Bertelsmann AG is the largest media and entertainment group in Europe and the second largest in the world to U.S. based Time Warner, Inc. Bertelsmann has operations in over 40 countries, primarily in North America and Europe. Bertelsmann’s Theory of Business is to provide information, entertainment and media services to inspire people’s daily lives, make…
Case Study: Opportunity A: Your bank is looking at an optical character recognition (OCR) system to further automate the check processing function. Check processing is a time sensitive function. If outgoing checks miss daily clearing deadlines, the bank looses use of the money for one day. Since your bank clears over one million checks per…
Overview Amazon.com offers Earth’s largest selection of online products. Being the #1 online retailer, it offers the most advanced and innovative ways of e-commerce that is capable to continuously deliver fastest, reliable, cheapest and most user-friendly online shopping experience for the customer. Marketing Strategy Focus and Market Segments Company’s mission is to become extremely customer-centric…
All organizations strive for excellence. The Theory of Business (TOB) of any company is considered the deciding factor, which determines the degree of excellence and ultimately defines the fundamental assumptions that the business is built on. The main thought process that leads to a well-defined TOB is an organization’s own experience and its openness to…
Its my pleasure to introduce you to the emerging world of m-commerce and how your company can take a competitive edge by harnessing this technology towards effective information management. The industry has already seen a huge shift towards increasing end user value by enabling commercial transactions such as comparison shopping and directory services via handheld…
Force field analysis is a tool used for analyzing the supporting and opposing forces behind a change process. Managers use it to identify the stakeholders who support or oppose the proposed change, analyze the forces or motivating factors behind each supporting or opposing behavior and then take action so as to reduce the opposing forces….
Technology cycles and innovation are two useful phenomena that can be used to explain how competitive advantage of companies can be maintained over time. Technology cycle can be defined as the period of time between the birth or introduction of a new technology and when it is replaced by a newer and substantially better technology….
Planning has advantages as well as disadvantages. This means that even though planning aids in improving organizational and individual performance, it might not work very well all the time throughout the existence of the organization. One important benefit of planning is that it encourages managers and workers to direct their persistent efforts towards activities that…
Cognitive dissonance is an insecure feeling, or lingering doubts, consumers sometimes have after making large purchases. One way to reduce Cognitive dissonance (CD) is to introduce full money back guarantee on dissatisfaction within a stated time period, say 2-3 weeks after purchase. Another way to reduce CD is by allowing product evaluations where the user…
The consumer can be influenced by exposing him to some stimuli that makes him realize about his potential need or desire for something. A good method will be to expose him to some sort of advertisement. For example as a marketing manager of a ABC company that produces dandruff remover shampoos, I will work on…
Market segmentation is the process of separating the varied market into segments, each of which has similar characteristics. For example, a cosmetic company may segment its market according to age and sex, thus concentrating on baby lotion (age), adult shampoo (age), after-shave (sex) and eye-liner (sex). The organization could then do research in each segment…
Case: A company invests $15000 and receives a $11000 cash benefit at the end of the first year and a $12100 cash benefit at the end of the second year. (Assume Cost of Money = 10%) Calculation: t=0 t=1 t=2 Costs Onetime investment (15000) Benefits Cash 11000 12100 F (15000) 11000 12100 P (15000) 10000…
Accounting can be considered as an information system that provides various tools to summarize financial performance or economic activities of an individual, family, organization or any other entity. The reports generated from an accounting system, aids the interested individuals, management, owners and creditors to make intelligent decisions in allocating resources. Financial management is the discipline…
Balance Sheet gives the snapshot of the business’s financial position at a particular instance. It basically measures the wealth of a business firm at that instance. On a Balance sheet, the main accounting formula is Owner’s Equity = (Assets-Liabilities). The Income statement on the other hand is the summary of the revenue and the expenses…
Assets and liabilities are the two major entities that find an entry in a business’s balance sheet for measuring its wealth. Assets are items owned by the business firm that have certain monetary value and will result in future benefits in the form of service and and/or cash flows. Two common assets are accounts receivable…
Process Management has its relevance when managers begin to conceptualize business activities as interdependent processes instead of functions and tasks. The basic requirement towards effective process management is IT enabled business process automation, usually an outcome of a reengineering task. For the processes to accomplish the set goals, we need to set various standards of…
Systems view refers to analyzing a problem situation as a system of interdependent processes that exchange input and output. This view helps to identify the important processes and their relationships as far as maximizing the organizational efficiency and goal achievement is concerned. This leads to the main principle of process improvement which is to emphasize…
Equity theory states that a person is motivated when he perceives that he is treated fairly. He usually picks a colleague who works with him, as the “referent”. He tries to equate his outcome (pay, status, job-title, job assignment) over input (education, training, intelligence, experience, number of hours worked) ratio to that of referent’s and…
Two major types of diversities is notable in an organizational setting, which every IT manager should take into consideration – Surface level diversity are those differences that are easily noticeable such as age, gender, ethnicity/race, culture, language, disability etc. Surface level diversity is easy to be measured and managers/recruiters can fall into the wrong practice…
Working in teams does not always ensure positive results. Two possible disadvantages are large number of employees quitting the job and “Social Loafing”. Teams require extensive learning of standard team policies and work procedures and adherence to specific individual responsibilities. This might lead to excessive team pressure when much is expected from each team member….
Managing diverse workforce is a crucial skill for a manager since there exists both surface level (demographic, cultural and language) and deep level (personal differences in attitudes, values, beliefs and personality) diversity among an organization’s workforce. A diverse workforce has various advantages attached to it such as cost benefits by saving dollars spent on expensive…