Auto MSc Consultancy Project Group Business Report and Company Presentations
The assignment
Task: Working as a group, you are required to prepare a business report and deliver a presentation summarising your research, analysis and conclusions/recommendations from your project. It is intended that the presentation will be delivered by the team to a panel from the sponsoring company. If allowed and feasible, this could be conducted in person at the company premises, or alternatively via video conference (e.g. MS Team or Zooms), or a combination of the two. The business report will also be passed to the sponsoring company, providing additional detail and depth to support your presentation.
The business report
The report structure should be tailored as appropriate depending on the scope and objectives of the project as defined in the project briefing sessions and ongoing communications between the project team, the sponsoring company and the supervisor. The business report should observe and respect any data confidentiality requirements identified by your sponsoring company and meet all academic quality and integrity expectations (e.g. appropriate referencing of all sources)
Broadly, it is expected that the report should cover the following sections :
· Executive summary
· Purpose, Scope and objectives of the Project
· Research and/or benchmarking methodology, implementation and analysis
· Development, summary and review of proposed solutions
· Conclusions / recommendations including further work proposed
· Appendix & Bibliography (as appropriate)
Report specifications: This assessment should be written and structured in the form. of a business report. Your business report should be a maximum of 3,000 words (+/- 10%) - approximately 10 pages in length.
This word limit includes the following:
· The body of the assignment
• The executive summary
• In-text references.
• Title page, figures and tables
• Contents page
It excludes:
• Bibliography
• Appendices (please note that appendices should only be used for supporting material, the content will not count towards your grade).
Sticking to a strict word limit is difficult and an important skill for you to acquire, so make sure that you write in a concise and focused manner. It should be typed font size 12 and 1.5 line spacing. You must include a word count at the start of the report.
Deadline: Report to be submitted by deadline as indicted in Moodle in doc, docx or pdf format.
Credits : The group business report contributes 30% to the overall unit assessment per student.
Assessment Criteria : An indicative marking guide for the business report is as follows:
|
Section
|
Proportion of marks
|
|
Executive summary
|
10%
|
|
1. Purpose, Scope and objectives
|
10%
|
|
2. Research and/or benchmarking methodology, implementation & analysis
|
20%
|
|
3. Development, summary and review of proposed solutions
|
20%
|
|
4. Conclusions / recommendations including further work proposed
|
20%
|
|
Overall quality and professionalism of report
|
20%
|
The presentation
The presentation should also be tailored as appropriate depending on the scope and objectives of the project as defined in the project briefing sessions and ongoing communications between the project team, the sponsoring company and the supervisor. The presentation should broadly follow the same structure as the business report but should be developed and presented in such a way as to provide an impactful and compelling summary of the project work.
Presentation specifications: It is anticipated that the presentation will be created and delivered using powerpoint and should be 20 mins in length with an additional 15 minutes allowed for Q&A.
Deadline: The presentation should be finalized and presented to the sponsoring company during the last week of August (specific date to be arranged together with sponsoring company) and uploaded to Moodle prior to the deadline indicated.
Credits : The group presentation contributes 20% to the overall unit assessment per student.
Assessment Criteria : An indicative marking guide for the presentation is as follows:
|
Section
|
Proportion of marks
|
|
1. Summary of Purpose, Scope and objectives
|
15%
|
|
2. Research and/or benchmarking methodology, implementation & analysis
|
15%
|
|
3. Development, summary and review of proposed solutions
|
15%
|
|
4. Conclusions / recommendations including further work proposed
|
15%
|
|
Overall quality and professionalism of presentation material
|
15%
|
|
Overall quality of presentation delivery
|
15%
|
|
Effective handling and responses during Q&A
|
10%
|
Plagiarism: The University of Bath operates a strict policy with regard to plagiarism and what constitutes plagiarism. It is essential that all students familiarise themselves with this policy. Please note that all group work reports will be checked for plagiarism. Cases of plagiarism will lead to severe penalties. (Please check the following UoB webpage to learn more about how to avoid plagiarism: http://www.bath.ac.uk/learningandteaching/epigeum.bho/).