Topic 8 Period 35 onwards

hi i just wanted to ask on how to get the list of verified mentors for the oxford brookes rap project ?

@kamlesh – register as a mentee on the OBU mentoring website and there should be a list showing the names and where the mentor is based. In the first instance you can contact anyone on the list via the website to enquire about potential mentoring

Hi,

Must say I’ve found this forum very helpful and thank you for your assistance and guidance.

I hope you can clarify a few things for me.

For my submission period, sectors are Aerospace, Food products & Hotels. I’ve looked at the ICB and looks like these are sub sectors of a sector. I’ve decided to choose Aerospace (2713).

My only concern is that organisations are now much more diverse and have different income source and can be involved in different sub sectors. So, how strict do we need to be in choosing a sector specific organisation? For. e.g. I’ve picked Rolls Royce PLC primarily sells aircraft engines but also supplies to defence sector (2717) and is involved with marine & nuclear activiites. Should I choose organsiatons that are strictly sector specific as provided by OBU? However this is going to be a challenge as we all know that the publicly available financial statements are group consolidated and segregating it will be a real challenge. Also, comparing it with its competitors will be a real challenge too as their figures will be diluted as well. Most of the organisations involved in aerospace sector will be involved in defence and other sectors for generating income. Not just aerospace, most of these organisations with publicly available financials will one way or another will have diverse income sources and a real challenge to be sub-sector specific.

I’ve emailed ACCA OBU to seek clarifications as well but no response yet.

Can you shed some light on this and assist?

Many thanks
Nash

I would like to know the ideas of what are the specific ratios for Aerospace industry? Anyone any idea what ratios are industry specific? Please share 2 or more. Thank you. Boeing

@nada000 – I like the idea of Hotel Chocolat and Ferrero, however you need to have access to the financial statements which may sometimes be an issue with private limited companies. If you can get these for HC then go ahead. They have different marketing models and and philosophies so there will be some limitations in the comparisons you can make.

In fact I think HC would make a good subject for Topic 18.

@nash1807 – apart from mentioning the diversity etc. in your limitations section and where appropriate in the analysis, I can give y out no real advice. It will be interesting if you get a detailed reply from the OBU Office, (which I doubt) but if you do please post it here.

I have made some comments and suggestions on the Aero space thread so you might l like to read those. I can’t help feeling that the business analysis should be the main focus for this sector (marketing factors being particularly important e.g. customers [commercial companies or government] promotion [air shows, trade delegations] payment terms and product differentiation. In fact an Aero space company would probably a good subject for Topic 18.

Sorry I can’t be much help but the sectors for T8 in P35 are quite difficult and none are really clear-cut.

dhameelolar – that sounds appropriate as a food producer

I am thinking of submitting RAP in Period 35 on topic 8 and recently went through OBU Info Pack. I am really confused about choice of organization. The choice has been made unnecessarily difficult by limiting it to specific industry sub sector ( not even keeping it to a sector). I am really unable to understand that what is the point in narrowing down the choice of organization so much that it becomes a headache for students. For evaluating business and financial performance of an organization students obviously needs an organization of size large enough to be a topic of discussion in business reporting media platforms and for which financial and other business information is available through at least some sources. But organizations of such size rarely very rarely operate within a sub sector of an industry as large organizations have diverse product portfolios and mostly even industry sectors are not a boundary for their products. Even if one finds a company fulfilling the specifications, finding a suitable competitor is nearly impossible. ( According to my initial research on food product companies) As it adds another layer of specifications that is finding two companies operating in same target market with nearly similar product portfolios obviously otherwise their wont be a competition particularly at organizational level.

hello trephena,

can you tell me united technologies with honeywell will go well for topic 8 ? Please could you guide ?

I was not implying ignorance on your part but know students (about 70% of them generally and about 95% in Pakistan) just never consider anything other than topic 8, (which followers of this forum will know is not a particular favourite topic of mine). However I try to overcome my bias by advising where I can for example I have produced an article on Evaluation and Analysis on our homepage which focuses mainly on this in relation to Topic 8 and also I created a special forum on Airlines for Topic 8 when they were the industry sector (which if you read the comments on P34 results students found invaluable).

Previously I had created a special forum for Topic 17 mainly because African students actually tend not to go for Topic 8 and were looking for a suitable topic that did not involve primary data collection. This forum for T17 has proved very popular and useful. Overall many students have commented that with my advice they have achieved B grades

In relation to the new industry sectors for Topics 8 and 15: they are so hard I genuinely think students would be better off considering alternative topics. I therefore wanted you to be aware that you stand a much better chance of passing if you broadened your horizons and looked elsewhere. ( I would in fact put money on the statistics for P35 backing me up on this – and I am not a gambling woman – that Topics 17, 18 and 20 will have higher pass rates than Topic 8).

@trephena I was going through an old thread where the use of individual or consolidated financial statements was discussed. One of the participants commented that it should be avoided as it means more complexity and he was of the view that if consolidated statements are used contribution of each subsidiary towards the performance of the group should be assessed. Need your opinion on it. Wont it be appropriate to look at the whole group and focusing on performance of products and areas such as sales, costs etc.

Hi.
As RevPAR= Occupancy Rate x ADR so if i have already analyzed ADR and occupancy rate,how should i analyze RevPAR as i will not have anything new to say.
Best Regards.