business communication assignment

ASSIGNMENT 1

CHIPOLTE Evaluation

This is a draft, designed to show me your writing skills

Writing Assignment #1 – Business Communication Evaluation – Fall 2016

The purpose of this assignment is to assess your business communication & research skills. 

Scenario

Chipolte, the innovative food restaurant chain, is reviewing how it does business in the current volatile market.  You are a junior analyst for the company, tasked with contributing a portion of the competitive analysis. You have been asked to draft a comparative financial analysis that creates a basic benchmark your company’s performance. This task is an opportunity for you to showcase your competency in research, analysis, writing, and public speaking.   

You need to determine Chipolte’s position in the market by conducting a basic comparative analysis of the enterprise versus a competing company within the industry.  You must submit a memo to the company CEO and make an oral presentation explaining the company’s financial strength and its strength compared to the selected competitor at a company strategy meeting.   You need to compare five key indices of financial strength:

 

Sales/Revenue  (over the last three full-years)
P/E Ratio
Net Income (over the last three full-years)
EPS
 

In addition, for each metric analyzed, explain the reason for the company’s performance and provide support for your reasoning.

 

To begin, you will need to research Chipolte’s financial statements. You can find this information on the company website, company 10K Report or on a number of Cook library databases, e.g. Standard & Poors NetAdvantage, LexisNexis Academic (Business > Company Dossier) or Yahoo Finance.

 

Next, you will need to research one of TSLA’s competitors across the same five indices and compare its performance with TSLA.

 

Part I – Written Evaluation

You will need to draft a report memorandum that succinctly compares the financial strength of both companies. 
Your report should answer several key questions:

What was your rationale for selecting the competitor to serve as a measure for the analysis?
What did you learn from the comparison of these companies?
What is the significance of each index to your comparison?
 

This will require you to use some of the basic principles of business writing:

Proper memorandum format
Proper addressee (research the name of the CEO)
Proper use of sources using APA format
Include an introductory statement that foreshadows or “sells” the main idea
Use deductive structure
Condense information using tables, charts, graphs and bulleted points when appropriate
Use well developed headings
Use chunked paragraphs
 

Criteria

When you present your information, I will be evaluating your ability to write clearly and succinctly. In other words, get to the point. What is the most important information? I should be able to scan your document and pick out key information quickly and efficiently. If I cannot skim the document in under two minutes, then you did not do your job. Additionally, this document must contain clean and well-proofread content (error-free prose). Careless and errant errors in your LOCs (grammar, spelling, punctuation, and word choice) will result in a deduction in your grade.

Students will revise their TESLA analysis ad resubmit by the end of the semester for a grade.