What is a Business. What does/should it do. How does it do it What is a Business? What does/should it do? How does it do it? What are businesses looking for in an employee? The following is a model, all models are wrong, some are useful. Institutions are dynamic Simplified

Basic Answers A business is a group of people working together with a set of processes to accomplish a specific goal in a specific and, often, dynamic market. These groups and processes are constrained and/or guided by dynamic organizational and governmental rules and structures. The end goal in business is to produce the correct product such that value to the customer of a product, as seen by the customer, is greater than the value provided by the competitions’ product, and is priced such that other stakeholders can be satisfied, including a profit sufficiently large to satisfy owners in the short and long term. Profit is obtained by producing and selling the correct product ethically and legally. What do employers want in an employee: Specific Discipline Skills, Solid Analytic and Communication Skills, Productivity, Proactive worker/learner, Teamwork, Integrity, Can do Attitude

Words Defined Process: a structured, measured set of activities designed to produce a specific output. Product: good and/or service (tangible and intangible characteristics) Correct Product: Provides more value to your targeted customer than your competition at a price that provides enough revenue to satisfy the wants and needs of the other five stakeholders. Have to be stakeholder centric to achieve this balance. Value: what a person gives up for what they receive. Time, money, effort… Six Stakeholders: Owners/stockholders, employees, suppliers, customers, community, environment. The only right holder among the stakeholders is the owner.

Porter’s Value Chain Organized How

Alternative View Information Systems High Level Management Finance Accounting HRM R&D/Engineering SCM Correct Product to Customer Operations Mgt: Production & logistics Marketing IS: what technology to have, what will fit with current what will not, how to store data, how to collect data, how to retrieve data and generate reports, how to communicate… Finance: capital budgeting (time value of money), cost of capital, mix of capital structure, risk management (hedging, capital structure, cash on hand…), terms Accounting: compliance, audit, financial reports, AP, AR, terms, costs, depreciation, payroll, inventory control HRM: hire, fire, compliance, training, counseling, scheduling people, payroll, reward structure , compensation and benefits Marketing: voice of the customer, market assessment, product management, product development and improvement, sales, promotion, pricing… Operations: production, logistics, product development, scheduling people and jobs, inventory control, SCM, process mgt, project management, … Economics: economic theory, price elasticity, Original by Tom Bundi: Tom is an U of I business alumni who started his career working for Boeing as a process manager. He took that knowledge and was buying, fixing, and then selling companies. He was very successful.

Success Rests On Having the correct adaptable Mission, Vision, and Strategy (MVS). (high level goals) Being able to operationalize MVS better than we did yesterday Basing MVS and operationalization on tools that define and ‘formas’ that mitigate risk. Risk is driven by variability, therefore theory and tools that define, leverage, or help eliminate variability Risk/variability/ambiguity increase in a firm as you get closer to product production, the customer, or the environment Formas: doing things by form Probability Statistics SPC Queuing Theory Forecasting Decision trees Data base mgt Relationship Mgt Hiring screens Training Inventory mgt (including cash) Process mgt Project mgt QFD Pro forma budget Time value of money…

Questions to Answer in order to Achieve Continuous Improvement Relative to a Goal Related to Obtaining the Correct Product Where are we? Why are we there? Where do we want/need to be? How should/do we get to where we want/need to be? Is it worth going to where we want to go?