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Section B – TWO questions ONLY to be attemptedBooxe is a furniture manufacturing company b

Section B – TWO questions ONLY to be attempted

Booxe is a furniture manufacturing company based in the large, developed country of Teeland. Booxe is the largest furniture manufacturer in Teeland supplying many of the major retail chains with their own-brand furniture and also, making furniture under its own brand (Meson). In a highly competitive market such as Teeland, Booxe has chosen a strategy of cost leadership.

Booxe has been in business for more than 70 years and there is a strong sense of tradition and appreciation of craft skills in the workforce. The average time which an employee has worked for the firm is 18 years. This has led to a bureaucratic culture; for example, the company’s information systems are heavily paper based. In addition and in line with this traditional culture, the organisation is divided into a set of functional departments, such as production, warehousing, human resources and finance.

In order to drive down costs, the chief executive officer (CEO) decided to re-engineer the processes at Booxe. She decided that there should be a small pilot project to demonstrate the potential of business process re-engineering (BPR) to benefit Booxe and she selected the goods receiving activity in the company’s warehousing operations for this.

The CEO has asked you as a performance management expert to complete the post-implementation review of the pilot project by assessing what it has delivered in financial terms. The project identified that 10 of the warehouse staff spend about half of their time matching goods delivered documents to purchase orders and dealing with subsequent problems. It was noted that 25% of all such matches failed and the staff then had to identify the issue and liaise with the purchasing department in order to get the goods returned to the supplier and a suitable credit note issued. The project introduced a new information system to replace the existing paper-based system. The new system allowed purchase orders to be entered by the purchasing department and then checked online to the goods delivered as they arrived at the warehouse. This allowed warehouse staff to reject incorrect deliveries immediately.

The following are further details provided in relation to the project:

Notes relating to old system:

1 Average staff wage in warehouse $25,000 p.a.

2 Purchasing staff time in handling delivery queries 8·5 days per week

3 Average staff wage in purchasing is $32,000 p.a. for working a 5-day week

Notes relating to new system:

New IT system costs:

Section B – TWO questions ONLY to be attemptedBoox

The CEO now plans to apply BPR across Booxe and as well as completing the post-implementation review, she also needs to know how BPR will change the accounting information systems and the culture at Booxe. Booxe’s current accounting system is a traditional one of overhead absorption based on labour hours with variances to budget used as control indicators. She has heard that an activity-based approach using enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems is fairly common and wants to know how these ideas might link to BPR at Booxe.

The CEO is concerned that middle management unrest may be a problem at Booxe. For example, the warehouse manager was uncomfortable with the cultural change required in the BPR project and decided to take early retirement before the project began. As a result, a temporary manager was put in place to run the warehouse during the project.

The CEO has also begun to reconsider the human resources system at Booxe and she wants your advice on how the staff appraisal process can improve performance in the company. The existing system of manager appraisal is for the staff member to have an annual meeting with their line superior to review the previous year’s work and discuss generally how to improve their efforts. Over the years, it has become common for these meetings to be informal and held over lunch at the company’s expense. The CEO wants to understand the purpose of a staff appraisal system and how the process can improve the performance of the company. She also wants comments on the appropriate balance between control and staff development as this impacts on staff appraisal at Booxe.

Required:

(a) Assess the financial impact of the pilot business process re-engineering (BPR) project in the warehousing operations. (6 marks)

(b) Assess the impact of BPR on the culture and management information systems at Booxe. (11 marks)

(c) Advise on the appraisal process at Booxe as instructed by the CEO. (8 marks)

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更多“Section B – TWO questions ONLY to be attemptedBooxe is a furniture manufacturing company b”相关的问题

第1题

Section A – This ONE question is compulsory and MUST be attemptedCantor Group (Cantor) is

Section A – This ONE question is compulsory and MUST be attempted

Cantor Group (Cantor) is a listed company with two subsidiaries, both involved in food and drink retailing in the small country of Deeland. Its mission is ‘to maximise shareholder value through supplying good value food and drink in appealing environments for our customers’.

Cantor Cafes (Cafes) is the original operating company for the group and is a chain of 115 cafes specialising in different coffee drinks but also serving some simple food dishes. Cafes has been running successfully for 15 years and has reached the limit of its expansion as the cafe market is now considered to be saturated with competition. Further growth will occur only as the opportunity to obtain profitable, new sites is presented, although such opportunities are not expected to be significant over the next few years.

Cantor Juicey (Juicey) was started by the Cantor Group two years ago. Now, it is made up of 15 juice bars which serve a variety of blended fruit juice drinks and health snacks. The products served by Juicey have benefited from an increased awareness in Deeland of the need to eat and drink healthily. Cantor Group expects to increase the rate of property acquisition in order to feed the rapid growth of this business, intending to open 25 outlets per year for the next four years.

Cantor Group organises its two subsidiaries in a similar way, as they are involved in similar areas of business. There is one exception to this, namely in the arrangements over the properties from which the subsidiaries operate. Cafes rent their properties on the open market on standard commercial terms with a five-year lease at a fixed rental payable quarterly in advance. Juicey, on the other hand, has made a single arrangement with a large commercial landlord for all of its properties. Juicey has agreed that the rent for its sites is a percentage of the revenue generated at each site. Juicey believes that it can continue its expansion by obtaining more sites from this landlord under the same terms.

The board of Cantor is reviewing their performance reporting systems and would like your evaluation of the current report given in Appendix 1. This report contains information for both of the subsidiaries and the group and is used by all three boards. The CEO has advised you that the board does not require an evaluation of Cantor’s performance. However, the CEO does want you to consider the cost structures at Cantor and advise on the implications of the mix of fixed and variable elements in the key cost areas of staff and property for performance management.

At a recent shareholder meeting of Cantor, one of the large shareholders expressed concern that the group lacks focus and suggested the introduction of value-based management (VBM) using economic value added (EVATM) as the measure of value. Cantor’s CEO has asked you, their strategic management accountant, to give the board more information on the implications of this suggestion. She has asked you to do an example calculation of the EVATM for the Group using the current data (Appendices 1 and 2) and explain how the shareholders might view the result. Next, the board needs to have the VBM system explained and evaluated to be able to make a decision about its use at Cantor.

Finally, the board is considering amending the mission statement to include more information on the ethical values of the company. The area being considered for inclusion in the overall mission is on the treatment of employees as it is felt that they should share in the progress and profitability of Cantor since a happy working environment will help them to better serve the customers.

The proposed new mission statement would read:

‘to maximise shareholder value and to provide a fair deal to our employees by supplying good value food and drink in appealing environments for our customers.’

The CEO has asked you to consider how the Group’s performance in the area regarding employees could be measured using the current management information at Cantor. You have obtained additional information from the management information system to assist with this task, given in Appendix 3.

Appendix 2

Additionally, you have discovered the following data about the group for the financial year:

7 There has been $2·1m of tax paid in the year.

8 It is estimated that half of the marketing spend of $7·638m is building the Cantor brand long term.

9 It is further estimated that there has been the same level of annual spending on long-term brand building in the years leading up to 2014.

Appendix 3

Additional management information

Note:

1. Group numbers include Cafes, Juicey and head office numbers

Required:

Write a report to the CEO of Cantor to:

(i) Evaluate the current performance report in Appendix 1. (15 marks)

(ii) Assess the balance of fixed and variable elements of the CEO’s two key costs in each of the two subsidiaries and the impact which this may have on performance management of these costs. Note: Detailed calculations are not required. (6 marks)

(iii) Evaluate the economic value added (EVATM) of Cantor Group, justifying any assumptions made. (9 marks)

(iv) Explain how value-based management (VBM) could be implemented at Cantor and evaluate its potential impact on the group. (10 marks)

(v) Using the information in the appendices, provide justified recommendations for suitable performance measures to reflect the proposed change in the company’s mission statement. (6 marks)

Professional marks will be awarded for the format, style. and structure of the discussion of your answer. (4 marks)

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第2题

Herman Swan & Co (HS) is a family-owned company that has made fashionable clothes and

leather goods for men for over 100 years. The company has been successful in building a strong reputation for quality by sourcing from local textile and leather producers. It sells its goods across the world through a chain of owned shops and also franchised stalls inside large, well-known stores. The company is still owned and run by the family with no other shareholders. The main goal of the firm is to organically grow the business for the next generation of the Swan family.

Customers are attracted to HS products due to the history and the family story that goes behind the products. They are willing to pay the high prices demanded as they identify with the values of the firm, especially the high quality of manufacturing.

The competition for HS has been increasing for more than ten years. It is made up of other global luxury brands and also the rising national champions in some of the rapidly expanding developing countries. The competitors often try to leverage their brands into many different product types. However, the Swan family have stated their desire to focus on the menswear market after an unsuccessful purchase of a handbag manufacturer five years ago.

The company is divided into a number of strategic business units (SBU). Each production site is an SBU, while the whole retail operation is one SBU. The head office previously functioned as a centre for procurement, finance and other support activities. The company has recently invested in a new management information system (MIS) that has increased the data available to all managers in the business. This has led to much of the procurement shifting to the production SBUs and the SBU managers taking more responsibility for budgeting. The SBU managers are delighted with their increased responsibilities and with the results from the new information system but feel there is still room for improvement in its use. The system has assisted in a project of flattening the organisation hierarchy by cutting out several layers of head office management.

You are the management accountant at HS and have been trying to persuade your boss, the finance director, that your role should change. You have read about Burns and Scapens’ report ‘Accounting Change Project’ and think that it suggests an interesting change from your current roles of preparing and reviewing budgets and overseeing the production of management and financial accounts. Your boss is sceptical but is willing to listen to your arguments. He has asked you to submit an explanation of the change that you propose and why it is necessary at HS.

Also, your boss has asked you for an example of how your role as an ‘internal consultant’ would be valuable at HS by looking at the ideas of brand loyalty and awareness. You should consider their impact on performance management at HS, both from the customer and the internal business process perspectives and how to measure them.

Required:

(a) Describe the changes in the role of the management accountant based on Burns and Scapens work. Explain what is driving these changes and justify why they are appropriate to HS. (12 marks)

(b) Using HS as an example, discuss the impact of brand loyalty and awareness on the business both from the customer and the internal business process perspectives and evaluate suitable measures for brand loyalty and awareness. (8 marks)

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第3题

Coal Creek Nursing Homes (CCNH) is a company operating residential care homes for the elde

rly in Geeland. Residents are those elderly people who can no longer care for themselves at home and whose family are unable to look after them. There are 784 homes with about 30,000 residents under the care of the company. There are about 42,500 staff, who range from head office staff through the home managers to the care staff and cleaners and caterers. The company is a private company which aims to make a suitable return to its shareholders. It had revenues of $938m in the last year and is one of the largest providers of residential care places in Geeland.

The company is split into two divisions: General Care (GC) which handles ordinary elderly residents and Special Care (SC), which is a newer operation that handles residents who need intensive care and attention due to physical or mental ailments.

The company does not own its homes but rents these from a number of large commercial landlords. It has taken on a large number of new homes recently in order to cope with the expansion of SC, which has proved successful with 24% pa revenue growth over the last two years. GC is a mature business with little growth in a sector that is now fully supplied. GC has seen volumes and margins falling as price pressure comes from its main customers (public sector health organisations who contract out this part of their care provision).

A new chief executive officer (CEO) has just taken over at CCNH. She was appointed because the board of CCNH believed that the company was in difficulty. The previous CEO had been forced to leave following a scandal involving a number of the homes where residents’ money had gone missing and their families had called in the police. The finance director and the operations director had also resigned, leaving the company without any experienced senior management.

The board have tasked the new CEO with ascertaining the current position of the business and identifying a strategy to address the issues that arise. The CEO wants to address the strategy, deciding whether to divest or retain elements of the business.

The CEO has come to you, as the most senior member of finance staff, for assistance with this task. The first area that she wants help on is the problem that the business is having with its landlords. The company struggled to meet its most recent rental payment, which the bank eventually agreed to cover through an increase to the overdraft, as CCNH had no ready cash. She is upset that the chosen strategic measures of performance (earnings per share growth and operating profit margin) did not identify the difficulties that the firm is now facing. One of the other directors had mentioned gearing problems but she did not follow what this meant.

Also, she has heard of qualitative models for predicting corporate failure and wants to apply one at CCNH. Obviously, she wants to know if CCNH exhibits any symptoms of failure.

You have been given the outline financial statements to help with this task (see Appendix on the next page).

Required:

(a) Discuss why indicators of liquidity and gearing need to be considered in conjunction with profitability at CCNH. Illustrate your answer with suitable calculations. (11 marks)

(b) Explain one qualitative model for predicting corporate failure (such as Argenti) and comment on CCNH’s position utilising this model. You are not expected to give scores, only to comment on the areas of weakness at CCNH. (9 marks)

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第4题

Section B – TWO questions ONLY to be attemptedStillwater Services (SS) is a listed water u

Section B – TWO questions ONLY to be attempted

Stillwater Services (SS) is a listed water utility company providing water and sewage services to the public and businesses of a region of Teeland. The company was formed when the government-owned Public Water Company of Teeland was broken up into regional utility companies (one of which was SS) and sold into private ownership over four years ago.

As a vital utility for the economy of Teeland, water services are a government-regulated industry. The regulator is principally concerned that SS does not abuse its monopoly position in the regional market to unjustifiably increase prices. The majority of services (80%) are controlled by the regulator who sets an acceptable return on capital employed (ROCE) level and ensures that the pricing of SS within these areas does not breach this level. The remaining services, such as a bottled water operation and a contract repairs service, are unregulated and SS can charge a market rate for these. The regulator calculates its ROCE figure based on its own valuation of the capital assets being used in regulated services and the operating profit from those regulated services.

The target pre-tax ROCE set by the regulator is 6%. If SS were to breach this figure, then the regulator could fine the company. In the past, other such companies have seen fines amounting to millions of dollars.

The board of SS are trying to drive the performance for the benefit of the shareholders. This is a new experience for many at SS, having been in the public sector until four years ago. In order to try to better communicate the objective of maximising shareholder wealth, the board have decided to introduce economic value added (EVA?) as the key performance indicator.

The finance director has asked you to calculate EVA? for the company, based on the following financial information for the year ending 30 September 2012:

Stillwater Services

2. Economic depreciation is assessed to be $83m in 2012.

Economic depreciation includes any appropriate amortisation adjustments.

In previous years, it can be assumed that economic and accounting depreciation were the same.

3. Tax is the cash paid in the current year ($9m) and an adjustment of $0·5m for deferred tax provisions. There was no deferred tax balance prior to 2012.

4. The provision for doubtful debts was $4·5m on the 2012 statement of financial position.

5. Research and development is not capitalised in the accounts.

It relates to a new project that will be developed over five years and is expected to be of long-term benefit to the company. 2012 is the first year of this project.

Required:

(a) Evaluate the performance of SS using EVA?. (13 marks)

(b) Assess whether SS meets its regulatory ROCE target and comment on the impact of such a constraint on performance management at SS. (7 marks)

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第5题

The Drinks Group (DG) has been created over the last three years by merging three medium-s

The Drinks Group (DG) has been created over the last three years by merging three medium-sized family businesses. These businesses are all involved in making fruit drinks. Fizzy (F) makes and bottles healthy, fruit-based sparkling drinks. Still (S) makes and bottles fruit-flavoured non-sparkling drinks and Healthy (H) buys fruit and squeezes it to make basic fruit juices. The three companies have been divisionalised within the group structure. A fourth division called Marketing (M) exists to market the products of the other divisions to various large retail chains. Marketing has only recently been set up in order to help the business expand. All of the operations and sales of DG occur in Nordland, which is an economically well-developed country with a strong market for healthy non-alcoholic drinks.

—————————————————————————————————————————

The group has recruited a new finance director (FD), who was asked by the board to perform. a review of the efficiency and effectiveness of the finance department as her first task on taking office. The finance director has just presented her report to the board regarding some problems at DG.

Extract from finance director’s Report to the Board:

‘The main area for improvement, which was discussed at the last board meeting, is the need to improve profit margins throughout the business. There is no strong evidence that new products or markets are required but that the most promising area for improvement lies in better internal control practices.

Control

As DG was formed from an integration of the original businesses (F, S, H), there was little immediate effort put into optimising the control systems of these businesses. They have each evolved over time in their own way. Currently, the main method of central control that can be used to drive profit margin improvement is the budget system in each business. The budgeting method used is to take the previous year’s figures and simply increment them by estimates of growth in the market that will occur over the next year. These growth estimates are obtained through a discussion between the financial managers at group level and the relevant divisional managers. The management at each division are then given these budgets by head office and their personal targets are set around achieving the relevant budget numbers.

Divisions

H and S divisions are in stable markets where the levels of demand and competition mean that sales growth is unlikely, unless by acquisition of another brand. The main engine for prospective profit growth in these divisions is through margin improvements. The managers at these divisions have been successful in previous years and generally keep to the agreed budgets. As a result, they are usually not comfortable with changing existing practices.

F is faster growing and seen as the star of the Group. However, the Group has been receiving complaints from customers about late deliveries and poor quality control of the F products. The F managers have explained that they are working hard within the budget and capital constraints imposed by the board and have expressed a desire to be less controlled.

The marketing division has only recently been set up and the intention is to run each marketing campaign as an individual project which would be charged to the division whose products are benefiting from the campaign. The managers of the manufacturing divisions are very doubtful of the value of M, as each believes that they have an existing strong reputation with their customers that does not require much additional spending on marketing. However, the board decided at the last meeting that there was scope to create and use a marketing budget effectively at DG, if its costs were carefully controlled. Similar to the other divisions, the marketing division budgets are set by taking the previous year’s actual spend and adding a percentage increase. For M, the increase corresponds to the previous year’s growth in group turnover.’

End of extract

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At present, the finance director is harassed by the introduction of a new information system within the finance department which is straining the resources of the department. However, she needs to respond to the issues raised above at the board meeting and so is considering using different budgeting methods at DG. She has asked you, the management accountant at the Group, to do some preliminary work to help her decide whether and how to change the budget methods. The first task that she believes would be useful is to consider the use of rolling budgets. She thinks that fast-growing F may prove the easiest division in which to introduce new ideas.

F’s incremental budget for the current year is given below. You can assume that cost of sales and distribution costs are variable and administrative costs are fixed.

On the basis of the Q1 results, sales volume growth of 3% per quarter is now expected.

The finance director has also heard you talking about bottom-up budgeting and wants you to evaluate its use at DG.

Required:

(a) Evaluate the suitability of incremental budgeting at each division. (8 marks)

(b) Recalculate the budget for Fizzy division (F) using rolling budgeting and assess the use of rolling budgeting at F. (8 marks)

(c) Recommend any appropriate changes to the budgeting method at the Marketing division (M), providing justifications for your choice. (4 marks)

(d) Analyse and recommend the appropriate level of participation in budgeting at Drinks Group (DG). (6 marks)

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第6题

Section A – BOTH questions are compulsory and MUST be attemptedLincoln & Lincoln Adver

Section A – BOTH questions are compulsory and MUST be attempted

Lincoln & Lincoln Advertising (LLA) is an advertising agency based in Veeland, which is a large well-developed country considered to be one of the wealthiest in the world. LLA operates out of three regional offices (North, East and West) with its head office functions based in the East offices. The business offers a wide range of advertising services:

Strategic: Advising on an overall advertising campaign (mix of advertising channels and overall themes);

Buying: Advising and buying advertising space (on television, radio, websites and in newspapers and magazines); and

Creative: Designing and producing specific adverts for the customers’ use.

The company is one of the three largest agencies in Veeland with many years of experience and many awards won. Competition in advertising is fierce, as advertising spending by businesses has suffered recently during a general economic downturn. Most new business is won in tender competitions between different advertising agencies.

Veeland is a large country with considerable diversity of markets, economic conditions and fashions across its regions. As a result, the regional offices have developed with a considerable amount of decision-making autonomy. This also reflects the temperament of the key creative employees of the firm who have a strong attachment to their campaign ideas and take great personal pride in their success. The individualism of the key employees also comes from the way that LLA has grown. The business has been built through acquisition of small, local businesses in each of the three regions. Each of these acquisitions has been consolidated into the appropriate regional office.

You have been recruited in to LLA in order to take up the newly created post of senior management accountant. Your recruitment caused some concern amongst the board but was championed by the chief executive officer (CEO) as ‘necessary to stay ahead of the game’. The board have asked that you prove yourself and also give a fresh perspective on LLA by providing them with a report. Initially, you have been asked to provide an assessment of the current financial position of the three regional offices. The most recent management accounts are in Appendix 1. The basic assessment calculations have already been accurately completed by one of the junior staff and the results are in Appendix 2.

As part of the briefing for this exercise, you attended part of a recent board meeting where you were told that the board want your views on the choice of net income as the performance measure for each of the regional offices. They want you to suggest other measures and why they are appropriate for each office. The CEO has advised you that you may want to use different key measures for each office, rather than have a ‘one-size fits all policy’. During the board’s discussion, issues around controllability and responsibility accounting appear to be the main concerns of the board. The CEO also stated that the board would not be interested in a long list of which numbers have gone up and which have gone down. They will want to be given a coherent picture of what is going on at each of the regional offices.

Finally, the CEO said, ‘Well, if you are not completely tired out at the end of this little project then I’d also like you to comment on our remuneration policy at the regional offices including ideas based on your assessment of performance measures.’ Later, the CEO gave you a note (see Appendix 3) describing these policies at LLA.

Required:

Write the report to the board of LLA to:

(i) Assess the recent performance of the three regional offices by interpreting the data given in Appendices 1 and 2. (10 marks)

(ii) Evaluate the choice of net income as the performance measure for the regional offices and suggest other measures and why they are appropriate for each office. (10 marks)

(iii) Using the information provided, evaluate LLA’s remuneration policy suggesting changes as appropriate. (10 marks)

Professional marks will be awarded in question 1 for the format, style, structure and clarity of the discussion of your answer. (4 marks)

Note: the Appendices follow on the next two pages.

Appendix 1: LLA financial data

The figures are drawn from the regional offices’ management accounts for year to September 2012.

Notes:

1. East office data is for the regional office only. It excludes any costs of the head office function based there other than the allocated costs listed.

2. Notional cost of capital at LLA is 9%.

3. Current assets contains only accounts receivable for each office.

Appendix 2: Basic calculations

[These can be assumed to be calculated correctly.]

Notes

1. Other costs and allocated head office costs are fixed.

2. Margins are calculated as a percentage of revenue.

Appendix 3: Note on remuneration from the CEO:

There are broadly five grades of staff at each regional office. The following is an outline of their remuneration packages. (The head office staff are treated separately and are not part of this exercise.)

Senior management

All staff at this level are paid a basic fixed salary, which reflects industry norms over the last few years, plus a bonus dependent on the net income of their office.

Creative staff

The ‘creatives’ are on individual packages which reflect the market rates in order to recruit them at the time that they were recruited. Some are fixed salary and some have a fixed element plus a bonus based on their office’s revenues.

Buying staff

The buyers are paid a fixed salary plus a bonus based on the prices for advertising space that they negotiate compared to the budgeted cost of space. The budget is set by the finance team at head office based on previous years’ experience and their forecast for supply and demand in the year in question.

Account management staff

Account management handles relationships with clients and also develops new clients. They are paid a fixed marketbased salary.

Administration staff

These staff are paid the market rate for their jobs as a fixed salary based on hours worked.

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第7题

Callisto Retail (Callisto) is an on-line reseller of local craft products related to the h

istoric culture of the country of Callistan. The business started ten years ago as a hobby of two brothers, Jeff and George. The brothers produced humorous, short video clips about Callistan which were posted on their website and became highly popular. They decided to use the website to try to sell Callistan merchandise and good initial sales made them believe that they had a viable business idea.

Callisto has gone from strength to strength and now boasts sales of $120m per annum, selling anything related to Callistan. Callisto is still very much the brothers’ family business. They have gathered around themselves a number of strategic partners into what Jeff describes as a virtual company. Callisto has the core functions of video clip production, finance and supplier relationship management. The rest of the functions of the organisation (warehousing, delivery and website development) are outsourced to strategic partners.

The brothers work from their family home in the rural North of Callistan while other Callisto employees work from their homes in the surrounding villages and towns. These employees are involved in video editing, system maintenance, handling customer complaints and communication with suppliers and outsourcers regarding inventory. The employees log in to Callisto’s systems via the national internet infrastructure. The outsourced functions are handled by multinational companies of good reputation who are based around the world. The brothers have always been fascinated by information technology and so they depend on email and electronic data interchange to communicate with their product suppliers and outsourcing partners.

Recently, there have been emails from regular customers of the Callisto website complaining about slow or non-delivery of orders that they have placed. George has commented that this represents a major threat to Callisto as the company operates on small profit margins, relying on volume to drive the business. He believes that sales growth will drive the profitability of the business due to its cost structure.

Jeff handles the management of outsourcing and has been reviewing the contracts that exist between Callisto and its strategic partner for warehousing and delivery, RLR Logistics. The current contract for warehousing and delivery is due for renewal in two months and currently, has the following service level agreements (SLAs):

1. RLR agree to receive and hold inventory from Callisto’s product suppliers.

2. RLR agree to hold 14 days inventory of Callisto’s products.

3. RLR agree to despatch from their warehouse any order passed from Callisto within three working days, inventory allowing.

4. RLR agree to deliver to customers anywhere in Callistan within two days of despatch.

Breaches in these SLAs incur financial penalties on a sliding scale depending on the number and severity of the problems. Each party to the contract collects their own data on performance and this has led to disagreements in the past over whether service levels have been achieved although no penalties have been triggered to date. The most common disagreement arises over inventory levels held by RLR with RLR claiming that it cannot be expected to deliver products that are late in arriving to inventory due to the product suppliers’ production and delivery issues.

Required:

Assess the difficulties of performance measurement and performance management in complex business structures such as Callisto, especially in respect of the performance of their employees and strategic partners.

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第8题

Ganymede University (GU) is one of the three largest universities in Teeland, which has ei

ght universities in total. All of the universities are in the public sector. GU obtains the vast majority of its revenue through government contracts for academic research and payments per head for teaching students. The economy of Teeland has been in recession in the last year and this has caused the government to cut funding for all the universities in the country.

In order to try to improve efficiency, the chancellor of the university, who leads its executive board, has asked the head administrator to undertake an exercise to benchmark GU’s administration departments against the other two large universities in the country, AU and BU. The government education ministry has supported this initiative and has required all three universities to cooperate by supplying information.

The following information has been collected regarding administrative costs for the most recent academic year:

The key drivers of costs and revenues have been assumed to be research contract values supported, student numbers and total staff numbers. The head administrator wants you to complete the benchmarking and make some preliminary comment on your results.

Required:

(a) Assess the progress of the benchmarking exercise to date, explaining the actions that have been undertaken and those that are still required. (8 marks)

(b) Evaluate, as far as possible, Ganymede University’s benchmarked position. (9 marks)

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第9题

Section B – TWO questions ONLY to be attemptedThebe Telecom is a large national telephone

Section B – TWO questions ONLY to be attempted

Thebe Telecom is a large national telephone business in Fayland. Thebe provides telephone service to more than 11 million customers through its fixed line and mobile services. Thebe has three strategic business units: mobile; fixed line telephone (incorporating broadband); and corporate services (serving other businesses’ telephone needs). It has become the largest mobile operator in Fayland through a series of acquisitions of competitors and operating licences.

Thebe’s CEO has won many awards for being an innovative businessman who recognises the rapid changes in technology, regulation and competitor action that occur in the sector. Thebe’s major competitor in Fayland is the original nationalised telephone company, FayTel, which was privatised 20 years ago but which retains many of the features of a monopoly supplier including a massive infrastructure. As a result, Thebe’s CEO realised long ago that competition on the basis of price and volume would not work against such a large competitor and so he has focused on customer service as the key to growing the business.

In order to improve the company’s competitive position, the CEO decided that the company should consider a Six Sigma initiative to give an immediate step change improvement to the service quality at Thebe. The initiative involved a number of projects including one to improve the quality of customers’ bills. FayTel was publicly criticised by the government’s consumer advocate who pointed to occasional misallocations of call minutes to the wrong numbers and also, more frequently, the application of incorrect tariffs in calculating the costs of calls. Thebe’s CEO is aware that all telephone businesses (including Thebe) have these problems but this is an area in which Thebe can gain a competitive advantage and has taken a special interest in this project by championing it himself.

The project is focused on improving the accuracy of customers’ bills and the handling of complaints. Within the billing department, the company divided activities into normal money collection, credit control on overdue payments and managing complaints. Process diagrams were created for each of these areas and then data was sourced from customer feedback at the various points of interaction with Thebe employees (such as complaint handling) and internal measurables created. The project team was formed from line managers from all three strategic business units and the billing department.

Required:

(a) Explain how the general way in which Six Sigma is implemented helps improve the quality of performance illustrating your answer with reference to Thebe. (8 marks)

(b) Explain and illustrate how the DMAIC method for the implementation of Six Sigma could be applied at Thebe. (9 marks)

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第10题

Amal Airline (Amal) is the national airline of Jayland. It was originally owned by the gov

ernment but was listed on the local stock exchange when sold to private investors more than 20 years ago. The airline’s objective is to be the best premium global airline.

Amal provides long- and short-haul services all over the world and is based at its hub at Jaycity airport. Amal has been hit by a worldwide reduction in air travel due to poor economic conditions. The most recent financial results show a loss and this has caused the board to reconsider its position and take action to address the changed environment.

Amal has cut its dividend in order to conserve cash and it is trying to rebuild profitability by reducing costs by 14%. The airline is capital intensive as it requires to maintain a large fleet of modern aircraft. The two major costs for the airline are staff and fuel. In trying to renegotiate working conditions and pay, the management have angered the unionised workforce. There has already been some strike action by the unions representing the aircraft crew and ground staff and more is threatened. They are upset about changes to pension provisions which will require them to make larger contributions and also, a reduction in the number of crew on each aircraft which they believe will require them to work harder and so they want a compensating pay-rise.

Additionally, the board are pushing forward a large project to improve the design of the company website in order to increase the number of passengers who check-in on-line and so would not require as much assistance at the airport. The new design is also aiming to increase the number of passengers who book their tickets through the company’s website rather than other resellers’ websites or at booking agents. The project is currently two months behind schedule due to one of the main software suppliers becoming insolvent.

Finally, the board has been considering taking advantage of new technology in aircraft engines by making a large investment ($450m) in new low-noise, fuel-efficient aircraft in an effort to reduce the environmental complaints surrounding air travel and also cut costs.

Given all of the issues and projects affecting Amal, the CEO has tried to find a unifying view that will explain the airline’s performance. She has heard that the performance prism may provide such a framework.

As further background, the CEO has supplied the data below on Amal and two of its main competitors. Kayland Air is a government owned and run airline in the neighbouring country of Kayland. It has a similar mix of business to Amal and targets a similar market. Cheapo Air is currently one of the most successful of the new privately-owned airlines that have gained significant market share over the last 15 years by offering a cheap but basic short-haul service to customers in and around Jayland. Cheapo Air subcontracts many of their activities in order to remain flexible. The CEO wants you to calculate some suitable performance measures and explain the results.

Data provided by the CEO:

Data for the most recent calendar year

Note: A seat kilometre is generated for every one kilometre flown by an available seat on the company’s aircraft.

(a) Using the data provided, analyse the three airlines using appropriate performance indicators and comment on your results. (12 marks)

(b) Apply the performance prism model to Amal and suggest improvements to performance management including possible methods of performance improvement and also relevant performance measures. (14 marks)

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