Assignment

Prompt: You have already chosen the company (Nordstrom Inc.) you will use for your final project, and you have started a narrative description of your expansion project into another country. In this milestone, you will build on that narrative description providing sufficient detail about the expansion, its costs, and its time frame to give a loan committee a firm sense of the proposed investment. You will also analyze the impact of the investment proposal on your business by explaining why now is the right time for this investment given the global context and by explaining how the investment is a good strategic fit with your company. This milestone addresses all of Section II and Section III (Parts A and B only) of the final project.

Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:

II. Investment Project: Use this section to describe the investment for which you are seeking funding, its costs, and time frame. Specifically, you should:

A. Describe the investment project. Be sure to provide sufficient detail to give the loan committee a firm sense of the parameters of the activity, the need for it, and what financial metrics are relevant for determining success. In other words, what do you propose to do, where, what marketplace ?need will it fill, and how will you measure success?

B. Specify the resources the project will require and where these resources will come from. In addition to noting the amount of the loan you are ?requesting, you should also consider human resources, facilities, government approvals, intellectual property, access to natural resources, and other ?resources that might be required to carry out the project.

C. Time frame. When will the project start, what is the anticipated economic life of the proposed expansion, and how will you decide if, when, or how ?to exit? Justify your choices with appropriate financial metrics.

III. Justification: In this section, you should analyze the impact of the investment proposal on your business. In particular, you should cover:

A. Why is now a good time for this investment given the global context? Justify your response, citing specific external factors such as trade regulations, foreign currency considerations, or trends in foreign direct investment that might affect business financial decisions.

B. Strategic fit. Use this section to discuss why the investment proposal makes sense for your company strategically. Specifically:

1. How does the investment align with the company's organizational and financial priorities? Support your argument with evidence from ?company reports and financial statement analysis designed to persuade the lender that the investment is a good strategic fit for your ?company.

2. How does the project fit within the global microeconomic environment? Support your response with evidence. For example, would the ?expansion tap unmet demand for the company's key products or services or fill a new niche? How do you know?

3. How does the project build on the organization's core competencies and comparative advantage? For example, does the company have a ?strategic advantage from intellectual property, regional expertise, suppliers, or organizational structure?