MBA Integrative Group Project
INTRODUCTION
This is a group project using the groups assigned for your cohort. The goals of this project and its
components are to improve your analytical skills and reinforce the reality that organizational issues
are not limited to specific functional disciplines but rather overlap those disciplines.
There are several specific components of the project:
A. Company selection.
B. A revenues forecast for the company using statistical and economic tools. (Statistics)
C. An evaluation of the competitive environment in which the company operates. (Economics)
D. An evaluation of the company’s financial status and prospects. (Accounting)
The various parts of the project will count towards the course grades. See the individual course
syllabi for specific details as well as grading weights.
Note on team assignments: The assignments listed below involve group work. Your individual
grade on the team projects or participation grades will reflect your teammates’ assessment of
your contribution to that project as measured by the collaborative learning peer evaluations. (See
the form at the end of this document.)
COMPANY SELECTION
This is really important because if you get it wrong there will be issues later in the semester
that may create many problems for you at a time when you don’t need or want those
problems. (Your professors will help you with this.)
Select a publicly traded company to study as a group. Be sure that the company you have
selected has data available for conducting the analyses listed above. Use the checklist at the end
of this document for guidance.
Clothing companies do not make good choices because their reporting dates do not match
standard reporting of economic data. Companies that are regulated are also not good
choices.
Companies that have recently been used and are not available for analysis are: Cheesecake
Factory, Harrah’s, Radio Shack, Panera Bread, Southwest Airlines, Jet Blue, Walgreen’s, 1-800Flowers, PetSmart, Craft Brewers Alliance, Lowe’s, Nutrisystem, Chipotle’s, Tesoro, Alaska
Air, Waste Management, BJ’s Restaurant, Einstein Noah, Lifetime Fitness, Health Net,
Packaging Corp of America, Peet’s, VCA Antech, Whole Foods, Green Mountain Coffee,
Under Armour, Kona Grill, O’Reilley Auto Parts, Union-Pacific, Ryland Group, Sprint Nextel,
Republic Air, Six Flags, Dine Equity, 8by8 Inc, Atlas Pipeline Partners, Almost family, Papa
John’s, and Tuesday Morning Corporation.
Companies that have been used in the past and are available and will be automatically
approved include: Safeway, Target, Arch Coal, DR Horton, Sports Chalet, Netflix, Tootsie
Roll, ACF Humana, DR Horton, Maui Land and Pine, Famous Dave’s, Hawaiian Air, Wausau
Paper, Red Robin, Williams-Sonoma, Buffalo Hot Wings, Caremark, PetMed Express,
Sketchers, Verizon, Regal Entertainment, Boston Brewery, Texas Roadhouse, Davita, Ruger,
IHOP, M/I Homes, Great Lakes Air, Buca di Beppo, 1-800-CONTACTS, Midwest Air Group,
Group 1 Automotive, Pulte Homes, Pyramid Breweries, Kbhol’s Corp, Hershey, Cedar Fair,
CSK, Apria Healthcare Group, Friendly's, Hibbett, America West, Redhook, Genetech, Sharper
Image, Home Depot, Rent-A-Center, Dell, Best Buy, eBay, Harley-Davidson, Amazon, WFMI,
Symantec, Champion Enterprises, Sherwin-Williams, Mesa, PF Changs, TPG, STLD, Knight
Transportation, Carmike Cinemas, Frontier Airlines, Sysco, California Pizza Kitchen, Costco,
Dean Foods, Exxon, and Jack in the Box.. To use another company submit the company
selection form (end of this document) electronically to Professors Daniel, Suyderhoud and
Worthley.
A. FORECASTING PROJECT: Statistics
See the statistics course syllabus for details
B. COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS: Economics
See the economics course syllabus for details.
C. FINANCIAL ANALYSIS PROJECT: Accounting
See the accounting course syllabus for details
.
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MBA Company Selection
E-mail the following info to all 3 professors
1.
2.
3.
4.
Company choice:
Group Number:
Group Name:
Group Members:
___________________________________
___________________________________
___________________________________
___________________________________
___________________________________
___________________________________
___________________________________
___________________________________
___________________________________
Use the following checklist to help you in your company selection. Taking the time to
ensure that your company satisfies ALL of these checkpoints will go a long way to a
successful study.
Choose a company that has been publicly traded from quarter 1, 2007 and is still
publicly traded today. This will ensure that the 6 years of quarterly data you need
for these project analyses will be available.
Make certain your company prepares their financial statements using U.S. GAAP.
Look in Note 1 of the Notes to the Financial Statements for this important tidbit of
information.
Check to make sure that your company does not have substantial foreign revenues
(more than 10%). Otherwise you will need to separately forecast both domestic and
foreign revenues (and that is a lot more work).
Some companies have strange definitions of their quarter ending dates (example:
last Tuesday in February). Selecting a company with quarters ending on
approximately March 31st, June 30th, September 30th, and December 31st will make
it much easier to match your data up with prospective drivers of your company
sales. This is more important than it might seem.
Try to pick a company that concentrates on one type of product or service to better
focus on what the important drivers may be for the sales for that company. A
diversified company like Coca-Cola is difficult to work with because of its myriad of
subsidiaries.
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MBA Integrative Project Evaluation Form
The following peer evaluation of your group members is a tool to enhance your
experience with collaborative learning. Its purpose is to determine those who have
been active and cooperative members as well as to identify those who did not
participate in the development of your group’s work. Be consistent when evaluating
each group member’s performance and contribution using the guidelines given below:
1 – NEVER
2 – RARELY
3 – SOMETIMES
4 – USUALLY
5 – ALWAYS
Assign a number from 1 to 5 for each of the questions below for each group (excluding
yourself) member for this project.
Project (Check one): _____ Comp Env _____ Rev Fcst ______Fin Analysis
Group member name
Evaluation question
Has this group member
attended your group meetings
on a regular basis?
Has this group member
completed the assigned work?
Does he/she do so on a timely
manner?
Has this group member
provided high-quality and
useful input?
Did the group member seek
help when he/she needed it?
Was this group member
cooperative?
Group and Company name:
Comments of Individual Team Members:
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