Week 6 Assignments Assignment 6.1 Creating an Organizational Budget Presentation(Total 70pts) Part 1 (50pts) Due by Thursday (Midnight, CST) of Week 6 Part 2 (20pts)Due by Sunday (Midnight, CST) of Week 6 Part 1 (50pts) Due by Thursday (Midnight,CST) of Week 6 Prepare a short presentation that includes the following (minimum): (1)assumptions you made to arrive at your numbers, 2) justification for any major changesin expenditures – e.g., adding or deleting items, capital requests, (3) any problems orconcerns you have regarding your budget, including your reaction to budgeting usingtwo scenarios, (4) explain the changes in activities as a result of the increase or decrease in the budget. CREATING A BUDGET Your first task is to develop a budget for next year’s operation of your department. Some relevant information is provided below;also provided is a spreadsheet showing last years budget. Develop two budgets fornext year. One should be based on an optimistic scenario (companys revenues grow ator above goals); specifically, the company will grow by 15%, and you need to plan whatchanges your department will need to make to support this growth.

The second budgetshould be based on a pessimistic scenario (companys revenues below goals);specifically, company revenues will shrink by 15%, and you must plan the changes yourdepartment must make given lower revenues. Use the spreadsheets listed underBudget Exercise -Enter your budgets onto the spreadsheets; show relevant percentagechanges from last year. BACKGROUND & SCENERIO You are the manager of theManagement Consulting Department of General Interconglomerate Corporation. Thedepartments mission is to support functions throughout the corporation by providingtraining, recommendations, and advice on management issues. The departmentaccomplishes this by offering standard training courses to meet special needs ofcustomer groups and by consulting as needed on special issues. Both the trainingcourses and the consulting services are offered on-site at the corporations five offices(Seattle, Denver, Toronto, Rio de Janeiro, and Omaha). 2 Department staff includes sixconsultants, one administrative assistant, and you – the manager. In a typical month,each consultant spends about two weeks on the road, traveling to branch offices toeither consult or conduct training (split about 50% consulting – 50% training). When noton the road, consultants spend about a third of their time conducting training orconsulting at headquarters (split about 75% consulting, 25% training); about half ofhome-office time is spent writing reports to document consulting advice, and the rest ofthe time goes toward new course or consulting concepts (including research as well asdevelopment). The administrative assistant coordinates communications betweencustomers and consultants, polishing and printing reports for distribution, printingtraining materials, distributing training schedules, etc. Department offices are located incorporate headquarters in Omaha. Equipment currently used by the departmentincludes eight pcs networked with "works" type software (word processor, spreadsheet,database, group calendar, e-mail); one of the pcs (assigned to the admiinistrativeassistant) has desktop publishing capability, used to create professional-appearingworkbooks for trainees in the departments training courses. The administrativeassistant requested a $500 software upgrade for increased publishing capability. Thereis one heavy-duty photocopy machine and a fax. One of your staff members is taking abusiness class at Bellevue University; she has informed you that she worked on aproject with another student who has a notebook-type computer, and she thinks thatnotebooks could allow consultants to be more efficient on their many trips to branchoffices. Notebooks currently cost $1000 per notebook. CURRENT SITUATIONDepartment workload has been fairly constant. Lately there has been a steady demandfor the consulting and for the training classes offered by the department. Just aboutevery department in the company signed up for the five-course TQM sequence lastyear. You currently have two consultants working on development of the departmentsnew course, tentatively titled "Competitiveness for the 90s", a 3 course follow-on to thepopular TQM training; the first classes in "Competitiveness" will be ready the secondmonth of the fiscal year. Consulting demand this past year has been largely for TQMimplementation support. You expect some slacking of this as more departments get intoa "maintenance mode" on TQM; you wonder if you should initiate something to assureTQM doesnt fade away. You also wonder whether you should develop new consultingspecialties to supplement your standard repertoire: TQM, conflict management,organization structure, dealing with downsizing, and creative problem-solving. Youcurrently measure department quality by surveying (1) all company managers, (2)managers who have recently used the departments services, and (3) your consultants.Responses have averaged (on a 5-point scale) 3.8, 4.0, and 3.5 respectively. Qualitynumbers have been stable. The one area with an unfavorable trend is a recent usersassessment of departments responsiveness (timely response to service requests):Response averages were 3.9 last year, 3.7 six months ago, and 3.5 last month.GUIDELINES FROM CORPORATE The comptrollers department has provided someguidelines for all managers to use in developing next years budget. The board ofdirectors told the comptroller they want to see overall revenues increase by 10%. Someof the increased revenue would be directed toward future growth of the company, somewould be returned to stockholders, and some will be shared with employees.Specifically, profit-center departments (travel) are to plan to achieve 10% 3 revenuegrowth, or higher, while holding cost increases to 8%; cost-center departments (officesupplies) are to hold their cost increases to less than 5%. Any other capital budget(equipment) items are to be proposed separately from the operating budget. The $500software upgrades forthe administrative assistant and notebook purchase have beenapproved. In a separate instruction, the human resources department announced thatcorporate guidelines for next years salary adjustments call for a 4% cost of livingincrease on the average. However, this depends upon a revenue increase or decrease.Bonus plans havent been announced. Previous bonuses have averaged 4%. HR alsoindicates that group insurance rates will increase by 7.5%. Your assignment is to createa narrated PowerPoint Presentation. The PowerPoint narration instructions can befound in the Assignments/Week 6 tab. Your presentation should be 3–5 slides (approx.4-5 minutes in length). Ensure you have a good introduction, discussion, andconclusion. Attach your narrated PowerPoint presentation as a reply to DiscussionBoard 6.1 (max size >120mb). NOTE: You Need the Excel Spreadsheet to CompleteThis Assignment Part 2 (20pts) Due by Sunday (Midnight, CST) of Week 6 Each studentwill creatively critique/coach two presentations. Your critique/coach will have (as aminimum) five items you thought were good and five areas for improvement. Explainwhy they were good or need improvement. You will also comment on their Budget.Please select a presentation that has not been critiqued/coached.Week 6 Assignments Assignment 6.1 Creating an Organizational Budget Presentation