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A GUIDE TO REPORT WRITING - Part II
“How to choose a suitable topic for your report”
Siddique Hayat Khan
“SIR, my bank is asking me to do a report on foreign exchange, but there isn't much to write about, I'm afraid.” “Really?” I asked innocently. “Yes sir, it will be too small a report if I do this; will you accept that? “Son, I would like to differ with you; I think ten interns can write ten different reports on different aspects of a bank's foreign exchange. And there will still be ample scope left for others”. A typical conversation I often have with my interns. My advice to you is finalize your research topic within the first 2 3 weeks of your organizational attachment. Some organizations, at the beginning of the attachment period, will hand you over a list of topics to choose from. I've even seen some multinationals specifying a topic along with the acceptance letter, which means the intern has no choice. In one way it is better; it makes your life (as well that of your supervisor) much easier. Given too many choices, interns tend to take longer time in making up their minds. If you are given the freedom to choose your topic, my advice is talk to your faculty advisor; s/he is the one who can help you best in this regard. S/he can tell you which topic goes well with your major area and would be manageable for you. You may very well have a list of some “real cool” topics. Sit with him/her with the list and narrow down on a single topic on enough data is available. You also need to take consent of your supervisor (from the host organization), because s/he is responsible for providing necessary data. Carry a notebook; note down every details of the works that you are assigned everyday. Meet your faculty advisor at least once a week with the notes at an agreed upon time. In my case, I ask my students to come on Saturdays, because that's their off day.
§ Carry a notebook everyday to note down all tasks assigned to you from time to time. Most organizations will place you at different departments by rotation, so that end of the attachment period you will have gained experience on the whole business.
§ Sit with your faculty advisor with the notes at least once a week. This will help you immensely in deciding the topic and will expedite the report writing.
§ Finalize your topic ASAP. Don't linger until the last week of submission. The sooner you do that the better it is for you.
§ Once you finalize the topic, stick to it. Identify possible sources of data. The starting point should be the annual report of the company that'll provide you with the financial statements and other info. If you intend to analyze the trend of say. sales or performance over the years, you'll need the annual reports of 2-3 consecutive years. So get them (annual report) as soon as you can; most organizations provide them at no cost. These can also be bought from pavement stalls near the DSE building or at Nilkhet.
§ Read relevant texts from the reference books prescribed by your faculty advisor and include them in your report as part of theoretical background. Many organizations maintain a pool of resources like journals, news bulletins, and publications. Banks have training departments and libraries with rich collection of books, journals, and reports. Make proper use of them with due permission.
Some probable topics for finance, marketing, MIS and HRM major:
Today banks take the largest number of interns. Besides, mobile phone operators, RMG manufacturers, buying houses and property developers take a sizeable number of interns every year. Multinationals however are quite selective, but accept few interns from only top business schools.
Finance major students doing internship at a bank:
§ Credit Management, Credit Risk Management and Credit Risk Analysis are quite popular and usually require lots of analyses to determine the creditworthiness of borrowers. This will include the process that your bank follows in doing that.
§ Performance Analysis of a Bank is quite common that involves various types of ratio analyses of commercial banks. Your financial management teacher must've hammered them pretty well inside your brain.
§ You may also consider showing the Deposit mix of a bank and their trend over the years. As you've seen in your financial institutions course, a bank's liabilities include different deposits like the demand deposit, savings deposit, …. etc. Over the period, their proportion changes due to various economic factors like changes in interest rates. You may show their trend and attempt to analyze reasons. Relationship between the bank's deposits and the Interest Rates on them will focus on establishing a cause effect relationship.
§ A Bank's credits in different areas, their trend over the years and their relationship with interest rate have always been of special interest to interns as well as academics. The volume of credit given by banks in different areas like agriculture, SME, industrial, etc. vary from time to time. This study will attempt to see if a significant relationship exists between the volume of credit and interest rates.
§ Asset Liability Management (ALM) of a commercial bank is an excellent topic. But I haven't seen many students taking this.
Marketing major students (Bank/FMCG):
§ Market share of different credit cards: You may decide to make a comparison among different financial products, like debit/credit cards of a bank, or those of different banks.
§ Customer satisfaction of different credit/debit cards or any other banking products: Based on feedback from customers, you may carry out study to determine customers' preference on different debit/credit cards or different consumer loans.
§ Comparison of market share/popularity of different fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) soap, detergent, etc. would be a good idea.
§ Analysis of spending pattern at superstores: It will take you a lot of interviewing of customers and processing data to determine the consumer behavior at superstores like agora, PQS, etc.
For MIS major students:
§ MIS system of a large corporation: Most multinational corporations like the Unilever, BAT and GP have long implemented their automated MIS, based on modern servers and LAN/WAN. Large national companies like Rahim Afrooz and Transcom groups have also done it. You'll find things are quite organized and well defined there. That includes different levels of Information System the ESS (Executive Support System), DSS (Decision Support System), MIS (Management Information System), KWS (Knowledge Work System), and TPS (Transaction Processing System). You may analyze how the existing MIS is serving the different levels of users. To what extent they are helpful in decision making and effective in improving performance. I bet you'll need a lot of flow charts and data flow diagrams to show the flow of info and its weaknesses, and how it can be made more efficient and fault tolerant (show your backup plan). Show any improvement you recommend in the data/table structure and relationship between tables. Don't forget the security issues involved.
§ MIS system of a superstore: It is difficult to imagine a superstore like PQS, Agora or S&S doing business without a full-grown, automated MIS. In each of these places you'll definitely find an MIS interconnected with other stores of the chain. One module of the MIS, for instance, keeps track of the goods arriving at the stores, adding them to the stock. Any sale of a good at one the POS (Point Of Sales) terminal is instantly recorded and the amount is deducted from the stock (as part of perpetual inventory control). Another module alerts the manager when a good has gone below the reorder level. End of the day, the MIS connects all the stores under the chain and prepares a complete list of goods to be ordered for the next day. Statements on suppliers, payments made to them and amounts due are prepared by another module. There are at least one dozen of areas where you can study and make your report.
For HRM major students there are many attractive topics:
§ Evaluation of training program of an organization
§ Selection process of an organization and its analysis
§ Analysis of existing recruitment, training and placement process
§ Promotion and increment policies and their evaluation
You may choose any of the above areas like the existing (a) selection process, (b) training and placement, (c) performance evaluation, (d) promotion and increment policies, (e) grievance procedures, analyze the existing systems, identify their shortcomings, and recommend for possible improvements.
(To be continued
Sr. Lecturer, UODA 1/7)
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