Problem statement
For a business to succeed, there is need for proper business panning. Planning in business environment is at a time very tedious and can cause business failure due to poor work analysis or inappropriate analysis. This essay therefore explains how Microsoft excel can be properly used in business planning to reduce or avoid such problems.
Use of what if scenario in break-even analysis
Business is an industry that entails risk taking in many decisions that the manager makes. A manager’s decision will either make the company undergo a loss, make a profit or just operate at break-even. Therefore, the best decision a manger can make in the business organization will have to be based on certain facts that might change and in the end affect the business, while others might be constant yet affect the business.
A manager will henceforth have to look at some of the probabilities of attaining a certain business goal before making the final decision to undertake it. This kind of work can be very tedious and ambiguous if a manager has to do some of the jobs manually. Therefore, excel spreadsheets can be used to easily find out the breakeven analysis at which the organization has to operate and know what needs to be added so as to make a certain profit margin. In undertaking break-even analysis, a manager has to categorize the various kind of cost (i.e. variable and fixed costs).
The manager can use the ‘what if’ scenarios to project how changing certain values can affect the results and operation of the organization. For instance, if the current scenarios of a break even analysis of the company is as given below.
In this example, a company can project for a lower price that that can enable increase sales and in the end increase the profit. This can be done easily by substituting the cells of you want to change. For instance, the cell for unit price, can be reduced to $6.00 and the cell for sales increased to 250, 000. This scenario will help the planning manager to know how the profit will change if the unit price is reduced and sales are increased as projected. Therefore, developing various scenarios, a manager will be able to know the best price to set for the business.
Use of pivot tables
The pivot table allows managers in a business organization to organize any kind of database in tables that have got similar subtotals. If for instance a big company has various branches, the subtotal sales of various stores in one branch can be compared within the branch, or compare sales per branch, per month or any other method the manager feels deem. A manager can have a large sample of products from various branches and he needs to analyze and know what was sold per branch or city. Take the following example of varies products of a company with three branches.
In the above data, if a manager is to find out how many spoons were sold in total by each branch as well as the knives might be very tedious if done manually. To use the pivot table to analyze such data, a manager can create the first pivot table of the product by starting with the first branch. This can be done severally by filtering the first information and compare all the tables to see sales as per each branch.
Conclusion
The use of excel spreadsheets is a means of simplifying the managements planning jobs in all the departments of an organization. It is useful in financial, human resource, marketing, planning and all the fields of private and public businesses organization.
The concept of planning
Problem statement
Project failure can be attributed to poor planning. Many people fail to make proper planning that has seen the projects they are working on fail at the initial stages or towards maturity of the project. This essay therefore explains how proper planning can avoid project failure.
Principles of planning
The first real step to solve a problem is the concept of planning. This concept helps to understand and know the feasibility of the project and the potentials of the project succeeding. In this way feasibility study will help to understand all the problems that may be encountered in carrying out the plans and to undertaking a particular project. Once the problems have been understood, one will be able to develop strategy of how to tackle the problem. This prior planning prevents putridly (piss) poor performance of a project.
The concept of Herb
The concept of herb Simon can be used to revolutionize the computer world. Many of the decisions made by managers are made under a lot of uncertainties. In the computer industry, it is one of the industries faced with a lot of uncertainty since there is constant change in technology. Under such cases, managers in this industry have to be rational in their decision-making. Studying the future might be a problem to many managers hence there is need to simulate the work by use of a computer programs. The managers can always try satisficing rather than the concept of maximizing. Therefore, the manager can choose the first reasonable option and not the best option.
The concept of Polya
In solving a problem, the first step is to understand the problem. A good way of understanding the problem is by putting it in one’s own words or way. After understanding the problem, the second thing is to make the plan on how to solve the problem. This plan on how to undertake the problem will depend on the way one understands the problem. The best way to tackle the problem is by understanding the available strategies of problem solving. For instance, if a mathematical problem requires computers to help in solving, or requires some set of charts, diagrams etc one has to choose which will be the best to use in solving the problem. After deciding the strategy to use, one then embarks on solving the problem. There are issues where one jumps to solving the problem without making prior arrangements on tackling the problem, hence might end up with poor results. Therefore, it is good that one ‘looks back’ to see if the solution that has been given or found makes sense. Some times, one may even look (go) back to the problem in the middle of solving it when it is found that whatever that is being solved is actually not what is supposed to be. Therefore to know if as a student or a manager you can understand and solve a problem, you should also be able to pose one.
It is only through understanding a problem and having proper plans of solving it that the project planner can be to achieve the best results of a project.
Work cited
Buenker, J. Satisficing social work student’s Research Needs, 2002. Web.
Kipka F. P. Premises, principles, procedures, prudence, A useful Taxonomy of learning objectives. Web.
Mims, F. Proper Planning prevents piss-poor performance, 2007. Web.