BCE (Babson Consulting Experience) Library Resource Guide

Resources for Experiential Learning
 
 

How to Approach Your Research

To properly research your company/industry for strategy analysis, always approach it using three perspectives:

  • Company perspective - SEC filings, website, company investor presentations, earnings conference calls, etc
  • Industry view  - how are they viewed by competitors, where do they fit in the industry, how does the market rate them?
  • Expert perspective  -  use the experience and opinions of an industry analyst to better evaluate performance and problems such as from an investment research report from Investext or in-depth market research from Gartner or similar higher level analysis.

Where to Find Different Types of Information

What are you looking for?

Company Information including:

  • Analyst reports
  • Stock prices
  • Financial information including annual reports, quarterly reports and associated presentations & transcripts
  • Company history & overview
  • Competitors
  • Company's vision & mission
  • Management team, board members
  • Products and/or services 
  • News articles 

Industry Information including:

  • Industry reports & overviews
  • Trends
  • Key Players
  • Current news
  • Ratios & comparables (comps)

Market Research including:

  • Market overviews
  • Market size
  • Consumer data
  • Demographic data
  • Economic data

Competitive Environment including:

  • Making company lists to find competitors
  • Market share & competitive landscape