week 6 course project for walmart-JAGUAR
Now that the team has gathered its data, it is time to analyze the information and also make recommendations to management based upon what you found. What recommendations do you have concerning corporate governance, segregation of duties, and working with the external auditor? Remember the Three Es of an operational audit (economy, efficiency, and effectiveness) what would you recommend to the management of the company to increase the economy, efficiency, or effectiveness of the functions or areas that your team investigated?
In this phase, you are comparing what you found in your field work to what should be happening, and using this information to make recommendations to management on how operations could be run more efficiently, economically, or effectively.
This is the whole project, but i am only doing week 6 mentioned above Groups will be assigned by the instructor after the close of Week 1, and each group will be assigned an existing company to research for their project. The company will be one of the following: Home Depot, Walmart, General Electric, or Starbucks. If an individual should desire to work the group project as an individual (not with a group), he or she may do so by notifying the instructor during Week 1 of the course. After Week 1, students will be assigned to a group and must finish the project with that group.
Students assigned to a group are to first select a group leader. This individual will be responsible for keeping the group focused, on target, and will submit the groups final paper into the group Dropbox in Week 7.
Once the groups are in place and the company is assigned to the group, the group will review information that is available about the company. There are several documents available for each company in Doc Sharing to get you started, including the most recent annual report and a document containing four recent articles written about the company (gathered from a company search in our DeVry library). Using information in the Annual Report and through your own research, your group will perform an operational audit on selected areas of the company. Each week as we cover one phase of the operational audit, you will work with your group to perform that step for Home Depot, for example.
There is not a right answer to the project, since your group will determine which areas it wants to examine, and you will utilize commonly used auditing techniques (for example, performing ratio analysis on the financial information contained in the Annual Report or conducting hypothetical interviews with persons working at the company). The purpose of the project is to be able to identify issues that may need further investigation, and then perform the phases of an operational audit and report your findings to management. Have fun with this project, and use your imagination and creativity – there is no wrong answer!!
Click here for an animated overview of Group Dynamics.
The group project will be conducted on a weekly basis, with the final grade assigned in Week 8. The student’s individual grade will be comprised from the group effort, but will heavily factor in feedback from that student’s peers on the project. Thus, it is expected that not all group members will receive the same individual grade on the group project.
The form for peer feedback can be found in the Doc Sharing section. It will need to be submitted by each team member in the final week of the course. Initial Survey and Engagement Development Based upon your initial reading of articles and the Annual Report, identify three areas of the company which your group thinks may warrant further investigation through an operational audit. This could be anything from financial information to company structure to corporate culture to employee retention; in other words, anything that you read about the company which interests you could be an area to investigate!
Planning Phase In the Planning Phase, you will determine the sources of information to be gathered in order to investigate the areas you have identified. For example, if you believe that some of the financial data should be looked at, then the Annual Report would be the source of information. Perhaps an organization chart needs to be (hypothetically) requested, or policies and procedures manuals. Perhaps a physical inspection or interviews are needed in order to gather the necessary information.
Work Program Phase The Work Program Phase is the bridge between the Planning and actually doing the Field Work. In this phase, you will develop a work program in which you identify time, staff, and materials necessary to carry out that work program. A Gantt chart, similar to the one illustrated on page 113 of the Reider text, may be used, or any other similar schedule showing the allocation of audit team resources. In the real world, these schedules are used in all audits. They aid in the audit teams understanding of expectations, as well as the clients understanding of work to be performed for the company.
Field Work/Findings Phase Portion In the Field Work Phase, your audit team is (hypothetically) out at the company performing the audit techniques that you identified in your Work Program. The team may be conducting interviews, observing, reviewing company documents, calculating financial ratios, or benchmarking the companys data against competitors, among other things! What did your team find when it conducted its audit? This phase simply gathers the data collected out in the field.
Recommendations and Reporting Now that the team has gathered its data, it is time to analyze the information and also make recommendations to management based upon what you found. What recommendations do you have concerning corporate governance, segregation of duties, and working with the external auditor? Remember the Three Es of an operational audit (economy, efficiency, and effectiveness) what would you recommend to the management of the company to increase the economy, efficiency, or effectiveness of the functions or areas that your team investigated?
Jaguar
