Environmental concerns may be on everyone’s mind, but until the cold hard facts of a cost/benefit analysis weight high on American’s minds, going green is the way to go. General Motors has put a lot of capital behind building cleaner E85 (also known as Flex Fuel) cars. They promote the cars as being cleaner for [...]
Financial ratio analysis aimed at determining a business’s financial strength and condition. The Current and Quick Ratios are commonly used to evaluate a company’s ability to pay it’s short term obligations.
While RIM’s current and quick ratios seem low on first glance, it’s important to consider the business as a going concern. RIM had a higher than the current year’s industry average in 2007 because it’s current liabilities grew from almost half the current industry average to 3.35 times the industry average current liabilities. This increase can be explained by the release of the BlackBerry Storm, which was released November 4th, 2008.
Let’s take a look at how to value an organization. We’ll take the following company as an example: Wide-Comm Wireless provides wireless broadband service using Wi-Max, a largely unproven technology, on a wide scale. As expected the company lost money it’s first few years as it built it’s infrastructure. It does not expect to reach [...]
So you’ve thought of a great idea for a product or service and are ready to start actually implementing your strategy, but you soon realize you need funding to fully realize your goals. This is a point every business owner finds themselves in at one point or another. When someone is looking to fund there business, they [...]
In Lesson two on revenue forecasting, I introduced the notion of Type 1 and Type 2 errors. What would you expect would be the implications for Fred’s business if he expected the volume of repair work to be $400,000 the first year and it was only half that? On the other hand, what are the [...]
Forecasting revenues is a tricky business. Two common errors (called Type 1 and Type 2 errors) made are forecasting too many sales and operating at a negative cash flow until your fume date, or underestimating sales and not having enough capacity to meet demand. The best way to negate these errors is to come up [...]
Some companies that may look profitable based on their cash on hand actually require a deeper look. Absolute Software (http://www.absolute.com/) is a company that makes software that tracks computers when they get lost or stolen. The company works with partners such as Dell to provide it’s services to end users. The company charges $100 per [...]
I have very limited experience with financial management. Most of what I know is self-taught from dealing with budgets, trying to follow conversations between people in accounting departments, and general life experience. Most of my knowledge actually comes from watching Jim Cramer, host of the TV show Mad Money on CNBC. In his books he [...]
Entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship are two closely related concepts that are seen expressed by individuals that are comfortable with some degree of risk whether it be financial or social. The main differences between the two are that for the most part entrepreneurs have a greater appetite for risk, and they are willing to have a more [...]
I’ve been doing research the past two years into grad schools and I’ve compiled this list of brick and mortar schools that have online programs during my travels online…
I came across an interesting topic while reading “Trading and Exchanges”, by Larry Harris. It dealt with shifting cash flows in time. I personally love learning of new topics, and this definitely was a paradigm shifter for me. I decided to dig a bit deeper to see what else I could learn about the topic. [...]
I think one of the most challenging aspects of portfolio project management (PPM) is actually implementing a PPM system. In my experience, changing the culture of an organization that is used to ad hoc project selection/project management requires a significant ROI, and even then may not be implemented because management is not comfortable with such [...]
Project management can be a difficult enough endeavor, but managing a multi-cultural project team can add additional differences as well. It’s important to remember that not all of the differences that arise are negative. The three main differences are: Team member motivation (Anbari 2010) Communication style Heterogeneous idea generation Team Member Motivation According to Geert [...]
My current company manufactures hardware and develops software that assists Athletic Trainers perform their job duties. They have numerous projects that run concurrently to design and develop new hardware and software revisions. Every fiscal year management develops a list of key strategic goals that will improve the company over the next year. Each proposed project [...]
