Guillermo Furniture Store

Guillermo Furniture Store For many years, Guillermo Navallez has owned and operated a small and profitable wood furniture making company in beautiful Sonora, Mexico. He has enjoyed an abundance of raw materials, low labor costs, and limited competition. This has recently changed due to a few significant events (1) new competitors from overseas, using high-tech automation manufacturing processes, resulting in exact furniture specifications at rock bottom prices and (2) Sonora, Mexico labor cost have dramatically increased due to emerging new industries and companies. Guillermo Furniture has been forced to reconsider his current business model and implement a change in strategy to remain in business and competitive (ACC561, Guillermo, 2009). Guillermo Furniture SWOT Analysis Prior to addressing the outlined questions we must understand Guillermo Furniture Store’s current; Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT). Managers use accounting information for many different types of decisions. Information uncovered in accounting provides; scorekeeping, attention directing and/or problem solving, but we first need to understand our current environment (Horngren, 2008). The first course of action for Guillermo Furniture is to have an objective SWOT analysis performed in order to have a clear picture of the company’s current position in the market and among the competition. Of course, a more detailed SWOT analysis would be needed for a more specific focus and direction. Strengths: Strengths identified during the SWOT analysis is an abundant supply of raw materials, inexpensive labor, and a market that allowed a price premium for quality. Weaknesses: The Guillermo Furniture Company was shown to be weak in manufacturing process and technology when a larger competitor started operations in direct competition. This made the company’s market position uncompetitive due to lack of manufacturing automation and labor costs. Guillermo also would like to remain independent, thus he would not benefit from the strengths of merging or having his small company acquired to facilitate growth. Opportunities: Guillermo has multiple opportunities to improve his company’s future. First, the company could expand the selection of furniture produced through new manufacturing processes. Second, the patented furniture coating product, could easily become the driving force behind Guillermo growth and competitive advantage. And finally, Guillermo could develop a new business unit division, and combine it with an investment in technology for the coating manufacturing to further improve his unique selling proposition. Threats: The Guillermo Furniture Company faces a myriad of threats. A new and large competitor that uses advanced technology and automation. Rising labor costs, declining sales due to competition, eroding margins, and declining revenues with sales losses. The current climate of mergers and acquisitions in the furniture industry is producing stronger competition with more economies of scale and leveraging of power in the marketplace. Budgets and Performance Reports The basic purpose of accounting information is to help make strategic decisions. Regardless of who is making the decisions, understanding accounting information allows for a more informed, and better decision (Horngren, 2008). Accounting reports are classified into two types; Accounting and Financial reports. Budgets and performance reports are vital information for a company that is looking to survive, compete and expand in their marketplace. Guillermo would benefit immensely by using these reports to see data trends in different business segments. For example, a performance report showing real versus budgeted sales would identify the most viable and profitable business segments in both short and long-term. Guillermo could then use these data trends to build a 5-10 year forecast for individual business segment manufacturing viability. Guillermo must evaluate each business unit taking into account fixed and variable costs associated with the fixed assets required for operation. Once this evaluation is completed, business models for revenue, costs, profit margin, and resource investment could be compared for each of the proposed business units. †¢ Manufacturing as currently in place †¢ Manufacturing with investment in new technology †¢ Broker Business Segment Product Coatings Business Segment Lastly, Guillermo could use performance reports to identify growth segments for immediate and future resource investment. He could identify declining segments and begin to diversify or limit future investment in these segments. For example, demand for moderate furniture is growing while the demand for high-end furniture is on the decline. While limiting further investments in declining segments, use them as sources of income for the higher profit margins they do produce. The proceeds from this could be re-invested in the growing market segments. Ethics and Accounting Decisions Regulation of accounting systems seeks to ensure the reliability of the information that accounts provide. â€Å"However, no regulation can be as effective in ensuring liability as holding accountants to high ethical standards† (Horngren, 2008). Organizational and individual ethics influence critical decision-making processes, with potentially negative results affecting the bottom line. Ethics are based in part on core values imparted on individuals throughout a lifetime. Each person perceives right and wrong based upon ethics and consequently his or her actions will follow these parameters. Technology also promotes organizational ethics; however, ethical and moral conflicts will increase work-related stress amongst employees. This behavior negatively influences organizational behavior. Guillermo must decide whether to transition from manufacturing to distribution, and if he does remain in manufacturing, are there potential ethical violations if he continues to broker as well. This author believes Guillermo would have the personal ethical dilemma of continuing to employ human labor from his city, or transition to a more automated production thus saving him money from his bottom line, and making the company more efficient and effective. The current economy has been shaped with bad ethical decisions in accounting practices. One only needs to look as far as Tyco, Enron and WorldCom to understand how pressure to perform and expand can corrupt a company. The bottom line for Guillermo Furniture Company will be how Guillermo responds to the competition and how his desire to remain ndependent affects his decision making process. Relevant Accounting Information and Decision Making The most relevant accounting information for Guillermo to consider would be the following examples. †¢ Short and Long-Term Demand Forecasts, Revenue Generation, Pricing, Cost, and Profit Margin for each Business Segment. †¢ ROI in months / break even when determining the ROI on New Technology Investment †¢ Compare Expected Revenue, Margins and Net Income from all three business opportunities. Forecasting demand for each segment, pricing and production costs for each opportunity †¢ Assets Management†¦. Develop a plan to support assets that are profitable, and a plan to divest the underperforming. Conclusion The Guillermo Furniture Company has enjoyed years of profitability without constructing a business dynamic plan. With the larger direct competition moving in, this has shown the weaknesses in the Guillermo Furniture Company. Guillermo must immediately change the course of direction in order to remain solvent in the current marketplace. The statistics available through accounting practices will give him the necessary tools to make both short and long-term decisions to remain a viable company in today’s global economy. References ACC 561 Course handout: Scenario: The Guillermo Furniture Store. Retrieved July 19, 2009 from the material section of the course description page. Brealey, R. ., Myers, S. . & Marcus, A. J. (2007). Fundamentals of Corporate Finance (5th ed. ). Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin. Horngren; Sundem; Stratton. (2008). Introduction to Management Accounting (14th ed. ). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson / Prentice Hall.

Designing and executing strategy in aviation management Essay

Management Introduction             Airline strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by the airlines’ top management on behalf of owners based on consideration of resources. Airline always focuses on their customers in terms of pricing, food, more user friendly website and cooperation with travel agents. Developing a customer focused strategy is one of the key roles of customer leaders. There are various ways in which an airline can implement customer focused strategy; evaluate the services they provide to customer base, use customer feedback tools to get information about their customers, train their employees to offer customer focus, consider providing customer incentives and work their business copy, create the service vision, develop a customer service strategy, build an appropriate customer service framework, deploy leaders and managers who will become organization’s service, design and implement customer-centric pro cesses that make purchasing easy for customers. Evaluate services they provide to customer base. Their customer focus ideas are going to be the bridge or the answers on the key services that they offer. Use of customer feedback tools to get information about your customers is one essential starting points of developing a customer focus. It helps one to figure out what your customers like and what appeals them. Customer research helps airlines to develop goals and objectives like: use pre-sale and post-sale feedback. Getting information from your customers before the deal is made will help you adapt those deals and arrangements to be more attractive to the people you are trying to reach. Use surveys, questionnaires and similar customer focus tools. The airline staff need to get to know their customers and understand what they want from them. Customer service managers need to focus on all their customers consistently and there are many ways of gathering customer intelligence. Also where satisfaction surveys are concerned the custome r experience depends a lot on customer expectations, for example EasyJet might score higher because we have low expectations but we might score British Airways lower because we have high expectations. Airlines need more reliable methods of evaluating the customer experience and they need people to make this happen Train your employees to offer customer focus. The staff should understand their roles in approaching the airline business with a customer focus. This includes elements of customer service, customer focus is about keeping attention on the customers, anticipating their needs and valuing their input. Consider providing customer incentives. They could be in form of temporary sale offers or targeted giveaway programs. When the airline has identified what customers like, they use these items to reach out to their base further. Work your business copy. Airline should focus on making communications and business copy adopt a customer focus tone and outlook. Customers are readers they get information about the airline through websites, printed brochures or other written materials. Creating the service vision or service personality is an identifiable set of service characteristics that define how an organization service proposition is different from that of its competitors. Some airlines have a service promise or customer charter but whatever method one has of communicating their service standards to their customers is important to make sure those promises are achievable and shared by all teams in the organization. Develop a customer service strategy and this determines the overall direction of the organization and in particular how the organization will go about delivering customer service excellence. This is high level plan that communicates to everyone involved within the organization how it will develop relationships with its customers in order to maximize customer satisfaction and customer loyalty and achieve business success. Used to prevent non-aligned and disjointed activities between departments and drives everyone towards the same service goals. It includes service plan to ensure the strategic objectives are met and this should be shared with employees as everyone is going on the same journey. If one does not keep people informed rumors and gossip spread faster. Build an appropriate customer service framework. A learning and developed framework will help identify how the organization is going to go about delivering service excellence. Reward and recognition, celebrating success are key motivators for employees. Customer service performance will improve when organizations provide support through valued reward and recognition systems. This level of recognition results in higher levels of employee satisfaction which translates into better customer service for the customers. References Evans, N., Campbell, D., & Stonehouse, G. (2003). Strategic management for travel and tourism. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.Flouris, T. G., & Oswald, S. L. (2006). Designing and executing strategy in aviation management. Aldershot, England: Ashgate.Lawton, T. C. (2007). Strategic management in aviation: critical essays. Aldershot, Hampshire, England: Ashgate.Ray, S. J. (1999). Strategic communication in crisis management lessons from the airline industry. Westport, Conn.: Quorum Books.Hill, C. W., & Jones, G. R. (2013). Strategic management: an integrated approach (10th sEd.). Mason, OH: South-Western, Cengage Learning. Source document

What evidence that marilyn monroe did not kill herself Research Paper

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