix.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. One last question, I have already gone through my RAP like a dozen times trying to remove unnecessary words to reduce the word count and I don’t think I can do it anymore. So I was thinking to try including a shorter version of PESTLE analysis in the main body of RAP, which is PEST, and the including LE in appendix. Is that appropriate? If not, can I just do the shorter version of PESTLE?
As I have tried to get across the important thing with models is how you use them and what you do with them in the financial evaluation. So yes, a PEST would be ok
Ensure any models are fully referenced – students often overlook this requirement
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