Up and Coming
I am busy at the moment preparing a book of case studies: with 100 brand new case studies. 50 of the cases are aimed at AS level and the other 50 aimed at A2 level.
The cases are being specially prepared for this book: they have appeared nowhere else. Many of them are based on up to the minute news stories so that users will still be able to relate to them and find up to date references in the newspapers and on the web. Some of them, especially the accounting and arithmetical ones, are again specially designed but come from my own fertile imagination and experience.
Every page is self contained on one page of A4 and is full formatted ready to print out or copy. I am aiming at covering as wide a range of topics as possible to comply with all A Level Business Studies Specifications. Of course, the cases could be used for GCSE level in many cases as well as for the International Baccalaureat and even first year introductory undergraduate.
There will be samples on the web site before too long and in addition to the cases there will be
Top tips for sitting a case study exam
Top tips for Revision
Weighting of the questions (how many marks = how long to spend on a question)
Each question identified by level (AS or A2) with all topics and sub topics listed
For subscribers there will be an interactive web page where all the levels and topics will be selectable via a database so that subscribers can enter the topic and level and find out which cases cover them
And more
Write to me now at info@oxbow.org.uk to register your interest and I will send you a reminder when the book is ready ... around the end of next week.
Duncan Williamson
Labels: Case Study Book Almost Ready
It pays to listen
This is a joint blog post as I am posting it simultaneously to my own blog and to the OxBowBusiness blog.
There are times when it pays to listen to advice. I was brought up in the
West Riding of Yorkshire whose motto was audi consilium: I listen to good advice.
A web site that many readers of this site will know and use offers a lot of good services and products: both free and for payment. What they do not do well is control or assure their quality. Several of the things they publish are wrong. Of course, we all make mistakes but how we deal with being told about mistakes says a lot about us: how we use our emotional intelligence.
Whenever I find mistakes in my own and others' work I like to help by sorting out the problem. Tell me I've made a mistake and I'll check it and correct it if appropriate. Don't we all do this when we want to be helpful?
In an education discussion forum, at the Times Educational Supplement site (www.tes.co.uk), you can see that someone (Honest John) wrote to the web master of the other site and s/he received abuse in return. John pointed out that in one quiz of just ten questions, at least seven of the answers given were either wrong or that the question was ambiguous. John was told that they probably lacked knowledge and experience so the web master would post some links to some of their other resources that would help them. John gave a specific example of where they used the word forecast throughout the quiz when they really meant budget. Clearly the person making the comment understood the problem, was able to deal with it but know that an uncertain or weak student would worry. A budget is a financial or quantitative plan for the future. A forecast is a prediction based on fact or fancy. A forecast may become a budget. A budget is not necessarily a forecast. And so on.
My view is that any decent management accounting teacher will make the distinction between a forecast and a budget because examiners ask questions about the differences and because there are differences.
Anyway, at OxBowBusiness we pride ourselves both on the quality of our work and on our ability to cope in an intelligent way when someone points out a mistake we might have made.
As a matter of interest, having followed this story I went to the other site and looked at the quizzes that were being discussed. I can't say that I found all of the errors that Honest John was claiming but I did find a significant number and have prepared a quiz with the right answers AND the reasoning behind my answers for anyone who has a problem with them. Go to the OxBowBusiness web site, click on the quiz menu item and find your way to accounting and then management accounting. Go to http://www.oxbow.org.uk/php/index.php
DW
Whole Foods
I know that this Blog is probably not being read by anyone in the USA and
not being read by anyone who uses the Whole Foods chain of shops in the USA (me neither!) and their products but I thought you would be interested in
the information anyway.
Interestingly for a company such as this, I was attracted to the statement
on the cover of their 2005 annual report:
Profits are a result of doing a lot of things right
At times I lead seminars that include discussions of Mission Statements. I
like really naff mission statements meaningless; written in the terms of a
modern poem; and absolutely vacuous. I like simple ones and this is where
Whole Foods comes in: their mission statement is
Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet
I got that from http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/company/declaration.html
Whole Foods says, "Our motto ... emphasizes that our vision reaches far
beyond just being a food retailer. Our success in fulfilling our vision is
measured by customer satisfaction, Team Member excellence and happiness,
return on capital investment, improvement in the state of the environment,
and local and larger community support"
Is this what the mission statement says to you?
They go on to make these headline statements on their statement:
We Sell the Highest Quality Natural and Organic Products Available
We Satisfy and Delight Our Customers
We Support Team Member Excellence and Happiness
We Create Wealth Through Profits and Growth
We Support Our Communities and Encourage Local Involvement
We Promote Environmental Stewardship
Balance and Integration
Go to their page (as above) and see the details of all of these headlines.
Now let me tell you that Whole Foods had sales of US$5.6 billion in the
financial year 2006 and you can download their last five years' results:
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com//investor/fiveyeardata.pdf. Whole Foods'
operating profit margin was 5.68% for 2006 and its net profit margin is
3.63%. Whole Foods' EPS was US$2.10 for 2005 and US$1.46 for 2006 and its
DPS for the same period was US$1.98 for 2005 and US$1.41 and for 2005 its
return on shareholders' funds was 9.98%
I also like the look of their latest annual report and accounts (2005), at
http://www.shareholder.com/visitors/dynamicdoc/document.cfm?CompanyID=WFMI&d
ocumentID=1246&PIN=&resizeThree=no&Scale=100&Keyword=type%20keyword%20here&P
age=2 For anyone from the UK please bear in mind that this is US based
report and US financial reporting standards are radically different from UK
and International standards.
There you are, take a look at the stuff and see what you think about the
business.
There is a more complete version with graphics of my thoughts on this in a PDF file, click here to open or download.
Duncan Williamson
13th January 2007
Petrol things
Here are two surprising things about petrol stations that you might find
useful one day.
Surprising Thing One
Under the Petrol Vapour Recovery stage II controls (PVRII), every petrol
station selling over 3.5 million litres of petrol a year has until January
1, 2010 to fit equipment to capture the fumes. This threshold has been set
high enough to ensure that smaller service stations, particularly those in
rural areas, will not face disproportionate costs that could affect their
viability, the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
claims.
Here comes a really surprising statistic ... the technology will recover
around 85% of the petrol fumes that would otherwise escape into the
atmosphere: around 16,000 tonnes per year in total.
Surprising Thing Two
In 2005, across the nine European markets assessed (Belgium, Czech Republic,
France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, the UK)
44.9% of transactions at forecourts were card-based
cash payments accounted for around 42%
there is great variation between the different European countries. For
example, cards accounted for 61.2% of forecourt transactions in Belgium, but
just 18.4% in Poland.
Thought you'd like to know.
Duncan Williamson
We urge our pupils to be efficient!
By chance it happens that I have a new pupil this week-end - someone sitting Edexcel Business Studies Units 3 & 4.
I have not taught Edexcel for some time so I needed to look at the syllabus. I went to the Edexcel site: www.edexcel.org.uk and the ONLY syllabus NOT there was the one for Business Studies.
I telephoned Edexcel and was asked my centre number...
Edexcel: What is your centre number?
Me: I am not a centre. Please may I have the syllabus for Business Studies?
Edexcel: Are you an Examiner?
Me: No. Please may I have the syllabus for Business Studies - the link does not work.
Edexcel: Are you a private tutor?
Me: Yes. look, I have been to your website and I just need to know the syllabus please?
Edexcel: The syllabus has to be bought. There are no syllabuses available online - that's why I wanted the Centre Number. If you're not a centre then you have to buy the syllabus.
Me: There are syllabuses online for everything except Business Studies.
Edexcel: No, you have to buy the syllabus.
Me: I have just said that the syllabuses are online except for Business Studies.
Edexcel: That's why - as you are not a centre you have to buy it.
Me: So why just Business Studies then - why not for the rest of the syllabuses?
Edexcel: The other syllabuses have to be bought too
Me: But they are online!
Edexcel: Are they? I will go and have a look
Me: Look, please may I have the syllabus for Business Studies?
The guy then gave me the code and I downloaded the syllabus.
(The link has now been mended, BTW)
I saw in the syllabus that Unit 3 is to be examined by a pre-released Case Study.
I went back to the Edexcel site and...no pre-released case study there except for Unit 1.
The syllabus says it is the same case study for Units 1, 2 and 3
So I went back to the case study and...it says it is available for Unit 1 only. But the syllabus says:
"Students will use a pre-seen case study, common to Units 1, 2 and 3, to answer 2 structured questions. All questions are compulsory."
Yep - up to date - May/June 2005.
Why do we even bother to tell our pupils to be efficient?
Chris Sivewright
AS now over
So, with Kiki out of the way some pupils may be concentrating on Unit 4. As a teacher, perhaps time to reflect ...
I have met some pupils who, at school, ONLY entered for Unit 2 (People and Operations) and not Unit 3.
The reason?
Unit 3 had alraedy been passed at a high grade.
Therefore even though they had to read and reread Kiki they deliberately ignored anything to do with the external environment.
I bet that will help them for their A2 syllabus!
Very short-sighted....
This is a test
The AQA Kiki Case Study Exam took place today and OxBow recieved some good feedback by phone and by email.
Duncan Williamson
Literal or Lateral?
Want to test your lateral thinking abilities? Try the following six questions then:
1 Cut a 100 metre length of rope into 2 metre lengths. How many cuts do you make?
2 A 10 metre rope ladder hangs over the side of a boat with the bottom rung on the surface of the water. The rungs are one metre apart and the tide goes up 10 centimetres per hour. How long will it be until 3 rungs are covered?
3 Three switches outside a windowless room are connected to three light bulbs inside the room. How can you determine which switch is connected to which bulb if you may enter the room only once?
4 Take two apples from five apples and what have you got?
5 The day before yesterday Jenny was 17 years old. Next year she will be 20 years old. How is that possible?
6 You are all alone in a deserted house at night and you've got only one match, a lamp, a fire and a candle. What do you light first?
Take a look through our newly revamped web site starting here
www.oxbow.org.uk/php/index.php to find the answers ... they are all together on one page, not spread over the whole site.
Duncan Williamson
Working in the city
Want a job in a bank or finance house and wondering which University might be helpful? Look no further. I have trawled the Careers in Financial Markets guide from www.efinancialcareers.com and this is what I can exclusively reveal.
The guide includes profiles of and interviews with people who have followed a graduate/management programme in the various banks and finance houses. Here are the universities they graduated from: each University mentioned is mentioned at least once but where the University is mentioned more than once, the number following the University indicates the total number of times it was mentioned.
City
York
Nottingham
King's College London
Oxford 2
Brunel
Liverpool 2
European Business School London
LSE
Leicester
EM Lyon France
Bath 2
Exeter
Cambridge 6
Edinburgh
Warwick
Imperial College London
Durham
Unknown
Top of the pile is clearly Cambridge ... coincidence or THE place to be? The good news is that there really is a good spread of Universities represented despite the heavy score achieved by Cambridge graduates.
Another free service from OxBowBusiness.
By the way, have you seen our newly revamped web site?
www.oxbow.org.uk/php/index.phpDuncan Williamson
Standard Costing Variances
Frankie from Canada asked me to have a crack at writing a page about standard costing sales variances so I did. Not the stuff you read in modern books but good old fashioned stuff on how it really works. I used a book from 1966 to help me!
It comes as a pdf file in the form of a presentation.
My PDFs page is where you need to go to start with. Then look under the cost and management section of the menu.
Marvellous
Duncan Williamson
