Oxford Brookes University BSc (Honours) Applied Accounting

Skills and Learning Statement

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DATE: 29 August 2013

Word count: 1,936 (apart from title and contents pages)

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ACCA/OBU BSc (Honours) Research and Analysis Project the Skills and Learnin State!ent """#$d contentde%elo$!ent#co#uk

CONTENT
SECTION 1 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 3 Introduction..................................................................................... A critical evaluation of the PM meetings........................................ First meeting................................................................................... Second meeting............................................................................. Third meeting................................................................................. An evaluation of the extent of meeting my project objectives and hence answering the research question........................................ Critical assessments of the interpersonal and communication skills during the research............................................................... An evaluation of the contribution of the RAP towards my accountancy studies and career prospects.................................... Conclusion...................................................................................... PAGE 1 1 1 2 2

5 6

ACCA/OBU BSc (Honours) Research and Analysis Project the Skills and Learnin State!ent """#$d contentde%elo$!ent#co#uk

1. Introduction
This content contains an evaluation of the experiences and skills learned during the process of undertaking the Research and Analysis Project (RAP). It attempts to answer four basic questions as required by Oxford Brookes University (OBU) for the fulfilment of the requirement of the RAP. Therefore, I tried to answer all four questions required by OBU for the fulfilment of the requirement of the BSc (Honours) in Applied Accounting.

2. A critical evaluation of the PM meetings

As far as completing the RAP is concerned, the meetings with the project manager (PM) helped me a lot and I gained a lot of experience from it.

2.1 First meeting

During the first meeting with the PM, I actually came to a realisation that to be a qualified BSc Honours degree holder, there is a lot of work you need to do. Because my mentor was a very busy man, I decided that there should be an alternative scheduled date if my PM could not make it up to the first date. This was one thing I learned from doing this RAP, that whenever you are planning for an important meeting with someone with a very busy schedule, have an alternative date in mind as a contingency. It proved right because the first scheduled date did not materialise, and I remember, speaking over the phone when my PM had to say that, ...really I am very sorry for the planned meeting date because I will not be able to make it. Something urgent came up and I have been authorised by my boss to take action. But if you already have an alternative date in mind, please just prepare towards this date. Thanks. So before receiving the phone call, I already had the state of mind that there could be a Plan B kind of meeting.

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During this meeting, my PM also said that I should make sure that I was not just to answer questions but also to ask as much as I could answer. This really made a lot of sense to me because I was only focusing on answering questions from him. He stressed further that, whenever you are going to a one-on-one meeting always have the idea of not just there to answer questions from the person, but to ask as much as it is possible because sometimes feedback only comes from answers to certain questions you put forward. One important thing I did at the first meeting was to not elaborate too much on answers from the PM, and tried as best as possible for these answers to be short. He was really happy that I could respond straight to the points. But later after the meeting, I realised that my PM was taking note of my body language which seemed to be in contrast with my words. He was not happy about this and had to advice me later during the second meeting.

2.2 Second meeting

At the second meeting, which happened during a lunch with my PM, I was really ready to ask him a lot of questions as I needed a lot of answers from him regarding the difficulties I was going through during my research. But the mistake I did was that I could not write down the specific and technical aspects of these questions, which had me wasting a lot of my PMs time, because I had to go over the documents before giving him the specific questions. So I learned here that when dealing with a project work always write down specific and technical problems you face during the work, because people can easily respond to questions with specific or technical points.

2.3 Third meeting

This meeting was my last meeting with my PM and I had to make a presentation. During the presentation, I was attempting to explain clearly in some amount of detail, but my PM pointed out to me that I should focus on the key points and be aware of the time, as I had only 15 minutes to do this presentation. I learned that presentations should always

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focus on the time and the main points. He was happy that I involved a good amount of charts and tables.

3. An evaluation of the extent of meeting my project objectives and hence answering the research question
So far the RAP is concerned; I believe that I have answered the questions to this research, though there are certain limitations mentioned in the Research and Analysis Report (RAR). In carrying out the analysis on the financial statements, I have made sure to state or explain any result obtained and found out the reasons for any changes observed. As ratio analysis was extensively used during the analysis of the date, these ratios were different when compared with other years. So I had to go further and did a thorough analysis. The reasons for any differences in these ratios were either explained or stated in the reported. As I stated in the RAR, the questions I was going to answer regarding the project were: 1. Has the Company really done well over the three year period chosen for the RAP, and in comparison with some of its main rivals in the industry? In answering this question, I have done a thorough analysis of both the financial and non-nonfinancial data of the company, made certain comparisons with John Lewis Partnerships, a key rival, and found out that the company did satisfactorily well given the results from the analysis. 2. Secondly, post recession reports like the performances in 2009 and 2010 were my other concerns. And with this, I was able to come out that the recession did affect the companys performance as well. 3. Also one point I wanted to find out was the impact of the companys strategy on its performance. This I came out with, showing the companys change of strategy from being too centralised to a system of allowing store managers to get involved in the decision making as they are the ones who know more about customer concerns.

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I was going to use a lot business models to help in evaluating the business area performance of the company, but due to the limitation in the word count because if I used a lot of models in evaluation the business performance of the company, all of these models would not give detail enough assessment, living room for improper conclusion. So given the details involved in all the requirements I put forward to answer my research question, I think I have actually met these requirements based on the techniques been used during the analysis of data.

4. Critical assessments of the interpersonal and communication skills during the research
This RAP has helped me a lot in the area of interpersonal and communication skills. Doing this research made me realise the fact that communication skills is an important component of every graduate. For the fact that I did all the research work is a personal realisation that I can use such communication skills to do a research work and come out with certain solutions. During my PowerPoint presentation, I realised that I could go on in preparing a PowerPoint from a research work and make a presentation involving some amount of talking to certain individuals. Now I can evaluate relevant information sources and come up with the most important points for a given amount of time for doing a presentation. Also during the PM meetings, I realised that ones body language is an important component in interpersonal communication. I came to understand the difference in approach when you are talking with someone in a position such as a supervisor. I had to talk to various people during the process of gathering the data for my research. Some of these people, talking to them had involved some technicalities. As I mentioned earlier, there are certain questions of a technical nature that when you are putting forward these questions to a professional or someone who understands the particular

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concerned area, you have to be technical enough in order to get a quick response from the person. Otherwise, You are going to get the person to kind of decode the question first; changing it to his/her own language before attempting to give you an answer or a response. This RAP has really improved my level of writing. Before, especially when I started my research, it was really hard for me to pick up the most relevant information from the variety of sources. But as the work went along, I became confident and developed some aspects of picking out relevant information in the fastest possible time. I became faster in word processing as well. Now I can type faster than when I just started my RAP, because I did all the typing and editing by myself. I typed every detail contained in this RAP.

5. An evaluation of the contribution of the RAP towards my accountancy studies and career prospects
Completing this RAP does not only make me fulfil the requirements for the BSc degree, but also helped me a lot towards my accountancy studies. Now my communication skills have improved to a level that I can now easily evaluate scenarios in exam type questions in the ACCA exams, far better than before. Now I also realise that I am able to read faster and longer than before. Before starting this RAP, I could not read longer than two hours at a particular period, but now I can sit down to read for longer than four hours at a particular moment. The RAP has also helped to read al lot in relevant areas of the ACCA syllabus that will help me through my studies for the Professional Level of the syllabus. This includes contents I have read in the P3, Business Analysis Syllabus. I have been able to thoroughly study the models involved in the syllabus The RAP has also helped me a lot in the area of applying concepts, techniques and business models in a practical scenario. Now I understand more how to apply accounting techniques in a practical way. I am now able to use ratios to apply them in

ACCA/OBU BSc (Honours) Research and Analysis Project the Skills and Learnin State!ent """#$d contentde%elo$!ent#co#uk

the analysis of the financial performance of a particular company. Before, all I learned during my previous studies was the use of ratio analysis, given the financial data of a fictitious company. Now, as I have used these techniques on a real life company, I have realised more the relevance of these techniques and how they help greatly in practice, and their worth is invaluable. One other benefit in doing the RAP is the ability to prepare and present an argument in the form of a PowerPoint presentation in front of a number of people. This has helped me greatly in that I will now feel confident whenever I am asked by a superior or supervisor to do a presentation. I am now also able to prepare a financial report and make clear interpretation and analysis from it.

6. Conclusion
So far this SLS has given an assessment and evaluation of the experiences and skills that I have learned during the process of completing the RAP. Some important aspects and critical mistakes made that the PM had to advice corrected me has been explained. And the fact that I did a lot, though there were limitations, in answering the research questions has also been mentioned in this content. And more over how my communications skills have improved and how the RAP has contributed to my accountancy studies and career prospects, has also been mentioned in this content.

ACCA/OBU BSc (Honours) Research and Analysis Project the Skills and Learnin State!ent """#$d contentde%elo$!ent#co#uk