Hello all,
I have just finished writing my first AWA Essay and looking for feedback.
Admittedly the model answer has been published however I thought it be best to gain tailored feedback to my actual response.
I planned and wrote the essay in 30 mins (test conditions).
5 mins planning
20 mins writing
5 mins proofreading
Question: “When the Apogee Company had all its operations in one location, it was more profitable than it is today. Therefore,
the Apogee Company should close down its field offices and conduct all its operations from a single location. Such
centralization would improve profitability by cutting costs and helping the company maintain better supervision of all
employees.”
Answer:
The author claims that it would be beneficial for apogee to close its field office and return to if former operation structure of having only one central hub to reduce costs and improve profits and employee supervision. The authors conclusion gained from the presenting information i rather weak due to several flaws; which include but are not limited to, the lack of yearly, or monthly sales figures, the lack of a cost breakdowns for the creation and operation of the field offices as well as the lack of any information such as the types of products/services offered by the company or operational information to determine whether increase employee supervision would reduce costs and increase profits.
Firstly, the author does not present the audience with any past demand forecasts or sales figures (either monthly or yearly). For example, it may not be the fact that field office operational costs are reducing overall corporate profits, it may for example be a reduction in sales reducing revenue and therefore profits. Conversely if these sales figures and future demand forecasts were provided it would mitigate this weakness showing that reduces sales were not the reason for lower profitability helping strengthen the author's claim and position.
Secondly, the author fails to provide costing information of the change in operational structure, these costs may still be impacting the short-term profitability of the company especially if short-term high interest loans were used to develop this operational change, which could naturally increase short-term costs, resulting in reductions in profits. The authors lack of statistical data regarding costs and possible focus on short-term results weakens the overall conclusion. Conversely if this information was provided and showed that the company was incurring increased costs to achieve above industry below average profits in the future, this information would help strengthen the authors conclusion, however the author's claim in its current form isn't provided any strength from numerical data.
Finally, the author believe that returning to one central operational hub would help increase employee supervision. Nevertheless we are not provided with any information stating that this would be beneficial to either the operations of the company or result in reductions in costs or increases in profits. For example this claim could be strengthen if the author provided the audience with some information regarding the type of service in which apogee provided to customers and the type of customers it serves. This information may provide us with deeper insight into corporate operations. Increasing supervision my reduce the ability for employees to travel or provide creative solutions, reduce quality, possible reducing customers and therefore profits. Moreover it could be stated that increased supervision may results in increased costs to the organisation through hiring more managers to manage the supervision of employees, this in itself being detrimental to corporate profits. Therefore to strengthen the authors current assertion either quantitative or qualitative information of this nature must be provided to strength their current analysis.
In conclusion the author need to provide essential information to support their claims, the aforementioned statistics and information could serve as a basis for a stronger conclusion. Unfortunately, in the arguments current form the authors conclusion can be said to be, extremely weak.
Above is my Second AWA essay, I will try to post at least two more.
If you have the time, please provide me feedback on my writing style or any improvements I could make to this essay. Grammar points, sentence structure/length as well as alternative flaws.
Thanks in advance!