[WLO: 3] [CLOs: 1, 3, 4]: Decisions for Quarter One and Quarterly Business Review – Week 2 Assignment Solution

The Decisions for Quarter One Assignment

Include a cover page and 1-2 pages of reflection regarding what new learnings you’ve taken away from the week’s activities, readings, videos, and other information you found noteworthy. For your Week 2 Journal consider the importance of having quality information to make decisions associated with creating and implementing strategies in your current place of employment.

Week 2 – Assignment

Decisions for Quarter One and Quarterly Business Review

[WLO: 3] [CLOs: 1, 3, 4]

Part I: Decisions for Quarter One. Prior to working on your Decisions for Quarter One, review the following through the Growing Your Business simulation, the “Suggestions for Quarter 1” pop-up screen, any Quarter One Internal Emails and/or Memos, and watch the Preparing Your Financial Commitments video. The pop-up will be available at the lower left (Blue Guidelines) of the Executive Summary Decisions Tab and the video, emails, and memos can be re-accessed through the Help section. Additionally, read Turning bean counters into difference makers: How corporate finance is changing with the times, Why financial dashboards matter, and Five pointers to get you started, and What are your financial statements telling you.

The Decisions for Quarter One Assignment

• Must be completed through the Growing Your Businesssimulation.
• Consider the following questions as you prepare your annual budget/plan (if the answer is “No” to any of the questions you may be at a Competitive Disadvantage and lack critical information to draw inference from):
  • Did you
    • Request/purchase the Marketing Report and Business Intelligence Dashboard (BID)?
    • Utilize the 3 available role plays for Qtr.1?
    • Consider in the R&D Projects (other than Project 2, for which you may want to complete funding in Qtr.1)?
  • 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 One Budget Plan.
    • Periodically, as you modify inputs to 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 One Decisions prior to moving on this week’s Quarterly Business Review assignment.

Part II: First Quarter Quarterly Business Review (QBR). You must submit your Quarter One Decisions prior to moving on this week’s Quarterly Business Review assignment. Prior to beginning work on the First Quarter Quarterly Business Review, review the following through the Growing Your Business simulation, the Variance Analysis video and the content from the Suggestions for Quarter Two Decisions pop-up. The video will provide you with a variety of financial tools, routinely used in Financial Planning & Analysis, for planning, meeting commitments and growth purposes.

These are tools any business leader, regardless of function, needs to have a working knowledge.   Real world examples will be presented throughout the simulation. You can always re-watch the Variance Analysis video in the Supplementary Review Materials in the Help section. In addition, there is a TRI Corp Critical Equation in PDF format that can also be found in the same section. Additionally, read Turning Bean Counters Into Difference Makers: How Corporate Finance Is Changing With the Times, Why Financial Dashboards Matter, Five Pointers to Get You Started, and What Are Your Financial Statements Telling You.

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With the completion of Q1 you are responsible for completing your first Quarterly Business Review (QBR). This is a qualitative and quantitative summary of your competitive performance for Q1. Business reviews (or Operational Reviews) are a routine part of annual corporate activities and are very cross-functional in nature. A major component of a QBR is around meeting commitments that are embedded in your budgetary planning process. Meeting commitments are seen explicitly in your Variances. These learnings are designed to enhance your performance in future Quarters.

The Quarterly Business Review Assignment

• Must be completed through the Growing Your Business
• • After logging in, go to the Quarterly Decisions tab on the top right of the simulation site and then click on the Executive Summary tab to access the Quarterly Business Review section.
• Must be completed and submitted using all of the data provided including
  • Quarterly Pre-Tax Net Income relative to Plan for the Quarter
    • Review the Pre-Tax Net Income Chart Explanation Download Pre-Tax Net Income Chart Explanationdocument
  • Cash Flow walk
    • Review the How to Read the Cash Flow Walk Chart Download How to Read the Cash Flow Walk Chartdocument
  • Pre-tax Net Income in Plan
• 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 pdf found within the Executive Summary tab of the Quarterly Decisions page and submit 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 then go to the Executive Summary tab. Within the Executive Summary page, you will find a Download link associated with each quarterly decision you completed.
• Remember, you will be receiving feedback on your QBR each quarter. You should review the feedback prior to submitting next quarter’s decisions, as there may be some critical learning that can help your performance in the next quarter.
• Must use scholarly sources in addition to the course text.
  • The Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources(Links to an external site.) table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
• Must document any information used from sources in APA Style as outlined in the Writing Center’s APA: Citing 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 Writing Center. See the APA: Formatting Your References List(Links to an external site.) resource in the Writing Center for specifications.

Required Resources

Text

There is not an official text for this course. Instead, there is a variety of selected reading materials that will be reviewed to ensure your success and meeting the learning objectives of the capstone.

• Selected TRI Corporation Critical Equations for Business Leaders
• Selected videos on strategy, developing an annual plan/budget, and variance analysis
• Selected MBA materials in prior classe

Articles

Biery, M. E. (2013, December 22). What are your financial statements telling you? (Links to an external site.) Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/sageworks/2013/12/22/understanding-financial-statements/#72daac5822b0

• The full-length version of this article is available through the Forbes.com website. This article provides information about analyzing trends associated with data used in financial analysis and will assist you in writing your Decision for Quarter One and also writing your First Quarter Quarterly Business Review this week. How you think about the data and then develop decisions based upon your analysis drives overall performance.
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Pal, N. (2015, April 9). Why financial dashboards matter, and five pointers to get you started (Links to an external site.). Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/skollworldforum/2015/04/09/why-financial-dashboards-matter-and-five-pointers-to-get-you-started/#4f6e2f5f2520

• The full-length version of this article is available through the Forbes.com website. This article provides information about using financial dashboards used in graphical analysis of company financial data and will assist you in becoming familiar with tools used that help with analyzing information for your Decision for Quarter One and also writing your First Quarter Quarterly Business Review this week.
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Sampson, L. (2015, March 13). Turning bean counters into difference makers: How corporate finance is changing with the times (Links to an external site.). Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2015/03/13/how-corporate-finance-is-changing-with-the-times/#1aaa9ab639d1

• The full-length version of this article is available through the Forbes.com website. This article provides information about using a wide variety of skills along with financial analysis that would be useful in digging deeper into the data generated by operations and will assist you in considering your Decision for Quarter One and also writing your First Quarter Quarterly Business Review this week.
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Multimedia

TriCorporation. (n.d.). Preparing your financial commitments: Guide to developing a budget as the leader of HISCO [Video file]. Retrieved from https://qa.trisimulation.com/Simulation

• This video provides information about the budgeting process that will be used within the Simulation and will familiarize you with what you will need to do in Week 2 for making budgeting decisions and submitting those decisions in the Simulation this week. The budget video will familiarize you Dashboards to be used in the Simulation. The video is found by clicking the (I) tab on the Simulation navigation bar and then clicking on the Supplementary Review materials tab.
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Supplemental Materials

Cadrain, S. (2020). Pre-tax net income chart explanation  Download Pre-tax net income chart explanation[Presentation slides]. Canvas@UAGC. https://login.uagc.edu

• This PowerPoint presentation covers information about how to analyze HISCO’s financial metrics specifically pre-tax and after-tax income. The presentation can be used as a tool to better understand the “Pre-Tax Income: Year Plan vs. Actual” graph located in the Grow Your Business” (GYB) simulation.

Required Technology

Website

“Growing Your Business” – A Management Simulation. (https://uagc.tri-sim.com/canvas)

• This website is where you will conduct your readings and work to complete the Decisions for Quarter One assignment and the First Quarter Quarterly Business Review (QBR) assignment.
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Please note that if you are experiencing technical issues with the Growing Your Business Simulation, you will need to contact the help desk within the simulation.