Reference no: EM132388423
Assignment: You Are the Consultants
Case 1: To ensure that the correct size of heart valve is available for heart surgery, Heart Plus, the make of the valves employs salespeople to place and maintain inventories in hospitals in its market. After a valve is used in surgery, Heart Plus, bills the patient's insurance company and credits the sales person with the sale. Each sales person earns a commission based on a percentage of revenue of the sales in their territory.
Because Heart Plus does not get paid until it sells its valve, it must bear the cost of holding inventory calculated as the cost of capital (assumed 12%) time the wholesale cost of the valves placed in the hospital.
Problem: Heart Plus faces a cost of holding inventory that is higher than its competitors. The salespeople are clearly overstocking hospitals in their territory. Considering that Heart Plus does not want to lose good sales people how do you fix the problem?
Instructions: 1. Use your training in economics and business to address the problems. As a consultant, you need to first make sure you are familiar with the company and the industry you are working for by doing preliminary research. Then read the description carefully to determine the main conflict/issue. The suggestions and solutions provided should be, logical, realistic and reasonable.
2. You can use the following questions as a guide to your proposed actions.
a. Who is responsible for making the decision?
b. Does the decision maker have enough information to make a good decision? If not what information is required?
c. Do they have incentive to do so?
d. How would you go about determining the best course of action?
3. Prepare a voice-over presentation to discuss the statement of the problem/issue and potential business alternatives. The file name should be ‘Last name 1_Last name 2_Last name 3_project name'.
4. The ppt should include a cover slide, showing at the least the title of the presentation and the name(s) of the consultants. The ppt should be not more than 3 slides, excluding the cover slide and reference, if any.
5. The presentation should take no longer than 5 minutes. No written submission is needed.
6. It is assumed that you are giving the presentation to the executives of the company. Use the appropriate tone and wording during your presentation. Pay attention to the type of audience you are facing.
7. Do not read off the slides. Do not simply read off the script that you might have written down. You need to give a talk using the ppt slides as an aid. Reading and talking are two different things and people (including me) can often tell the difference easily.
8. Make simple slides and limit the amount of content. Too much content or graphics can be overwhelming and carry the audience away from your talk. Unless absolutely necessary, restrain from using pictures and cartoons.
9. You can prepare scripts for your presentation. However, it is highly recommended that you do not read from the scripts in your presentation unless you can read it as if reading lines for a play without sounding robotically.
10. Rehearse before recording! Presentations not well prepared with adversely affect your performance.