Forecasting demand-management distinctions:

The guy with the Palm Treo in your local Home Depot store may just be checking his email while he picks up something to fix up the basement—or he may be part of the demand-management process at San Rafael, Calif.-based Kelleher Corp., a lumber and molding products supplier to Home Depot. A once laborious and slow paper-based order-entry process, notes Paul Herzog, Kelleher's VP of marketing, has been replaced by an electronic process that uses a mobile bar-code reader and inventory-management solution from 3G Touch Solutions and Socket Communications. As a result, a replenishment process that took up to 10 days has been transformed, with Home Depot's shelves being restocked within 24 hours."One of the things that distinguishes demand management from demand forecasting is moving downstream to capture demand sooner, taking customers' real-time inventory levels into account," notes Kiron Shastry, a demand-planning specialist for New York-based Accenture. Being closer to customers' real inventory levels, he adds, acts to reduce uncertainty and boost forecast accuracy and responsiveness.Not to mention boosting cash flow. The old system, says Herzog, involved a Kelleher sales rep creating a replenishment order on a multipage preprinted form, and handing it to a Home Deport employee who would fax it to Kelleher headquarters—and then manually type it into Home Depot's own systems.
A single version of the truth it most certainly wasn't. "If the two orders differed, there would be payment delays because what we would ship wouldn't match what they thought they had on order," says Herzog.No longer. Today, the Kelleher rep downloads a store-specific inventory profile as he enters the store, and scans each inventory location with a Palm Treo that costs around $600—including scanner. When the order is complete, he goes to the computer room at the back of the store, gets a purchase order number, and plugs the Treo into a serial cable that issues the order to Home Depot's system. Moments later, the exact same order is sitting on Kelleher's system, awaiting fulfillment.

Introduction to management consulting:

Management consulting is the practice or business of helping other companies improve their performances and accountability through efficiency analysis, IT analysis, studying existing and potential business problems, and helping develop corporate goals. It involves the leveraging of best practices across the company, as well as identifying and conrolling risk. Management consulting uses rigid frameworks or methodologies in order to identify problems and suggest better ways of performing business tasks.
Management consulting overlaps in many other areas of business consulting, including IT consulting, risk management consulting, and change management consulting.

History of management consulting
In the 1890s, Arthur D. Little opened the first management consulting firm near MIT (where an Arthur D. Little office stands to this day). Originally, it specialized in technical research, as one would expect from an MIT professor, but later it became a general management consultancy business. The first solely management consulting business was McKinsey &Co. in Chicago. Opened in 1926 by James O. McKinsey, it was later shaped primarily by Marvin Bower, who turned the field of management consultancy into a true profession. A.T. Kearney also came from this same new company.
Much later, the Boston Consulting Group brought a strongly analytical approach to management consulting, forming the foundations of modern management consulting. In the 1960s and 1970s, major accounting firms and IT services like IBM also developed large consulting arms.
Management consulting today
Today, three main types of consulting firms exist. The first is the large multiple-service firm like IBM, who provide not only management consulting but also IT, accounting, or risk management consulting, among other things. Large management and consulting firms like McKinsey offer pure management consulting, but are not specialized in any industry; they provide generalized management consulting for a variety of industries. Finally, smaller “boutique” firms like First Manhattan provide management consulting in very specific industries, such as banking, healthcare, or IT.
Management consulting provides a bridge between the academic and philosophical ideas of management and the practical, day-to-day application of these ideas. Their tools and techniques approach business problems in both a practical and an analytical manner, and are therefore often superior to previous forms of management.
Unfortunately, the methodologies of management consulting, since they are so close to the cutting edge and sometimes use untried ideas, have also gotten the reputation of being impractical and farfetched. No doubt, for some management consulting ideas, this is true. But a seasoned management consultant, used to working in the real world with philosophical business practice ideas, will not only be well-versed in cutting edge methods but will also have an understanding of what will and what will not work in today’s business world.
When choosing a management consultant, look for one who has good, solid experience in your industry, as well as a thorough understanding of how the latest ideas work out in the real world. Don’t let someone experiment with your company; instead, find someone who approaches your business as if it were his own.

What is Decision Making?

Some DefinitionsA good place to start is with some standard definitions of decision making.
1. Decision making is the study of identifying and choosing alternatives based on the values and preferences of the decision maker. Making a decision implies that there are alternative choices to be considered, and in such a case we want not only to identify as many of these alternatives as possible but to choose the one that best fits with our goals, desires, lifestyle, values, and so on.
2. Decision making is the process of sufficiently reducing uncertainty and doubt about alternatives to allow a reasonable choice to be made from among them. This definition stresses the information gathering function of decision making. It should be noted here that uncertainty is reduced rather than eliminated. Very few decisions are made with absolute certainty because complete knowledge about all the alternatives is seldom possible. Thus, every decision involves a certain amount of risk.
Kinds of DecisionsThere are several basic kinds of decisions.
1. Decisions whether. This is the yes/no, either/or decision that must be made before we proceed with the selection of an alternative. Should I buy a new TV? Should I travel this summer? Decisions whether are made by weighing reasons pro and con. The PMI technique discussed in the next chapter is ideal for this kind of decision.
It is important to be aware of having made a decision whether, since too often we assume that decision making begins with the identification of alternatives, assuming that the decision to choose one has already been made.
2. Decisions which. These decisions involve a choice of one or more alternatives from among a set of possibilities, the choice being based on how well each alternative measures up to a set of predefined criteria.
3. Contingent decisions. These are decisions that have been made but put on hold until some condition is met.
For example, I have decided to buy that car if I can get it for the right price; I have decided to write that article if I can work the necessary time for it into my schedule.
Most people carry around a set of already made, contingent decisions, just waiting for the right conditions or opportunity to arise. Time, energy, price, availability, opportunity, encouragement--all these factors can figure into the necessary conditions that need to be met before we can act on our decision.
Decision Making is a Recursive ProcessA critical factor that decision theorists sometimes neglect to emphasize is that in spite of the way the process is presented on paper, decision making is a nonlinear, recursive process. That is, most decisions are made by moving back and forth between the choice of criteria (the characteristics we want our choice to meet) and the identification of alternatives (the possibilities we can choose from among). The alternatives available influence the criteria we apply to them, and similarly the criteria we establish influence the alternatives we will consider. Let's look at an example to clarify this.
Suppose someone wants to decide, Should I get married? Notice that this is a decision whether. A linear approach to decision making would be to decide this question by weighing the reasons pro and con (what are the benefits and drawbacks of getting married) and then to move to the next part of the process, the identification of criteria (supportive, easy going, competent, affectionate, etc.). Next, we would identify alternatives likely to have these criteria (Kathy, Jennifer, Michelle, Julie, etc.). Finally we would evaluate each alternative according to the criteria and choose the one that best meets the criteria. We would thus have a scheme like this:
decision whether ... select criteria ... identify alternatives ... make choice
However, the fact is that our decision whether to get married may really be a contingent decision. "I'll get married if I can find the right person." It will thus be influenced by the identification of alternatives, which we usually think of as a later step in the process. Similarly, suppose we have arrived at the "identify alternatives" stage of the process when we discover that Jennifer (one of the girls identified as an alternative) has a wonderful personality characteristic that we had not even thought of before, but that we now really want to have in a wife. We immediately add that characteristic to our criteria. Thus, the decision making process continues to move back and forth, around and around as it progresses in what will eventually be a linear direction but which in its actual workings is highly recursive.
The Components of Decision Making
The Decision EnvironmentEvery decision is made within a decision environment, which is defined as the collection of information, alternatives, values, and preferences available at the time of the decision. An ideal decision environment would include all possible information, all of it accurate, and every possible alternative. However, both information and alternatives are constrained because time and effort to gain information or identify alternatives are limited. The time constraint simply means that a decision must be made by a certain time. The effort constraint reflects the limits of manpower, money, and priorities. (You wouldn't want to spend three hours and half a tank of gas trying to find the very best parking place at the mall.) Since decisions must be made within this constrained environment, we can say that the major challenge of decision making is uncertainty, and a major goal of decision analysis is to reduce uncertainty. We can almost never have all information needed to make a decision with certainty, so most decisions involve an undeniable amount of risk.
The fact that decisions must be made within a limiting decision environment suggests two things. First, it explains why hindsight is so much more accurate and better at making decisions that foresight. As time passes, the decision environment continues to grow and expand. New information and new alternatives appear--even after the decision must be made. Armed with new information after the fact, the hindsighters can many times look back and make a much better decision than the original maker, because the decision environment has continued to expand.
The second thing suggested by the decision-within-an-environment idea follows from the above point. Since the decision environment continues to expand as time passes, it is often advisable to put off making a decision until close to the deadline. Information and alternatives continue to grow as time passes, so to have access to the most information and to the best alternatives, do not make the decision too soon. Now, since we are dealing with real life, it is obvious that some alternatives might no longer be available if too much time passes; that is a tension we have to work with, a tension that helps to shape the cutoff date for the decision.
Delaying a decision as long as reasonably possible, then, provides three benefits:
1. The decision environment will be larger, providing more information. There is also time for more thoughtful and extended analysis.
2. New alternatives might be recognized or created.
3. The decision maker's preferences might change. With further thought, wisdom, maturity, you may decide not to buy car X and instead to buy car Y.

source: http://www.virtualsalt.com/crebook5.htm

Control

Many People Are Averse to Management "Control"New, more "organic" forms or organizations (self-organizing organizations, self-managed teams, network organizations, etc.) allow organizations to be more responsive and adaptable in today's rapidly changing world. These forms also cultivate empowerment among employees, much more than the hierarchical, rigidly structured organizations of the past.
Many people assert that as the nature of organizations has changed, so must the nature of management control. Some people go so far as to claim that management shouldn't exercise any form of control whatsoever. They claim that management should exist to support employee's efforts to be fully productive members of organizations and communities -- therefore, any form of control is completely counterproductive to management and employees.
Some people even react strongly against the phrase "management control". The word itself can have a negative connotation, e.g., it can sound dominating, coercive and heavy-handed. It seems that writers of management literature now prefer use of the term "coordinating" rather than "controlling".
"Coordination" Must Exist or There's No Organization -- Only an "Experience"Regardless of the negative connotation of the word "control", it must exist or there is no organization at all. In its most basic form, an organization is two or more people working together to reach a goal. Whether an organization is highly bureaucratic or changing and self-organizing, the organization must exist for some reason, some purpose, some mission (implicit or explicit) -- or it isn't an organization at all. The organization must have some goal. Identifying this goal requires some form of planning, informal or formal. Reaching the goal means identifying some strategies, formal or informal. These strategies are agreed upon by members of the organization through some form of communication, formal or informal. Then members set about to act in accordance with what they agreed to do. They may change their minds, fine. But they need to recognize and acknowledge that they're changing their minds.
This form of ongoing communication to reach a goal, tracking activities toward the goal and then subsequent decisions about what to do is the essence of management coordination. It needs to exist in some manner -- formal or informal.
The following are rather typical methods of coordination in organizations. They are used as means to communicate direction and guide behaviors in that direction. The function of the following methods is not to "control", but rather to guide. If, from ongoing communications among management and employees, the direction changes, then fine. The following methods are changed accordingly.
Note that many of the following methods are so common that we often don't think of them as having anything to do with coordination at all. No matter what one calls the following methods -- coordination or control -- they're important to the success of any organization.

Various Administrative ControlsOrganizations often use standardized documents to ensure complete and consistent information is gathered. Documents include titles and dates to detect different versions of the document. Computers have revolutionized administrative controls through use of integrated management information systems, project management software, human resource information systems, office automation software, etc. Organizations typically require a wide range of reports, e.g., financial reports, status reports, project reports, etc. to monitor what's being done, by when and how.

DelegationDelegation is an approach to get things done, in conjunction with other employees. Delegation is often viewed as a major means of influence and therefore is categorized as an activity in leading (rather than controlling/coordinating). Delegation generally includes assigning responsibility to an employee to complete a task, granting the employee sufficient authority to gain the resources to do the task and letting the employee decide how that task will be carried out. Typically, the person assigning the task shares accountability with the employee for ensuring the task is completed.

EvaluationsEvaluation is carefully collecting and analyzing information in order to make decisions. There are many types of evaluations in organizations, for example, evaluation of marketing efforts, evaluation of employee performance, program evaluations, etc. Evaluations can focus on many aspects of an organization and its processes, for example, its goals, processes, outcomes, etc.

Financial Statements (particularly budget management)Once the organization has establish goals and associated strategies (or ways to reach the goals), funds are set aside for the resources and labor to the accomplish goals and tasks. As the money is spent, statements are changed to reflect what was spent, how it was spent and what it obtained. Review of financial statements is one of the more common methods to monitor the progress of programs and plans. The most common financial statements include the balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement. Financial audits are regularly conducted to ensure that financial management practices follow generally accepted standards, as well.
Performance Management (particularly observation and feedback phases)Performance management focuses on the performance of the total organization, including its processes, critical subsystems (departments, programs, projects, etc.) and employees. Most of us have some basic impression of employee performance management, including the role of performance reviews. Performance reviews provide an opportunity for supervisors and their employees to regularly communicate about goals, how well those goals should be met, how well the goals are being met and what must be done to continue to meet (or change) those goals. The employee is rewarded in some form for meeting performance standards, or embarks on a development plan with the supervisor in order to improve performance.

Policies and Procedures (to guide behaviors in the workplace)Policies help ensure that behaviors in the workplace conform to federal and state laws, and also to expectations of the organization. Often, policies are applied to specified situations in the form of procedures. Personnel policies and procedures help ensure that employee laws are followed (e.g., laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, Occupational Health and Safety Act, etc.) and minimize the likelihood of costly litigation. A procedure is a step-by-step list of activities required to conduct a certain task. Procedures ensure that routine tasks are carried out in an effective and efficient fashion.

Quality Control and Operations ManagementThe concept of quality control has received a great deal of attention over the past twenty years. Many people recognize phrases such as "do it right the first time, "zero defects", "Total Quality Management", etc. Very broadly, quality includes specifying a performance standard (often by benchmarking, or comparing to a well-accepted standard), monitoring and measuring results, comparing the results to the standard and then making adjusts as necessary. Recently, the concept of quality management has expanded to include organization-wide programs, such as Total Quality Management, ISO9000, Balanced Scorecard, etc. Operations management includes the overall activities involved in developing, producing and distributing products and services.

Risk, Safety and LiabilitiesFor a variety of reasons (including the increasing number of lawsuits), organizations are focusing a great deal of attention to activities that minimize risk, avoid liabilities and ensure safety of employees. Several decades ago, it was rare to hear of an organization undertaking contingency planning, disaster recovery planning or critical incident analysis.

source: http://www.managementhelp.org/cntrllng/cntrllng.htm

Management Roles

Management Roles
The primary role of management is to make it possible for teams to work. They also provide guidance and direction to work effort.
The role of management in an organization is purely functional. It is not a role any more or less prestigious than any other role in the company. It is similar to the difference between marketing personnel and engineering personnel. The function of management is:
Set up a plan (vision) for the company, group, or team being managed.
Ensure that the management personnel can do their jobs with the up most efficiency.
Resolve any disputes that arise.
Act as an interface between employees and upper management
Track resource use and report costs to higher management.
Present new ideas for the company to upper management.
Track project progress and revise estimates or make adjustments.
Deal with problems and shield employees from them as much as possible to allow them to concentrate on their jobs.
One important difference between managers and other functional positions in the company lies in the fact that decisions made by the manager will affect more people either in a positive or negative way.
Skills Required
Communication - Learn to listen and be observant.
Experience - At least 10 years working in a field similar to those being managed. A broad background is helpful.
Leadership - Leadership is really a mix of many other skills and in many ways is intangible. A true leader, however, is willing to do any task necessary to complete the job. That means, they are willing to do the same work as other employees and get their hands dirty when required.
Delegation - Good managers must be willing to trust their staff and delegate responsibility and authority.
Organizational - Being able to organize teams, roles and projects is important. Some organizational requirements can be delegated, however. Having a messy desk does not necessarily mean a manager is unorganized.
Not all individuals have all these skills in abundance, but essential skills require communications and getting along with others.
What to do
Trust your team and expect professionalism unless proven otherwise.
Base project estimates using employee estimates times the observed load factor of the team. The load factor can be calculated when iterative development is used. It is calculated based on how long the iteration would have actually taken vs the original time estimated.
Make sure all team members are heard with regard to ideas and project input when applicable.
Make sure all confidential meetings with employees stay confidential.
What not to do
Force schedules upon employees. This is dependent on the project or problem. If there is a major problem such as a network being down it needs to be fixed as soon as possible. For these types of problems or mission critical problems, everything else is stopped until it is fixed. Therefore this is as much a setting of priority, but is normally a short term problem where overtime is justified.
Be bureaucratic with employees that show initiative.
Fail to reward desired behavior.
Fail to resolve problems when they occur.
Management Roles
Management must:
Keep focused on requirements
Shield the team from distractions
Resolve conflicts
Serious project risks that can be caused, allowed, or influenced by management are:
Excessive schedule pressure
Creeping requirements
Poor estimates
Low quality
Low productivity
Inadequate measurementSource: CTDP Management Guide
Mintzberg's 10 Managerial Roles
INTERPERSONAL
Figurehead
Performs ceremonial and symbolic duties such as greeting visitors, signing legal documents
Leader
Direct and motivate subordinates, training, counseling, and communicating with subordinates
Liaison
Maintain information links both inside and outside organization; use mail, phone calls, meetings
INFORMATIONAL
Monitor
Seek and receive information, scan periodicals and reports, maintain personal contacts
Disseminator
Forward information to other organization members; send memos and reports, make phone calls
Spokesperson
Transmit information to outsiders through speeches, reports, memos
DECISIONAL
Entrepreneur
Initiate improvement projects, identify new ideas, delegate idea responsibility to others
Disturbance Handler
Take corrective action during disputes or crises; resolve conflicts among subordinates; adapt to environmental crises
Resource Allocator
Decide who gets resources, scheduling, budgeting, setting priorities
Negotiator
Represent department during negotiation of union contracts, sales, purchases, budgets; represent departmental interests

source: http://www.metamagazine.com/management_roles.htm

SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis is a simple framework for generating strategic alternatives from a situation analysis. It is applicable to either the corporate level or the business unit level and frequently appears in marketing plans. SWOT (sometimes referred to as TOWS) stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. The SWOT framework was described in the late 1960's by Edmund P. Learned, C. Roland Christiansen, Kenneth Andrews, and William D. Guth in Business Policy, Text and Cases (Homewood, IL: Irwin, 1969). The General Electric Growth Council used this form of analysis in the 1980's. Because it concentrates on the issues that potentially have the most impact, the SWOT analysis is useful when a very limited amount of time is available to address a complex strategic situation.

The following diagram shows how a SWOT analysis fits into a strategic situation analysis.

Situation Analysis
/	\
Internal Analysis	External Analysis
/ \	/ \
Strengths Weaknesses	Opportunities Threats
SWOT Profile

The internal and external situation analysis can produce a large amount of information, much of which may not be highly relevant. The SWOT analysis can serve as an interpretative filter to reduce the information to a manageable quantity of key issues. The SWOT analysis classifies the internal aspects of the company as strengths or weaknesses and the external situational factors as opportunities or threats. Strengths can serve as a foundation for building a competitive advantage, and weaknesses may hinder it. By understanding these four aspects of its situation, a firm can better leverage its strengths, correct its weaknesses, capitalize on golden opportunities, and deter potentially devastating threats.

Internal Analysis

The internal analysis is a comprehensive evaluation of the internal environment's potential strengths and weaknesses. Factors should be evaluated across the organization in areas such as:

• Company culture


• Company image


• Organizational structure


• Key staff


• Access to natural resources


• Position on the experience curve


• Operational efficiency


• Operational capacity


• Brand awareness


• Market share


• Financial resources


• Exclusive contracts


• Patents and trade secrets

The SWOT analysis summarizes the internal factors of the firm as a list of strengths and weaknesses.

External Analysis

An opportunity is the chance to introduce a new product or service that can generate superior returns. Opportunities can arise when changes occur in the external environment. Many of these changes can be perceived as threats to the market position of existing products and may necessitate a change in product specifications or the development of new products in order for the firm to remain competitive. Changes in the external environment may be related to:

• Customers


• Competitors


• Market trends


• Suppliers


• Partners


• Social changes


• New technology


• Economic environment


• Political and regulatory environment

The last four items in the above list are macro-environmental variables, and are addressed in a PEST analysis.

The SWOT analysis summarizes the external environmental factors as a list of opportunities and threats.

SWOT Profile

When the analysis has been completed, a SWOT profile can be generated and used as the basis of goal setting, strategy formulation, and implementation. The completed SWOT profile sometimes is arranged as follows:

Strengths	Weaknesses
1. 2. 3. . . .	1. 2. 3. . . .
Opportunities	Threats
1. 2. 3. . . .	1. 2. 3. . . .

When formulating strategy, the interaction of the quadrants in the SWOT profile becomes important. For example, the strengths can be leveraged to pursue opportunities and to avoid threats, and managers can be alerted to weaknesses that might need to be overcome in order to successfully pursue opportunities.

Multiple Perspectives Needed

The method used to acquire the inputs to the SWOT matrix will affect the quality of the analysis. If the information is obtained hastily during a quick interview with the CEO, even though this one person may have a broad view of the company and industry, the information would represent a single viewpoint. The quality of the analysis will be improved greatly if interviews are held with a spectrum of stakeholders such as employees, suppliers, customers, strategic partners, etc.

SWOT Analysis Limitations

While useful for reducing a large quantity of situational factors into a more manageable profile, the SWOT framework has a tendency to oversimplify the situation by classifying the firm's environmental factors into categories in which they may not always fit. The classification of some factors as strengths or weaknesses, or as opportunities or threats is somewhat arbitrary. For example, a particular company culture can be either a strength or a weakness. A technological change can be a either a threat or an opportunity. Perhaps what is more important than the superficial classification of these factors is the firm's awareness of them and its development of a strategic plan to use them to its advantage.

source: http://www.netmba.com/strategy/swot/

Management Function of Coordinating / Controlling

Introduction: "Control" Getting a Bad Rap:

Many People Are Averse to Management "Control". New, more "organic" forms or organizations (self-organizing organizations, self-managed teams, network organizations, etc.) allow organizations to be more responsive and adaptable in today's rapidly changing world. These forms also cultivate empowerment among employees, much more than the hierarchical, rigidly structured organizations of the past.
Many people assert that as the nature of organizations has changed, so must the nature of management control. Some people go so far as to claim that management shouldn't exercise any form of control whatsoever. They claim that management should exist to support employee's efforts to be fully productive members of organizations and communities -- therefore, any form of control is completely counterproductive to management and employees.
Some people even react strongly against the phrase "management control". The word itself can have a negative connotation, e.g., it can sound dominating, coercive and heavy-handed. It seems that writers of management literature now prefer use of the term "coordinating" rather than "controlling".

Various Administrative Controls:

Organizations often use standardized documents to ensure complete and consistent information is gathered. Documents include titles and dates to detect different versions of the document. Computers have revolutionized administrative controls through use of integrated management information systems, project management software, human resource information systems, office automation software, etc. Organizations typically require a wide range of reports, e.g., financial reports, status reports, project reports, etc. to monitor what's being done, by when and how.

DelegationDelegation is an approach to get things done, in conjunction with other employees. Delegation is often viewed as a major means of influence and therefore is categorized as an activity in leading (rather than controlling/coordinating). Delegation generally includes assigning responsibility to an employee to complete a task, granting the employee sufficient authority to gain the resources to do the task and letting the employee decide how that task will be carried out. Typically, the person assigning the task shares accountability with the employee for ensuring the task is completed.

EvaluationsEvaluation is carefully collecting and analyzing information in order to make decisions. There are many types of evaluations in organizations, for example, evaluation of marketing efforts, evaluation of employee performance, program evaluations, etc. Evaluations can focus on many aspects of an organization and its processes, for example, its goals, processes, outcomes, etc

Quality Control and Operations Management:

The concept of quality control has received a great deal of attention over the past twenty years. Many people recognize phrases such as "do it right the first time, "zero defects", "Total Quality Management", etc. Very broadly, quality includes specifying a performance standard (often by benchmarking, or comparing to a well-accepted standard), monitoring and measuring results, comparing the results to the standard and then making adjusts as necessary. Recently, the concept of quality management has expanded to include organization-wide programs, such as Total Quality Management, ISO9000, Balanced Scorecard, etc. Operations management includes the overall activities involved in developing, producing and distributing products and services.

source:
http://www.managementhelp.org/cntrllng/cntrllng.htm