Assessment 2. Presentation Briefing
Financial and Marketing Analysis of Company
Submission
The presentation will take place during normal seminar hours. Attendance is compulsory. You are required to use PowerPoint for the presentation. All group members must present on the day.
In addition to doing the presentation in class all students must submit an electronic version of their presentation individually online by using a separate link on the Blackboard. All group members must submit the same PowerPoint slides.
The deadline for the group presentation in class is Semester 1 Week 10, Monday 30th November or Tuesday 1st December 2015 depending upon your timetable.
The deadline for online individual submission of the PowerPoint presentation is Wednesday 2nd December 2015 at 1:00pm.
Additional instructions on submission will be posted on Blackboard close to the deadline. You may save the PowerPoint slides and their explanation notes as MS Word or PDF before submitting it.
If you have a financial hold situation a hardcopy plus electronic version will be accepted via the WBS Registry Coursework Lobby before the deadline. Please do not email your module leader or your seminar leader your coursework unless you have been asked to do so. The Registry does not accept such a submission in most cases.
If you are having technical difficulties on the date of submission please email Evgeniya Macleod (e.macleod@westminster.ac.uk) and call FixIt.
We strongly advise that you submit your assessment at least 3 hours before the deadline. This way if there are any technical issues you will have time to sort them out.

Penalties for late submissions
Any assessment submitted late online will be penalised unless you submit a claim for Mitigating Circumstances and the claim is accepted by the Registry. There will be penalties for any coursework submitted even one second after the deadline without an approved Mitigating Circumstances claim. The penalty for courseworks submitted individually online within the 24 hours late period is a reduction of 10% of the mark. Presentations submitted individually online more than 24 hours late will be given the mark 0% even if you have presented in class.
Avoiding Plagiarism
Your assignment must demonstrate your own group's work and ideas. You may use graphs and clipart as appropriate. All written work must be the work of the group members. Since this assignment is a group piece of work we expect that you will combine your individual work (PowerPoint slides and their explanation notes) into one document. Similarities between the work of students within the same group will not be regarded as plagiarism.
Any quotations and references that you include in your assignment will be identified by the Turnitin or SafeAssign programme as being similar to other sources, i.e. Turnitin or SafeAssign will generate a similarity / originality content report. Therefore it is vital that you reference correctly. Any evidence of plagiarism will be reported.
A Turnitin similarity content of 0% will be investigated by the Plagiarism Committee as it is regarded as being an indicator of an attempt to circumvent the plagiarism software. Since your document should have several different references the Turnitin programme should identify them.

The Assessment Task * The group assessment will be completed in small groups (approximately 5 people per group). You will be allocated into groups during the seminars in week 5. * Your group will be required to choose a company from the FTSE100 Index list, analyse the past and future performance of a company from a financial and marketing perspective using Excel-based statistical techniques and to deliver a group presentation of your findings to the other seminar members. Emphasis is placed on your ability to communicate results in an appropriate format.
How to choose a company: Discuss your areas of interest with your group members. Choose a company from FTSE100 list and then check that the company data is available in Mintel and FAME databases. If the company you chose does not have data in FAME and Mintel then choose another company with your group.
Your mark for the group assessment will consist of: (1) a mark for the work given to all members of the group. The students in your seminar will contribute to the assessment of your presentation by asking questions and giving feedback. (2) a mark for each individual, agreed by the group with your seminar tutor’s approval, reflecting the individual’s contribution to the assignment. Without agreed peer marks the individual group members marks can be reduced by the seminar leader.
Consider that you are a group of Trainee Market Analysts at your chosen company. Your manager requires you to analyse the market position and financial performance of the company for the last 5 years. * For the above, you should: * briefly describe your company; * analyse the company’s past financial performance in relation to inflation for the last 5 years (use a graph of Index Series for Turnover and Gross Profit from FAME alongside a relevant Price Index www.statistics.gov.uk); * summarise the financial performance of your company in relation to the main competitors in the sector (use graphs and tables which you have prepared of relevant financial ratios); * summarise the market position of your company for the sector in which your company operates and in relation to competitors (use secondary data from MINTEL & other sources as well as Annual Reports).
Assessment Criteria

* Criteria | * Marks | * 1. Brief description of the company | * 10 | 2. Analysis of the company’s financial performance in relation to inflation for the last 5 years (Accuracy of calculations & graph of Index series of Turnover, Operating Profit & RPI) | * 20 | * 3. Summary of your company’s financial performance in relation to their current competitors (Quality of description of performance; appropriateness of selection of main indicators, explanation of meaning and relevance) | * 20 | * 4. Summary of your company’s market position for the sector in relation to competitors in which the company operates at present (Quality of description of performance; appropriateness of selection of main indicators, explanation of meaning and relevance) | * 20 | 5. Presentation and Use of technology: PowerPoint & Excel (Clear, appropriate graphs & tables; slides legible and visually balanced), Verbal and non-verbal communication (clarity of speech, body language, professionalism) | * 20 | * 6. Harvard Referencing Style (Number of relevant references; appropriate referencing style; you must include FAME and Mintel in your reference list) | * 10 |
Learning Outcomes (LO) Assessed: 1. Use of main external sources of data 2. Collection of information relevant to a specific business organization 3. Assessment of the limitations of secondary data 4. Collection, presentation and interpretation of data 5. Selection and application of appropriate forecasting methods 6. Use of Excel to prepare graphs 7. Use of PowerPoint

Literature Sources
You are required to use the following essential sources of information:
Electronic resources at the UoW Library Search – gateway to electronic resources * For your assessment, you will be required to consult electronic databases such as: * MINTEL (Marketing data) http://www.reports.mintel.com
FAME (Financial data) http://www.fame.bvdep.com * You may find FAME and MINTEL easier to access through Library Search. Both databases may be accessed off-Campus using your university username and password.
To get additional help please contact the Business Librarians at Marylebone campus.
Ellie Murphy: e.murphy@westminter.ac.uk
Sara Goddard: s.goddard@westminster.ac.uk
Gill Ackerman: g.ackerman@westminster.ac.uk
Also check our Library blog that has guides on FAME and Mintel: http://bit.ly/busblog * Other useful sites are: * Company Annual Reports * Reuters Business Insight http://www.globalbusinessinsights.com/rbi/ * (Industry overviews) * Financial Times http://www.ft.com * (Company summaries for 20 000 listed companies) * Hemscott http://hemscott.com * (Share prices, mergers & acquisitions)
Eurostat http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu (Statistical office of the European Communities)
Access to some EU statistics. * Oxford English Dictionary http://www.askoxford.com/ * Biz/ed Home Page http://www.bized.co.uk/
The main provider of secondary data is the Government. * The Office of National Statistics http://www.statistics.gov.uk * Annual Abstract of Statistics www.statistics.gov.uk * Published yearly and provides detailed summary data on a variety of economic, social, demographic and business variables. The Monthly Digest of Statistics provides comparable data but is published monthly. * Census of Population Reports www.ons.gov.uk/census/ * Provides data on population and demographic trends relating to the ten-year cycle of national censuses (last was in 2001, next is 2011). Contains valuable market information e.g. shows proportion of population in an area having higher education qualifications which is useful to someone considering opening a bookshop. * Family Spending www.statistics.gov.uk * Annual report of an ongoing survey (7 000 consumer units) in the UK monitoring the income and expenditure patterns of these households in detail. * Living in Britain www.statistics.gov.uk * Contains findings of the General Household Survey providing a comprehensive picture of how we live in the UK today and describing social change over the last 30 years. * Labour Market Trends * Monthly. Data on employment, unemployment, wages, retail prices, job vacancies, overtime, stoppages. * Economic Trends * Monthly. Deals with the key economic and financial indicators for the UK. Data on GDP, National Income accounts, personal income and expenditure, prices, earnings, labour force statistics, financial statistics. * Financial Statistics * UK’s key financial & monetary data. * Europe in Figures * Published by Eurostat (Statistical Office of EU). Provides comparative data on all member countries and on major trading partners (e.g. USA). * There are many other sources of information such as the ‘Financial Times’, and other quality newspapers, for Stock Market information, trade journals, published company accounts, industrial training boards. Newspapers are available in the LRC as text and on the web. *

HINTS FOR YOUR ASSIGNMENT * You should check your company’s website immediately for copies of the relevant Company Annual Reports. You are expected to look at the following sources for information: * FAME http://www.fame.bvdep.com * Mintel http://www.reports.mintel.com * Office of National Statistics http://www.statistics.gov.uk * * You can access FAME and MINTEL through Library Search. * -------------------------------------------------
You must remember to clearly reference the source of any data or information you use. Directly using pre-prepared graphs or tables from FAME, MINTEL and from company websites without referencing is plagiarism. * In your assignment it must be clear what the data refers to, when it applies, and where it has come from. If you reference your sources, you will be rewarded with marks for effective research skills. *

Appendix 1. Title Page Example
Your title page does not have to look exactly like the one below but all of the information presented in this example title page should be included in your title page. University of WestminsterWestminster Business SchoolModule code and title: BKEY401 Professional CompetencesAssessment 2. PresentationFinancial and Marketing Analysis of the [Company Name]Student Names:Student ID numbers:Seminar leader name:Date: | *