...EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report was commissioned to discuss a number of information management topics and subsequently draw up strategic advice to Broadway café on how to transform its old fashioned business ways. Firstly, the café faces high buyer power, high rivalry and high threat of new entrants and substitute services because of the many coffee shops available and limited market entry hurdles. Furthermore, the supply power is low as they are many suppliers servicing the industry. The eight topics covered will positively manage Porter’s Five Forces and give Broadway café back its competitive edge. Firstly, Customer Relations Management (CRM) involves managing all aspects of a customer’s relationship with an organisation to increase customer loyalty and retention and overall profitability. The café can use cheap software such as Sugar-CRM designed for small business to do this. Secondly, Excel is a Business Intelligence tool. It can be used to analyse and transform operational data into high quality and strategic business information. It is readily available. Thirdly, deploying a Wi-Fi connection improves existing customer loyalty, attracts new customers and generates additional revenue. However, the start-up and maintenance capital are high. Broadway café should embrace the use of technology in order to increase competitiveness. Its business structures should be supported by IT initiatives for it to compete in the 21st century. This is imperative. Fifthly, Broadway...
Words: 453 - Pages: 2
...DSS Assignment (Assignment 1) GROUP DUE DATE: March 13, 2015 Peer Evaluation: Each group member will be grading other team members. A student’s score will be an average of the group member’s rating times the overall assignment score. For example if you get an average of 80/100 in peer evaluation from your group and 90 in the assignment, your INDIVIDUAL score would be 90*.8 = 72/100. If there is a problem with your group members, please e-mail me right away!!! PEER Evaluations are posted in the ASSIGNMENT section under PEER_EVAL_assignment1 Once the project is submitted, fill it out and post it in SAKAI under peereval1 Peer Evaluation has TWO parts * Rubric part (one for each group member) * Text Part (only once) If your team has three/four members, you will be submitting two/three rubric parts by copying and pasting rubric parts as needed (one for each group member; do not evaluate yourself) and ONE text part COMBINE all in ONE file. Do not submit separate files for each group member. SUBMIT only one rubric file with all evaluation!!!!! Budget Planning and DSS System for Pierogi_rus.com COMPANY HISTORY Pierogi, Inc. was started by Mr. Polanki, Sr. in 1962 in the basement of his home in Warsaw, Poland. He and his wife worked endless hours experimenting and promoting their product. Eventually, their product became known as the specialty Pierogi in supermarkets, restaurants and food circles. The sales increased almost 10 percent...
Words: 2405 - Pages: 10
...Managing Motivation at Technocraft Lea Darrigade Ines Gyselinck Mary Sagala Benjamin Seban Intercultural Management BS 1 Christophoros Lambridis I. Introduction This report talks about the working motivational problem shown by the workers in a small factory named Technocraft, located in the South East of England. It had slowed down the company’s function in producing high-quality sound recording equipment. The problem has risen to high labor turnover and difficulties in recruiting new employees. It led George Orwell Newell, the company chairman, to hire a consultant named Helen McKiernan to figure out the sources of the problems. In order to help figuring out the problem, George Orwell told Helen about his hypothesis of the lack of motivation in workers is because company’s location which is in the below-average national unemployment are, therefore most of the women workers, who work on the wiring, had no real reason to work since they already have husbands who can earn adequate wages to fulfill living necessities. However, Helen did not want to conclude the problem there. When Helen had done her research, she found out that the workers actually enjoyed their work, but hate to work for the company. In other words, the problem that halted the working motivation in workers is the management itself. II. Forms of inefficient management that leads to the lack of working motivation. a) Uncomforting regulation on working performance In a company,...
Words: 1359 - Pages: 6
...Student Survival Guide On the personality spectrum my biggest dimension was the giver personality. I think that I need to learn how to put other peoples needs aside so that I can focus on my school work more. I love to help others and will always put others before myself, but when going to school in a distance learning environment that will sometimes get in the way, it is easy to put off school work for other people. I need to designate time away from my husband and children so that I can concentrate on the task at hand in my schooling. That does not mean that I need to neglect my family, I just need to also make time for myself. When doing research on the internet I need to be very careful. It is easy to get into websites that are not ones that I should be using for education research. It is difficult because there are websites like Wikipedia that look like they are credible and good for research purposes, but in fact they are not. Sites like wiki are able to be changed by anyone, allowing people to go in and change information, making it false, or adding information that is not correct in with what is. A good way to know if I am on a good website is if it is .edu, .gov, or .org. I need to make sure I am doing lots of research on any topic to make sure that I have all the facts about that topic correct. The University of Phoenix has a lot of good resources to use for research. They have a University Library that is very helpful when doing research. I can choose different...
Words: 1180 - Pages: 5
...that they are too short term oriented, too focused on fast returns, and that this negatively impacts their long term capital budgeting. Can you suggest a company, or industry, where this appears to be true. How? Why? Instant gratification is important in today’s society. People do not have the time in their busy lives to wait on much. Companies also focus on instant gratification and make decisions to help bring in quick returns to satisfy investors. Strong or growing earnings per share is important for investors. Some industries will make decisions that may not be long termed oriented to keep from reducing earnings per share and return on investment. A great example is General Motors. General Motors went a bit too far and had a class action suit against them. They settled in 2008 for $303 million to its shareholders. “The two-year-old class-action lawsuit stems from claims that GM issued false and misleading statements about its finances to artificially inflate the company’s stock price and debt securities “(General Motors 2005). The problem with short term orientation is that the company may take money from other areas to achieve earnings that are expected of them. This money can come from research and development or advertising and have a long term effect on the company. It is still important to keep an eye on short term gains to earn capital that the company needs to provide for its long term goals, but the company still needs to focus on long term and sustainability. ...
Words: 544 - Pages: 3
...and powerful in both stability and its financial systems. However, the global crisis of 2008 cost 10 million people to loose their jobs, savings and even their homes. The unemployment rate in Iceland tripled and the government regulators who were in charge of taking care of its society allied to side of bankruptcy. In 2008, Iceland was in the brink of bankruptcy. In a scenario repeated in the United States (US) the financial regulators failed to raise the alarm or halt the reckless borrowing. What the Banks and financial institutions have done over the years has enriched themselves as companies and individuals at the expense of the greater good of other and the economy and environment as a whole, forcing high short term returns at the cost of not doing long term investment in plant, products, training and environmental protection amongst others. Instead they have used the power and influence that they have to further reduce the legal restrictions on what they and prevent any meaningful increase in regulation, permitting only window dressing laws that do little and are easily circumvented. This has given them more power and influence with which they get further concessions and so acquire more money and so on. With the financial crash in 2007 the reason why such regulation was needed became obvious, but again the financial sector used their power to prevent any meaningful reform. However acting on the suspicion that an investment is a bad one by betting against it for own financial...
Words: 653 - Pages: 3
...M4 – Analyse the reasons why costs need to be controlled to budget. Introduction – for this assignment I will be analysing the advantage and disadvantage about the business that brad owns, which involves transporting business people to and from the airports using luxury cars. Furthermore I will also explain what the word budget, fixed, variable and total costs means. The main topic that I will cover is the fact that if brad does nothing to his costs than what effects will it have on the business as well as him. Explain: 1) If they are not monitored then: - Managers may not notice problems because he can’t take steps to correct the problems if he doesn’t know it exists, he won’t know if he made more adverse or more favourable. If Brad doesn’t know that he have made more adverse than he will not be able to know how much adverse he have made and on which item. If the costs are not controlled by him than he will go above his budget and he will make a loss. 2) Paste in the Eco Clothing variance analysis and explain why it may be overspent in each area of adverse variance (refer to your completed hand-out) 3) What problems might this create? - Reduced profits - problem because…. - The need to replace/better train staff - problem because…. - The need to source new material suppliers/renegotiate - problem because…. - Pressure to increase prices - problem because…. Conclusion – • Consider (and then explain) how without the budgeting process (the setting...
Words: 391 - Pages: 2
...expected and a guideline for others to follow throughout their school, career and individual everyday life. Defining personal responsibility is different depending on who is asked. However, personal responsibility is being liable for the outcome of an action in a variety of capacities. Deflection and entitlement are costly on so many levels. Taking ownership of mistakes is highly important in discovering how to avoid being a victim of the “blame game”. In order to achieve this, there must be a strategy put in place to decide how to proceed in being personally responsible. There must be a list of short term goals that are easily attained. Short term goals allow an individual to solidify their commitment and achieve instant gratification while staying realistic and ethical. Long term goals, however, are achieved over a longer period of time and can be a compilation of short term goals. Hand in hand with creating strategic goals, it is necessary to utilize self discipline. Self discipline will ensure that an individual adheres to the steps required in meeting particular goals. Setting aside an allotted time to study that is conducive to learning is important to success. Create a list of deadlines for each of your assignments to ensure that each assignment is done and submitted on time. Although...
Words: 799 - Pages: 4
...me, as I am currently pregnant and am working to purchase a house for our family. When reviewing the ten principles of Economics, there are several that play a major role in my decision to purchase a house. First, we as a family needed to understand that there are tradeoffs that will need to be made in order to budget in a house purchase. Frivolous spending such as eating out and purchasing various technological gadgets will have to be monitored more closely and possibly stopped altogether. Also, any old debt would need to be paid off first to make room in the budget for the new debt of the house payments. In order to understand what items are considered frivolous and what old debt is priority, we will need to develop a short and long term budget that addresses where we are currently and where we want to be, and lays out a course of action to meet those goals. Also in the budget and course of action we would need to identify the incentives of purchasing a house, as well as the consequences that can occur. For example, what are the positives of the neighborhood and schools in the area? If one or both of the income providers lost their jobs or became unable to work, what plan of action would take place? These questions and many others would have to be taken into consideration to understand the pros and cons to purchasing a...
Words: 259 - Pages: 2
...Challenge Identification The primary issue to be addressed by the management team is how best to allocate company attention and capital to the possible growth opportunities in order to drive company growth and stimulate short-term financial results without sacrificing long-term growth potential. Key Decision Criteria Brannigan Foods is faced with the problem of energizing innovation and resultant company growth in a stagnating industry in which it is the market leader. Brannigan possesses a “cash-cow” in its current soup division, and must figure out a way to utilize this source of capital in order to drive growth in other sectors to ensure long-term profitability. The short-term financial goals are to increase profits by 3% over the next year, while long term goals are to stimulate growth in other areas of the Brannigan soup division’s lines of business. When considering which strategic direction to pursue with respect to possible growth strategies, Brannigan should consider shifting consumer preferences. Consumers tend to be favouring products which are perceived as being lower in sodium and healthier overall. For example, the recent growth in the Annabelle’s Foods division demonstrates that consumers are becoming more focused on a combination of healthiness and convenience. Brannigan’s should be wary when considering allocating it’s limited growth capital to initiatives such as expanding the core lines of business due to the recent negative category growth of the ready...
Words: 449 - Pages: 2
...life experience for the right justice, so that they are easy to lost themselves when they meet some problem in their life, so that they use their own way, which is easy to cause the crime, to solve the problem. Besides, the other factor is the increasing levels of poverty around the world. We have seen with globalization the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and this inevitably means that those who are poorer will have to resort to illegal means to get what others have. Of course, this caused youth crime of the children from the poorer families. As the consequence, youth crime caused quite serious social effect, not only in short term, but also in long term. From short term perspective, youth crime annoyed social safety, such as drug deal or offending, usually accompanied with fighting, injure such these kind result. But from long term perspective, these crime activities affect social safety, serious health concern, so that increase the social burden. However, since the youth crime had caught the...
Words: 497 - Pages: 2
...Associate Level Material Appendix F Reading Strategies Worksheet Identify two reading goals, one short-term and one long-term. • Long-term reading goal: • Short-term reading goal: Write a 100- to 150-word response to each of the following questions: • How do you currently approach the weekly readings in the course? After I have completed alI my assignments and discussions for the current week I give myself one day break, then I go ahead and look on to see the reading for the following week. I download the excerpt that is needed for my readings onto my desktop (so thy can be easily assessable). I skim through the chapter first before I actually start reading to get a better understanding of what I will be learning. Then I start reading the whole chapter, taking notes and highlighting after each section that I read. I take notes on all things I think may be important, or things I think may be on an assignment or discussion question. I also highlight what I think are important points, and definitions of all key terms in the chapter. I also write down anything that I do not fully understand, so that I can research it further, either in the book, in a dictionary/thesaurus, or on the internet until I do fully understand. The note taking and highlighting is the main things that I do to help me with my reading and assignments • How might you incorporate three of the suggestions covered this week into your study time? One suggestion I could use...
Words: 612 - Pages: 3
...“The First Impression” Conditions Precedent: n Send memo and e-mail to all those that may be attending. State place and time of meeting. n Prepare PowerPoint to accompany presentation during meeting. Meeting Points: n Present State of “Gourmet’s Delight” o For the last 6 consecutive months we have had declining profits. o Reported net loss of $10 million in Q4. o Our Chief Financial Officer has resigned. o New appointment of Jeffery A. Blade as Chief Financial Officer ▪ Most recently, Vice President of Finance for Cott Beverages USA ▪ Has led many companies from financial disarray to structured organization leading to financial control and profit growth o Establish new vision and mission statements ▪ New Vision Statement: “ Gourmet’s Delight is a modern American concept and we intend to lead and dominate the premium bistro segment in the restaurant industry.” ▪ New Mission Statement: “ To consistently serve our patrons the highest quality salads and sandwiches, using only the freshest ingredients, while offering the finest service and the lowest possible price.” n The Future of “Gourmet’s Delight” o Forecasting profits of $3 million in Q1. o Forecasting profits of $15 million for 2010. n Growing our business o Strategic ▪ No expansion set for 2010. ▪ Managing Labor • Establishing mandatory breaks • Strategic scheduling • Constant management involvement in units ▪ Managing Food Cost • Counting inventory before opening and after...
Words: 565 - Pages: 3
...and Long- Term Planning Management Budgeting is a process of planning, setting goals and defining the objectives of the management that are needed for a given period of time. It is the tool that provides specific direction and achievements for the company. It also controls the business setting, as well as it helps the management to study the financial aspects of the business and challenges of each department, and learn how to solve these problems. Budgeting also focuses on the essential points in evaluating the alternative actions before coming up with final decisions. Similarly, this is also the financial plan to control the future operations and outcome of the business. The financial aspect involves the budget allocation, the number of hours that must be spend in the operations and production, as well as the number of manpower that is needed in order to operate efficiently an effectively the business. Budgeting works also for the systematic and orderly management program that involves the management of the manpower as well as the effective communication process between the management and the workforce in order to promote motivational factors over the employees. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_range_planning) Furthermore, some budget allocation may be short term, like one year or less; it can be intermediate term for two to three years; or a long term budget that might span for three years or beyond. In the case of short-term budgets...
Words: 828 - Pages: 4
...Step One: Establishing a Sense of Urgency Establishing a sense of urgency is essential to gain the cooperation needed to initiate a greater need for change. Some leaders misjudge the difficulty to get people out of their comfort zone, or give themselves too much credit for how well they think they have already done. They could also just lack the patience required to develop appropriate urgency. Leaders should understand the importance of having a sense off urgency. If they did, they would be able to differentiate between complacency, false urgency and true urgency. Many times change initiatives fail isn’t due to being poorly thought out, or insufficient facts, the problem is that the case is all head and no heart. Leaders should “Aim for the Heart.” This way they will connect to the values of their people and encourage them to become great. The business will then bloom with human experience, engage the senses, create messages that are simple and imaginative, and call people to aspire. Step Two: Creating the Guiding Coalition Forming the right coalition of people to lead a change initiative is detrimental to its success. The coalition must have the right composition, a substantial level of trust, and a mutual objective. Decision-making is an important component for teams. In a world that is constantly changing, organizations are forced to make decisions more quickly and with less certainty. Teams of leaders and managers acting together are the only effective way to make...
Words: 1988 - Pages: 8
