...discussed, problems and opportunities identified, alternative presented and evaluated using the situation analysis and relevant financial analysis, and a decision must be made. An analysis that omits part of the situation analysis or only recognizes one alternative is not a good analysis. Second, each area must be covered in-depth and within insight. 2. Avoid rehashing case facts. Every case has a lot of factual information. A good analysis uses facts that are relevant to the situation at hand to make summary points of analysis. A poor analysis just restates or rehashes theses facts without making relevant summary comments. 3. Make reasonable assumptions. Every case is incomplete in terms of some piece of information that you would like to have. A good case analysis must make realistic assumptions to fill in the gaps of information in the case. For example, the case may not describe the purchase decision process for the product of interest. A poor analysis would either omit mentioning this or just state that no information is available. A good analysis would attempt to present this purchase decision process by classifying the product and drawing upon real life experience. Could you not describe the purchase decision process for a bike, even though you have never read a research report about it? 4. Don’t confuse symptoms with problems. In summarizing an agency’s problems a poor analysis confuses the symptoms with real problems. For example, one might list two problems as (1)...
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...Mr Lardo Hotel Manager Panorama Hotel Via Umberto Sicily Mr Van der Vaart Sales manager Electronics RDC Kerstraat 26 Eindhoven Holland February 15th 2008 Dear Mr Jan Van der Vaart I would like to thank you for taking time to inform us of the issues you reported earlier on today. On behalf of Panorama Hotel, please accept my apology for your unpleasant stay at the Panorama Hotel from 5th to 8th of February 2008. We strive to ensure our patrons experience the best visit possible during their travels or as in your case business conferences and we fell our goals this time. I would like to inform you that I personally have taken the necessary steps to inform the appropriate department of the problems raised. To prove to you that we have taken every complaint seriously, we have attached a revised copy of your bill, where you can see I have credited your account with an allowance of the amount that was paid extra by you. On behalf of Panorama Hotel I do hope that this gesture will go some way in apologizing for the problem you reported. And we also have enclosed an invitation in this letter offering a free two-night stay at any departments of our hotel. We hope you will see the improvement and enjoy your time with us next visit. Please do not hesitate contact me if you have any further question or comments connecting your stay. We look forward to welcoming you back in the near future. Thank you. Sincerely, Hotel Manager Mr...
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...GS1140 Unit 2 Research Paper 1: Experiment You are a supervisor in an office setting and you have noticed tension growing amongst your staff members. The problems have become apparent not only to other employees but to the customers as well. For fear of damaging the business’ reputation and in turn this affecting sales, it is necessary for you to investigate the situation further and to restore a pleasant work environment. To begin you must establish a plan of action. First identify the main source of the problem. Interview all parties knowledgeable of the situation. Be sure to take note of comments and suggestions given by staff members during your one-on-one interviews. Often those close to the situation have great insight on how to end such conflicts. Once you have conducted your investigation determine the level of priority this situation deserves. Ask yourself if this is low priority, meaning something that can possibly work itself out or is it a situation that needs prompt attention and an immediate solution implemented. Consider if the problem may be solved amongst staff or perhaps a third-party intervention may be necessary. Remember, you have to work with the individuals, so it might be necessary to involve a third-party. When you have planned your course of action, it is time to bring everyone together and inform them of your solution. Remember to remain calm, communicate effectively, be fair and use good management skills. Once you have given set instructions...
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...$16 million gross sales by the engineering department. The supply department consisted of the supply manager, a buyer and two clerks. Multiple problems led up to the main problem in this case, one of those is the fact the engineering and production departments would contact the expediter in ordering instead of going through the requisitioner. This in turn caused faulty paperwork on items leaving the stockroom and the books would start to get out of order. Another problem was that there isn’t enough communication between departments and this has led to drop in efficiency. Everyone claims they did their job correctly but there isn’t a paper trail to prove it. Assumptions: The supply manager had no technical training on the job which is highly technical in nature, it was assumed that he had a fair grasp of the engineering terminology used in the field and so she could handle the department. She definitely was dealing with as little as she understood and so the expeditor took over the procurement process bypassing the important part of the process. The expediter who was formerly one of the technicians in the production shop and had some technical training in the army but had no background in strategic procurement processes was often contacted on ordering problems, he was not following the requisition procedures. Defining the issue: The main issue and statement of problem here is the expediter...
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...pressed to send a message to someone else in the company – electronic (possibly generates an email) * Digital display – visual * Management telling call centre staff that it is their problem – face to face or email 2. How can bad communication (9 in total) a. Damage the relationship between customers (3) * Customers’ upset as they are being chased for bills already paid * When they ring they are upset and staff do not have the answers for them * Workers then get upset at how angry the customers are and find it hard to deal with them * Customers may cancel take their business to another company * This could lead to a decrease in sales and therefore profit * The company reputation would suffer if customer service did not improve b. Demotivate workers (3) * Workers are upset by dealing with angry customers * The customers are angry because the systems and processes are not in place * When a message is sent “it is fairly random whether something is done about it” * Workers feel that managers are blaming them for waiting times being too long and that they are spending too much time with each customer * Workers feel that there are not enough staff to deal with the calls * Workers demotivate each other by discussing the problems at lunch time c. Create inefficiency in the workplace (3) * Processes are not in place so letters are sent in error (costing...
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...focused entirely on custom made furniture. Their customers specify the kind of wood that’s used to create the pieces they want. As the company’s reputation grew and sales increased, the Chad’s Creative Concepts began to sell some of its more popular pieces to retail furniture stores. This has allowed the company to produce a more standard line of furniture. These buyers however, are much more price-sensitive and impose a more stringent delivery requirement. Over the past few months sales for the standard line furniture has increased, however custom made furniture has continued to dominate their sales. Although the company’s sales for the standard line has increased, scheduling trade-offs have to be made to meet the demand of the custom made products because of the higher profit margin from the custom sales. This has led to a delay in shipping of the standard line furniture, a lack of warehouse space and increased lead times for the standard line of furniture. Analysis Significant issues have been identified with the company’s standard line of furniture. Although sales have increased, the custom made line has taken precedence, leading to customers who are not able to receive the standard line in a timely manner. This has created long lead times as well has because a backlog in the warehouse space. Sales have indicated that there is a steady increase in the standard line furniture, but because the profit margin is much greater with the custom line, these customers are...
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...Exploratory research: The chief purpose of exploratory research is to reach a better understanding of the research problem. This includes helping to identify the variables which should be measured within the study. When there is little understanding of the topic it is impossible to formulate hypotheses without some exploratory studies. For example, crop residues such a straw are high in lignin (a wood-like substance) and low in nutrients. This makes them a poor animal feed since the lignin acts against digestibility and the low nutrient content means poor food value. However, if treated in a strong alkali, plus a little heat, the lignin breaks down and the nutrient content increases. A company was established to exploit this technology and did so successfully for 4 seasons. After this period sales began to slow down. Three other manufacturers had entered the market by this time. The company, Animal Feed Systems, did not know whether the whole industry had slowed down or if only their product was suffering. Nor did they know if the problem was temporary in that perhaps the market comprised of "early adopters" had been saturated but it was only a matter of time before other farmers began to buy their systems when they saw how well they worked. It was also possible that if a problem did exist it could lie in any one of a number of areas: animal populations might be declining, distributors may not be promoting the product aggressively, customers may be experiencing difficulties in...
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...the gap in BM's product mix. Lea-Meadows' is a 75+ year old company, selling upholstered products made of the finest fabrics and frame construction in the industry. Its net sales in 2007 were $5m and have increased 3% annually for the past 5 years. The total upholstered industry had sales of $15.5b and is anticipated to have sales reach $16.1b in 2008. LM has 15 sales agents, who represent several manufacturers of noncompeting lines. These agents spend approximately 10-15% of their in-store time on LM products. Those agents get 5% of sales as commission and there is little other cost associated with them. BatesManor sells medium-to high priced wood for bedroom, living room and dining room furniture. The company had net sales of $75m in 2007 and a before tax profit of $3.7m. The industry sales of wood furniture in 2007 were $12.4b and are projected to be $12.9b in 2008. The company currently employs 10 full time sales reps, who work off of an average salary of $70,000 (plus expenses) and a commission of .5% of net sales. The total sales admin costs in 2007 were $130,000. BM's sales reps are highly regarded and known for their knowledge of wood furniture and their willingness to work with buyers and sales personnel. On average the reps are making 10 calls per week and each call averages 3 hours. VP of Sales, Bott, is recommending an annual increase per account per year to 7 calls (7,000 calls...
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...over-the-counter market. There are seven sales districts within the organization with a total of forty sales representatives. Each receives a salary, fringe benefits, and commissions of 0.5 percent of their dollar sales volume up to their sales quota. Field sales efforts are extremely important and quality control is critical with supplying the plater with the processed chemicals. These services are provided by the sales representatives of the firm. The northeast district sales manager had recently been persuaded to take early retirement and had been replaced by James Sprague. He has directives from the national sales manager to be responsive to the company’s sales plans and policies, improve the district’s profit performance, and to manage a group of sales representatives who are older, more experienced, and not very happy about his promotion. Problems concerning Hanover-Bates Chemical Corporation James Sprague accepted the position knowing what was ahead of him. He knew that his northeast district (District 3) had some problems that needed to be addressed. The first of those problems was profit performance. Although his district was ranked third in dollar sales, it ranked last in profit performance out of the seven districts. This was one area that the national sales manager expected him to correct. The second problem dealt with management. The last manager for district seven did not support the sales plans and programs developed by the national sales manager. It is...
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...Sime Darby's scandal 2010-11-18 12:20 World's leading listed plantation company Sime Darby has just celebrated its 100th anniversary and it has once again become a focus recently due to a project cost overrun scandal involving malpractices. When Sime Darby was said to have suffered a loss of RM2.1 billion in May this year, the market was shocked as Sime Darby has been a giant multinational conglomerate involved in five core sectors with a total annual turnover of about RM33 billion. Even the largest listed company is facing a management problem, we can actually imagine the situation of other government-linked companies (GLCs). It has seriously affected the confidence of investors in the stock market and supervision of the authorities. There are questionable points in its four projects, including the Maersk Oil Qatar (MOQ) Project which has lost RM526 million and the Bakun hydroelectric dam project which has caused a loss of RM340 million. Sime Darby decided to take civil action against certain individuals found culpable over the severe losses. It has reflected the seriousness of the situation and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) should also take actions. The government must disclose the internal audit report of Sime Darby to tell the people the truth. Over the years, losses suffered by the GLCs would just be left unsolved without even an investigation. For example, the Bumiputera financial scandal in the early 1980s had caused the country a loss of RM2...
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...marketing concept. 2) Value personal selling. 3) Assume the role of a problem solver or partner in helping customers make buying decisions. Personal Selling as an Extension of the Marketing Concept When a business firm moves from a product orientation to consumer orientation, we say that it has adopted the marketing concept. This concept springs from the belief that the firm should dedicate all of its policies, planning, and operation to the satisfaction of the customer. Promotion can be further subdivided into advertising, public relations, sales promotion, and personal selling. Personal selling is the major promotional method used in business. Evolution of Consultative Selling Consultative selling emphasizes need identification, which is achieved through effective communication between the salesperson and the customer. The salesperson establishes two-way communication by asking appropriate questions and listening carefully to the customer's responses. The salesperson assumes the role of consultant and offers well-considered recommendations. Transactional selling is a sales process that most effectively matches the needs of the value conscious buyer who is primarily interested in price and convenience. This approach to selling is usually used by marketers who do not see the need to spend very much time on customer need assessment, problem solving, relationship building, or sales follow-up. 4 Major Features of...
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...Jim Black Case Synopsis Noram Canada Ltd. sells compressed gases through sales representatives who are supervised by an area supervisor. With the recession hitting hard, sales representatives cannot afford to lose their customers to other compressed gas suppliers who are eager to grab new clients. Jim a sales representative of Norman Canada has been having a difficult time. Customers knowing the market is in their favour demand for discounts and shorter delivery times. Jim, has had to have expedited delivery to meet a deadline and offer discounts which reduce his commission. Expedited deliveries delays the shipments of other clients and discounts are not smiled upon by Noram management except in cases of huge orders. Jim is currently worried about a number of things which includes the sale of the company to the competition, increasing his sales as his are supervisor hinted that he wasn’t doing well, his work life balance and the pressure from his wife to secure a management position. Although securing a management position would guarantee a stable salary for Jim, he isn’t excited at the prospect of siting behind his desk all day. Also with the impending sale of the company to the competition, his job is in jeopardy as if he isn’t fired, attaining management position will become harder. Other problems which seem to be evident are stress and bad time management as Jim is late for his appointment with a client. Jim is also showing low motivation and experiencing low task control...
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...Summary To: IM Medicine From: Oluwatobi David Ajetomobi Subject: IM Medicine and untrained employees Primary or central problem: The employees at IM Medicine do not follow and understand the company’s policies that have been in place for over 20 years. Alternatives: 1. Drugs inspection before dispatchment. 2. Company’s policies awareness. 3. Discourage doctors from accepting bribes and prescribing IM’s drugs to salespeople 4. Replace failing products with new ones. 5. Free medical consultation for customers that were affected by Filex. Facts considered: 1. Ignorance of employees 2. Lack of knowledge about the company’s policies 3. No cooperation among employees. Recommendation: The company should immediately compensate customers that were affected by Filex. A new and improved drug that can replace Filex should be introduced to the public. All drugs must be properly checked before they are dispatched to the public. Assumptions It would cost the company money to implement alternative and a long while to recover lost customers that might have switches to competitors. Statement of the problem Satellite problems: * IM Medicine is suffering from a decrease the company’s stock. This means a decrease in the sales of the drugs manufactured by the company. Primary/central problem: Some of the employees at IM Medicine do not have enough knowledge about the company’s policies while the rest are not aware of...
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...the Pro-Sales Agent Program Webster University Abstract Pro-Audio is a manufacturer of electronic sound processing equipment. Its leading product was an advanced digital reverb unit called PSX-360, which retails for about $12,000. It was sold primarily to major recording studios and professional musicians throughout the country though an exclusive network of approximately 50 leading professional audio retailers. Pro-Audio created the Pro-Sales Agent Program to stem the tide of discounting that seemed to be harming the overall studio equipment industry. Unfortunately, concerns have risen that include: 1) Slow sales growth, 2) retailers’ finding ways to circumvent the fixed pricing clause, and 3) is administratively cumbersome and deters the retailers’ ability to sell and deliver the product. My paper will address these concerns and provide executive leadership with options to resolve these concerns. Keywords: branding, breakeven analysis, cross-functional teams, discounting, premium price, willingness to pay. Pro-Audio Sales Agent Program The Pro-Sales Agent Program (PSAP) was created in an effort to curtail the tide of discounting that seemed to be harming the overall studio equipment industry. Certain adverse conditions included: 1) An increasing dependence on orders from two of PSX’s largest dealers. One dealer was in Los Angeles and the other in New York, and by April, these two dealers accounted for 70% of the company’s total sales of PSX products...
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