BUSA 3110: Business Management and BUSA 3255: Corporate Strategy: Company

To better understand a company, its performance in the market and the factors that affect it, you need to understand the whole picture of that universe.  This includes :

• Company’s financials
• Products and services
• SWOT reports (Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)
• Industry pressures and challenges
• Competitors
• Analyst reports

While you should certainly look at the company’s website, note that will only help you gain insight into that company's opinion about itself.  For other opinions about a company’s issues and performance, there are several types of library databases that will help.  They are generally divided up by the type of information they contain although there are some exceptions such as OneSource, which gathers by company name several different types of information.

Using the company stock symbol helps you find consistent company analysis from resource to resource by making sure you are comparing the same company, and not any subsidiaries.

You can access the current list of Fortune 500 companies via the Fortune website.

Hoovers
Contains company profiles, analyst reports, SWOTs, and market research reports under the NAICS code link..

• Search by Company Name
• Once on the results page, click on the link for your correct company
• Use the left hand menu to select specfic pieces of information on that company.

Example of SWOT analysis from Hoovers:

While many U.S. companies are privately held, financial data is often available for both public and private companies.  This can appear in annual reports and SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) required financial filings for public companies.  These can be found in many library databases.