GMAT Essays (AWA)

Please review and score my AWA

Please review and score my AWA

The following appeared in a memorandum from the business department of the Apogee Company:
"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."


My Analysis: The argument that holds the field offices of Apogee Company solely responsible for its loss omits many other probable factors which must be addressed to substantiate the argument. Simply stating that Apogee company will be more profitable if it operates from one location doesn't provide strong support to the main argument.

The argument doesn't say anything about the other probable reasons of the loss of the Apogee company. For example if the branch offices had been set up at wrong locations without proper market survey of that area this might have been a major reason of their failure. The argument also doesn't throw any light on the measures adopted to bring business to the branch offices. If proper methods were adopted to bring business to the branch offices they might have been proved as asset to the company. Most importantly if the reasons of the loss of the company are something else like less demand, better competitor then cutting down the field offices will not have any positive impact. Also the logic put forward by the argument that closing down branch offices will improve profitability by cutting cost and facilitating better supervision of employee is a very weak attempt to support the main argument. Closing off the branch offices might reduce the cost temporarily but it can't contribute towards the profit of the company in the long run as this means cutting down the future business prospects. Also better employee supervision can be attained in the field offices too with proper planning and leadership. One more major drawback of having office at only one location is the risk of losing business for a long time if anything goes wrong with that office. Field offices can act as disaster recovery centres in case of any natural or other major technical disasters occur in the central office.

Because the argument leaves out several key issues, it is not sound or persuasive. If it included the
areas discussed above instead of making the branch offices fully responsible for the loss of Apogee company, the argument would have been more thorough and convincing.