The purpose of the Discussion Board is to allow students to learn through sharing ideas and experiences as they relate to course content and the DB question. Because it is not possible to engage in two-way dialogue after a conversation has ended, no posts to the DB will be accepted after the end of each week.

Part 1

As EEC’s corporate business financial analyst, you will need to have a clear understanding of the different types of costs (variable, fixed, and mixed) that the company carries. Complete the following for this assignment:

• Review EEC’s journal activity.
• Define and identify its variable, fixed, and mixed costs.
• Determine what affect a sales volume increase or decrease will have on unit fixed cost, unit variable cost, total fixed cost, and total variable cost.

Click here to view EEC’s journal activity.

Part 2

As an EEC corporate business financial analyst, you must have an expert understanding of the various costing methods. Select 1 of the following costing concepts:

• Full costing or absorption costing
• Variable costing
• Target costing
• Life cycle costing
• Activity-based costing

Respond to the following questions on the costing concept that you selected:

• Provide the definition of the concept.
• Discuss how and when the concept could be used by EEC.
• Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the concept as it relates to EEC.

Attachments:

Aims

To analyse a set of data (in Microsoft Excel), and write a brief report (in Microsoft Word), identifying and explaining your insights into the operation of Trade Fair organized by “Home and Office Product Exhibition (HOPE)”.

Learning Objectives

In the process of this assessment task you will:

• plan, schedule and execute project tasks with a view to improving your personal productivity;
• gain awareness of some typical issues related to the operation of a small-to-medium size business;
• use the functionality of Microsoft Excel 2007/10/13 to manipulate data, analyse it and visualise it in tabular and chart form; and
• use the functionality of Microsoft Word to write a brief report of your business observations and recommendations.

Home and Office Product Exhibition : Analysing Sales and Customer Relations

Introduction

Home and Office Product Exhibition (HOPE)specialises in promoting and selling both (i) stand space at trade fairs and (ii) tickets for visitors to trade fairs in Latrobe Valley, Gippsland area. The company currently promotes and sells two different sized stand spaces, to new or returning exhibitors,for a number of Trade Fairs locally and overseas. HOPE alsoprovides a number of additional value-added services to exhibitors for fees, such as organising exhibitor stands, developing marketing material for exhibitors to distribute at fairs, arranging travel and/or accommodation for exhibitors, and hospitality/catering for exhibitors to offer their customers attending the Exhibition. HOPE also organise visitor tickets for the trade fairs, which also provide commission income. All these activities are managed through the efforts of a number of sales representatives. The company’s founder, Ms IsabellaHunt, like all small business owners, is always interested in finding ways to increase revenues and decrease expenses.

Ms Hunt has recently hired you as her business analyst and poses some operational-level questions about the performance of her business. She is also eager to hear your thoughts and ideas on how to improve the business and requiresyou to make several recommendations on how to improve the company’s performance, especially in relation to the following business objectives:

• improving the sales strategy;
• improving internal efficiencies and effectiveness; and
• building strong lasting relationships with its customers.

Ms Hunt has provided you with latest sales information in the“ITECH1005_assignment_data.xlsx” file. The data needs to be analysed and visualised to help observations related to the business operation and its shortcomings.

The data worksheet “Sales” contains collected information of the consultancy’s operationsinthe current year. Thesedetails included:

• Date and Day(of customer order),
• Trade Fair
• Customer (i.e. exhibiting company)
• space sold (sq.m.)
• Sales Representative
• time spent by Sales Representative to complete sale
• returning Exhibitor?
• Exhibitor stand organised?
• Exhibitor travel organised?
• Exhibitor accommodation organised?
• Exhibitor marketing material organised?
• Exhibitor hospitality organised?
• Visitor tickets sold

The fees charged by HOPE to customers (i.e. exhibitors) for their value-added services are:

Each sales representative receives 15% of the total value added services for corresponding transactions. The data worksheet “Exhibitions” contains collected information of the Trade Fairs over the past decade. These details included:

• Exhibition
• Year
• space available for HOPE to sell to exhibitors (sq.m.)
• Visitor tickets sold by HOPE
• Total Profit for HOPE

HOPE receives a fee ($5) for each Exhibition visitor ticket sold through its Sales Representatives. HOPE pays $1 per ticket to the corresponding sales representative. This historical information is summarised in the “Exhibitions” worksheet as a summation of all Sales Representative ticket sales.

The company receives different rates of ‘commissions’(i.e. fees) for selling space to companies exhibiting at the various fairs. The exhibition managers charge $175 per square meter for floor space. HOPE receives commission according to the following table.

HOPE thenpays commissions to the Sales Representatives for selling the space to those exhibiting companies. Each representative also receives $15 for each hour of their service on the weekdays and $20 per hour in the weekends. The following tables describe how these commissions are calculated:

On an average HOPE spends 50% of each sale as management salary, office rent, utilities, transportation and maintenance.

Calculations (All Students):

1. a) Total sales, sub-totalled by each (a) Trade Fair, (b) Sales Representative, and (c) income type. Use Pivot Table(s) and appropriate graph(s)/chart(s) to summarise these calculations.
2. b) Total profit, sub-totalled by each (a) Trade Fair, and (b) Sales Representative. Use Pivot Table(s) and appropriate graph(s)/chart(s) to summarise these calculations.
3. c) Total expenses, sub-totalled by each (a) Trade Fair, (b) Sales Representative, and (c) expense type. Use Pivot Table(s) and appropriate graph(s)/chart(s) to summarise these calculations.
4. d) Total hours worked, sub-totalled by each (a) Trade Fair, and (b) Sales Representative. Use Pivot Table(s) and appropriate graph(s)/chart(s) to summarise these calculations.
5. e) Changes to profitability over the past decade, including 2015 figures, sub-totalled by each Trade Fair. Use an appropriate graph/chart to summarise these changes.

Ms Hunt requires you to make observations to help her with the following questions.

Observations (All students):

1. f) Who are HOPE’s five best and five worst customers by total sales? Use an appropriate table and graph/chart to summarise these observations.
2. g) What are HOPE’s best and worst value-added services by total profit? Use an appropriate table and graph/chart to summarise these observations.
3. h) What are HOPE’s best and worst Trade Fairs by total profit? Use an appropriate table and graph/chart to summarise these observations.
4. i) What would happen to profits if the rate of pay to Sales Representatives for hours worked on sales was increased by 50%? Use an appropriate table and graph/chart to summarise these calculations.

Observations (ITECH5005 Students Only):

1. j) What are the best Sales Representative’s best- and worst-selling services (by total profit)? Use an appropriate table and graph/chart to summarise these calculations.
2. k) What would happen to profits if the amount of space required to be sold to change the scale of commission paid was changed from 20 sq.m. to (a) 25 sq.m. and (b) 30 sq.m. Use an appropriate table and graph/chart to summarise these calculations.

Ms Hunt also requires you to make recommendations concerning the following business-level questions.

Recommendations (All Students):

1. l) Should HOPE focus on any particular (a) customer(s), (b) Trade Fairs, and (c) particular sales activities in future, and why?
2. m) What are your recommendations for resolving any data redundancy issues observed in the workbook?
3. n) What are your recommendation regarding what other data should be collected to improve decision making for HOPE?
4. o) What are your recommendation regarding record-keeping to improve the quality of data collection and management?

Recommendations (ITECH5005 Students Only):

1. p) What changes should HOPE make regarding any currently employed Sales Representative(s), or to the fees paid to the Sales Representatives, and why?

Ms Hunt has asked you to provide her with the details of how you have accomplished these tasks. Therefore, you must include the functions and the formulae you’ve used in your analyses, and not simply report the answers. Create a new worksheet in the assignment workbook called “Calculations” to provide Ms Hunt with these calculations and summations.

As a paid consultant, your submission to Ms Huntmust be professionally presented;all analyses, calculations and summaries in the Excel file musthave headings and be supported with explanatory notes; and the formal business report must be preceded by a ‘covering letter’ (i.e. incorporate letter as first page of your Word document with your report on following pages).

Note: All recommendations in your report must be clearly justified (e.g. include charting or refer to specific analyses/summaries from the Excel spreadsheet).

Some Hints

The business options are linked to a number of questions posed by Ms Hunt. Your role is to answer these specific questions and to support your answers with your data analysis as presented in the appropriate tables and charts. Ensure that your recommendations address the company’s objectives, and that they are clearly linked to your observations.

There is no ‘ideal’ or ‘best’ way of doing this project. You’ll be assessed on your insight of the data, on your ability to make observations by analysing (with formulas) and visualising (with charts) your data, and your ability to link your observations to business issues.

There are numerous Microsoft Excel facilities and functions that may be useful in this project. While planning your workbook, and especially the observations, you may wish to reviewthe tutorials on the related topics (e.g. Excel functions, absolute and relative cell referencing, formatting, chartings andmanaging large worksheets, as well as on the analysis of Excel data and drawingrecommendations).

The Excel workbook contains all the necessary data for your assignment. However, you need to make sure the records included in the worksheets are not faulty or inaccurate (e.g. missing data) to avoid errors in calculations.

You will very likely need to analyses beyond the assessable tasks to gain sufficient insight into the business operations to provide recommendations to Ms Hunt. Include any additional analyses or summaries on the calculations worksheet.

You might check the space available and compare it to the space sold this year.

Make sure you review the marking guide, to ensure you complete all required tasks before submission.

Assignment Assessment

The questions posed to you in this assignment range from easy, through medium to challenging. However, it is expected that all students will succeed in all the tasks. Some of the tasks are very similar to those covered in tutorials and the associated exercises. Some of the challenging tasks may rely on insight that requires self-directed study (e.g. using help facilities in Excel to explore in depth some of the topics covered in the tutorials).

This assignment is worth 30% of total marks for this course and will be marked on:

• your demonstrated understanding of the problems;
• completeness of the tasks;
• exploration of the features in Microsoft Office; and
• quality of the submission (Excel workbook & Word document).

Submission

All students are required to submit two (2) files for this assignment, via Moodle, prior to the due date and time.

Marking Guide

Assignment 3: Glencore
Your client is the Glencore. It has hired your company to help them think through the outlook for the copper mining industry 2 years from now. As part of your report, they would you to help them make sense of some of the uncertainty that lies ahead using Scenario Analysis and TOWS Analysis. In terms of the scenario analysis, please create four scenarios of what the industry will look like 24 months from now. Scenarios should be labeled, best case, worst case and two moderate cases. To create the scenarios, please follow the follow process. Please identify 6 to 8 trends affecting the industry. Then identify five or six key uncertainties facing companies in the industry. For each of these uncertainties, identify offer a measurement scale (high, low; hot cold; light heavy). From these uncertainties, pick the two with the highest potential impact on your company. Explain why these two have the highest impact. From these two uncertainties create the scenarios. Then suggest which scenario is most likely and why.

Based on your choice of one of these scenarios, Please create a TOWS analysis of your company and its operating environment offering three points for each quadrant and ensure that each point is supported with empirical data. Choose the most important point from each quadrant. Match the categories as follows: strength/opportunity, strength/threat, weakness/opportunity, weakness/threat and suggest a strategic response by the company.

Please reference online information sources appropriately using endnotes. Please end the analysis with a discussion regarding implications. In others, after gathering the data, so what? What does it mean?

Suggested Reading:
• Shoemaker, P. (1995) Scenario Planning: A Tool for Strategic Thinking. Sloan Management Review Winter 25 – 40.
• Wierich, H. (1982). The TOWS Matrix – A tool for situational planning. Long Range Planning, 15 (2), 54 – 66.

Requirement：
Assignments will be to respond to the specific questions. These are described further on in this course outline. Each assignment shall be limited to three single spaced pages plus diagrams and appendices. A paper version or hard copy of the assignment shall be handed at the start of class which it is due. Please use APA style when citing and referencing information.

cribe how such isChoose on question and provide supporting evidence, quotes and references where necessary.
Paper need to be well written (Masters Level) demonstrate good research skills, analytical thinking, your capacity to synthesize material in question into other arguments and ideas, and finally demonstrate your ability to relate your own ideas to the material presented in your paper.
Choose #5
APA Format
6= (1650 words) pages not including title page or works cited page(s)

1. Assessment tools assist in uncovering who the client is and what client needs to work on. Expand on this theme and describe at least three assessment tools and how they are utilized.
2. Describe treatment planning, using this method to assist a client through the treatment process to address three problem areas in his/her life.
3. Identify two main, evidence based counseling methods and choosing one, describe the method and how it use benefits clients.
4. It has been proven that working with families of clients in treatment benefits the client and improves outcomes. Explain and describe methods of involving and assisting families of substance users.
5. Mental health issues are the norm when working with clients who ae substance uses. Explain this outlook and dessues are addressed in treatment settings.

Must be original, individual work (absolutely no plagiarism)
•Include name, student ID, and course in header
•Must be formatted: 1 inch margins, 1.5 spacing, 12 point font (New Times Roman), either block paragraphs with blank line separation or indentation
•Length – 1.5 to 3 pages not including a formatted list of references
•Include an informative title
•Must contain three (3) main points
•Minimum of three (3) body paragraphs (one for each point)
•Must use supplied references

Use these below resources:

classical conditioning and phobias

Step Three: Your next step is to write a research question that addresses your selected category and topic. I

“How does classical conditioning explain phobias?”

Sub-questions “What are phobias?” or “How are phobias classified and categorized?”