I am back again with tales of my sojourn at Lagos Business School. We just concluded our first project, and it was a Corporate Financial Accounting (CFA) project. If you recall my last write up on my thoughts about accounting, then you can imagine how I felt when we got the task. I can admit I was initially anxious, as I usually am with any task that takes me outside my comfort zone, but in retrospect I should not have been as I can happily say it was a success. We were tasked with analysing ten (10) year financials of 2 companies in the same sector using of one of them as a benchmark with the main aim of providing recommendations to the management as well as investors of the company under review.
It involved us having to source for this data, extract the data and run extensive financial analysis on the data. We were required to also perform both qualitative research and analysis on the company under review and provide a comprehensive research report on our findings as well as a detailed presentation of same to the class for discussion and analysis. This analysis provided critical information about the financial health of the company, how efficiently they managed their resources, their growth trajectory as well as their profitability and future growth prospects. Some of the ratios we used in performing this analysis include, Profitability ratios such as gross profit and operating profit margin, Liquidity ratios such as current ratio and quick ratio and Gearing ratios such as interest coverage ratio and debt to capital ratio.
The project required a significant amount of work and made for a learning opportunity for the group as the subject matter did not fall into the discipline of most of the group members. This meant that other group members who were experienced and knowledgeable about it needed to take out time during the project work to teach the other group members, and this significantly helped to boost the general knowledge and confidence of most group members in dealing with the subject matter beyond just the project.
The learning aspect of this exercise was for me one of the best things about having to carry out this group project. The fact that we could learn, unlearn, and relearn from each other, even for those who were already comfortable with analysis such as this, I dare say they also learnt a thing or two. Again, this is one of the benefits of the group learning system, where team members can build each other up and help strengthen the weaknesses of one another.
In my opinion our major success factors were having a team where everyone was willing to put in the work and do their bit, having a group lead who was coordinated and able to push the team, having a laid-out plan for the work, assigning specific tasks, and most of all starting early. Starting early is always a good plan as it eliminates panic, rush, and unnecessary sleepless nights.
