GMAT Essays (AWA)

“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.”

In this argument the author concludes that the Apogee Company should close down field offices and conduct all its operations from a single location. To support this conclusion, the author provides evidence that when the Apogee Company had all its operations in one location, it was more profitable than it is today. But in my opinion, this argument is not very convincing from some reasons.
Firstly, the author provided us the evidence that it was more profitable when the company had all its operations in one location. This evidence is not creditable because it does not have any data to support it. Is it the only possible to get more profitable? The revenue also can be affect by lots of reasons such as low skill of employees, inefficient productivity, and poor management and so on. It cannot conclude that the lower profitable was caused by it did not operate from a single location, unless the author can rule out other factors relevant to diminishing profits.
Secondly, the author relies on a groundless assumption that centralization would get more profitable by cutting coasts and maintaining supervisions of employees. However, no evidence supports this assumption. The author ignored that centralization may increase the cost since the employees need to travel and stay in different places in order to meet their customers. It will create more losses such as wasting time and travel costs. In short, this assumption must be supported by a cost-benefit analysis of centralization and other possible cost and profit.
Last but not least, the background conditions cannot remain unchanged, so the situation in the past can be totally different from today. Many successful companies establish branches all over the world.
In conclusion, the argument lack credibility because the evidence cited does not lend strong support to what the author claims. To strengthen the argument, the author need to give more data and background and provide more evidence to prove that the company will get more profitable when it is centralization.

4-4.5

it stays within structure

I agree with the post above. The argument is nicely articulated; however, it lacks cohesiveness. I would suggest you follow some sort of template where you first outline the assumptions that can poke holes into the argument, then you use the present evidence to somewhat strengthen the argument and lastly, you wrap up with the conclusion.

Hope this helps.