Which of the following characteristics makes it easier to measure the quality of a service, relative to that of a product or facilitating good?

Select one:

A. Service portions are abstract, rather than concrete

B. Service portions are transient, rather than permanent

C. Service portions are psychological, rather than physical

D. None of the above characteristics make it easier to measure service quality

Among the best-known companies that use customer satisfaction surveys to evaluate service quality in various industries is:

Select one:

A. J.D. Power and Associates

B. McDonald’s

C. American Express

D. Alaska Airlines

Service defections are important in process control for services because:

Select one:

A. No advertising is necessary to get the business of long-term customers

B. They are equally important to organizations that produce tangible outputs

C. A customer who takes their business elsewhere is analogous to a product defect

D. Long-time customers are more likely to purchase additional products

One of the most common errors when monitoring data is to gather information that has little or no probability of changing significantly from one collection period to the next.

Select one:

True

False

There are five stages of effectiveness in terms of the role their operations play in terms of strategic business objectives.

Select one:

True

False

Departments within a stage 2 organization may exhibit a stage 3 orientation, thereby upgrading the organization to a stage 3 categorization.

Select one:

True

False

The balanced scorecard approach relies not only on financial performance measures, but includes customers, internal business processes, and organizational learning and growth.

Select one:

True

False

Benchmarking is a process that helps compare a company against its competitors on a variety of relevant indicators.

Select one:

True

False

You are the Business Systems Analyst for a diversified business conglomerate. The top management wants you prepare a short note explaining to them the concept of cloud computing, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).

Type your short note approx. 250+ words.

Discuss the pros and cons of using various potential raters to appraise an employee's performance.

chapter 8

human resources

There are 3 ways to acquire a new system: custom development (the company develops the system in house using corporate resources), packaged systems (purchasing a system off the shelf), and outsourcing (hiring an external developer, vendor or application service provider to create or supply the system). Assume you are the Business Systems Analyst for a company that adopts a mix of these three acquisition strategies.

What would be your role in each of these acquisition activities as a Business Systems Analyst?

Type a 200+ words answer.

Is transactional leadership the same as management? Define both concepts, explain your perspective and provide an example to justify your answer.

Given the following project:

1. Identify the critical path of the project using activity expected time.
2. What is the probability that the critical path will be completed in 205 days.

Briefly share your experience with project closeout. Recommend a set of five (5) best practices for closeout. At least one best practice should relate to documentation.

HelloFresh is at the forefront of disrupting a multi-trillion-dollar industry at the very beginning of its online transition. HelloFresh is a truly local food product, uniquely suited to individual tastes and meal-time preferences offering delivery of a giant box of delicious food with recipes to enable easy and enjoyable meal preparation for a weekly fee. HelloFresh aims to provide each and every household in its 7 markets with the opportunity to enjoy wholesome home-cooked meals with no planning, no shopping, and no hassle required. Everything required for weeknight meals, carefully planned, locally sourced and delivered to your door at the most convenient time for each subscriber. Behind the scenes, a huge data driven technology platform puts us in the prime position for disrupting the food supply chain and for fundamentally changing the way consumers shop for food. HelloFresh has local founders across the globe who are able to leverage the global platform, and at the same time ensure that the HelloFresh product in each market truly reflects the local community. The soft subscription model business enables us to leverage our weekly subscriber touchpoint to consistently manage supply chains and demand, and to optimize the customer experience as well as our business economics. Customers sign-up for a box containing between 2 and 5 meals per week for a flat fee. If the customer is out of town or unavailable he can easily cancel any week without a penalty provided they notify HelloFresh in advance. Dominik Richter has been CEO since starting HelloFresh in 2011. He has responsibility for keeping a general oversight of the business and strategy. Prior to HelloFresh, Dominik worked with Goldman Sachs in London. Dominik graduated with a degree in International Business in 2009, and from the London School of Economics in 2010 with a Masters in Finance. Thomas Griesel has been responsible for the logistics and operations behind HelloFresh since founding with Dominik in 2011. Previously, Thomas had spent time at OC&C Strategy Consultants and worked on a range of his own businesses and ideas. He graduated with a degree in International Business Administration in 2009, and from the London Business School in 2010 with a Masters in Management. 2011 All the way back in 2011, Dominik and Thomas arrived in Berlin, intent on starting a new and disruptive business. With a love of healthy food, nutrition, cooking, and a desire to make access to healthy food as easy as possible for as many people as possible - starting a Food at Home business seemed the natural choice. 2012 After examining business models from Sweden to Japan to very local ideas, they and a group of like-minded individuals formulated the recipe for HelloFresh. The team started early in 2012 packing shopping bags in Berlin, Amsterdam and London with a view to target the highest density population areas in Europe. Quite quickly, they started getting requests from people outside those areas who all wanted to become a part of the HelloFresh family. Wanting to serve as many people as possible, the team developed a logistics model that enabled them to deliver to every single household across a given country. 2013 The HelloFresh product started to rapidly gain in popularity, as subscribers shared the excitement about their weekly boxes, with friends and colleagues. Subscriber referrals accelerated, as it became clear that HelloFresh had finally solved the "What's for dinner tonight" problem for its subscribers. 2014 Having launched on the East Coast of the U.S in December 2012, HelloFresh moved to cover the entire country in September 2014. Over the short time since then, HelloFresh has grown rapidly to become one of the largest players in this market. QUESTIONS Do you consider HelloFresh a form of disruptive or sustaining technology? Is HelloFresh an example of Web 1.0 (ebusiness) or Web 2.0 (Business 2.0)? Describe the ebusiness model associated with HelloFresh. Describe the revenue model associated with HelloFresh.

1) What is the role of marketing in strategic planning process? Explain how marketing works with its partners to create and deliver customer value. (Chapter-2)

2) Write an essay on how post COVID 19 will influence the Consumer buying behavior related to their Social class,explain by giving an example of a product. (Chapter-5)

3) Discuss how companies differentiate and position their products for maximum competitive advantage. (Chapter-7)

As Hill et al. (2014) pointed out in their "Collective Genius" article, “the role of a leader of innovation is not to set a vision and motivate others to follow it. It’s to create a community that is willing and able to innovate.” Please integrate and synthesize the concepts presented in "Collective Genius" with any two course lessons into your leadership and motivation statement. Please cite from where you drew your concepts and also be specific about what resonated with you in the "Collective Genius" article. Think of this as your personal leadership and motivation mantra or brand going forward that you can use when people or future employees and/or teams ask you what leadership and motivation skills you bring to the table (organization).

When Howard Schultz founded Starbucks in 1987, he wanted to create a company that would genuinely care for the well-being of its employees. He had been very influenced by his memories of his father, noting that his father “struggled a great deal and never made more than $20,000 a year, and his work was never valued, emotionally or physically, by his employer … This was an injustice … I want our employees to know we value them.” He also believed that happy employees are the key to competitiveness and growth. As he stated: “We can’t achieve our strategic objectives without a work force of people who are immersed in the same commitment as management. Our only sustainable advantage is the quality of our work force. We’re building a national retail company by creating pride in–and stake in–the outcome of our labor.”

Schulz set out to accomplish his goals by creating an empowering corporate culture, exceptional employee benefits, and employee stock ownership programs. While Starbucks enforces almost fanatical standards of coffee quality and customer service, the culture at Starbucks towards employees is laid back and supportive. Employees are empowered to make decisions without constant referral to management, and are encouraged to think of themselves as partners in the business. Starbucks wants employees to use their best judgment in making decisions and will stand behind them. This is reinforced through generous compensation and benefits packages.

In 2000, Schultz announced that he was resigning as CEO and left the firm to pursue other ventures (though he remained chairman of the board of directors). However, after Starbucks began to suffer from slumping net income and decreasing share price, Schultz returned to the helm in 2008. Rather than cutting costs and reducing the work force, Schulz announced his “Transformation Agenda”–a controversial plan to invest in Starbucks’ employees, environment, and community. His plan included:

Competitive employee compensation plans that include equity-based compensation for nonexecutive partners. In 2013, $230 million was paid out in equity awards. In 2015, Starbucks gave all baristas and supervisors a pay raise and increased starting pay rates across the United States. In 2018, Starbucks’s U.S. baristas earned between $7 and $15 an hour (with an average of $9 an hour), plus an average of $742 a year in cash bonus, $286 in stock bonus, $442 in profit sharing, and $1,095 in tips.

Industry-leading health care benefits and 401K benefits for both part-time and full-time workers. Other companies that offer health benefits to part-time workers typically only do so for employees who work at least 30 hours a week. Starbucks broke with industry norms by creating benefits for employees who work at least 20 hours a week.

Tuition reimbursement for students. In June 2014, Starbucks unveiled a “College Achievement Plan” wherein employees who work more than 20 hours a week can work towards a bachelor’s degree through an online program from Arizona State University.

An ethical sourcing plan. Starbucks’ coffee must be purchased from suppliers that adhere to Starbucks’ “C.A.F.E.” standards. These standards include practices related to product quality, economic accountability, and transparency (e.g., suppliers must provide evidence to demonstrate that the price Starbucks pays reaches the farmer), social responsibility (e.g., third-party verifiers provide audits to ensure that suppliers are using safe, fair, and humane working and living conditions, including minimum-wage requirements and the prohibition of child and forced labor), and environmental leadership (e.g., measures to manage waste, protect water quality, and reduce use of agrochemicals).

In founding Starbucks, Schultz's stated primary focus was which of the following groups of stakeholders?

LM.97 Each week the ABC Company, from Albuquerque, NM receives 56 separate LTL shipments from a number of different suppliers in the Dallas, TX area. Each parcel shipment from Dallas to Albuquerque costs $126.

Alternate Shipping Method

A Dallas-based 3PL provider has approached ABC Company with a proposal to run a consolidation operation where they would pick up the supplier shipments each week and load them on to one truck for shipment to Albuquerque. The relative data for this alternative shipping method are as follows:

• Local pickup fee = $29 pickup fee
• Average weight per supplier shipment = 165 lbs.
• Local consolidation fee = $41 per hundred-weight
• Consolidated TL shipment from Dallas to Albuquerque = $1,140
• What is the total cost of shipping the separate parcel shipments from the Dallas-area suppliers to the ABC company location in Albuquerque? (Display your answer as a whole number.)

   How much money would ABC Company save to hire the 3PL to pickup the shipments from each supplier and consolidate them into one bulk shipment to Albuquerque? (Display your answer as a whole number.)
   At what number of shipments is the cost the same for the two options? (Display your answer as a whole number.)

Which component of compensation is most essential to motivate executives to lead companies toward competitive advantage? Discuss your rationale. Discuss your position on executive compensation. Is executive compensation excessive or appropriate?