Misha Enterprises, a rapidly growing call center in Northeast Michigan, services clients across the United States. Businesses contract with Misha to provide external outbound calls in the following areas: customer satisfaction surveys, marketing research surveys, and fundraising for non-profit organizations. Misha was established in 1992 by Anela Ainsley, who founded the business in her basement. It expanded rapidly and moved to its current location in 1997. Fortunately, because of its niche market and responsiveness to its customer base, Misha has not been negatively impacted by the current trend of outsourcing call center activities to international companies.

Middle Management Turnover

Misha uses a part-time, multi-shift hourly workforce for outbound calling. Misha has had good success hiring its hourly workforce. Both name recognition and its status as one of a handful of employers in the area has created a candidate pool of hourly workers who have a tendency to remain in their positions for a long time.

But Misha has not been as successful hiring call center managers. The company requires its managers to be degreed professionals with call center experience, but the nearest university is 150 miles away. As a result, Misha usually recruits candidates from larger cities who desire a rural lifestyle, as well as Misha employees who left the area to complete a bachelors degree and have since returned to the area.

The call center is managed by Chauncey LaBrad, the general manager, who is skilled at selling contracts and gaining new business. He's also responsible for all profit and loss and cash flow for Misha, as well as overseeing operations. He reports directly to the owner, Anela, with whom he has worked for more than 10 years.

The two call center managers, Helen Kenjor and Linda Kamis, report directly to Chauncey. Turnover is high for this call center management position. Chauncey has told Anela that he thinks the requirements for a bachelors degree and call center experience are unnecessary for the position. In fact, he has told Anela, “If I knew Helen was working on her MBA, I never would have hired her.”

Anela has decided to enter into other business ventures and dedicate more of her time to racing horses, so she is frequently out of the office. She founded the organization on the principals of providing a high level of service to clients while remaining profitable, and when she was in the office daily, Misha retained a growth of 10% per year. Under Chauncey’s direction, however,

Misha is growing at just 2% per year. Worse yet, in addition to having trouble retaining call center managers, Chauncey also is unable to retain sales employees.

Skill Disparities

Over the years, Misha has had to hire additional employees as the organization has grown. In addition to hiring more help, the company has invested in technology with predictive dialers and a sales database that is both a customer service management tool for tracking contacts and preferences, and a statistical reporting tool. While Misha’s managers can operate the sales software, some of its tenured employees struggle with it. Admittedly, Misha brought the software when it was recruiting a new call center manager, so the training was not as thorough as originally planned. As a result, the tenured employees have exceptional customer service experience but are unable to log information in the database accurately. They remember client preferences and characteristics by making personal, handwritten notes.

This customer information is not shared with other employees, which has been problematic, but not disastrous. The tenured employees have a tendency to share their notes with each other, but do not share with employees who were hired within the past three years. This occurs because they simply have not formed strong relationships with the newer employees. Because they remain connected to a headset all day, talking to clients, they have little time to socialize with their colleagues like they did back in the day when they were manually dialing the phone.

The newly hired employees are more technically savvy and have taken ownership of learning the database software. They see the value in the software and keep all of their notes in the database. They are able to pull reports to help them manage their time and can calculate their bonus potential on a real-time basis, which keeps them motivated. These employees have established an instantaneous competency in system utilization despite the fact that they have had no training. But while these employees have exceptional software competencies, they lack customer service experience.

An example of their deficient customer service skills was recently brought to light when a newly- hired employee, who was soliciting donations, told a telemarketing prospect:

Unfortunately, I do not have the time to listen to the story about your child’s first day of school. I have to make more calls because my job is on the line if I do not make 50 calls by the end of the evening. I am sure you understand. Did you want to renew your contribution of $100 from last year?

While this employee received appropriate disciplinary action, the exchange is indicative of the type of customer service problems that exist among the employees who were hired during the past three years.

Write a letter in block format or a memo (select the correct format, per BCOM) and address it to Anela Ainsley. (This should not be a recap of your team meeting or a letter to me.) In the document, provide a brief description of the problems. Identify the facts and discuss the key problems. Consider the following before making recommendations:

· How should Anela Ainsley handle the managerial employee turnover problem? On what do you base this suggestion?

· How would you design training, and how would you test whether the training was successful, considering the disparity of skills in the workforce?

· What can be done to help the employees build rapport so the “tenured” vs. “newly hired” divisions are less obvious?

In the closing cite the benefits of your recommendations in a succinct, truthful and tactful manner. Also keep in mind that since you are consulting, you wish to land future business from Misha Enterprises. So be sure to establish your credibility for future projects through your skillful analysis and solutions.

Beltway Shoe Company sells luxury leather shoes in the United States. The company monitors its shoe sales by collecting randomly chosen data from store locations throughout the country. They record original price, sale price, and number of days it takes to sell each unit. Each pair of shoes is classified as “Eastern Region" if it is sold in the Eastern part of the United States, or as “Western Region" if it is sold in the Western part of the country. Randomly chosen samples provided sales data for 50 Western Region and 50 Eastern Region pairs of shoes. The complete data set is in the file named Shoes, linked at the bottom of the page.

Managerial Report
Prepare a report (see below) that summarizes your assessment of the nature of the shoe market in each region. Be sure to include the following seven (7) items in your report.

Descriptive statistics (mean, median, range, and standard deviation) to summarize each of the three variables for the 50 Western Region shoes. Are there any outliers in the data set for any of the three variables? If there are any outliers in any category, please list them and state for which category they are an outlier. Describe which method you used to make your determination.

Descriptive statistics (mean, median, range, and standard deviation) to summarize each of the three variables for the 50 Eastern Region shoes. Are there any outliers in the data set for any of the three variables? If there are any outliers in any category, please list them and state for which category they are an outlier. Describe which method you used to make your determination.

Compare your summary results from #1 and #2. Discuss any specific statistical results that would help the Beltway Shoes Marketing Department understand the regional shoe market.

Develop a 90% confidence interval estimate of the population mean sales price and population mean number of days to sell for pairs of Beltway Shoes in the Eastern Region. Interpret your results.

Develop a 90% confidence interval estimate of the population mean sales price and population mean number of days to sell for pairs of Beltway Shoes in the Western Region. Interpret your results.

Assume a branch sales manager requested estimates of the mean selling price of Western Region shoes with a margin of error of $5 and the mean selling price of Eastern Region shoes with a margin of error of $4. Using 90% confidence, how large should the sample sizes be for each?

A Western Region store manager just placed on display a pair of Beltway Shoes, with an original price of $120. Also, an Eastern Region store manager just placed on display a pair of Beltway Shoes, with an original price of $125. For each pair of shoes, what is your estimate of the final selling price (based on the percent difference for the sale and list price) and number of days required to sell each of these units?

1. Why are some economists concerned that the United States borrows too much from abroad?

2. Explain why you agree or disagree with each of the following statements:

a. "A nation's currency will depreciate if its inflation rate is less that that of its trading partners."

b. " A nations whose interest rate falls more rapidly than that of other nations can expect the exchange value of its currency to depreciate."

c. "A nation whose economy grows more slowly than its major trading partners can expect the exchange value of its currency to appreciate."

d. "A nation's currency will appreciate if its interest rate rises relative to that of its trading partners and its income level falls relative to that of its trading partners."

-If the exchange rate changes from $1.70 = 1 pound to $1.68 = 1 pound, what does this means for the dollar? For the pound? What if the exchange rate changes from $1.70 = 1 pound to $1.72 pound?

Cincinnati Paint Company sells quality brands of paints through hardware stores throughout the United States. The company maintains a large sales force who call on existing customers and look for new business. The national sales manager is investigating the relationship between the number of sales calls made and the miles driven by the sales representative. Also, do the sales representatives who drive the most miles and make the most calls necessarily earn the most in sales commissions? To investigate, the vice president of sales selected a sample of 25 sales representatives and determined:

• The amount earned in commissions last month (y)
• The number of miles driven last month (x₁)
• The number of sales calls made last month (x₂)

The information is reported below.

  Click here for the Excel Data File

Develop a regression equation including an interaction term. (Negative amount should be indicated by a minus sign. Round your answers to 3 decimal places.)

Complete the following table. (Negative amounts should be indicated by a minus sign. Round your answers to 3 decimal places.)

Compute the value of the test statistic corresponding to the interaction term. (Negative amount should be indicated by a minus sign. Round your answer to 2 decimal places.)

At the 0.05 significance level is there a significant interaction between the number of sales calls and the miles driven?

This is (not statistically significant, statistically significant) so we conclude that there (is no interaction, is interaction)

Red Canyon T-shirt Company operates a chain of T-shirt shops in the southwestern United States. The sales manager has provided a sales forecast for the coming year, along with the following information:

• Each T-shirt is expected to sell for $11.
• The purchasing manager buys the T-shirts for $4 each.
• The company needs to have enough T-shirts on hand at the end of each quarter to fill 21 percent of the next quarter’s sales demand.
• Selling and administrative expenses are budgeted at $72,000 per quarter plus 10 percent of total sales revenue.

Required:
1. Determine budgeted sales revenue for each quarter.



2. Determine budgeted cost of merchandise purchased for each quarter.



3. Determine budgeted cost of good sold for each quarter.



4. Determine selling and administrative expenses for each quarter.



5. Complete the budgeted income statement for each quarter.

Cincinnati Paint Company sells quality brands of paints through hardware stores throughout the United States. The company maintains a large sales force who call on existing customers and look for new business. The national sales manager is investigating the relationship between the number of sales calls made and the miles driven by the sales representative. Also, do the sales representatives who drive the most miles and make the most calls necessarily earn the most in sales commissions? To investigate, the vice president of sales selected a sample of 25 sales representatives and determined:

• The amount earned in commissions last month (y)
• The number of miles driven last month (x₁)
• The number of sales calls made last month (x₂)

The information is reported below.

  Click here for the Excel Data File

Develop a regression equation including an interaction term. (Negative amount should be indicated by a minus sign. Round your answers to 3 decimal places.)

Complete the following table. (Negative amounts should be indicated by a minus sign. Round your answers to 3 decimal places.)

Compute the value of the test statistic corresponding to the interaction term. (Negative amount should be indicated by a minus sign. Round your answer to 2 decimal places.)

At the 0.05 significance level is there a significant interaction between the number of sales calls and the miles driven?

Suppose that the United States initially has a lower capital rental rate (r) than Mexico.

• What would be the direction of foreign direct investment (FDI)?
• Use a world-capital-market graph to show the effects of FDI on the two countries’ rental rates of capital, GDP, and total return to labor owners.
• Identify the net change in world output in the above graph.
• If the source country restricts the amount of outward FDI, how would the net change in world output identified in part (c) above be affected? Illustrate your answer in the same graph above.
• Discussion: what policy could governments use to attract inward FDI? What are the tradeoffs of such policy?

2. The latest available data showed health expenditures were $8086 per person in the United States or 17.6% of gross domestic product (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services website, April 1, 2012). Use $8086 as the population mean and suppose a survey research firm will take a sample of 100 people to investigate the nature of their health expenditures. Assume the population standard deviation is $2500. a) Identify the sampling distribution of the mean amount of health care expenditures for a sample of 100 people. (1.5 marks) b) What is the probability the sample mean will be within ±$200 of the population mean? (1 mark) c) What is the probability the sample mean will be greater than $9000? If the survey research firm reports a sample mean greater than $9000, would you question whether the firm followed correct sampling procedures? Why or why not? (0.5 + 0.5 mark).

1. n your own words, identify two different stock exchanges in the United States. Describe the similarities and differences between the two stock exchanges. Identify one stock from each of the two stock exchanges.
2. Using the two stocks you identified, determine the free cash flow from 2015 and 2016. What inference can you draw from the companies’ free cash flow?
3. Using the 2017 and 2018 financial statements for both stocks, prepare two financial ratios for each of the following categories: liquidity ratios, asset management ratios, and profitability ratios. You should have a total of six ratios for each stock, per year. What challenges, strengths, or weaknesses do you see?