...1) Financial ratios are of little use without benchmarks to compare them against. Benchmarks are guidelines or general rules of thumb related to a specific industry or business segment. In order for financial operational performance measures to have evaluative meaning, the user must have some reference (comparison) benchmarks against which to compare the actual outcome. As benchmarking and ratio analysis continue to grow in popularity, the availability of such data will also improve. Various public and private organizations collect and analyze financial data on the industry as a whole and on specific sectors. Often this information is available to the general public. Three key financial ratio benchmarks are industry average, historical trend, and budget. A historical performance benchmark is financial data compared to a certain time period with another. The industry average benchmark compares specific firm’s ratios to industry averages which are normally available through a wide variety of industry specific trade journals and associations. This is a good benchmark to see how a firm would be comparing to industry norms. However, as firms diversify operations it can hinder the ability of an analyst to get accurate comparables. Finally, the budget benchmark which is only available to key managerial staff creates the most valid data in any real level or detail. A flexible budget provides the ability for the analyst to get a better understanding of how actual performance...
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...Beyond Benchmarks: Estimate Your Application Maintenance Costs Using Internal Data by Phil Murphy EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Applications professionals struggle to explain the cost of their applications' ongoing operations and maintenance to their business counterparts, who commonly perceive the costs as excessive. The business perceives these costs as excessive in part because of the way applications professionals deliver the information — as a large and indecipherable lump-sum budget item. Applications professionals who want to avoid blind mandates to cut costs by "X" percent must break out application costs in a way that business people can analyze and digest. When they do, they give the business an opportunity to make smart, surgical reductions to costs and shift underutilized resources to the work that is most important to the organization, increasing overall agility and innovation while reducing wasteful spending habits. IN SEARCH OF "INDUSTRY STANDARD" BENCHMARK COMPARISON FIGURES When business and IT executives push back on the costs of applications, they raise a common set of questions such as, "Are we spending too much?"; "What do other companies spend for the same services?"; and "How do we measure up against 'industry standard' measures and benchmarks?" The erroneous assumption is that "industry standards" exist for virtually every category of IT spending. The term "industry standard" implies that an industry such as manufacturing or insurance agrees to use a certain...
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...In order to move the corporation towards its strategic goal of “building a profitable franchise by providing relationship banking combined with a high level of service to its customers”, Citi Bank California has recently incorporated a variety of non-financial measurements into its performance evaluation system. Specifically, the problem needs to be addressed in the case is whether James should receive a “below par” or “par” overall rating for the fiscal year 1996 as a result of his “below par” rating in customer satisfaction. My recommendation is to give James a “par” rating, and supporting evidences are given as below. First of all, the newly adopted performance scorecard consists of six different types of measures including financial measures, strategy implementation, customer satisfaction, control measures, people, and standards. Among these measurements, the first four are objective measurements determined by related objective data collected during the year, and the latter two are subjective measurements which are substantially depending on the personal opinions of Lisa, direct supervisor of branch managers including James. According to the four quarterly performance evaluation over the year, James has done an excellent job in five out of six measurements other than customer satisfaction. Therefore, after taking the importance of improving customer satisfaction into account, an overall rating of “par” would be objective enough to highlight the corporation’s strategic goal...
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...INTRODUCTION The recent moves of the government to gradually deregulate the Petroleum, Oil and Lubricants(POL) sector in India as part of the agenda of ‘neo-liberal reform’ has generated discontent among the people. In the run-up to complete deregulation, there are instances of increase in the domestic price of POL products that are proportionately more than the rise in their international prices. In the most recent instance (of 13th September, 2012), the diesel price was raised by Rs.5 per litre at one go, even without any rise in international prices. These steps are being taken to eliminate the government subsidy on these products in a step-by-step manner. Deregulation of the POL sector is bound to eliminate the direct or indirect subsidies completely. And reduction in subsidy, according to the government, is the need of the hour in order to reduce the fiscal deficit as proportion to GDP. Deregulation is also necessitated in the current neo-liberal environment because if the government keeps subsidizing the public sector owned oil marketing companies (OMCs) like Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum, then the private companies like Reliance and others would not get a ‘level playing field’ and they would not be able to compete in price. In this way, the present subsidy regime indirectly restricts the private players from entering the oil marketing sector. Hence, if the priorities of the government in power are the reduction of subsidies and ensuring...
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...An Anatomy of the Crude Oil Pricing System Bassam Fattouh1 WPM 40 January 2011 1 Bassam Fattouh is the Director of the Oil and Middle East Programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies; Research Fellow at St Antony‟s College, Oxford University; and Professor of Finance and Management at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. I would like to express my gratitude to Argus for supplying me with much of the data that underlie this research. I would also like to thank Platts for providing me with the data for Figure 21 and CME Group for providing me with the data for Figure 13. The paper has benefited greatly from the helpful comments of Robert Mabro and Christopher Allsopp and many commentators who preferred to remain anonymous but whose comments provided a major source of information for this study. The paper also benefited from the comments received in seminars at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, UK, ENI, Milan and Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Oxford. Finally, I would like to thank those individuals who have given their time for face-to-face and/or phone interviews and have been willing to share their views and expertise. Any remaining errors are my own. 1 The contents of this paper are the authors’ sole responsibility. They do not necessarily represent the views of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies or any of its members. Copyright © 2011 Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (Registered Charity, No. 286084) ...
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...when people feel that performance fairly determines the pay for each individual with a certain job or that relative difficulty results in appropriate differences in pay rates between jobs. Worker dissatisfaction may arise when internal equity principles aren't met.Internal equity studies analyze the nature of a particular position including: 1.Skill2.Effort and 3.Responsibility” (web). 2. What is a benchmark or key job? Why are these kinds of jobs so critical in various job evaluation methodologies? Bench mark jobs are highly visible jobs that common to a variety of organizations. These jobs are critical in various job evaluation methodologies because they can be used for comparison with other jobs that are above, below, or comparable in complexity and difficulty for pay purposes. This is usually a job that is clearly defined and shows the differences between departments. Working in retail I observed different departments such as clothing and appliances. Working in the education filed I observed different “departments” such as special education, speech, dual language as well as mainstream classes. (pg174). 3. What are some of the strengths and limitations in the use of ranking for job evaluation purposes? Some of the strengths of job ranking is when evaluators are intimately familiar with all jobs being ranked, they may only have to direct their decision making processes to a job title which helps make accurate results (pg175). Ranking is valuable as a first...
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...CS 507 Adv. Computer Architecture Home Assignment No. : 1 Due Date : March 12, 2014 Q. No. 1 (40) SPEC CPU2006 provides benchmark suites to evaluate CPU performance. CINT2006 lists the benchmark programs to evaluate performance of CPU for integer performance. It is desired that you evaluate comparative performance of the CPU of your laptop with that of your friends. You may select two or more programs from CINT2006 and execute them on your own machine and that of your friends either with or without any modification to programs selected by you. You need to measure user and system times for each program executed for machines used for comparison. You are required to submit a report containing configuration of m/c.s, CPU details, OS and compiler details, source listing of programs executed, details of modifications in programs, if any, and performance. In case you are not able to run programs from CINT2006, you may select appropriate toy benchmark programs. Q. No. 2 (20) Amdahl’s law states the law of diminishing returns. Demonstrate this though a graph between overall speedup and enhancement made. Q. No. 3 (20) Write a report providing growth of DRAM in terms of priceperformance in the current decade. Please do list sources from where you have collected your data. Q. No. 4 (20) We wish to evaluate core utilization of your laptop processor for a set of programs for different application. Programs may include matrix multiplication, counting of vowels, or displaying certain...
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...components. Then we use these transitory and permanent components to develop forecasting models. We assess our models’ performance in various aspects, and our main results indicate: (a) for real BCNE prices, most of the short-run variation is attributed to demand shocks, (b) the world economic activity and real U.S. dollar effective exchange rate explain much of the cyclical variation of real BCNE prices, (c) real crude oil prices have two structural breaks over the sample period, and their link with the world economic activity is strongest in the most recent regime, (d) real prices of other energy components are highly correlated with the U.S. economic activity, and they are co-integrated with real crude oil prices, (e) our models outperform benchmark models, namely a VAR model, autoregressive (AR) model and a random walk (RW) model, in terms of out-of-sample forecasting, and (f) a 1% positive shock to world economic activity leads to an approximate 7.2% peak response of world commodity...
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...Hitman: Absolution benchmark feature ------------------------------------ Hitman: Absolution contains a performance benchmark feature that you can use to test the game's performance on your system. It will either use the current display and graphics settings or read specific values from an INI file depending on the way you initiate the test. The file benchmarkresults.txt is written to the gamefolder when the test is completed. It contains the benchmark results and the used display and graphics settings. To get an accurate test of the performance, the game will always go to exclusive fullscreen mode and disable VSync. There are three ways to start a benchmark test: 1) From the main menu: Start the game and proceed to the main menu. Select the Options menu. When you are done tweaking your Display and Graphics settings, select START BENCHMARK at the bottom of the options menu. Once the benchmark is completed you will be prompted with the results and be returned to the main menu. 2) From the Options dialog: When you start the game you are prompted with the launcher menu. Choose "Options". Tweak your Display and Quality settings and choose "Start Benchmark" on the bottom of the dialog. Once the benchmark is completed you will be prompted with the results and the game restarts itself to the launcher menu. 3) From the command line: You can also start the benchmark test from the command line. Use one of the following combinations of arguments: HMA.exe -startbenchmark...
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...Causes of Erratic Oil Price Fluctuations on a Global Scale Crude oil is a significant commodity that has a far-reaching global economic impact. This is mostly because it is used as a primary raw product for extracting various forms of energy, such as diesel, petrol, and kerosene. The products extracted from crude oil are used in the various facets of human life. For instance, diesel is a crucial component used in manufacturing facilities (Mankiw 115-133). There are constant fluctuations in oil prices, making the price of a barrel of crude oil vary on a minute-by-minute scale. Fluctuations in fuel prices can be a primary factor in the cost of transportation and manufacturing to name but a few. Therefore, fluctuations in the price of crude oil have constant effects on the global economy. These effects have made many investors and citizens alike to be wary of any fluctuations (Butcher 45-77). Oil price fluctuations are bad for the global economy. High crude oil prices contribute to a higher cost of living, thereby affecting national and global economic performance. The question then begs; what is the cause of the erratic crude oil price fluctuations in global scale? There are various reasons as to why there are frequent fluctuations in crude oil prices. In particular, just crude oil production itself can cause major fluctuations in crude oil prices. For instance, reduced production would create shortage of crude oil in the market, and following microeconomics principles;...
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...Has Asian Industrialization had a Negative Impact on the Global Marketplace? An Investigation into the Effect of Industrialization of Select Markets and their Impact on the Global Marketplace. Has Asian Industrialization had a Negative Impact on the Global Marketplace? The global marketplace has seen a large shift in buying power in recent years. Former world leaders have seen their influence on the marketplace dwindle as industrialization begins to take hold in countries previously not seen as traditional powerhouses. Worldwide, prices have risen at a rate never before seen. With a burgeoning population of middle class workers, Asia as a whole, and China and India specifically, have fueled this pricing explosion. Research shows that the development of these former 3rd world countries is responsible for a large increase in global pricing due to the high demand for steel, oil, and agricultural products. One major industry which has been affected by this shift is the steel industry. The demand for steel along with the decreased supply has caused prices to increase by 25 to 45 percent in the US market. (Van Der Schans, 2007). Several factors have coincided to deal a damaging blow to the US steel market. Firstly, China and India have become major players in the steel industry, accounting for the consumption of over 25 percent of the worldwide steel supply. Cooney found that, “China has become both the world’s largest steelmaker and steel consumer.” (2006). China’s...
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...Tracee Finley Business Economics GM 545 Spring Semester 2012 Tfinley73@yahoo.com Everyone’s Gasoline Problem Since September 2010, average monthly gas prices have risen 45 cents to $3.21 (February month-to-date), an increase of 16.4%. But during the past four years, there have been several periods where gas prices increased by even more substantial amounts. In 2008, gas prices rose 94 cents — or 33.4% — to $4.11 between February 2008 and June 2008. Gas prices also increased 63 cents from February to May 2006, 86 cents from February to May 2007, and 94 cents from December 2008 to June 2009. (http://www.edmunds.com/about/press/current-gas-price-hikes-dont-measure-up-to-recent-history-says-edmundscom.html). Prices fluctuate at the pump because of problems in the Middle East, natural disasters and government regulation. Crude oil also plays an important role in gas prices. Crude oil is a natural substance found underground that is used to produce fuel for cars, trucks, airplanes, boats and trains. As of February 2012, crude oil prices made up 72% of the price of gasoline. (http://useconomy.about.com). For every $1 increase in the price of a barrel of crude oil, U.S. consumers are likely to pay 2-1/2 more cents for a gallon of gasoline. The prices that we pay at the pump are determined by supply and demand. For example, if demand rises and supply falls, prices increase, and just the opposite when supply increases and demand decreases, prices will decrease. Being an...
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...CONFIDENTIAL Employee Performance Evaluation Employee's Name _______________________________________Title __________________ Office/Dept. _________________________Date of Evaluation __________________________ PERFORMANCE DEFINITIONS *3 2 1 STEP I COMMENDABLE ACCEPTABLE MARGINAL Performs beyond specified requirements within job description Meets the specified requirements of job description Corrective action and/or release from job may be required EVALUATE THE ELEMENTS OF PERFORMANCE. Evaluate all factors indicated below by checking the appropriate space and commenting where applicable. *3 _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ 2 _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ 1 _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ QUALITY - Performs work thoroughly effectively accurately QUANTITY - Completes the necessary amount of work Is able to prioritize tasks KNOWLEDGE - Is capable in handling all phases and details within job specifications HUMAN RELATIONS - Is willing to work with others Is able to work with others COMMUNICATION SKILLS - Effectively presents written ideas and information to others JUDGEMENT - Is able to make decisions based on sound reasoning JOB DEPENDABILITY - Is honest and reliable in carrying out instructions _____ Observes Personnel Policies _____ Complies with established...
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...Discuss the trends in the U.S. airline industry and how these trends might impact a company’s strategy Airline industry is a clearly structured industry. Trends in the U.S airline industry have an impact the strategies of the airlines especially the Jet Blue airline. U.S airline industry trends including increased crude oil prices, new technology advancement and the impact on post 911 aviation securities. Technologies place an important role in the airline industry today. Technology helps to develop great convenience offer to the customers. Internet as a way to book flights, check in, and check flight status. After the terrorist attack of the 911-airline industry have security systems protecting for the passengers. There are some main changes in the airline industry after attack of 911 such as baggage screening and passenger screening. After 911 federal government increased the air passenger safety. Screening procedures for passengers and their baggage including requiring passengers to remove their shoes and limiting carrying fluids on to the plane. Finally crude oil prices impact a company strategies in the airline industry. Crude oil prices increased dramatically and caused airlines to struggle. When the crude oil price increase they began to increase passenger fees for heavy bags, snacks and even blankets and pillows. Discuss Jet Blue’s strategic intent Discuss Jet Blue’s financial objectives and whether or not the company has been successful in achieving...
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...Dear sir/madam, I am submitting for your consideration this thorough analysis to support your plan to use FRACKING technology in a number of oil and gas wells on a private land in Adams County, Colorado. Your approval is required so that we can move to the next step of the project’s lifecycle. PRELIMINARY ACTIONS Seismic investigation is the first step that should be taken prior to a formal analysis of business opportunities. It is vital to ensure that expected revenue will justify cost of operation and result in reasonable profits expected by our customers. Communications Plan is in the pipeline to assure stakeholders that the fracking activity will not connect to the aquifer, since the oil and gas deposits are separated from any useable aquifers by nearly 5,000’ of impermeable shale, and that the cement wall to be used is solidly sealed. There are two resources that will be produced once project reaches its operational phase - OIL and NATURAL GAS. OIL PRODUCTION To minimize transportation costs it would be appropriate to use refining capacity in other US states where production presently exists. The refineries are configured to deal with specific types of crude. Therefore, it is important to examine compatibility of the oil to be produced from this project with target refineries. For example, Commerce City Refinery located in Commerce City, Colorado is going to be our primary target due to low transportation costs of oil to the refinery, as Colorado State is a promising market...
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