The following points must be addressed in the presentation:
1.What is the company’s name/ industry/ sales revenue for the previous fiscal year? (Many students lose credit because they forget to mention the industry (i.e. financial industry, airline industry))(Slide 1)
2.What specific problem is the company experiencing? (i.e. company brand reputation has been diminished by scandal or company is experiencing slow sales growth) How do you classify the problem? (i.e. is it a product, price, distribution, brand, PR problem?). Be as specific as possible and do not tackle multiple problems –focus on one problem. (Slide 2)
3. Identify five good sources of information about the problem.For a large or public company, at least three sources should be articles from respected publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Businessweek or other business publications. Two of your sources can be manager interviews or other sources such as financial statements.(For small or private companies, articles will not be available so you will need to conduct multiple interviews, use your own experience and/or use company documents but you should still have five sources).Carefully review and present your sources and talk about the credibility, accuracy and reliability of those sources.If you have doubts or concerns about assumptions or presuppositions in any source of information, please identify it. For example, a manager you interview may not see all sides of a problem and/or may be biased in some way.Another example would be that you may think that an author of an article did not consider all the aspects of a problem. (Slide 3-4)
4.After carefully reviewing your sources, describe three possible solutions (courses of action) to this problem? Briefly list the alternative and the advantages and disadvantages of each. (Slide 5)
5.Which alternative is the best solution to the problem and why? (Many students lose points because they forget to present their rationale as to why they chose this alternative.) (Slide 6)
6.Provide paper handouts of your presentation slides (3 slides per page) to instructor on the day you present or you may email the presentation on the day you present.