Description

ACFI115 – Groupwork Assessment (2024/25)

Introduction

The groupwork assessment is designed to give a taste of working together as a group on a consultancy-based challenge. Your group is cast in the role of a consultancy business that has been appointed to report to the board of a fictitious boat building company called Merbatty. You have been presented with some background information on Merbatty and its industry in the form of the case study material, which is available on Canvas.

Current issues faced by Merbatty.

You are also presented with some details behind six current issues facing Merbatty, which may or may not have been mentioned in the case study material. It is your role as a group of consultants to write a report and deliver a presentation to the board of Merbatty that prioritise the six issues and analyses and evaluates each of the them, giving recommendations where appropriate.

Any consultant will add value by taking the issues facing the business and dealing with the most important ones first, which is a key skill required in a successful business. Issues that might be financially significant, strategically important or simply urgent could all rank as items that must be dealt with soon. To help you in this your group should look to perform an initial analysis of the information provided in the case study material using some of the tools suggested in Appendix 1.

You are expected to decide as a group what you think the important aspects are in the scenario and write about them in the report in the order of importance.

Requirement

Your group is required to write a report and deliver a presentation that prioritise the six issues and analyses and evaluates each of the six issues, giving recommendations where appropriate.

This represents 20% of the overall mark for this module. It is to be completed as a group and one overall mark will be awarded, which all members of the group receive. Your intended audience for the report is the board of directors of Merbatty.

• Presentation, language and word limit guidance

The language used in the report should be suitable for a professional audience. It should be professional in appearance and include the following:

• Front cover
• Contents page
• Introduction
• Executive summary
• Analysis and evaluation of issues (in order of importance)
• Conclusion
• Appendices

The executive summary at the start of the report should be used to justify the order in which you have prioritised the issues, alongside any recommendations.

The layout for which could be as follows:

• What is the issue?
• Why is it important to the business?
• Ranking – why is this issue more important than your next choice?
• Create the need for management action or decision e.g. ‘thus management must decide whether to accept the proposal or not’ or `thus management will need to develop a course of action to reassure stakeholder concerns.’

There is no need for this section to be too long as it merely justifies the order at the start of your report.

The word limit is 3,000 words and the rules on the word count follow the standard University of Liverpool’s guidance.

APPENDICES

Appendix 1 – Approach

The main idea behind the case study material is to ensure that the consultant understands the business upon which they are advising (this is no less than would be necessary in a real[1]life situation).

Accordingly, your group should begin by reading and analysing this case study material. Analysis can take many forms and provided here is some brief guidance on areas to consider and possible approaches you could take:

• SWOT analysis: the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of a business. This tool is probably essential in most business analyses and provides a good starting point for this challenge.
• Strategic analysis: there are many technical tools open to accountants that can be used to understand the strategic position of a business and these will be covered on later modules on your Accounting and Finance programme. The objective here is to understand what the business is doing so that you can better advise them.
• Financial analysis: a company’s finances need to be understood as it helps you give better advice. For example, there would be little point suggesting expansion to a business if it had no cash and little prospect of borrowing any.
• Industry research: an accountant will often do a little research on the industry to gain better understanding. Again sometimes the examples from the real world uncovered by this research can be used in a report to add support to an argument or suggestion. Real world examples add credibility to an argument and should be used in your report.

Appendix 2 – Issue types and approach.

There are two types of business issues that could appear in the scenario – a problem and a proposal. The approach normally taken for each is different and suggestions are shown here:

1. An approach to a problem

– Explain the impact of the problem

The objective here is to focus the management in terms of what is important in the issue in order to galvanise them into action. Consider any financial (backed up by numerical calculations in an appendix), strategic (backed up by appropriate strategic tools) or reputational impacts. You should back up your points with real world examples where possible.

 – Discuss potential solutions to the problems

You should identify either two or three potential solutions and express your opinion on them. Provide an analysis of each of the potential solutions such that the reader can make a decision whether or not to go with them. This section is therefore, a brief assessment of the alternatives and not a set of recommendations.

– Recommendations

All reports need an output. Outputs take the form of the consultant expressing an opinion on the steps the business should now take. Hence you need to make recommendations. The style of recommendations for a problem will take the following approach:

Select from your alternative solutions the one (or two) that you feel the business should follow. You should then expand on the solution(s) to provide a detailed justified action plan.

Consider who, where, when, how and what in your recommendations.

You may feel that in some cases actions should be split between short-term and long-term needs. This is fine.

2. An approach to a proposal

– Background to the proposal

Explain the theoretical background to the proposal. Again you are trying to focus the managers’ attention on what the proposal attempts to achieve. They should then be in the right mind set to read your assessment of the proposal and hence make an informed decision.

Discussion of the proposal.

You need to assess the proposal made. Remember it is for the board to decide what the most appropriate course of action is to be. It is your job (in this section) to discuss the proposal so that management understands all the factors it needs to consider.

There are options here as regards approach:

For strategic proposals (new products or new markets for example) you can assess the market’s suitability, the acceptability and feasibility. Suitability is a market assessment i.e. is the market appropriate for this organisation. Acceptability is the stakeholders’ return and risk assessment, which tends to focus on shareholders as the principle stakeholder. Other stakeholders (if important) could also be considered. Feasibility considers whether the business has the resources to undertake the proposal.

For an Operational proposal you can simply discuss the factors surrounding the decision or even detail the advantages and disadvantages of it. Operational proposals include for example a proposal on the finance arrangements of the business or a new bonus scheme suggestion.

– Recommendations.

All reports need an output. Outputs take the form of the consultant expressing an opinion on the steps the business should now take. Hence you need to make recommendations. The style of recommendations for a proposal should adopt the following approach, where you must with justification:

• Accept the proposal or reject it as it stands. A third option is to suggest amendments to the proposal as stated
• If you accept then you should detail any significant implementation issues and indicate what must be done about them.
• If you reject the proposal then you should state why and indicate what you recommend the business should do as an alternative. You can of course reject on the grounds a better deal might be possible but you must say what that might be.

Note: in all cases recommendations for problems and proposals should:

Be specific, achievable, actionable, commercially realistic, and strategically sound.

Be decisive – tell management what to do. Do not set management objectives (e.g. ‘ensure that you improve your controls’) but tell them how, what, where and why!

Do not merely say that management ought to ‘investigate’ – that is your job and this report is the result of that investigation – theorise if you have to.

Appendix 3 – Ethical issues

You need to demonstrate you understand important ethical issues facing the business. Your report should:

• Explain the ethical dilemma. Be careful to restrict yourself to the ethical issues and not get drawn in to other related business issues. For example it may enhance your reputation or improve sales to behave ethically, but these are business advantages of ethical behaviour. Businesses should behave ethically regardless of business consequences.
• Give advice on how to resolve the ethical issue. As with all recommendations, be specific and forthright. Sitting on the fence will come across poorly.

The distinction between a business issue and an ethical issue is important.

A business issue is one that directly affects revenue, costs or profit both now or in the immediate future. It is one that is significant and where there is a clear and present link between it and the financial performance of the business.

An ethical issue is one that presents a moral dilemma to the management. They have a choice of action and so normally an ethical dilemma is not one that is governed by tight legislation. Common ethical issues surround a duty of care to a stakeholder, confidentiality, conflict of interest, unfairness, lack of objectivity and so on. In the scenario you must identify two ethical issues, and discuss them within the issue itself.

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