Prior to beginning work on this assignment, carefully review the content found in the “Suggestions...

Question

Prior to beginning work on this assignment, carefully review the content found in the “Suggestions for Quarter 4” pop-up screen and read any Quarter Three Internal Emails and/or Memos available through your Growing Your Business simulation. The pop-up will be available at the lower left (Blue Guidelines) of the Executive Summary Decisions Tab and the emails and memos can be re-accessed through the Help section.

As in prior quarters, you will revise and submit your Quarter 4 Decisions. If there is any quarter that requires balancing the short- and long-term this is it. You need not only to meet and/or exceed your Financial Targets within your budget/plan but are creating shareholder value for the long-term. Reminder, if you have the ability to exceed plan as you saw in the Internal Emails, go for it.

After your fourth quarter results are returned, the first screen you will see will be your Final Quantitative Competitive Ranking. This will be followed by Guidelines for “When Q4 Results are returned.” The Winning Chart can always be found on the Quarterly Dashboard under “Winner.”The ranking you receive from these results will determine your grade for Part I of the Week 5 Assignment. 1st = 10, 2nd = 9.25, 3rd = 8.5.

In yourGrowing Your Business simulation,

Evaluate quantitative and qualitative techniques for business analysis and decision-making.

Utilize tools from finance, marketing, information technology and human resources management to manage the profitability of overall business operations specific to Quarter 4.

Create specific business tactics to achieve organizational survival and growth.

The Decisions for Quarter Four and Final Qualitative Competitive Ranking

Must be completed through theGrowing Your Business simulation.

Must use the Role Play
- It is critical you read the details of the role play very carefully and any questions should immediately be referred to the Help Desk.
- You can gain differentiated competitive advantage through effective use of the role play.
- Some role players only provide qualitative information, while others provide the ability to negotiate with quantitatively.
- The role play is a scarce resource because of the limited number of calls per quarter.

Must submit your Quarter Four Budget Plan.
- Periodically, as you modify inputs, use the “Model My Plan” at the lower right to see the impact of your decisions on the Financial Metrics.
- Input your financial decision and then click on the blue Submit My SRO button on the bottom right of the Quarterly Decisions screen.

You must submit your Quarter Four Decisions prior to moving on to this week’s Annual Operating Review assignment.

Tanmoy · Accepted Answer

Annual Operating Review (AOR)
How well did you meet your commitments? (Pre-tax Income Variance to plan), and where did the growth come from? (Pre-tax Income Variance to prior year)
The commitment was not met well as there was a huge loss for Hisco in the Q4’22 in order to meet the Project 3 cost by investing $200000 to enhance the quality of the readers. Obviously this will benefit Hisco in the long run but currently it has hit Hisco hard. There has been a net loss of -$466615 in Q4’22 for Hisco. The planned pretax income was expected to be $734.6K while the actual was down by -$724.8k. 
This resulted in a loss and no growth for Hisco in Q4’22. The pretax income variance for Q4’22 to prior year Q3’22 was -9127.8% down and was mainly due to huge investments in Project 3, increase in marketing, advertising and building lease and utilities expenses in Q4’22. 
How well did your initial strategy work and did you maintain that strategy throughout the year?
The initial strategy was working fine for Hisco but the consistency in the strategy did not went well and as a result Hisco incurred a huge loss in the 4th quarter. The strategy as a financial analyst was to make Hisco the top company in the readers market. But, unfortunately there was a net loss for Hisco as a result of huge base and variable costs in the Q4’22. This was not as expectations of Hisco and led to a failure in the planning. The target was to achieve $300K to $400K and resulted in net loss for the company due to high costs like building lease and utilities and exceeding of the credit limit.  
What revisions would you make to your original SWOT analysis going forward over the next 2 to 3 years?
Over the next 2 to 3 years the strategies that need to be applied with respect to the SWOT analysis will be as follows:
Strengths: Strengths of Hisco is the CEO who is able to control the prices of Hisco to +/- 20%.
Weaknesses: Weakness is that the investment is not made prudently. Neither the planned nor the actual worked well for Hisco for the entire year. There is need for revamping the budget for FY-2022 in order to generate net income.  
Opportunities: The reader market in USA is huge and is expected to grow with prudent investment in the R&D and quality of the products. 
Threats: The new entrant Eastern is a threat for Hisco which has already captured 2.98% share of Hisco in Q4’22.
What inference can you draw about your competitor’s strategy?
The competitor’s strategy is to emphasize on investment in enhancing the quality of the readers by keeping the price of the products low to moderate in order to acquire more customers i.e. hospitals in USA. The strategy didn’t go well and it finally resulted in a loss for the company in the Q4’22. Had the cost been able to be controlled by Hisco financial analyst, the company could be atleast be brought to 2nd position with respect to the net income.

Prior to beginning work on this assignment, carefully review the content found in the “Suggestions for Quarter 4” pop-up screen and read any Quarter Three Internal Emails and/or Memos available...

Answer To: Prior to beginning work on this assignment, carefully review the content found in the “Suggestions...

Answer To This Question Is Available To Download

Related Questions & Answers

Submit New Assignment