Showing 325–333 of 1965 results
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LDR 625 Week 2 – Process vs. Content
$7.50LDR 625 Week 2 – Process vs. Content
Paper Contents:
- Process-Driven Change Intervention
- Content Driven Change Intervention
- Task Alignment
- Planning for Process-Driven Intervention and Task Alignment
4 pages
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CASE STUDY WEEK 8 on PHG (People’s home gadgets)
$5.00CASE STUDY WEEK 8 on PHG (People’s home gadgets)
Question:
People’s Home Gadgets (PHG) is a relatively young company that competes in the consumer electronics and appliances industry (TVs, computers, kitchen appliances, etc.). It has quite a large selection of items, and the range of the products PHG carries spans the price spectrum of very low cost to very high end. For example, some of the company’s kitchen ovens cost just under $400, while others cost well over $4,000. The company also has low-end affordable televisions under $400, as well as very pricy large plasma televisions that cost over $6,000. Throughout the price range, PHG strives to be a low-cost leader for the quality of the product. Compared to its competition, PHG offers a very competitive, if not the lowest, price. In addition to the cost focus, PHG prides itself on providing exceptional one-on-one customer service. In fact, the name of the company–People’s Home Gadgets–is intended to reflect both the strategy and the philosophy of the organization. With a focus on costs and customer service, the name reflects the company’s concern with the financial burdens customers face as well as the vast amounts of information that customers must process when making purchasing decisions.
The name PHG also refers to the company’s philosophy for managing customer service representatives: The company cares about its employees’ long-term well-being and success. Most customer service representatives who work at PHG are typically hired through personal referrals of current employees, or occasionally an advertisement will be placed in the newspaper when more than one opening exists. Each month, customer service representatives receive product training to explore the new products they will be selling to ensure that they are knowledgeable and can respond to customer questions. To motivate them to sell, they are rewarded on a commission-based pay plan. What is interesting about this particular incentive plan is that the customer service representatives have some discretion regarding the final price of the products. Most products have a standard markup of 10% to 25%, of which the employee gets a portion. While many of the products sell for the list price, sophisticated buyers and repeat customers are often able to negotiate lower prices for their products. The challenge with this plan is that the company has a reputation for low costs, and customer service representatives who are not willing to negotiate the sales price are viewed as going against this objective. By lowering the prices, however, they are cutting into their own take-home pay.
Up to this point, the company has done fairly well, and it now has six stores on the East Coast between Philadelphia and New York. With a focus on low costs and customer service, the company has been able to sustain reasonable growth–it just opened two new stores–and a modest level of customer satisfaction among its consumers. At the same time, however, while the customer service representatives seem to be fairly happy and work hard, their turnover is around 70% per year. This turnover obviously involves costs associated with constantly hiring new employees, and it also has a negative impact on customer loyalty and the level of experience of the customer service representatives.
As the company has grown, Lukas Phillips, president of PHG, has realized that he doesn’t have the time or expertise to attend to all the issues related to policies for managing people. Recognizing that it is time to hire a full-time director of HR, Lukas has decided to hire Paula Hillman. Paula has seven years of experience in HR in a manufacturing facility located nearby. Although Paula’s experience is in manufacturing, Lukas was encouraged by her enthusiasm for creating a fun and effective workplace. During the course of their discussions, Lukas told Paula that his main goal for her in her new job is to design an HR system that reduces the turnover among customer service representatives, encourages them to work hard toward the company’s competitive advantage of low costs and high customer service, and adheres to his principles of taking care of employees.
Answer the following questions by applying the concepts learned in Chapter 14. Also, conduct literature reviews on the subject of discussion and use to support your case study answers:
- Provide advice to Paula regarding the nature of the HR system she should recommend for the customer service representatives at the six stores.
- Identify a key strategic performance driver for this organization.
- How do the customer service representatives contribute to the strategic performance driver you identified?
- Design an HR system to realize the strategic performance driver you identified. Be certain to explain how you would (a) design the work environment, (b) manage employee competencies, and (c) manage employee attitudes and behaviors.
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CASE STUDY 1: THERAC – 25
$15.00CASE STUDY 1: THERAC – 25
PAPER CONTENTS
- INTRODUCTION
- WHAT WAS THERAC -25?
- Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL)
- THERAC – 25 ERROR/S AND RESULT
- INSIGHTS
- CONCLUSION
5 PAGES
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Aline DeNeuve Case Study 1 Analysis
$7.50Aline DeNeuve Case Study 1 Analysis
Aline DeNeuve by Alvin Turner St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada
Paper Contents:
- Problem
- Case Analysis
- Alternative 1
- Alternative 2
- Conclusion
Additional Materials:
Aline_DeNeuve_Case.pdf -
Problems and Exercises Week 6 Homework
$7.50Chapter 10
Question 1 – Consider the reasons implementations fail. For at least three of these reasons, explain why this happens, if there is one (or more) type of implementation likely to minimize the occurrence, and if there is one (or more) type of installation more likely to induce failure for this reason.
Question 2 – Two members of your project development team are disagreeing about the relative importance of training and documentation. Sam strongly believes that training is far more important because it will ensure the successful implementation of the information system and that the early usage is a positive experience. Pat encounters that the user documentation is far more important because its impact can help not only the current users, but also future users. Which do you think is right, and why?
Question 5 – Due to advances in technology and widespread computer literacy, many organizations use e-learning extensively to train employees. If you were managing a system implementation and had to train on a limited budget, you may find yourself choosing between e-learning or conducting faceto- face training with a subset of users who would then train their departments (called train-thetrainers). Which would you choose and why?
Question 6 – Is it good or bad for corporations to rely on vendors for computing support? List arguments both for and against reliance on vendors as part of your answer.
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Problems and Exercises Week 5 Homework
$5.00Chapter 8
Question 3 – Imagine the worst possible reports from a system. What is wrong with them? List as many problems as you can. What are the consequences of such reports? What could go wrong as a result? How does the prototyping process help guard against each problem?
Question 4 – Given the guidelines presented in this chapter, identify flaws in the design of the Report of Employees shown below. What assumptions about users and tasks did you make in order to assess this design? Redesign this report to correct these flaws.
Chapter 9
Question 3 – Transfer the E-R diagram of Figure 9-21 into a set of 3NF relations.
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Martin Shoes, Inc., manufactures and distributes orthopedic footwear
$10.00Martin Shoes, Inc., manufactures and distributes orthopedic footwear. To sell its products, the marketing department requires sales personnel to call on the shoe retailers within their assigned geographic territories. Each salesperson has a laptop computer, which he or she uses to record sales orders during the day and to send these sales orders to Martin’s network nightly for updating the company’s sales order file.
Each day, warehouse personnel review the current sales orders in its file, and where possible, pick the goods and ready them for shipment. (Martin ships goods via common carrier, and shipping terms are generally FOB from the shipping point.) When the shipping department completes a shipment, it also notifies the billing department, which then prepares an invoice for the customer. Payment terms vary by customer, but most are “net 30.” When the billing department receives a payment, the billing clerk credits the customer’s account and records the cash received.
Requirement
- Identify the resources, events, and agents within Martin’s revenue process.
- Develop an E-R diagram for this process.
- With a particular DBMS in mind, design the tables for this revenue process. Note that you will need tables for each resource, event, and agent, as well as tables for each many-to-many relationship.
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FM Practice Exercises Week 6
$20.00Question 1 ( H17.12)
A futures price is currently 60 and its volatility is 30%. The risk-free interest rate is 8% per annum. Use a two-step binomial tree to calculate the value of a six-month European call option on the futures with a strike price of 60? If the call were American, would it ever be worth exercising it early?
Question 2 (H17.7)
Calculate the value of a five-month European put futures option when the futures price is $19, the strike price is $20, the risk-free interest rate is 12% per annum, and the volatility of the futures price is 20% per annum.
Question 3 (H16.16)
Suppose that a portfolio is worth $60 million and the S&P 500 is at 1200. If the value of the portfolio mirrors the value of the index, what options should be purchased to provide protection against the value of the portfolio falling below $54 million in one year’s time?
Question 4 (H16.17)
Consider again the situation in Problem 16.16. Suppose that the portfolio has a beta of 2.0, the risk-free interest rate is 5% per annum, and the dividend yield on both the portfolio and the index is 3% per annum. What options should be purchased to provide protection against the value of the portfolio falling below $54 million in one year’s time?
Question 5 (H25.19)
In a three-month down-and-out call option on silver futures the strike price is $20 per ounce and the barrier is $18. The current futures price is $19, the risk-free interest rate is 5%, and the volatility of silver futures is 40% per annum. Explain how the option works and calculate its value. What is the value of a regular call option on silver futures with the same terms? What is the value of a down-and-in call option on silver futures with the same terms?
Question 6 (H25.11)
Explain why delta hedging is easier for Asian options than for regular options.
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Case Study: Southwestern University
$5.00Case Study:
Southwestern University: F The recent success of Southwestern University’s football program is causing SWU’s president, Joel Wisner, more problems than he faced during the team’s losing era in the early 1990s. For one thing, increasing game-day attendance is squeezing the town of Stephenville, Texas and the campus. Complaints are arising over parking, seating, concession prices, and even a shortage of programs at some games. Dr. Wisner, once again, turns to his stadium manager, Hank Maddux. This time, he needs a guaranteed revenue stream to help fuel the stadium expansion. One source of income could easily be the high-profit game programs. Selling for $6 each, programs are a tricky business.
Under substantial pressure from Wisner, Maddux knows he has to ensure that costs are held to a minimum and contribution to the new expansion maximized. As a result, Maddux wants the programs for each game to be purchased economically. His inquiries have yielded two options. A local Stephenville printer, Sam Taylor of Quality Printing, has offered the following discount schedule for the programs and game inserts: Programs Weekly Game Detail Inserts 10,000 to 30,000 $2.00 each 10,000 to 30,000 $1.00 30,000 to 60,000 $1.90 each 30,000 to 60,000 $0.95 60,000 to 250,000 $1.80 each 60,000 to 250,000 $0.90 250,000 and up $1.50 each 250,000 and up $0.85 As a second option, however, First Printing, owned by Michael Shader, an S.W.U. alumnus in Ft. Worth, will do the job for 10% less as a favor to help the athletic department. This option will mean sending a truck to Ft. Worth to pick up each order.
Maddux estimates that the cost of each trip to Ft. Worth will be $250. Maddux’s other major problem is he is never sure what the demand for programs will be. Sales vary from opponent to opponent and how well the team is doing that year. However, he does know that running out is a very bad idea. This football team is not only expected to make money for SWU, but it is also entertainment. This means programs for all who want them. With the new facility, attendance could be 60,000 for each of the five home games. And two of every three people buy a program. In addition to the programs, Maddux must purchase the inserts for each game. The inserts have information about the opposing team, photos of the expected starters, and recent game statistics. The purchasing issue is the same for inserts, except inserts will be purchased separately for each game and are a total loss after the game. The carrying cost, because inserts are to be delivered just as they are needed, should be nominal; he estimates 5%. The other costs and the same discount schedule apply, but the inserts only cost half as much because they are much smaller. First Printing will give the same 10% discount on the inserts.
Givens: Annual demand is 300,000 (60,000 per game times 5 games) Set-up cost for programs is $1,000.00 Holding cost is 40%
Questions:
- With whom should Maddux place the order for the programs and how many should he order each time?
- With whom should Maddux place the order for the inserts and how many should he order each time?
- What is Maddux’s total cost for programs with inserts for the season?
- What other program management opportunities might Maddux pursue?