You must submit your Quarter Four Decisions prior to moving on this week’s Annual Operating Review assignment. With the completion of Quarter Four, you are responsible for completing your Annual...

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You must submit your Quarter Four Decisions prior to moving on this week’s Annual Operating Review assignment. With the completion of Quarter Four, you are responsible for completing your Annual Operating Review (AOR). This is a qualitative and quantitative summary of your competitive performance for the year. Once the PDF is generated in the simulation, you will then upload that document for grading through Waypoint below. This will have a similar look and feel to the QBRs but is a review of the entire year as well responding, as any business leader needs to your long-term and how you will create shareholder value. At this time, your Business Intelligence Dashboard (all of the graphics) should provide you with the data to critically analyze your competitors for the year and how they are positioned for the longer term. Note the Variance Graphics are of slightly different form to reflect your annual activities.


Through theGrowing Your Business simulation,



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

  • Assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated with the corporate strategy & policy process.

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

  • Create specific business tactics to achieve organizational survival and growth.


The Annual Operating Review,



  • Must be completed through theGrowing Your Business simulation. Once the PDF is generated in the simulation, you will then upload that document for grading through Waypoint below.

  • Must be completed and submitted using all of the data provided including

  • Must show that Hisco is on track to Meet/Exceed its Annual Net Income Commitment through an evaluation of both quantitative and qualitative techniques for business analysis and decision making.

  • Must create specific business tactics to achieve organizational survival and growth.

  • After completing, check the box and submit in the lower right.


  • After completing the simulation, students must save the provided pdf from the pdffound withintheExecutive Summary tab of the Quarterly Decisions pageandsubmit it through Waypoint. Verify your submission was successful.

    • To access the PDF for submission, click on the QTRLY Decisions tab from the simulation home page and thengo to the Executive Summarytab.Within the Executive Summary page, you will find a Download link associated with eachquarterly decision you completed.



  • Must use scholarly sources in addition to the course text.

  • Must document any information used from sources in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’sCiting Within Your Paper(Links to an external site.)guide.

  • Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center. See theFormatting Your References List(Links to an external site.)resource in the Ashford Writing Center for specifications.

Answered 2 days AfterMar 10, 2021

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

Tanmoy answered on Mar 12 2021
151 Votes
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. Too much emphasize was given to the quality enhancement and marketing of the Hisco products which resulted in increase of the base cost of the company resulting in a net loss of $400K rather than a net...
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