OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY

Mentor Name:

Word Count: 1910

SKILL & LEARNING STATEMENT

Q1 How have you developed, personally and professionally, as a result of undertaking the
Research and Analysis Project?

When I first started this research and analysis project, I was overwhelmed with the lists of things
I had to prepare as it was the first time I was a writing a research paper. Oxford Brookes
University has recently made a few changes in the topics and added an additional criteria of
choosing the company for analysis and evaluation. I picked Topic #4 which requires to analyse
and evaluate the business and financial performance of an organisation which has performed
exceptionally poorly over a three-year period with a critical analysis of the reasons for its
difficulties.
First of all, determining a company that has performed exceptionally poorly was a big task as I
was unsure what should the criteria be and how a company’s performance should be called
exceptionally poor. I asked my colleagues and friends to help me finding a company with
exceptionally poor performance and I got few suggestions. When I first started calculating ratios
of these companies, there was no clear picture as not all ratios were bad and there was rather a
mixture of healthy and poor ratios. It made a bit more confused as there was a no clear picture.
During my first meeting with the mentor, I asked for his guidance on how to choose the
company. I was first encouraged to look for a company with prominent presence, preferably
global as it would be easier for me to acquire information as these are already available
publically on the internet. Then I was asked to look from the point of view of six major ratios and
figures such as; revenue, gross-profit margin, net-profit margin, market share, market price and
earnings-per-share. This helped in clearing the picture and I chose Chevron as my primary
company and ExxonMobil as its competitor as their ratios were mostly very poor.
I further discussed my topic, RAP objectives and RAP framework with the mentor. I had selected
too many objectives but I was advised to set clear RAP objectives and limited ones because of
the word count limitation. This helped me set a clear set of objectives as well as the structure of
the report. I was advised to use formal sources of data and information as to avoid irrelevant and
unreliable sources. I decided what sources of information I will use in my report. The first
meeting for very fruitful as now I was ready to start my research paper and do work efficiently as
I had set a target in mind. I was advised to start writing my skills and learning statement
simultaneously which turned out to be excellent for me.
For my second meeting with my mentor, I had already prepared a draft report which I presented
to him. He critically reviewed the report and highlighted many questions. I was advised to go
through the academic material to revise a few concepts as well as to reread the information pack
provided by Oxford Brookes University. I discussed the time management issue I was facing as I
work fulltime. He advised me set up a schedule and set daily goals. I followed his advice and
started to keep track of the progress I was making with my research and analysis paper.
I further discussed that I was having difficult time in filtering out relevant information from the
huge amount of information available on the company and its competitor. There was also some
issues of limited information available for the analysis part. Google as a search engine also has
its limitations as it does not always show the relevant information in the top search results. I was
advised to keep my focus on the key areas and don’t waste time on irrelevant information as it
was easy to get distracted.
Another issue was word count for which I was advised to focus on critically examining the
reasons for the poor performance of the company and analyse it rather than just explaining the
movement over the chosen period. Because the movement or trend was already explained
through graphs and charts. At the end of the meeting, I was once again advised to write SLS
side by side as it was a successful approach. I was able to finish the report within time.
During the last meeting with my mentor, I gave a fifteen minutes PowerPoint presentation. I was
a bit nervous at first because I have anxiety speaking in front of others. But I was encouraged
and I once I started, it got a lot better and by the time I finished the presentation I was feeling
excited. I read different articles and watched YouTube videos to prepare the presentation as I
was not familiar with MS PowerPoint before this project. At first, it seemed difficult but then I was
finally able to understand it.
After the presentation, my mentor asked me a few questions related to the industry and the
company I had chosen and fortunately, I knew most of the answers as I got an extensive
knowledge about the oil and gas companies while doing my research. The correct answers
further boosted my confidence. Even though, I did not know the answers of few questions
instantly but I was encouraged to take some time and then answer the questions. Luckily, this
method helped me and I remembered the answers.
My mentor gave him final comments on the report. After that, he wished me good luck for the
project and the meeting was ended.
There were several challenges during this project as the companies were overseas and it was
difficult to access the information. Although, financial and ratio analyses were easier task, I lack
knowledge of local laws and standards where these countries are present. There was main
challenge of word count due to which I had to omit several ratio analyses like interest cover,
quick ratio, GP margin, etc. The most surprising aspect of this research and analysis report was
when I analysed Chevron for extremely poor performance, its revenues are declining by huge
margin even then it proceeded to pay large dividends to its shareholders.
Q2 How will the experience of the RAP help you in the future?

To be a successful financial and business analyst, a few skills are essential which include
conducting research, filter out information, good communication skills and of course, writing
reports. I have recently started working as an analyst at a company and my job requires me to
perform an extensive research, meetings with stakeholders and writing reports. Before this
project, I was not very efficient with MS-Office. I was familiar with MS-Excel and MS-Word but
that was just on a basic level.

However, this project has also improved my writing skills a great deal as restricting your
research findings to under 7500 is a big task though it did not seem like it at first. This helps you
understand what information or research finding is absolutely crucial that you cannot miss it in
the report. While some other information that may seem important at first but due to restricted
word count, it is not possible to include it. Thus, helping to understand how to categories data
and information on the basis of level of importance and significance. This is an important skill to
have as an analyst.

Another important part of my job is to understand the objectives clearly as instructed by seniors.
But many a times, the guidelines are not clear and it takes me extra time to understand the
objectives clearly. Even then, sometimes my reports lack a proper structure. While doing this
research and analysis project, I had a clear understanding of my research objectives which in
turn helped me to structure my report accordingly. I believe it I can also use the same method of
structured writing at my work.

Furthermore, through this project I have learnt how to make presentations on MS-PowerPoint,
something I was not much familiar with. I can now make professional level presentations while
understanding how to summarise the large amount of information into few bullet points. Not only
this, it also helped me to deal with anxiety of delivering presentation thus boosting my self-
confidence. My colleagues have already witnessed a positive change in my attitude towards
speaking in front of audience.

Moreover, it also taught me the importance of visual data and how to use this powerful tool to
help user better understand the information without unnecessarily going through the lengthy
paragraphs. Graphs and charts are powerful tools that I have used in this report. They provide a
clear picture of what is happening in a summarised form. They show the trend of performance of
a company which aids in further performance measurement and management.

One more thing that I learnt solely by doing this project is how to do Harvard Referencing. I
believe it will help immensely in my future studies and as well as independent research. I always
wanted to learn and apply Harvard Referencing and through this project I got the perfect
opportunity to learn as well as apply this skill.

I plan to pursue master’s in Business Analytics which focuses on technical data analysis to form
strategy. It does it by gaining insights and discover hidden patterns by investigating and
exploring past performance of a business. It aids in forming strategies and business planning.
This project allowed me to use my research and analysis skills to evaluate the performance of a
company that has performed exceptionally poorly along with the causes of its poor performance
from financial as well as business perspective.
My research and analysis skills have improved through this project. This is the first time I applied
business models like SWOT and PEST on an actually company in a real life scenario. It was
very different from what I had done previously during studies. There are of course limitations of
using these models but my understanding of these have improved very much. Likewise,
interpretation of ratios and financial data on a practical level was totally different than we had
done as part of studies. It is much more detailed and requires better understanding of different
sources of data, like, annual reports. This will definitely help in my career as now I can
understand and read the annual reports better which in turn will help me to analyse and evaluate
its contents more efficiently and effectively.

Moreover, gathering relevant information is a big task because there is so much information
available, especially online. Most of the times, the information is not relevant or reliable. The
biggest challenge is to filter-out the useful and relevant information from plethora of new paper
articles and websites. This project helped me to understand the importance of reliability as well
as relevance of the data and its source.

Lastly, time management is a thing that I always struggle with. While writing this research report
I learnt how to divide my time between different parts of the reports. Although this research
paper requires a lot of time and patience as it is not always easy to find the relevant information
and then write it down in your own words. But this project taught me how to patiently conduct the
research, summarize the findings and then write that summary in my own words.