Paper/Project Instructions
Introduction to Business (Keating section)
Business Analysis

Team: Students may work individually or in teams of 2 or 3 persons (no more than 3). If working in a team, please appreciate that there will be one additional requirement. I will ask all team members to evaluate the performance of their teammates and based on those evaluations, the final grade of individuals on that team may be adjusted up or down from the team score.

Choose any one business enterprise to analyze. It will be important to choose well, as you will need access to a lot of information about that firm. So, you may choose a business with which you have a personal and well-informed contact or one that there is readily available information on the internet, I will show you, in class, how to get that information about a company and we will do so for several different kinds of business enterprise.

Technical specifications of the paper: The final paper should be submitted electronically (email) as a “word” document with the subject line business analysis. Margins must be 1 inch wide on all four sides; font should be Arial 11 point (used here); 1.5 line spacing: and the length must be at least three full pages and no greater than 6 pages. Number the pages at the bottom center.

There is no title page: At the top of the first page (only) please only give the name the firm analyzed, indicate the names of the paper author(s) and provide the date submitted.

In the body of the paper, please address the following, if the information is needed to draw conclusions about the state of the business (in other words, you don’t have to address every point, nor craft your paper in the same order…these are merely suggestions as things that you may wish to consider to properly analyze this business enterprise):

1. Structure: What is the basic form of the enterprise (corporation, partnership, sole proprietorship)?

2. Management:
a) Is the leadership of the company stable, experienced and effective?
b) Are there apparent threats to that leadership?
c) If publicly-traded, does the stock market appear to have confidence in the leadership?
d) Does the leadership also own significant shares of the business and what is their history of buying or selling that ownership?

3. Principal products or services:
a) How does the business define the business that they are in (a mission statement)?
b) What are the principal products or services that the enterprise provides?

4. The Market:
a) What firms are the primary competitors?
b) Are there competing products or services that need to be considered?
c) What is this business’s comparative advantage/
d) Who are the primary customers?
e) Where (in what “place”) does the company interact with the customer?
f) Do they compete on the basis of prices, quality, service or some other method?
g) How do they interact with their customers?

5. Finance
a) What are the trends in sales, cost of goods sold, and profits? What do you note in these trends? (see the companies income statement)
b) Are their balance sheet trends that suggest important things