WGU C218 Task 2: Business Analysis Report Guide (With a Worked Example)

Dan Palmer, MBA . Updated on: Sep 16, 2026

You finished the C218 simulation through Q6 on a bus ride home, a lunch break, or after the kids finally went down. Now Task 2 is asking you to turn six quarters of tactical plans, income statements, and scorecards into a formal Business Analysis report for the board, using WGU’s own Business Analysis Template, and you’re doing it around a full-time job and a family that still needs you at 6 p.m. This guide follows that exact template section by section, with a complete worked example attached so you can see what a finished submission actually looks like before you write your own.

A note on the example below. The worked example in this guide, and the attached filled-in template, use a fictitious company, NovaCraft Furniture Co. Your submission has to reflect your own six quarters of simulation data. WGU’s similarity checker and evaluators are both looking for that specificity, and a generic or copied analysis will not clear the c218 task 2 rubric no matter how well-written it is.

WGU C218 Task 2 Assignment Prompt

Introduction

After completing the business simulation at a competent level (a score above 0.000 for the cumulative total performance at the end of Q6), you will create a written report, using the attached “Business Analysis Template;’ for stockholders and the board of directors to review. Analyze the decisions throughout the simulation and evaluate the current state of the business.

Requirements

Your submission must represent your original work and understanding of the course material. Most performance assessment submissions are automatically scanned through the WGU similarity checker. Students are strongly encouraged to wait for the similarity report to generate after uploading their work and then review it to ensure Academic Authenticity guidelines are met before submitting the file for evaluation. See Understanding Similarity Reports for more information.

Grammarly Note:

Professional Communication will be automatically assessed through Grammarly for Education in most performance assessments before a student submits work for evaluation. Students are strongly encouraged to review the Grammarly for Education feedback prior to submitting work for evaluation, as the overall submission will not pass without this aspect passing. See Use Grammarly for Education Effectively for more information.

Microsoft Files Note:

Write your paper in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) unless another Microsoft product, or pdf, is specified in the task directions.Tasks may not be submitted as cloud links, such as links to Google Docs, Google Slide OneDrive, etc. All supporting documentation, such as screenshots and proof of experience, should be collected in a pdf file and submitted separately from the main file.For more information, please see Comp System and Technology Requirements

A. Using the attached “Business Analysis Template;’ create a written report for the board of directors and stockholders which includes al/of the following components:

Reflection on Decision Making

1. Reflect on the relationship between the corporate strategic thrusts selected during the simulation and the business decisions made by your company by doing the following:

a. Choose four of the selected strategic thrusts and identify one specific business decision that was influenced by each thrust, for a total of four distinct business decisions. Explain how each decision was influenced by its corresponding strategic thrust.

Note: The corporate strategic thrusts can be found in the simulation in Q6>Strategic Planning>Goals and Strategy, in the Strategic Thrusts section.

2. Reflect on the positive and negative impacts of your business decisions on your company by doing the following:

a. Explain how two business decisions were beneficial for your company. Include specific examples of benefits that resulted from your decisions.

b. Discuss two business decisions that you would change, why you would make each change, and what you would do differently, including specific details from the simulation.

Note: Support for your reflection may include clearly labeled graphs and other data, including indication of the time period(s). The decisions discussed in part A2 do not need to be the same as the decisions addressed in part A1.

Valuation and Return on Investment (ROI)

3. Discuss your company’s valuation and estimated return on investment (ROI) by doing the following:

a. Calculate your company’s Include each of the following in your response:

• an explanation of the chosen valuation methodology
• the calculation used to arrive at the valuation
• rationale for any assumption used in your calculation
• the financial data you used in your valuation

Note: Instructions for calculating valuation can be found in the course under “Preparing for Task 2.” Financial data such as the Q6 income statement or balance sheet can be exported from Q7 of the simulation or copy and pasted directly into the “Business Analysis” template.

b. Using the valuation calculated in part A3a, calculate your company’s estimated Include the calculation used to arrive at your estimate.

c. Explain the implications for investors of the ROI estimated in part A3b

Overall Financial Performance

4. Analyze the overall financial performance of the business using the financial reports from the simulation by doing the following:

a. Choose one metric from each of the following ratio For each ratio, analyze what the Q6 ratio numbers indicate about the company. Include industry performance measures for each metric.

• liquidity ratios
• activity ratios
• leverage ratios
• profitability ratios

Note: Industry performance measures can be found within the Industry Financial Ratios tab within the simulation. The Q6 ratio numbers are located on the Q7 tab.

b. Provide relevant cash flow activity numbers, including the Q6 totals, and explain what they indicate for the company for each of the following categories:

• cash balances (the top and bottom lines of the cash flow statement)
• cash flow from operating activities
• cash flow from investing activities
• cash flow from financing activities

c. Explain what the cash flow activities provided in part A4b reveal about the overall health of your company

d. Explain how three decisions that you made and are shown on your conscious scorecard affected the company’s performance.

B. Export the following Q6 reports from the simulation and submit them as attachments:

• the cumulative balance scorecard with an overall positive cumulative total performance score
• the conscious scorecard report
• income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement

C. Acknowledge sources, using in-text citations and references, for content that is quoted, paraphrased, or summarized.

D. Demonstrate professional communication in the content and presentation of your submission

WGU C218 Task 2 Example

C218_Task 2_Example Click to Download

What C218 Task 2 actually requires

Task 2 has one core deliverable: a written Business Analysis report, built on WGU’s attached “Business Analysis Template,” that a board of directors and stockholders could actually read to understand where the company stands after Q6. It only unlocks once your simulation has posted a positive cumulative total performance score, so the analysis itself always covers a company that reached competent territory, not a failing run.

The template splits into two halves. The first, Business Analysis, covers your Reflection on Decision-Making (the strategic thrusts and the decisions that came from them) and your company’s Valuation and Return on Investment. The second, Overall Financial Performance, covers your Financial Ratios, Cash Flow Analysis, and Conscious Scorecard Decisions. Every one of those five subsections maps to a specific rubric row, and every rubric row wants your own numbers, not a description of what the numbers are supposed to mean.

The sequence that fits around a full-time schedule

Task 2 rewards a specific order of operations more than any other C218 task, because two of its five sections depend directly on numbers from the other three. Working through it out of order is the single most common reason a solid weekend of writing turns into a rewrite.

1. Export your Q6 reports first. The cumulative balanced scorecard (with a positive cumulative total performance score), the conscious scorecard report, and the Q6 income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement all come straight out of the simulation. Pull all five before you open the template, since every later section references one of them.
2. Identify your four strategic thrusts before you draft the Reflection section. These live in the simulation under Q6 > Strategic Planning > Goals and Strategy, in the Strategic Thrusts section. Write down the one decision tied to each thrust while the reasoning is still fresh, not from memory next weekend.
3. Calculate valuation and ROI before you touch the financial performance sections. Your ROI calculation depends directly on the valuation figure from Part A3a, so getting the valuation methodology right first saves you from redoing the ROI math later.
4. Write the ratio, cash flow, and scorecard sections last, once your valuation and decision analysis are already on the page, so a study session that only has forty-five minutes in it can still finish one complete subsection instead of leaving four sections half-drafted.
5. Read your draft against the current rubric once, start to finish, checking that every “each” and every specific count (four decisions, two beneficial, two to change, three scorecard decisions) is actually satisfied.

If you already built a decision log for c218 task 1, extend that same spreadsheet through Q4 to Q6 rather than starting a new one; the investor presentation and the Task 2 stockholder analysis draw on overlapping decision history.

Reflection on Decision-Making: Corporate Strategic Thrusts

This subsection asks you to name the corporate strategic thrusts your company selected in the simulation, the priorities that shaped every later decision. Four is the number the rubric wants, and each one needs to trace back to something you can point to in Q6’s Strategic Planning screen, not a strategy you think you should have followed. In the worked example below, NovaCraft named Cost Leadership, Capacity Growth, Product Diversification, and Channel Expansion; your four will come from your own simulation’s Goals and Strategy section and will almost certainly read differently, since every student’s simulation run produces a different strategic path.

Reflection on Decision-Making: Four Business Decisions

For each of your four thrusts, identify one specific decision it influenced and explain the link between the two. “We raised R&D spending” is a fact; “we raised R&D spending because the Innovation thrust required it, and MTBF rose from X to Y as a direct result” is the explanation the rubric is grading. Keep each decision distinct from the other three. Four decisions that all trace back to the same pricing change will read as one decision described four times, not four decisions.

Reflection on Decision-Making: Beneficial Decisions

Pick two decisions, from anywhere in your six quarters, that clearly helped the company, and explain the specific benefit each one produced. The rubric wants both decisions explained with specific examples, not a general statement that a decision “worked out well.” A number that moved because of the decision, tied to the quarter it moved in, is what separates a competent answer from an approaching-competence one here.

Reflection on Decision-Making: Decisions to Change

Pick two more decisions, this time ones you’d change, and explain why you’d change each one and what you’d do differently, using specific details from your own simulation. This section rewards honesty more than any other part of Task 2. A decision that clearly cost the company money, explained candidly with the number attached, reads as stronger analysis than a vague admission that “results could have been better.” An evaluator who can see your own financial statements will notice if you skip past an obvious misstep instead of addressing it.

Valuation and Return on Investment: Valuation of Company

WGU’s course materials under “Preparing for Task 2” walk through the specific valuation approach your version of the course expects; follow that method exactly rather than defaulting to a generic formula. Whatever method you’re given, your response needs four things: an explanation of the methodology itself, the calculation used to arrive at the number, the rationale behind any assumption you made, and the financial data you pulled the calculation from. Q6 income statement or balance sheet figures can be exported directly from Q7 of the simulation, or copied straight into the template.

The worked example uses a discounted cash flow approach, since it’s one of the more commonly assigned methods and illustrates all four required pieces clearly: a growth-rate assumption, a discount-rate assumption, a terminal-value assumption, and the resulting number, each explained rather than just stated.

Valuation and Return on Investment: Return on Investment (ROI)

Using the valuation you just calculated, estimate the company’s ROI and show the calculation that got you there, not just the final percentage. Then explain what that ROI means for investors specifically: is it strong relative to the risk involved, how does it compare across the periods you have data for, and what does it suggest about where the company is headed. A percentage with no interpretation attached is the fastest way to lose points on an otherwise well-calculated ROI section.

Overall Financial Performance: Financial Ratios

Choose one metric from each of the four required categories, liquidity, activity, leverage, and profitability, and for each one, state what your Q6 ratio number indicates about the company and how it compares to the industry performance measures available in the simulation’s Industry Financial Ratios tab. Four ratios analyzed with real interpretation and a benchmark comparison outperforms ten ratios listed without either. The worked example below shows the shape this needs to take: name the ratio, state your number, say what it indicates, and compare it to the industry figure.

Overall Financial Performance: Cash Flow Analysis

Report your Q6 cash flow activity by category, cash balances (the top and bottom lines of the cash flow statement), operating, investing, and financing, and explain what each one indicates about the company. Then explain what the combined picture reveals about the company’s overall financial health, and connect three specific decisions shown on your conscious scorecard to how they affected performance. A company can look profitable on the income statement while its cash position tells a very different story; that gap, when it exists in your own data, is worth naming directly rather than smoothing over.

Overall Financial Performance: Conscious Scorecard Decisions

Identify three decisions reflected on your conscious scorecard and explain, logically, how each one affected the company’s performance. This is the one part of Task 2 that pulls the analysis outside pure financial metrics, so use whatever categories your simulation’s scorecard actually tracks, rather than writing generically about sustainability or ethics in the abstract. The worked example ties each scorecard decision back to a real cost or benefit shown elsewhere in the report, which is the connective thread evaluators are looking for here.

What the required attachments cover

Part B of Task 2 asks for three exports submitted alongside your written report: the cumulative balance scorecard showing a positive overall cumulative total performance score, the conscious scorecard report, and your income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement. These are pulled directly from the simulation, not written, so budget time to locate and export them correctly rather than assuming they’re a quick last step.

Parts C and D, sources and professional communication, apply to the whole document: every quoted, paraphrased, or summarized claim needs an in-text citation and a matching reference list entry, and Grammarly for Education has to clear before your submission will pass, so review its feedback before you upload your final draft, not after.

The NovaCraft Furniture Co. worked example

The example below continues the same fictitious company used in Gradevia’s C218 Task 1 guide: NovaCraft closed its $2.5M equity raise in Q4 and spent Q4 through Q6 executing the growth plan pitched in that investor presentation. None of NovaCraft’s figures come from an actual WGU simulation; they exist only to show how a completed Task 2 report reads once every section is filled in with real analysis instead of placeholder text. The full example, formatted directly in WGU’s own Business Analysis Template, is attached to this guide as a Word document.

Corporate Strategic Thrusts: Cost Leadership through Supply Chain Efficiency, Capacity Growth to Meet Demand, Product Line Diversification, and Channel Expansion through Retail Partnerships, each tied to one of the four priorities management set once the Q3 funding round closed.

Sample decision-to-thrust link: Under Capacity Growth, management used $1.4M of the raise to open a second production line, live by mid-Q5, directly addressing the plant-capacity constraint the Q3 tactical plan had already flagged as the binding limit on revenue growth.

Sample beneficial decision: The Q1 lumber contract renegotiation lowered unit production cost every quarter from Q1 through Q6, taking gross margin from 38% to 46% over that span, the single largest identifiable driver of the company’s margin gain.

Sample decision to change: Delaying the second production line’s construction from Q2 to Q4, waiting for the funding round to fully close, cost an estimated $45,000 in backordered Q4 sales; management would begin site preparation as soon as demand data confirmed a sustained backlog next time, rather than waiting on the capital.

Sample valuation: A discounted cash flow calculation using Q6’s $142,000 quarterly operating cash flow, an 8% near-term growth assumption, a 12% discount rate, and a 3% terminal growth rate produces an estimated valuation of $6,816,000.

Sample ROI: Comparing that valuation against a Q3 baseline valuation of $2,928,000 and the $2.5M invested produces an estimated ROI of 55.5%, a figure the example then weighs against the sensitivity of the underlying rate assumptions rather than presenting as a fixed outcome.

Sample ratio interpretation: A Q6 current ratio of 2.3, against an industry benchmark of 1.5 to 2.0, indicating a stronger-than-typical short-term cushion tied directly to cash retained from the equity raise.

Open the attached document to see all four Reflection subsections, both Valuation and ROI calculations, all four ratio categories, the full cash flow breakdown, and all three conscious scorecard decisions written out in full, formatted in the actual template you’ll submit.

Common C218 Task 2 mistakes

1. Fewer than four strategic thrusts, or fewer than four distinct decisions. The rubric counts; come up short and the whole Reflection section caps at approaching competence.
2. A beneficial decision or a decision to change with no specific example attached. “It helped the company” isn’t evidence; the number or event that proves it is.
3. Valuation without a stated methodology, calculation, rationale, and data source. All four pieces are required, not just the final figure.
4. ROI that isn’t built from the Part A3a valuation. Calculating ROI off a different number than the one you just justified breaks the chain the rubric is following.
5. Ratios listed without industry benchmarks. A number with no comparison point doesn’t tell a stockholder anything.
6. Cash flow categories reported without the Q6 totals. Every category needs its number, not just a qualitative description.
7. Fewer than three scorecard decisions, or ones not actually shown on your scorecard. Use what your simulation reports, not a general list of ESG talking points.
8. Missing the required attachments. A written report with no cumulative scorecard, conscious scorecard, or financial statements attached fails Part B outright, regardless of how strong the writing is.
9. Citations or reference list incomplete. Both are required together for anything quoted, paraphrased, or summarized.
10. Submitting before Grammarly for Education clears. The task doesn’t pass without it, so build in time to review that feedback before your deadline, not the night it’s due.

How C218 Task 2 connects to the rest of the capstone

Task 2 sits between the investor pitch in c218 task 1 and the reflection work in c218 task 3, and all three draw on the same underlying simulation run. If your course version uses a different course code for the same capstone sequence, the structure of this guide still applies; only the label on your transcript changes. For the investor-facing side of this same simulation, see the C218 Task 1 investor presentation guide and the C218 Task 1 guide and example; for the career management piece that follows Task 2, see the C218 Task 3 guide; and for how all three tasks and the simulation fit together as one course, see the WGU C218 MBA capstone guide or the broader WGU MBA course guides hub.

FAQ

Is there a c218 task 2 pdf version of this guide? The worked example is attached as a Word document formatted directly in WGU’s Business Analysis Template, which is more useful than a static PDF summary since you can see the actual section structure and formatting you’ll submit. Bookmark this page rather than searching for a separate download; it’s kept current as course versions change.

What are c218 task 2 answers, really? There isn’t a fixed answer key. Every student’s six quarters of simulation decisions produce different financial statements, different scorecards, and a different set of strategic thrusts, so a submission graded on specificity has to be built from your own numbers. What this guide gives you is the structure and the worked example; the numbers inside it have to be yours.

How is c218 task 2 different from c218 task 1 and c218 task 3? Task 1 is an investor pitch built from early simulation data. Task 2, covered here, is a deeper Business Analysis report built from your full six-quarter run, using WGU’s Business Analysis Template. Task 3 shifts to a career management reflection connecting your MBA experience to your professional path. See the linked guides above for each.

What is wgu c218, and how does the simulation feed Task 2? C218 is the capstone course for WGU’s MBA in Information Technology Management, built around a multi-quarter business simulation rather than a proctored exam. Task 2’s entire analysis is built from that simulation’s output: your decisions, your financial statements, your scorecards, and your tactical plan.

How long does C218 Task 2 take for a working student? It depends heavily on how organized your simulation exports already are by the time you sit down to write. Students who kept a decision log through all six quarters and export their reports as each quarter closes tend to move through the template in a handful of focused sessions; students reconstructing six quarters of reasoning from memory at the end usually need considerably longer.

Where this leaves you

The path through Task 2 is the same one WGU’s own template lays out: strategic thrusts, the decisions they produced, which ones helped and which you’d change, a defensible valuation, the ROI it implies, and then the financial and scorecard evidence that supports all of it. Your own six quarters of simulation data are what make each section real; no worked example, including the one attached here, substitutes for that. Verify your current rubric and task instructions before you finalize anything, since WGU does update course versions.

If you’re a working MBA student fitting C218 Task 2 around a job, a commute, and a family that needs dinner on the table, and you want a second set of eyes on your Q6 analysis before it’s due, message Gradevia on WhatsApp at +1 (564) 544-6924. Send over what you’ve got, even half-finished, and we’ll help you figure out what the numbers are actually telling you.

References

• Ayoush, M. D., Toumeh, A. A., & Shabaneh, K. I. (2021). Liquidity, leverage, and solvency: What affects profitability of industrial enterprises the most? Investment Management and Financial Innovations, 18(3), 249–259. https://doi.org/10.21511/imfi.18(3).2021.22
• Dwivedi, Y. K., et al. (2022). Information signals and bias in investment decisions: A meta-analytic comparison of prediction and actual performance of new ventures. Journal of Business Research, 155, 113424. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113424
• Kumar, J., Prince, N., & Baker, H. K. (2022). Balanced scorecard: A systematic literature review and future research issues. FIIB Business Review, 11(2), 147–161. https://doi.org/10.1177/23197145211049625
• Silva, C. A. T. (2023). Discounted cash flow: Theoretical and practical aspects of its use. Advances in Scientific and Applied Accounting, 16(3), 199–208. https://doi.org/10.14392/asaa.2023160309

This guide is written for academic coaching and assignment support purposes. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Western Governors University. Course codes, task letters, and rubric language referenced above are drawn from WGU’s publicly issued task overview for C218 Task 2 as of September 2026 and may change between terms.