Middleton Mutual is a large insurance company that is seeking innovation. The Chief Information Officer, Dennis Devereaux, and Vice President of Information Systems, Max Vargo, are trying to push for a new expert system to ease up the underwriting process of their company. The issue that arises in the company is that certain higher ups aren’t willing to fund this one million dollar project without proof of return. Within the next year, the company will be losing two underwriters. Devereaux has his hands full with trying to get the company’s financial approval.
Underwriting is the assessment of risk that a potential customer may have, this allows the company to offer the customer a certain amount of coverage. This is something critical for
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As a CEO I would want my company to be up to date in all aspects of technology so that we aren’t left behind. It seems that Atkins, the CFO, may have an old school way of thinking and wants to leave things as they are in working order. Atkins has the best interest of the company but will need to rethink certain things and accept that technology is a way of the future, and will not be going away. Vargo needs to identify that Devereaux is a risk taker, even at the expense of the company. Peterson, the Vice President of property and casualty, has said that the underwriters think that there’s too much judgment involved with their job, so the expert systems may not cut. The employees saying this may be valid reasoning, or a plea to keep from losing their jobs to artificial intelligence. More testing will be needed before the expert systems is fully in place.
My group and I have come up with the following questions following this reading: Why was the earnings down last quarter? Is it an issue that a new information system can fix or is it something larger?Is it possible to see a model or sample of what the system will be like and how it works and what it will be able to do?Why can't this be discussed with anyone outside the department? Why might people get the wrong idea? How does the CEO feel about expert
This case is about Star River and how the firm is in the middle of financial crisis that was induced by rapid growth. The CEO basically wants to improve the financial health of the company and ask for help to make some decisions. The CEO asks one of the analyst for help in reviewing the historical performance of the firm, forecast financing requirements for the next two years, exercise the forecasting model to identify the key drivers of the assumptions, estimate Star River’s weighted-average cost of capital and lastly to analyze the proposed investment in a packaging machine.
There are several areas that Miller has problems with concerning his job and the current recommendations from the consultant firm. The first problem is that Miller has been at his current for a long time and on the production line for twenty seven years. This shows that he has not had any initiative to promote within the company and may be complacent in his job now. He knows his job and does it proficiently. So proficiently that he is able to run two machines at the same time where most employees may only be able to run one machine. Even though Miller seems content and not burnt out on his job now, these new changes could push him to that point (Greenberg, 108).
Roth was in charge of emergency of Nortel, be that as it may it was affected by both individuals and capital business sector forms. Roth settled on the choice to change Northern Telcom to Nortel and put resources into the web notwithstanding doubt and uncertainity from numerous individuals. The Board of Directors of this organization didn 't know about the money related status of the association which demonstrates that the executives, Roth as CEO, and workers didn 't know about great business hones. Business includes a system of human communications (Collins, 2011). The ascent of Nortel was to some degree from the consideration the organization got from the media and the financial specialists. This consideration affected the choices that Roth
The five friends knew it would not be easy to found their own business. They unanimously decided to name Mike O’Brien as their first Chief Executive Officer (CEO) due to the fact that he was the only one in the group who was not currently employed and could dedicate the most time to the project. O’Brien was also the most out-going and the best salesperson in the group with the best business connections. All knew they could trust O’Brien to keep all their interest at hand. All five contributed $40,000 (for a total initial investment of $200,000) in order to set up the company. George Off and Mike Scroggie worked together to come up with a software that could collect and analyze the information to print coupons based upon the Universal Product Code (UPC) bar code. The idea was to come up with a means of modifying the only programmable POS (point of sale) system of the day, an IBM 3650, to print coupons once given a cue. A small family run chain in Rochester, New York (Wegmans) gave Catalina permission to test it’s “Coupon Solution” in their stores. The son of the owner, Danny Wegman, signed the contract for this test pilot.
...are both involved in Market Penetration. The first strategy would be to create additional market share through innovative and stylish advertising. The next market penetration strategy would be to develop new and fresh ad campaigns to compete with competitors new ads. The last strategy suggested would be of Forward Integration. This strategy would put Henri Bendel stores in more large cities. These five strategies have brought themselves to light through the TOWS Matrix.
The report will give an overview of each company, an explanation of what type of companies we are analyzing, the purpose of each company in terms of its goals and objectives, the products and services each company produces, and what future prospects we see these companies having. The reader should gain an understanding of each company as well. We also analyze the type of industry these companies are competing in. This will help us understand where each company fits in the marketplace. This is important because it places the two companies into a broader picture. The most important part of the financial report is the financial statement analysis. In this, the annual report of each company was analyzed. It studies the firms’ past earnings to understand their operating performances. It also forecasts future profitability and risk (short-term and long term). The financial statements give information on how these risks affect expected return. In the end, the reader will have an understanding of the two companies, the industry in which they operate, its financial standing in the past and present, and future profitability.
The basic concept of insurance is the transfer of risk from one entity to another through certain conditions. Health insurance is no different, only the entities mentioned are consumer or the patient and the insurance company. In the health insurance concept, a premium is paid by the individual to the company for a year and the insurance company has to pay for the cost of healthcare for that individual. Hence the risk for the consumer is transferred to the insurance company.
The Consumer and Industrial Products, Inc a company where their headquarters is based in the United States , also doing business internationally with facilities in Europe, Asia and South America. They are a manufacturing company what produced well known products to individuals and industries. This company is experiencing a great deal of trouble with their internal Payable Audit System (PAS) and how it would purchase goods; receive goods and pays for them. They are challenged with the redundancy and the lack of productivity to their system. They were finding ways to lower costs and eliminating steps in how these processes are getting accomplished. They decided that they needed to change their system and the way they did things at their business. There are some people, their roles and departments that will be closely involved with the process of this project. Some of these important roles will come from Ted Anderson director of disbursements, Peter Shaw the user project manager and Linda Watkins project director for the Payable Audit System (PAS). In addition, the Steering Group and the IS management department will have some important roles to the project too. Finally, there will be several major problems with the development of the project and how the one person would deal with these issues.
Don Bradish was recently hired to fix scheduling issues with the new company in which he works, The Fitzgerald Machine Company. There are a few relevant facts that were given in this case study. The first and foremost fact is Mr. Bradish was hired because the company is having issue with their scheduling. This is important because he comes in with a relevant degree and years of experience with a reputable company. He is going to be looked for to find a solution to the issue outlined in the case study. The second relevant fact in the case study is that the company that The Fitzgerald Machine Company is working with is having labor issues. This is considerable because the $300,000 order is a considerably large
Typically, this is not a healthy approach to take especially if the organization is already an established one with structures and guidelines that all employees are laid to follow (Miller, 2012). From this point of view, Josh is very unprofessional and his case evidently reconfirms the global mantra on employees within the millennial age bracket. It is then true that the millennial generation has a rather skewed approach to the attainment of their desires, with a construed imagination of success that is not respective of planning and assessment of risks. Josh after mentioning his suggestions to Sarah and she turn’s them down due budget inefficiencies; he takes a bolder step and approaches the CEO with the same idea. Fact is, regardless of whether or not his ideas were good, it needed a determination of that, done through concept assessment and evaluation. Critically, the behaviors and the manner in which Josh handles his employment is not so fairly warranted and it can only be fair if a conception of this and such ideas and approaches are alluded as null and irrelevant hence the assumption that generation Y’s attitude in the workplace are not so good for growth in any given
They believe that a CEO change will not be enough to get the company back on the right track (Wohl, 2015). After years of growth, McDonalds finally hit a rough patch back in 2014. Revenue, customer visits, and operating income decreased from the previous year. It was the first time they had a decline in same-store sales in over ten years. This has continued for the past five quarters, losing customers due to changing tastes, an overly complicated menu, and other fast casual chains like Chipotle. McDonald’s responded by hiring two new members tied to the health care industry, trying to shift with the U.S. customers towards healthier, fresher foods. Lloyd Dean, aged 65, has served as the CEO for Dignity Health for the past 15 years and John Mulligan, aged 49, is Executive Vice President and CFO at Target. While Mulligan does not have a direct link to the healthcare industry at Target, he is an active board member for the Minnesota Children’s Hospitals and Clinics. On the surface, both of these hires is a value-add and certainly a step forward for the McDonald’s board of directors. Obviously, it remains to be seen how much of an impact these new healthcare additions will affect McDonald’s in the future (Jargon,
The CEO has also hired employees with good experience like CIO Dunst from Safeway, and for the supply chain management team, some technology experts from companies like PepsiCo, Dell and even Wal-Mart. This allows the company to be in line with the latest technologies available and demonstrates the future planning undertaken by the CEO.
This scenario is used to show that accountants of today must continue to seek training opportunities on new and emerging technological advances. Continuing education is important in many professions, but is especially important in the accounting field. According to an interview with Mats Olsson of Sweden, who is a member of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), Small and Medium Practices Committee (SMP) by Giancarlo Attolini, who is the Chair of IFAC: We need to be more open-minded about emerging technologies as our work will likely become more computer-based. Ultimately, what differentiates one accountant from another is not their ability to manage IT, but rather their ability to better communicate with clients, to use the time saved by technology to develop client relationships and become a successful, trusted business advisor. (Attolini, 2014, quote by Olsson) Accountants who fail to stay in step with technology will find themselves out of step with their peers and clients.
it’s virtually impossible for Chief Executive Officer to find the future skills they will need — because they don’t yet exist. Bombarded by change, most organizations simply cannot envision the functional capabilities needed two or three years from now …
Keeping up with technology is difficult, tiresome, and firms find it very costly to keep at pace with it. Technology rapidly and constantly keeps on changing. Being at par technologically requires extensive research and strategic analysis of acquiring new innovation. Enforcing new technology requires staff retraining and in some cases making employees redundant.