MODULE ASSESSMENT: BEMM112DA-2L20 This module is assessed by two assignments and several formative exercises: Assignment 1 time and date due: 23:55 Monday 8 March 2021 Assignment 2 time and date due: 23:55 Wednesday 14 April 2021 % Weight: Form of Assessment: 50% Assignment 1 Evaluate a chosen organisation’s challenges and opportunities based on an analysis of its published financial statements. Assignment 2 Propose and justify a financial and non-financial Balanced Scorecard to support the strategic approach of a chosen organisation. 50% Size of the assessment e.g. duration/length 20 minutes audio commentary + supporting spreadsheets ILOs assessed by this assessment: Feedback method: 1, 3 Written Spreadsheet report plus 2,500word report All Written Marking rubrics for both assignments are provided in the appendix. Assignment 1: Evaluate a chosen organisation’s challenges and opportunities based on an analysis of its published financial statements Context: As a senior leader within an organisation you will typically be entrusted with resources and accountable for the stewardship and performance of those resources. This assignment supports your ability to explain to stakeholders how you have discharged your responsibilities. The only difference between this exercise and what you may do, currently or in the future, is the level of detail and frequency. Internally you will have access to a much greater level of detail and will likely do this on a monthly or quarterly basis. Detailed requirement: 1. Identify a real organisation that prepares audited annual financial statements that are publicly available. You may want to choose your own organisation or a competitor or peer. Equally, you may choose an organisation purely on the basis that it interests you. You are not limited to UK organisations. You are also not limited to for-profit organisations – very insightful analysis can be extracted from a review of the financial statements of non-profit organisations. A key consideration should be the level of detail provided by the financial statements – some organisations have a minimalist approach to presentation and disclosure which would make it harder to provide a meaningful analysis. 2. Obtain the audited financial statements covering at least three but no more than five years. 3. Perform a financial analysis of the organisation in order to understand what assets the organisation employs, how it has funded them, what income it has made and what expenses it has incurred. Identify relevant trends and relationships in the financial data and assess the key drivers behind these movements. Consider the strategic implications to the organisation in terms of challenges and opportunities. 4. Create spreadsheets and graphs in Excel as required to support your analysis. These will be assessed on the basis of clarity and accuracy. 5. Compile a PowerPoint slide deck to present your findings. If you wish to present a draft for feedback this is the point you must do so, we will not provide feedback on the final 1 slideshow (next step). You may use extracts or charts from your Excel workbook in the slide deck. 6. Record a PowerPoint slide show discussing your findings. Detailed guidance will be provided in the assessment information tile on ELE on how to do this. 7. Load the PowerPoint Show (.ppsx) and Excel (.xls) files to the assessment site as well as the financial statements that you used. Assignment 2: Propose and justify a financial and non-financial Balanced Scorecard to support the strategic approach of a chosen organisation. Context: The financial and business data analysis that is introduced in this module is required by senior leaders in developing and executing organisational strategy. Place yourself in the role of a senior manager such as internal auditor or finance manager for an organisation. You have been charged with leading a project to develop an information framework that will help the organisation achieve its strategic vision. This organisation can, but does not have to, be the same as the organisation you chose for assignment 1 although it is likely that you will derive some efficiencies from using the same organisation. It would be beneficial but not essential to use your own organisation. You are free to use another organisation such as a former employer or an organisation you are interested in, possibly a peer or competitor of your employer. The use of an organisation is key as the application of the topics to be discussed can vary significantly depending on the nature of the organisation. The essential consideration is that you should be able to discuss how the topics are applied in practical specifics rather than academic generalities. Detailed requirement: 1. Using Excel, you are required to create a Balanced Scorecard report. The report should be able to stand on its own (i.e. be clear and informative) without reference to the accompanying memorandum discussed below. Effectively, this would be the report that would be distributed to the attendees at the meeting to discuss the organisation’s performance management. It is expected that you would have the standard 4 perspectives although you could propose your own perspectives but should not exceed 6 perspectives. Within each of these perspectives you are expected to have 3 to 5 relevant objectives. Each of these objectives would have 1 or 2 indicators or measures and would be supported by 1 or 2 initiatives. 2. You are also required to submit a 2,500-word memorandum providing justification for the measures you have chosen to use in the Balanced Scorecard. Start with an introduction to the organisation and explain what its mission is and how it creates value for its stakeholders. Discuss the organisation’s approach to strategy and what actions it should take to effectively execute the strategy and how these would be measured using the scorecard you have developed. All the topics covered in this module will have some relevance to the scorecard and rationale that you submit. Although your report should provide comprehensive coverage of the performance management framework your memorandum, providing the rationale for the metrics you suggest, may likely focus on a few areas rather than the entire range of metrics. 2 Alignment of assignments to the Finance Knowledge and Skills in the CMI Evidence Locator Professional discussion: D1 / D2 / D3 D4 / D5 D10 Understands financial strategies including scenarios, modelling and identifying trends; application of economic theory to decision-making, and how to evaluate financial and non-financial information. Understands financial governance and legal requirements, and procurement strategies. Oversees procurement, supply chain management and contracts. Work-based project showcase: D6 / D7 D8 D9 Oversees financial strategies/management, results and setting organisational budgets, and challenges financial assumptions underpinning strategies Is accountable for decisions based on relevant information eg Key Performance Indicators/scorecard Uses financial data to allocate resources Assignment 1 assesses your understanding of financial statements and your ability to identify trends within financial statements and evaluate financial and non-financial information in order to understand the financial strategies and decision-making of the organisation. This understanding and ability assessed in the first assignment also provides the foundation for the other knowledge and skills outcomes required by a Senior Leader. In order to effectively exercise financial governance, including compliance with legal requirements, it is essential to have knowledge of the contents of financial statements. Equally budgeting, formulation and monitoring of strategy, and resource allocation including procurement, supply chain management, and contracts, all require an understanding of the elements of financial statements and in turn have an impact on the financial statements. Assignment 2 expands your understanding of financial information while providing the insights that financial information on its own is often not sufficient to support decision-making and oversight of strategy. The assignment provides you with the opportunity to apply non-financial information to support decisions which will include consideration of resource allocation, procurement strategies, budgeting, and governance. Assignment feedback: You will have the opportunity to submit a draft of each assignment. It is important that objective and scope of the feedback given be clarified to avoid misunderstanding. The objective is to provide you with feedback on the fit of your draft to the requirements of the assignment, not what you need to include to achieve a certain mark. The assignments must be your own work and follow University requirements for citation and referencing to comply with proper academic conduct. The objective of the feedback is to reduce the stress associated with coursework and help students avoid a failure (referral) by providing an advance warning that the draft submission is not yet of the required standard to pass. You will not be told what to do to pass but instead will be told that a section is insufficient or shows a misunderstanding of the requirements. Where a section is on track to pass you will receive feedback to that effect. You will not receive any indication of a likely mark. If you are confident you understand the brief and have a clear idea of the content you will provide you will likely find no advantage in submitting a draft. Only one draft may be submitted i.e. you 3 cannot submit a draft, respond to feedback to try get the assignment to a pass level and then resubmit. Drafts must be submitted through the drop box that will be provided in the assignment folder within the ELE module site. (If an extension has been granted than the deadline will be two weeks before the extended deadline – if this applies it is critical that you let your module leader know that you have submitted a draft for feedback). Again, advance clarification is needed to prevent misunderstanding – drafts submitted after the deadline will not be reviewed. No exceptions to this will be made. This is for reasons of logistics and fairness. For the feedback objective sufficient time needs to exist between receiving the feedback and the final submission date. The module leader also needs sufficient time to complete the review. All students need to be treated equally so it is not appropriate to make an exception and review the efforts of some students beyond the deadline. So, to reiterate, the deadline exists for valid reasons and to be fair has to be applied consistently. Submission Guidelines Please submit your assignments electronically only through the assignment submission link on the Exeter Learning Environment (ELE) module webpage. Do not submit any paper copies. All submissions when uploaded must include the following information on the front sheet: Module Code: BEMM112DA Module Name: Financial and Business Data Analysis Candidate Number: e.g. 012345 (on every page in Word or Excel but not PowerPoint) Time / Word Count: e.g. 21 minutes / 4,724 words (+/- 10% tolerance) Page numbers: You should not include your student number (9-digit number beginning with 6) or your name Late Submission of Assignments You must submit your assignment(s) by the deadline(s) specified, if you fail to submit on time, the following penalties apply: • The penalty for assessed work submitted up to two weeks and without an agreed extension is a capped mark of 50%. • Assessed work submitted more than two weeks beyond a submission date will receive a mark of zero. Genuine mitigating circumstances should be supported by a medical certificate from your doctor in the case of illness. In all circumstances we will require formal evidence. Referencing: You must provide a list of the articles and texts you have referred to. You should use the APA system of referencing. Guidance is provided in the ELE course, UEBS Academic Development Resources, under Finding and using sources at: https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/mod/book/view.php?id=668941. Detailed referencing examples are contained in the document, A to Z list of example references and citations in the APA (6th ed.) style at: https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=651525. There are a number of referencing programmes which may help you in your work, details which are available at: https://libguides.exeter.ac.uk/referencing/software. Cheating and plagiarism: The University treats very seriously any case of a student attempting to seek unfair academic advantage through plagiarism or cheating and can lead to exclusion from the module. For further guidance see the course on Academic Honesty and Plagiarism at https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=3044. Time Limits or Word Counts 4 You are expected to adhere to the indicated time or word count. A specific penalty is not administered for falling short or exceeding the guidance. However, if your submission is shorter than expected then you will of necessity lose marks as you will likely not have adequately covered the assignment topics. Conversely, if your submission is excessively long) the marker will stop marking at a point consistent with the upper range of time or words (i.e. 10% more than indicated length. This will then mean that any topics covered after this cut-off point will not receive marks. The following content is NOT included in a final word count: • Reference list • Bibliography • Appendices • Front cover sheet (refer to required details above) The following content IS included in a final word count: • Title • Contents page • Abstract • Executive summary • Main body of text • Words used in tables, graphs and other forms of data presentation (including titles of figures) • In text quotations • In text references • Footnotes • Section headings 5 Appendix - Marking Rubrics Assignment 1 Assignment 2