...Strategic Initiative Paper – Barnes & Noble In order to be successful corporations have to plan how their business will run financially every year. There are a few different plans that are put together, usually overseen by the Vice President of the organization. Two of these plans include strategic planning which is the capital-budgeting process. The other of the two plans is financial planning. Financial planning entitles collecting sales forecasts from marketing personnel and production plans from operations, and then combining them to make projections of the firm’s future financing requirements (Barnes & Noble, Inc, 2009). While reviewing the annual report for Barnes & Noble, Inc, Team A will discuss the relationship between strategic planning and financial planning for Barnes & Noble, Inc. A strategic initiative will be described and will show how it affects the financial planning for Barnes & Noble, Inc. While there are many factors that can affect the costs and sales of an organization, Team A will discuss how the strategic initiative can be one of these factors. The final piece that will be discussed is the risks associated with the initiative and the financial effects they may have on the organization. Barnes & Noble remain the largest bookseller offering a wide selection of online retailing and discounted, high quality books to enrich, enlighten, and educate its readers. In October 2009, Barnes & Noble launched the nook, the most full-featured eBook reader...
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...impact and to attract resources and support, at which processes must we excel?” Learning & Growth “How do we align our intangible assets to improve critical processes?” Learning & Growth “How do we align our intangible assets to improve critical processes?” Financial “How should we manage and allocate our resources for maximum social impact?” 3 Palladium Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame for Executing Strategy® : By Industry 2000-2010 The Management System for Strategy Execution Links Vision and Strategy to Operational Excellence 2 TRANSLATE THE STRATEGY DEVELOP THE STRATEGY • Mission, Values, Vision • Strategic Analysis • Strategy Formulation 1 • • • • Strategy Map / Themes Measures / Targets Initiative Portfolios Funding / Stratex 3 ALIGN THE ORGANIZATION • • • • Business Units Support Units Employees Board of Directors Strategic Plan • Strategy Map • Balanced Scorecard • Stratex TEST & ADAPT • Profitability Analysis • Strategy Correlations • Emerging Strategies 6 performance measures results MONITOR & LEARN 4 • • • •...
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...Capital budgeting Making decisions having significant future benefits or costs for various entities and their stakeholders. Capital budgeting is the backbone of financial economics. Related topics in financial economics include: the time value of money, the meaning of net-present value, accounting concepts consistent with present-value calculations, discount rates, and option valuation techniques. In the public sector, the term is often exclusively associated with infrastructure investments -- plant and equipment. It is more properly associated with all policy choices that have significant, long-term consequences: especially decisions about missions, programs, products, processes, or procedures. There are standard solutions to several kinds of capital-budgeting problems: make or buy decisions, investment in working capital (especially inventories) decisions, maintenance-level decisions, project selection, the choice of mutually exclusive investments, and investments in plant with fluctuating rates of production. However, the same basic calculus of benefits and costs is supposed to guide all classes policy choices with long-term consequences. Financial Theory Financial theory teaches that, in the presence of a capital market where funds can be obtained at a price, welfare will be maximized by the implementation of all policy choices that generate positive net-present values. This means, in part, that the timing of benefits and costs is generally of no...
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...The Operating Budget Dr. Marion Lee PAD 505- Public Budgeting and Finance May 4, 2014 Abstract This paper will give the Operating Budget for the City Of New Orleans. It will provide the agencies mission, goals, objectives, departments and strategic plan. It will describe the budget of the agency by addressing the Financial Summary, including revenue expenditures, department budgets, funding, capital projects and debt administration. This paper will also perform a Cost Analysis which will include fixed cost, step-fixed cost, and variable cost. It will identify one to two challenges a Budget Analyst will have in managing the budget. This paper will recommend two to three strategies the agency should review regarding new initiatives and budget cuts over the next five years. Introduction With roots spanning all the way back to the 1700’s, The City of New Orleans is the Largest Metropolitan city in the State of Louisiana. It is a port city, which had a population of 343, 829 as of the 2010 U.S. Census (Bureau, 2012). The mission, goals and objectives of the city are to have more public safety, more job creation, more recreation for the youth, and to reduce blight in the city. New Orleans is still in a transition stage. Even though it has been 9 years after Hurricane Katrina, one of America’s Deadliest Hurricanes, the city is still rebuilding, still restructuring and actually still growing. Hurricane Katrina affected the city’s economic wellbeing. The city has several...
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...Stringfellow Concept Reflection The first step to budgeting for unforeseen changes and improvements in information technology that require large capital outlays is to appropriately plan for such an event. Healthcare facilities need to transition from the mentality that IT upgrades are merely something that need to be squeezed into the budget somehow, and actually create a meaningful plan that will transition IT from an “as needed” task to an ongoing process (Shimamoto, 2012). The second step would be to identify what management’s goals are in order to align their IT strategy with their business strategy. This will help in determining if an IT change is a good investment decision (Shimamoto, 2012). Aside from liquidating some of the hospital’s assets, it would benefit the business to confront unforeseen expenses before they actually happen. Grow budget items help to introduce new projects into the facility or improve upon existing ones (Shimamoto, 2012). Grow initiatives can include the implementation of new software in order to make daily operations run more efficiently, the purchase of firewalls to help safeguard important patient information, or other items that help the facility better interact or communicate with their patients (Shimamoto, 2012). The great thing about grow initiatives is that there is no running clock on them in that they are not meant to be completed by a specific point in time. These initiative are flexible in that they can be implemented at any convenient...
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...TABLE OF CONTENT No. | Content | Page | 1. | Introduction | 2 | 2. | Main findings and discussions: * Outcome-Based Budgeting * Objectives of OBB * Importance of OBB * Fundamentals of OBB * Components of OBB * Potential benefits of implementing OBB * Implementation of OBB in other countries | 356671011 | 3. | Conclusions | 12 | 4. | Recommendation | 14 | 5. | References | 15 | 6. | Appendices | | INTRODUCTION Budgeting in the public sector has evolved over the years. After Independence, we started with line-item budgeting that focused on expenditure. Under this approach, ministries and agencies were assessed on their ability to spend the approved allocation within a given year. Moreover, it lacked coordinated planning, performance measurements and systematic evaluation. Subsequently, a more results oriented Programme and Performance Budgeting System (PPBS) was adopted in 1969, where the focus shifted to outputs, with resources allocated for specific programmes and activities based on priorities. Systemic problems, however, continued to persist. There was lack of accountability, while decision making was highly centralized. To address these problems, the PPBS was improved and introduced as the Modified Budgeting System (MBS) in 1990. The system expounded the concept of “let managers manage” and held them accountable for their performance. However, even under this system, the emphasis was still on output, with each ministry and agency focusing...
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...Budget Policy and Process Vernita Davis-Knight Susan Friguglietti Edna Primas Ronald Rehn University of Phoenix-Online February 27, 2008 Capital Budget Policy and Process Capital budgeting is the process by which capital investment decisions are made. Capital can be described as an organization’s operating assets (Diamond, Hanson &, Murphy, 1994). The capital budgeting process includes "planning, setting goals and priorities, arranging financing, and identifying criteria for making long-term investments" (Diamond et al., 1994, p. 463). Previously, capital budgets were known as plant and equipment budgets (Berman, Kukla &, Weeks, 1994). As the previous term implies, most capital expenditures are long-term investments for plant or equipment investments. Most, if not all, organizations have limited financial resources and must decide how to invest the financial resources for the best advantage of the organization. Capital investment decisions have a significant impact on the organization since large amounts of the organization’s resources are at risk for extended periods of time. This makes capital budgeting one of the most important decision making opportunities an organization can undertake (Diamond et al., 1994). There are two basic types of capital budgeting projects, independent projects and mutually exclusive projects. The independent project does not affect the cash flow of other projects. That is, regardless of whether the project is accepted or rejected...
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...JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING RESEARCH Volume Fifteen 2003 pp. 95–116 Practice Developments in Budgeting: An Overview and Research Perspective Stephen C. Hansen The George Washington University David T. Otley Lancaster University Wim A. Van der Stede University of Southern California Abstract: Practitioners in Europe and the U.S. recently have proposed two distinct approaches to address what they believe are shortcomings of traditional budgeting practices. One approach advocates improving the budgeting process and primarily focuses on the planning problems with budgeting. The other advocates abandoning the budget and primarily focuses on the performance evaluation problems with budgeting. This paper provides an overview and research perspective on these two recent developments. We discuss why practitioners have become dissatisfied with budgets, describe the two distinct approaches, place them in a research context, suggest insights that may aid the practitioners, and use the practitioner perspectives to identify fruitful areas for research. INTRODUCTION udgeting is the cornerstone of the management control process in nearly all organizations, but despite its widespread use, it is far from perfect.1 Practitioners express concerns about using budgets for planning and performance evaluation. The practitioners argue that budgets impede the allocation of organizational resources to their best uses and encourage myopic decision making and other dysfunctional budget games....
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...Leadership and Budgeting in a Higher Education Setting Decision-making, policy, finance and budgeting are all areas that one will encounter as a higher education administrator. There are multi-facets of leading a higher education department and managing that department’s budget. An administrator must be strategic when planning and budgeting. Understanding higher education administration requires knowing how to define the basic objectives of the department, while efficiently and effectively allocating limited resources to accomplishment departmental and institutional goals (June, 2013, par. 40). In other words, one must know the direction in which the department or institution needs to move to fulfill its mission. According to Varlotta (2010), “The responsibility-centered approach engenders a broader understanding of university budgeting since larger numbers of administrators are compelled to recognize and manage all of the costs of doing business” (p. 17). This paper discusses significance in leading, planning, decision making processes, and budgeting in higher education. Additionally, this paper presents a case study, a real world scenario that involves, strategizing due to state budget cuts. A strategic plan must act as a road map for carrying out budgetary tactics and achieving long-term results. Proficient leadership arises by defining how members can support the overall strategy of a budget; therefore, in order to boost directorial and financial performance, faculty...
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...www.hbrreprints.org BEST OF HBR Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System by Robert S. Kaplan and David P Norton . • Included with this full-text Harvard Business Review article: 1 Article Summary The Idea in Brief—the core idea The Idea in Practice—putting the idea to work 2 Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System 14 Further Reading A list of related materials, with annotations to guide further exploration of the article’s ideas and applications Reprint R0707M BEST OF HBR Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System The Idea in Brief The Idea in Practice Why do budgets often bear little direct relation to a company’s long-term strategic objectives? Because they don’t take enough into consideration. A balanced scorecard augments traditional financial measures with benchmarks for performance in three key nonfinancial areas: The balanced scorecard relies on four processes to bind short-term activities to long-term objectives: • a company’s relationship with its customers • its key internal processes • its learning and growth. COPYRIGHT © 2005 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. When performance measures for these areas are added to the financial metrics, the result is not only a broader perspective on the company’s health and activities, it’s also a powerful organizing framework. A sophisticated instrument panel for coordinating ...
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...organization’s strategy, including Strategic Results, Strategic Themes, and Perspectives, are developed by workshop participants to focus attention on customer needs and the organization’s value proposition.Step Three: Objectives In Step Three, the strategic elements developed in Steps One and Two are decomposed into Strategic Objectives, which are the basic building blocks of strategy and define the organization's strategic intent. Objectives are first initiated and categorized on the Strategic Theme level, categorized by Perspective, linked in cause-effect linkages (Strategy Maps) for each Strategic Theme, and then later merged together to produce one set of Strategic Objectives for the entire organization. | | | Step Four: Strategy Map In Step Four, the cause and effect linkages between the enterprise-wide Strategic Objectives are formalized in an enterprise-wide Strategy Map. The previously constructed theme Strategy Maps are merged into an overall enterprise-wide Strategy Map that shows how the organization creates value for its customers and stakeholders.Step Five: Performance Measures In Step Five, Performance Measures are developed for each of the enterprise-wide Strategic Objectives. Leading and lagging measures are identified, expected targets and thresholds are established, and baseline and benchmarking data is developed. | Step Six: Initiatives In Step Six, Strategic Initiatives are developed that support the Strategic...
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...Introduction Part A Economic Regulation Part B Ratio Analysis Decision making techniques Part C Benefits and Limitations of Budgeting and Planning SDCCC Reflection Appendices Analysis for Ratio Sample Income and Expenditure Balance Sheet Proposed Monthly Review Introduction In 2000 the National Development Plan in Ireland allocated funding to the development of childcare with the specific aim of improving the quality, and increasing childcare provision and places through the introduction of a more coordinated approach. As a result thirty three County Childcare Committees, (CCC) were formed in the Republic of Ireland, each with an agreed set of objectives for the various county/areas. They are currently under the Office for the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (OMCYA) which was set up by the Government in December 2005. On Wednesday, 9th March 2011, the establishment of a new ‘Department of Children’ was announced, together with the appointment of a new minister. This is on the back of a general election in February 2011, where a new coalition government was voted into power. This means that there could be extensive changes as a new program for government is announced and introduced. As this Office will now become a government department in its own right, it reflects the prioritization that childhood development is now taking in modern Ireland. However as the new Department has not been fully established I will use the previous...
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...Strategic Initiative Strategic planning is used by organizations to define the strategies and direction of the organization. Strategic planning is also used to make decisions for organizations like the allocation of resources and financial investments. The main purpose of strategic planning is to convey and organization’s purpose and to set long-term and short-term goals. There are different types strategic planning techniques like SWOT analysis, STEER analysis, and PEST analysis. Financial planning is influenced by and related to strategic planning. This research paper will address the relationship between strategic planning and financial planning by addressing Starbucks’ strategic planning initiative, how it affects financial planning such as costs and sales, and the risks associated with strategic initiative. Starbucks’ Strategic Planning Initiative On July 1, 2008, the Starbucks Corporation announced the next step in its multi-faceted plan to transform the company (Starbucks, 2008). This plan was to close approximately 600 underperforming company-operated stores in the U.S. market (Starbucks, 2008). The decision to close these stores was a result of a rigorous evaluation of the U.S. company-operated store portfolio and included the 100 stores targeted for closure in the company’s previously announced plans (Starbucks, 2008). In addition to the closures, Starbucks expected to open fewer than 200 new U.S. company-operated stores in fiscal year 2009 (Starbucks, 2008)...
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...“LetsGo Travel Trailers: A Case for Incorporating the New Model of the Organization into the Teaching of Budgeting,” by Sally Wright, Cases from Management Accounting Practice, Vol. 14, Montvale, NJ: Institute of Management Accountants, 1998). Note that part 2 of this case requires the use of Excel. 10-3 Building Processes for a Solid Foundation: The Case of Community Health Initiatives (Source: Sandra Richtermeyer, Strategic Finance, August 2007, pp. 52-57. Note: this case was the case used as the 2008 IMA Student Case Competition. The Student Case Competition is sponsored annually by the IMA to provide an opportunity for students to interpret, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and communicate a solution to a management accounting problem.) 10-4 Academic Advising at Bay State (Source: Janice E. Bell and Shahid L. Ansari, Strategic Finance, September 2008, pp. 44-51. Note: this case was the case used as the 2009 IMA Student Case Competition. The Student Case Competition is sponsored annually by the IMA to provide an opportunity for students to interpret, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and communicate a solution to a management accounting problem.) Readings 10-1: “How to Set Up a Budgeting and Planning System” by Robert N. West and Amy M. Snyder, Management Accounting (January 1997), pp. 18-20, 22, 24. This article demonstrates the setting up of a budgeting and planning system for Penn Fuel Gas Inc., a public utility holding company that provides natural gas storage...
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...execution has two basic rules: understand the management cycle that links strategy and operations, and know what tools to apply at each stage of the cycle. the Management System by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton NOT LONG AFTER ITS SUCCESSFUL IPO, the Conner Corporation (not its real name) began to lose its way. The company’s senior executives continued their practice of holding monthly one-day management meetings, but their focus drifted. The meetings’ agenda called for a discussion of operational issues in the morning and strategic issues in the afternoon. But with the company under pressure to meet quarterly targets, operational items had started to crowd strategy out of the agenda. Inevitably, the review of actual monthly and forecast quarterly financial performance revealed revenues to be lower, and expenses to be higher, than targeted. The worried managers spent hours discussing how to close the gap through pricing initiatives, capacity downsizing, SG&A staff cuts, and sales hbr.org 1808 Kaplan.indd 63 | January 2008 | Harvard Business Review 6 3 12/5/07 5:32:05 PM | Mastering the Management System campaigns. One executive noted, “We have no time for strategy. If we miss our quarterly numbers, we might cease to exist. For us, the long term is the short term.” Like Conner, all too many companies – including some well-established public corporations – have learned how Gresham’s Law applies to their management meetings: Discussions...
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