A2. Analyze the financial and leadership strengths and weaknesses of the Utah Opera before the merger.
Financial strengths of the opera are positive cash flow, cash reserves and assets as well as fund raising. The opera has done a remarkable job maintain their expenses and making a profit. This is attributed by good fundraising and having strong sponsor. They also have great leadership strength from Anne and her experience in management and seeing success. Some of the financial weaknesses of the opera comprise of net losses on their rental income and expense. This has caused their books to not look very clean even though they show positive profits. Another weakness is a major decline in performance revenue and ticket sales. This could lead to a loss in profit if the current trend continues. Another weakness of the opera was the resignation of Leslie Peterson who is the daughter of the Opera’s founder.
a. Recommend the key steps Anne should take to address these weaknesses.
I believe an effective way that Mrs. Ewers could address the financial weaknesses of the opera would be by upping the rental charges for the rental agreement of their stage equipment. This agreement is currently causing in a net loss of close to one hundred thousand dollars, to generate a profit. In order to help with the decrease in ticket sales Anne needs to reassess the target audience for the opera to ensure that it is still in line with the current advertising and consumer wants. Another thing that she could do would be increasing the ticket prices for admission to the concerts. This would add overall revenue and help battle the current drop attendance.
A3. Analyze the four aspects of the scorecard from the attached “Business Scorecards” for each company.
After evaluating the score card for both he Opera and the Symphony it is obvious that there are some issues that need to be corrected. While some aspects of the Symphony’s scorecard do a good job stating the vision and mission of the organization it lacks a metric that could help increase customer satisfaction. For example, hoping to receive 80% or higher on customer exit surveys after a performance. When considering their internal processes, I feel that a target for the amount of progress based on cash or percentage is indispensable. Lastly, when weighing their learning and growth, I feel that a measurable target should be combined with an increase in ticket sales by 10% and a customer return rate of 60% and above.
When looking at the scorecard for the Opera there are other areas which need some attention. In the financial perspective section it is important that they measure the increasing reserve fund by associating it with a measurable assessment tool that can be monitored daily, weekly, monthly and annually. In the customer perspective section the strategic goal is having a nationally and regionally acclaimed accredited Opera. While this is a good goal they are measuring it by having sold out or nearly sold out performances. This just doesn’t seem to be the suitable measurement for a customer oriented perspective goal.
In the internal process perspective section it looks like the Opera’s goal is to maintain financial stability and attracting top talent. This is a good goal; however the critical success factor is listed as having successful negotiations with selected performers. It seems like these this critical success factor doesn’t tie in very well to the strategic goal which is listed in the internal processes section. In addition, the measurement for this is done by measuring profitability, which relates back to the strategic goal of maintaining financial stability, but it also include having reviews observing the quality of concerts which doesn’t directly connect back to drawing top talent or having effective negotiations with some of the performers which makes it appear that the goals contradict each other. We can also see this in the learning growth perspective where it seems like the success factors in the measures don’t correctly line up with the strategic goal.