ASS#1 DRAFT
finally upload the draft, i will appreciate if someone of you leave feedback as the students in my group DID NOT response me.
Step 1: personal profile on Moodle & Blog
A link to my blog:
A link to the blog
links forum on Moodle:
Step 2: My firm and KCQs
Links to my company’s
annual reports:
2014 Annual Report
2013 Annual Report
2012 Annual Report
Background information on company
RELX Group is a
world-leading provider of information solutions for professional customers
across industries. It is owned by two parent companies: Reed Elsevier PLC and
Reed Elsevier NV. It serves customers in more than 180 countries and have
28,500 full-time employees worldwide. The main fields it provides is about
scientific, technical and medical markets. Also, in fields of risk &
business information, legal markets, exhibitions and so on. The Chairman of
RELX Group is Anthony Habgood, the Chief Executive Officer is Eric Engstrom.
Know my firm
Areas
of my firm’s financial statements I am having difficulty understanding:
I am a little
confused about the combined statement of changes in equity. Every category has
been classified into different types of equity. It is much complex to recognise
what each item is for.
Areas
of its business that seem most important or critical to you:
This company is
focusing on market segments. The most important area seems in the scientific,
technical & medical markets. Its objective is to help customers advance
science and improve healthcare by providing world-class content and innovative
information solutions that enable them to make critical decisions, enhance
productivity, and improve outcomes. It also supports these markets by publish
primary research, reference and education content, as well as a range of
database and workflow solutions.
Key
challenges the firm appears to be facing, how successful it appears to be in
meeting these challenges and its apparent strategy:
RELX Group makes
unique contributions as a business and good management on material areas such
as customers and environment. The main challenge in the area of customers is to
create “blueprint” to help sales stuff enhance their customer conversations and
CR on the agenda at five sales conferences. The company updated their intranet
resource and continued to incorporate CR into customers. The progress in 2014 it
had appeared is that CR fast facts document created and promoted across the
company. Sessions delivered to more than five sales teams across the company.
Moreover, RELX Group had progress in terms of environment challenges during the
last year. For example, the 2014 objective was to purchase 45% of electricity
from renewable energy certificates. During the year, they purchased 46% of
electricity from renewable energy and renewable energy certificates purchased
through US auction.
Comments on other’s blogs
My
top 3 blogs:
1. Renae Gordon
I like this lady's
blog! The look of home page is awesome. Those ideas about the chapter
discussion are clear and logical to understand. Renae responded everyone who
leaves comments in her blog, and was friendly to make a contact with other
students.
2. Emma Walker
Emma's key concepts
and questions about the chapter 1 and 3 are quite detailed. so many
detailed information and makes me know much about her company. I'd love to
learn from her, she is the one who gives me ideas to get started my
subject.
3. Sharon Andreassen
Love Sharon's blog
profile! There are many interesting pictures related her company. She did
a lot of research for the background information of her company. also, she gave
many evidence by analysing the company's financial statements, which is a good
way to get to know our companies. She put videos and latest news of her company
and pointed out the main concepts and her own ideas. That is a pretty good
example that I should learn from.
Comments
on my favourite blogs in the Blog Links Forum:
Step 3: input company’s financial statements
RELX Group spreadsheet
has been uploaded as requirement.
Step 4: KCQs
Chapter
1: a way of viewing business
It is absolutely a
good guidance that lets me get to know business and accounting which were not
familiar to me before. This is the first semester of my studying life in Australia,
which means a lot to me. I used to work for several years and I am interested
in business that enables me to create ideas about my career. Beginning is the
most difficult part during studying a new thing that never touched before. From
the chapter 1, I have got a new view of business and accounting.
I really like the definition
of business which is so clear and accurate to understand. It is also important
that value plays a key role in the field of business. The author explained that
“value is a word to describe things that matter to us, that we care about, that
mean something to us.” I strongly agree with that. Most people think of value
as in terms of money, but it is also about personal attitude in our own lives. To
start with setting up a business, the author told us that the challenge before
beginning is creating or destroying value. In my opinion, every item of
business is risky if an organisation have no a sophisticated system in its
business.
Accounting is one of
items in the sophisticated system. Companies could be a range of different
sizes, the way they manage account is different. To keep recording is the main
thing as a responsibility of accounting, I have been introduced the background
information and the history of accounting in the chapter 1. The author also
showed his own experience of studying law, such as completing assignments a few
days before due date and spending 8 hours practicing touch-type, finally he
handled that. It is totally university life, everyone would experience that and
learn from each other who has positive experiences.
There is an easier way
to bookkeeping than before. We live in a high-tech century. Recording every
transaction of a firm by using computer is a powerful and efficient way. Of course,
like the author said, bookkeeping without books.
It is a little complex
that accounting uses 2 types of books: journals and ledgers. They are different
ways to contain transactions of a firm, in particular, in different period. In my
opinion, it is about recording the daily transactions (journals) and containing
what happens in each individual account. Also, five elements of accounting are
another complicated part to me. I am not good at numbers and maths, so I was
confused with that sometimes.
From chapter 1, I have
known a range of new information about business and accounting. It is
beneficial to me not only in terms of university program but also in terms of
my career in the future.
Questions:
·
Why
is not equity in essence a residual item?
·
Why do
many chief executive officers end up running their businesses, as other senior
managers or as directors?
·
Why do
we have to use spreadsheet designed to support us to analyse our own listed
company, even there is no information helping?
·
If there
will be more than one owner in an organisation, how can disputes and problems
be arising between owners?
Chapter
3: introducing financial statements
At the beginning of
the chapter, there is a quite interesting introduction to explain financial
statement as meeting someone at a party. The way the author presented
absolutely attracts me to keep reading. In this part, I have been introduced some
new things like balance sheet, income statement, statement of changes in equity
and cash flow statement which are related with the five elements in the chapter
1.
“Hi Christian, you have completed everything as requested. I can see from that you are really happy with the company you have been given. Here are some advises I would like to provide as a feedback. In the step 2(know your firm), you could give more opinions about your company by looking at the annual report. Also, in the STEP 5, you would better to leave feedback to other 3 people’s blogs. Good luck with your study!”
One of new things in this
chapter is Ratios that I have never heard before. The author defined that it is
an idea used in analysing financial statements systematically. In other words,
Ratios supports the process of assessing businesses. With the ratio had been
developed and improved during several centuries, the way was being used in a
range of industries and different countries. It is also necessary to know about
the history of what I am not familiar. Although
the author gave a number of examples, I actually do not understand what his
meanings are. Reading is exactly time-consuming. I have spent two to three days
reading these chapters, as I am an international student. I really need to pay
more attention on each program than others, so sometimes I felt tired to catch
up with the process. Even though I have read every each word in the content, I
did not completely understand the implication. It is not easy to remember each
part of accounting for me. However, studying accounting is a tough process that
I have to follow step by step. The first thing I must be facing is to
understand each section of accounting exactly means.
·
Why are parent company’s accounts usually of
little interest to us?
·
The author mentioned that the ratio is very
important, and why there is no clear reason why these various ratios should be
useful?
·
Why does a firm have no net cash flow from debt
owners and the F equals zero if the company has no debt or borrowings?
Step 5: student feedback
My group is group 4 with
Downman Stephsnie, Lam Trung Tuyen and Saini Simran. However, as none of them
response me, I leave feedback on other’s blogs. The following is the feedback I
provided to their blogs:
Feedback provided on Megan
Fenton’s blog:
“Hi Megan, I spent several
times taking a look at your blog which attracts me review the interesting
content. First of all, you have provided a good introduction of your company
and detailed information, as well as the annual reports. Also, uploaded the top
3 blogs and gave the reasons why you like these blogs in your own opinion. It
would be better if there are some questions created in the STEP 4 for each
chapter. You really have done a lot of works on your member’s blogs and
provided quality feedback to them. Good job!”
Feedback provided on Ngoc Ha
Pham’s blog:
“Good afternoon Ha Pham,
although you are not the member of my group, I would love to give you feedback
for your ASS#1 draft. Well done with the step 1&2! I can see the 3 years annual reports clear on
the page. The background information of your firm has been provided with
evidence and data, which means that you had done a lot of research on your
firm. Then, you have shown the top 3 blogs you are interested in. Expressing
your own opinion about the 2 chapters is an important part in this subject, be
advised that creating some questions about these chapters will be better. Best
wishes!”
Feedback provided on Christian
Testa’s blog:
“Hi Christian, you have completed everything as requested. I can see from that you are really happy with the company you have been given. Here are some advises I would like to provide as a feedback. In the step 2(know your firm), you could give more opinions about your company by looking at the annual report. Also, in the STEP 5, you would better to leave feedback to other 3 people’s blogs. Good luck with your study!”
