The Need of Financial Skills for Managers - Essay Example

Finance for Managers Name Institution Q1: Critique the strategic decisions made by the senior management with specific reference as to the impact that those decisions had upon the current financial health of the company (25 marks). Introduction The key success of any strategy relies on three vital factors and they include the agency’s alignment with the external atmosphere, a realistic interior view of its key competencies and sustainable viable advantages, and watchful monitoring and implementation. According to Zack, McKeen, & Singh, undertaken indicate that there are a huge number of aspects that influence strategic decisions influence. (2009). The first and major phase in strategic planning procedure is the development of a broad statement regarding the organization’s purpose, values, and future direction. The vision statement should convey the company’s key ideologies, what they stand for and why they exist, and its future vision, that it aspires to achieve, be, or create. The other aspect necessary for a good strategic decision is the mission statement. The mission statement has eight components regarding the organization and they include main services and products, self-concept, geographic domain, target market and customers, philosophy, commitment to survival, desired public image, core technologies, and profitability and growth. The financial growth of an organization is reflected through the organization’s commitment to profitability, survival, and growth. The analysis of any organization’s external opportunities, business trends, core competencies, and internal resources is vital. A financial ratio is a critical aspect that is very vital to the health of any organization finances. A financial ratio can be attributed or denoted as a relative magnitude of two chosen numerical values attained from an organization’s financial statements. Financial ratios are mainly applied in accounting and there are numerous standard ratios applied to try to estimate the overall financial situation of an organization (Zack, McKeen, & Singh, 2009). Financial ratios could be applied by managers within an organization, by potential and current stakeholders of an organization, and by an organization’s creditors. Financial ratios are applied for the comparison of the weaknesses and strengths of different organizations (Lewellen, 2004). Financial health depicts the mode in which to calculate the entire financial aspect of an organization and could include the asset amount they own and the total income they have to pay out to wrap regular and other expenses. A huge factor for determining an organization’s short term financial health is liquidity. (Koijen, Philipson, Uhlig, & National Bureau of Economic Research 2014). There are various strategic decisions that have been implemented by different companies. Such strategic decisions have particular consequences to the organization. HP has made various strategic decisions like integrating to different sectors that have had different consequences to the company. The strategic decision made by HP 1. The company in its printing section, ascertained that it was greatly affected the mobility growth, competitive pricing operating atmosphere and weaker consumer demands. To ease these issues, the company decided to make a decision regarding the execution on fundamental initiatives by focusing on goods that are aimed for formulating emerging market chances, high usage specifics, and also launching newer returns delivery platforms. 2. The management embarked on executing an improved channel execution, pursuing new product design like the 3PAR, HP Moonshot servers, wireless networking, and blade servers. The decision was supposed to counter the current declines in multiple market drifts as well as highly aggressive pricing operating atmosphere. Generally, companies implement a product differentiation strategy having premium selling prices or a price leadership strategy with minimal selling prices, though different divisions of a company that is decentralized may assume different strategies. In 2013 October, HP closed its fiscal year and its financial performance on paper would look like the company is tremendously successful. In the last entire fiscal year, HP made a profit of about $5.1 billion and more than $112.3 billion in revenue. That profit was seen to be split almost evenly among its printing and personal business and its enterprise services and systems operation. Consequently, that financial statement fails to indicate the entire story. In the previous year, HP has lost its spot as the globe’s top PC manufacturer (Worthen, 2011b). It has had years of havoc in the C-suite and has fall short of becoming the key player in the mobile market. There are various strategic reasons that lead to that issue. Such decisions were announced on October sixth 2013. The strategic decision was that it was dividing the company to two separate enterprises, a printer and PC business named HP Inc, and a commercial-focused business, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. HP is one of the biggest and most significant companies in the IT industry, but it fails to be the leading force in the enterprise it once was. The strategic decision has had various issues to the financial health of HP leading to an intervention. The currently elected CEO took a huge decision of undoing the directive made by her predecessor of spinning out the separate company of HP’s personal system group and to undertake huge write-downs on two former acquisitions, Autonomy and EDS (Santos, Gonzalez, Li, Chen, Beyer, Biligi, & Zhang, 2013). Such decisions are undertaken with a motive of helping heal the financial health of any company. And as indicated by its ratios, its financial health after that strategic decision has had considerable effect and its affecting its financial performance. Oct 31, 2015 Oct 31, 2014 Oct 31, 2013 Oct 31, 2012 Oct 31, 2011 Oct 31, 2010 Current ratio 1.23 1.15 1.11 1.09 1.01 1.10 Quick ratio 0.80 0.73 0.69 0.66 0.58 0.66 Cash ratio 0.41 0.35 0.27 0.24 0.16 0.22 Oct 31, 2015 Oct 31, 2014 Oct 31, 2013 Oct 31, 2012 Oct 31, 2011 Oct 31, 2010 ROE1 16.40% 18.75% 18.75% -56.38% 18.31% 21.66% Based on the facts and figures above, the financial health of HP is viewed to have been affected by the strategic decisions implemented. Strategic decisions pose different consequences to a company and those made by HP had a negative effect towards its financial health. The current decisions implemented by the new CEO indicates that the company was facing struggles financially, and those decisions will improve its financial health. Such decisions as viewed are major decisions that hold the fate of the company’s financial health. Q2: Critically evaluate the financial performance of the company in the case study against the financial statements of its major competitors using appropriate analysis of data and application of relevant techniques and suggest what the future prospects of the company are vis-à-vis their competitors. (50 marks). Introduction Being on top of financial calculations of a company’s performance is a significant aspect of running any business, mainly in the present economic climate. Many companies fail due to poor planning or financial management. The success of any company is dependent on creating and implementing precise management and financial systems. The aspect of original business plan update is a better position to commence. Financial performance exists at diverse organization levels. Financial performance can be depicted to be the calculation of the outcomes of a company’s operations and policies in monetary terms (Back, Vanharanta, & Visa, 2001). These outcomes are portrayed in the organization’s return on assets, return on investment, and value added. The financial performance of HP since the inception of the strategic decisions has been on a downward position and mode, thus affecting the company’s financial health. The management has also admitted that the company is facing various issues in its financial performance, but states that those issues will take time to solve. The company is resulting to restructuring and resizing its employees as a mode of reducing the cost incurred. There are various methods of understanding and knowing the financial performance of a company. Such processes include competitor analysis and benchmarking (Roberts, & Dowling, 2002). These processes are used to compare the financial performance of a company with its competitors. Competition in any business is imminent as companies try to get hold of the market share and customers. A competitor is denoted as a contender or rival offering similar service or product. Competitor analysis is the technique applied in strategic management and marketing as a way of assessing the weaknesses and strengths of potential and current competitors. The analysis offers both a defensive and offensive strategic context to identify threats and opportunities. Benchmarking is one of the techniques that are vital in understanding the financial health of any company. Benchmarking denotes the mode of comparing a company’s performance metric and business processes to best practices and industry best from other companies (Eklund, Back, Vanharanta, & Visa, 2008). Dimensions mainly calculated include cost, quality, and time. In the procedure of best practice benchmarking, the management realizes the best companies in their industry, or in another industry where such similar procedures exists, and compares the processes and results of those targets to the processes and results of that company. The analysis of HP and its competitors will involve looking at how they have been performing since 2013. The financial performance of all competitors will be used to measure the financial health of HP after the major decisions made by the management. Among HP’s competitors who found themselves in the same aspect is IBM. Due to the current margin shrinking and increased competition in the hardware sector, IBM had to release part of its staff to reduce costs. IBM, however, changed and adapted their business mix through increment of their revenue contributions attained from services and software, while decreasing their hardware profit contribution reliance. HP currently is facing serious and huge business challenges. In any company’s life, it has to encounter competition from all sectors of the economy. Such competition could be inform of aspects like quality, technology, reputation, price, distribution, performance, brand, price, account relationships, range of services and products, service and support, customer training, application software availability, security, and internet infrastructure offerings (Chen, Cheng, & Hwang, 2005). The markets linked with every business segment are characterized by dynamic competition between major corporation or organizations with long-established positions and a huge number or rapidly and new growing firms. Many product life cycles are petite, and to continue being competitive, a company has to design new services and products, sporadically enhance our present services and products and compete effectively on the grounds of the factors stated above. Additionally, companies compete with numerous of their potential and current partners, including OEMs that manufacture, design, and often market their individual products under their individual brand names (House, & Price, 2009). There are various competitive environments that HP competes with its competitors. Such environment includes the personal systems. The markets that the personal systems operate are extremely competitive and are differentiated by inventory depreciation and price competition. The PC market contraction and the ongoing customer shift to tablets and other kinds of factors have additionally intensified the PC market competition. The key competitors in the personal system are Dell, Lenovo, Acer, ASUS, Toshiba, Apple, and Samsung. The aspects that make HP competitive is innovation, brand product portfolio, research and development capabilities, procurement and brand leverages, our extensive support and service offerings and the convenience of products via a broad-based allocation strategy from commercial and retail channels to direct sales. The printing market is los competitive for printer hardware and related supplies. The main competitors in the printing sector are Seiko Epson Corporation, Canon USA, Lexmark, Ricoh, Xerox Corporation, Samsung and Brother Industries. Printing is alert on growth via growing long-term and innovation, high value recurring business, analog to digital printing transition acceleration in graphics, production and commercial environments, document-centric commercial services and solutions, driving mobile and web content solution via the installed foundation of web connected eprinters and increasing cloud-based. The enterprise group is the other HP sector and is highly competitive enterprise technology growth market that is characterized by ongoing and rapid technological price and innovation competition. The key competitors include IBM, Cisco systems, Dell, VMware, EMC Corporation, Amazon.com, and Microsoft. The enterprise services is the other system of HP and it contends in the consulting and integration, IT services, business process outsourcing, infrastructure technology outsourcing, and application service markets. The core competitors in that sector is computer Sciences Corporation, IBM global services, offshore companies like Fujitsu and Indian-based competitors Infosys Limited, Wipro Limited, and Tata consultancy services, and systems integration firms like Accenture Ltd. In the software sector, the markets are fueled by fast changing customer technologies and requirements. The competitors in that field include VMware, IBM, BMC software, and CA Technologies. HP’s big data solutions that include digital marketing and information governance offering incorporating both unstructured and structured data, and data analytics compete with products designed by companies like IBM, Adobe systems, Oracle, EMC, Open Text Corporation, and Symantec Corporation. HP also delivers enterprise risk/security intelligence solutions, which competes with other products from companies like Cisco, EMC, McAfee, and IBM. HP’s net revenue in fiscal 2013 declined by 6.7% as compared to 2012 fiscal due to the revenue decrease of approximately 10%, 3%, 8%, and 5% in HP’s personal system, printing segments, ES, and EG, respectively. The revenue decrease indicates a series of revenue growth challenges that affected each of HP segments to varying degrees (Worthen, 2011b). The various challenges included enterprise IT demand and weak public area spending, mainly in Europe that impacted the EG and ES segments, major contraction in the whole PC market that impacted the PS, competitive pricing forces in the PC and enterprise markets that impacted both the personal systems and EG segments and unfavorable volume declines in supplies and currency impacts, that affected the printing segments. Gross margin also declined by 0.1% in 2013 fiscal as compared to fiscal 2012. The growth margin decrease was due chiefly to competitive pricing atmospheres in the markets for personal systems and EG products and decline contractual and revenue prices decreased for ES. Partially compensating these declines was the gross margin increase linked with the printing due to mainly the improvements in toner and extended selling prices for higher-value customer printers. Operating margin in fiscal 2013 increased by 15.6% as compared to fiscal 2012 due mainly to goodwill absence and intangible asset impairment charges and minimal restructuring charges in fiscal 2013. Additionally, R&D, SG&A expenses declined by 2.9% due chiefly to R&D EG streamlining, specifically in BCS and cost savings linked with the continuing restructuring efforts that affected all expense categories. Compared to Apple, HP has been facing financial performance decline since Apple posted about $51.5 billion in revenue and a $11.1 billion profit, or $1.96 per diluted share in comparison to the previous year 2014 that was $42.1 billion in revenue $8.5 billion in profit or $1.42 per diluted share. That is an indication that Apple is on the upward trend and its financial performance is trending well (Santos, Gonzalez, Li, Chen, Beyer, Biligi, & Zhang, 2013). Oct 31, 2015 Oct 31, 2014 Oct 31, 2013 Oct 31, 2012 Oct 31, 2011 Oct 31, 2010 Ratio Quick ratio1 0.80 0.73 0.69 0.66 0.58 0.66 Benchmarks Quick Ratio, Competitors Apple Inc. 0.89 0.82 1.40 1.24 1.35 1.72 Cisco Systems Inc. 2.97 3.10 2.71 3.20 2.99 2.45 EMC Corp. – 1.09 1.23 0.93 0.89 0.85 Intel Corp. – 1.15 1.74 1.71 1.54 2.65 Qualcomm Inc. 3.16 3.32 3.28 2.61 2.39 2.01 Texas Instruments Inc. – 1.80 1.83 1.51 Since HP competitors do not compete in one sector it is hard to explain the entire financial performance, but performance of the segments linked to HP. However, HP needs to ensure that it takes major decision that will turn around its fate to ensure its financial health is increased. The future of HP looks promising due to its innovation and differentiation, but strong techniques to maintain its financial health are required. Among such decisions include the critical step of workforce reduction. The workforce that is not needed should be released to ensure it uses less cost on workers. The other critical step is the aspect of it focusing on the major strategic area like security, cloud, and information optimization. Q3: Based on your findings from questions one and two, provide recommendations on how you believe the company can improve on its financial performance over the next five years. (25 marks) Introduction It is simple to understand that increasing revenue and decreasing cost are two key drivers for enhanced financial performance. The technique of optimizing these aspects while keeping quality care as a major priority is anything but easy. When undertaking a performance analysis, those involved with performance improvement are essentially assessing the present performance against the desired performance. Consequently, when undertaking the performance analysis, it is significant to progress along a macro to micro analysis technique. Commencing from the macro level ensures that an individual or company is able to view the organization or company in its present market place for which it functions, ultimately the organization’s suppliers, customers, and competitors (Krepapa, Berthon, Webb, & Pitt, 2003). The use of performance analysis is vital as it helps evaluate accomplishment versus behavior. After performance analysis, the performance gap analysis commences. Performance gap analysis decides what aspects are absent in the performance of a worker in a specific position or of an organization in comparison to its competitors. In both examples, actual performance is calculated in comparison with the standards launched by benchmarks for suitable performance in that post. An alternate kind of performance gap analysis decides what extra skills and training may be required to bring individual workers or the whole organization to a suitable standard when particular factors of jobs change. The second kind of performance gap analysis mainly happens when there are introduction of new technologies in a workplace. Gap analysis is depicted to be the comparison of actual performance with desired or potential performance. If an organization fails to utilize its current resources, or relinquishes investment in technology or capital, it could perform or produce below its potential. Gap analysis is vital as it helps in identifying the gaps between the integration of resources and optimized allocation, and the present allocation-level. That could identify areas that need improvement. Gap analysis involves documenting, determining, and approving the difference among current capabilities and business requirements. Gap analysis mainly flows from other assessment and benchmarking. When the general company performance expectation is understood, it is easier to compare that expectation the present performance level of the company (Bunse, Vodicka, Schönsleben, Brülhart, & Ernst, 2011). That comparison is what the gap analysis becomes. Such analysis is vital and can be undertaken at the operational or strategic level of a company. When completing the performance gap analysis, it ensures that the gap arising between the desired and current performance is known. When undertaking the gap analysis, the factor being evaluated is turned to expected outcomes and current behaviors. Gap analysis involves using two aspects and they include identify gaps, and determining the gaps priority. Based on the current trend of HP, the company needs to shed off some of its workers to ensure they reduce the cost they incur. The companies expected performance in the next few years is on the growth, but the current situation could derail them. Growth Est HPQ Industry Sector S&P 500 Current Qtr. N/A -10.10% N/A 2.90% Next Qtr. -60.90% 6.40% 177.90% 13.10% This Year N/A -14.20% 7.70% 2.60% Next Year N/A 10.80% 29.10% 9.30% Past 5 Years (per annum) -7.30% N/A N/A N/A Next 5 Years (per annum) -0.76% 11.51% 17.58% 4.91% Price/Earnings (avg. for comparison categories) N/A 7.94 9.51 19.73 PEG Ratio (avg. for comparison categories) N/A -0.90 41.82 1.98 The company needs to find and calculate the gap analysis to ensure that they attain the required performance. The company must evaluate the performance of the employees so that they can find the gap between the current and expected outcomes. The company should ensure that it sheds off some of its useless workers to reduce cost. HP in the laptop category sells about 56 different models, 31 of which could be customized in millions of mixtures. Customers mainly protest about having many options, and they tend to run to the other competitor. The core division of HP that competes with Apple, Lenovo, Toshiba, and Acer is the personal systems group and if it aspires to succeed in the next five years, it needs to drastically modify its PSG strategy. The aspect of HP producing 56 laptop models is irrelevant, since in the electronic division, less is more. For about three reasons, HP could actually decline costs and mount its sales by decreasing the number of options it offers in desktops, laptops, monitors, and printers (Santos, Gonzalez, Li, Chen, Beyer, Biligi, & Zhang, 2013). Additionally, the redundant activities reduction will ensure that resources are allocated towards quality smart phones and quality tablets. First, HP will reduce cost by redundancies elimination in customer support functions and product development labs. Reducing redundancies signifies that the quality of products is maintained. If HP dedicated its quality assurance, research and development, and customer service teams to about two or three products, the quality of these desktops, laptops, and other personal systems would shoot tremendously. Research and development groups will innovate more rapidly when they have a focal point, quality assurance group will iron out all small bugs and defects, and customer service will become more efficient in tackling problems since there will be fewer range of issues if there are smaller differences among HP’s product offering. If HP undertakes the restructuring phase, it may incur some costs in the short term, but in the long run, the investors will see the advantage. References Back, B., Vanharanta, H., & Visa, A. (2001). Financial benchmarking of telecommunications companies. Turku Centre for Computer Science. Bunse, K., Vodicka, M., Schönsleben, P., Brülhart, M., & Ernst, F. O. (2011). 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