Expanding Customer Service as a Profit Center: Striving for Excellence and Competitive Advantage

Expanding Customer Service as a Profit Center: Striving for Excellence and Competitive Advantage

$21.99

Striving for excellence in customer service is critical to gain a competitive advantage. It is the keystone for business growth and prosperity as it builds repetitive sales to existing customers and referrals for new customers. If customer service is looked at as a major business component and all customers are treated with excellence prior to the sale, during the sale, and after the sale, customer service will become a profit center that builds sales dollars to the top line and real profits to the bottom line. Customer service is not as simple as offering a smiling ‘good morning’ greeting and a ‘have a nice day’ parting, but an integrated system that manifests itself in all activities of the business to wield an overall customer service organizational mentality. Every time a customer comes in ‘contact with the company there is what we call a ‘touch point’ and each touch point must be a Wow! Moment’ for the customer. It is the build-up of these wow moments that develops into a superior customer service experience. No longer does the company sell whatever the customer is willing to buy or the company wants to sell, but realigns its customer service efforts to sell those products that the customer really needs. This book is geared to those interested in delivering customer service as a profit center concept that enables the organization to grow in the desired directions–doing the right thing the right way in spite of organizational roadblocks.

Financial Reporting Standards: A Decision-Making Perspective for Non-Accountants

Financial Reporting Standards: A Decision-Making Perspective for Non-Accountants

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Accounting is the score keeping system in the ‘game’ of business – you can’t do well in any ‘game’ if you don’t understand how the score is kept. This book is intended to benefit MBA students and upper division non-accounting business majors. It should also serve as an excellent desk reference for practicing managers. The book emphasizes how management’s choice of accounting methods and their required estimates in reporting transactions and events impact financial statements, both immediately and in the future. This book takes an exclusive user’s decision making perspective by utilizing the accounting equation format to directly illustrate financial statement effects. Readers should make better decisions based upon financial statement information through an enhanced understanding of its usefulness and limitations. United States financial reporting standards are compared and contrasted with international financial reporting standards where appropriate. Most of the topics addressed in this book are typically studied by accounting majors in the two course ‘intermediate’ accounting sequence, but the text also includes discussion of consolidations – a topic generally covered in the ‘advanced’ accounting course. Unlike typical accounting books, journal entries are not used to illustrate topical coverage. By exclusively applying a user’s decision making emphasis, and limiting topical content to areas relevant to financial analysis, this book allows non-accounting majors to acquire the underlying knowledge in a concise and easy to understand text. The book assumes the reader has a basic understanding of financial statements (through previous study in accounting principles) and a familiarity with time value of money concepts.

Sustainability Delivered: Designing Socially and Environmentally Responsible Supply Chains

Sustainability Delivered: Designing Socially and Environmentally Responsible Supply Chains

$21.99

If you are a supply chain manager, entrepreneur, executive, or a stakeholder, this book will help you develop the awareness and skills needed to support sustainable supply chain management. The authors introduce the many ways that social and environmental responsibility can be integrated into supply chain management, from sustainable product and process design to programs and techniques that support product end-of-life management. The book begins with the initial stages of strategy and policy development, and continues with product design, purchasing, manufacturing, and delivery (logistics) in the supply chain. This is followed by product end-of-life programs and, finally, assessment and reporting systems. The authors include real-world examples and cases from some of the world’s leading companies in sustainable supply chain management. The examples range from small local companies to large multinational players to give a broad range of ideas to the reader. With case examples, workshops, and step-by-step instructions on how to create a sustainable supply chain, Sustainability Delivered is the most practical and usable book on the market that will help you and other business leaders to authentically pursue and deliver on sustainability ideals.

Managing for Ethical-Organizational Integrity: Principles and Processes for Promoting Good, Right, and Virtuous Conduct

Managing for Ethical-Organizational Integrity: Principles and Processes for Promoting Good, Right, and Virtuous Conduct

$21.99

For some time people thought that business and ethics constituted separate and mutually exclusive realms. Businesses that perpetuate such a belief or still hold that “business ethics” is an oxymoron are at risk. Indeed, managers are now being called on to actively promote ethical organizational integrity. This means understanding the principles that define and creating an organizational culture that measurably encourages ethical conduct. The reason for this shift in paradigm is clear.It was once believed that business and ethics constituted separate and mutually exclusive realms. Businesses that perpetuate such a belief or still hold that ‘business ethics’ is an oxymoron are at risk. If you are a manager, you may have been called on to actively promote ethical-organizational integrity. But this means understanding the defining principles of and creating an organizational culture that measurably encourages ethical conduct. This book will help provide you and other managers with much needed guidelines for ethical decision making in business that are philosophically sound and strategically advantageous. This book provides a brief introduction to and general framework for managing for ethical-organizational integrity in a way that will enable you to identify those ethical duties that must be fulfilled in order to morally justify the pursuit of profit. It will help you develop a morally imaginative and socially entrepreneurial decision making process that is driven towards generating and sustaining social value.

As I Was Saying...Observations on International Business and Trade Policy, Exports, Education, and the Future

As I Was Saying…Observations on International Business and Trade Policy, Exports, Education, and the Future

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With a Foreword by Philip Kotler, the S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and the artistic touch by David Clark—an award winning and syndicated cartoonist—this exciting new title by Michael Czinkota is the perfect read for businesspeople to better understand just what is at stake in understanding and strategizing about international issues and opportunities.Editorials by Michael Czinkota

Corporate Communication: Tactical Guidelines for Strategic Practice

Corporate Communication: Tactical Guidelines for Strategic Practice

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The chief communication officer at a Fortune 500, multi-national corporation today faces the challenges of a rapidly changing global economy, a revolution in communication channels fueled by the Internet, and a substantially transformed understanding of what a 21st century corporation stands for. This book investigates these forces and the specific communication challenges that they pose for the global corporation.The chief communication officer at a Fortune 500, multi-national corporation today faces the challenges of a rapidly changing global economy, a revolution in communication channels fueled by the Internet, and a substantially transformed understanding of what a 21st century corporation stands for. This book investigates these forces and the specific communication challenges that they pose for the global corporation. Examining these forces and how they are interrelated should offer insights and strategies for students of the corporate communication discipline and business leaders to help them deploy effective communication as a strategic business asset in the contemporary global economy. This book focuses on the process of communication in a corporate context; and explores, analyzes, integrates, and applies the theory, practice, and functions of corporate communication. The combination of a theoretical framework for understanding how these forces influence corporate communication with practical guidelines for effective communication within this framework will also be of value to practitioners as well as students of the communication discipline. Designed for the professional whose position requires the creation and management of an organization’s communications, this book applies strategic approaches to tactical written and oral communication, and includes a particular emphasis on problem solving and analytical techniques appropriate to global corporate environments. Essential to effective communication in corporate and organizational environments is the ability to understand and apply the concepts of corporate communication as strategic management functions.

Pricing Segmentation and Analytics

Pricing Segmentation and Analytics

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Pricing analytics uses historical sales data with mathematical optimization to set and update prices offered through various channels in order to maximize profit. A familiar example is the passenger airline industry, where a carrier may sell seats on the same flight at many different prices. Pricing analytics practices have transformed the transportation and hospitality industries, and are increasingly important in industries as diverse as retail, telecommunications, banking, health care and manufacturing.Pricing analytics uses historical sales data with mathematical optimization to set and update prices offered through various channels in order to maximize profit. With this outstanding contribution to this subject, you will learn just how to identify and exploit pricing opportunities in different business contexts. Each chapter looks at pricing from an economist’s viewpoint beginning with the basic concept of pricing analytics and what type of data are needed to use this powerful science; the common assumptions regarding the customer population’s willingness- to-pay are discussed along with the price-response functions that result from these assumptions; examples from several industries and organizations; dynamic pricing, with a special emphasis on the most common application–markdown pricing; the new field of customized pricing analytics, where a firm responds to a request-for-bids or request-for-proposals with a customized price response; and the relevant aspects of behavioral science to pricing. Additional examples include the asymmetry of joy/pain that customers feel in response to price decreases/increases.

Setting Performance Targets

Setting Performance Targets

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Clearly, even in archery, hitting the target is more than just will and effort but rather judgment, ability and the likelihood of hitting the target under environmental conditions. This book discusses not only the science but also the art of target setting.
Targets are an important part of our work life, whether we are setting them or meeting them. Target setting forms part of the budgeting process and the performance management of business units and individuals. Unfortunately the behavioral impacts of target setting on performance are not well understood, and this can lead to serious consequences such as game playing. Target setting is an under-researched area. This book will help you fill the gap in target setting for performance. The pivotal issue in target setting is that it is an art as well as a science. Perhaps more of an art, requiring a balance between the psychologies of the people taking initiatives, the science of estimating probabilities and aligning with strategies, coupled with the effects of incentives. Another feature of this book is how the authors drew on ideas and research across disciplines, which is rarely done in this field. Inside this book, you will be introduced to some of the important methods in target setting such as forecasting, sensitivity analysis, and probability analysis; all of which include practical examples to show how these techniques can be directly applied. In the end, you’ll learn how interrelated the various parts of organizational activities are and how they impact on each other, which is important since target setting must include an understanding of the organizational context (e.g., people, competitive environment, structure, strategy) as well as the impact of incentive compensation and information flows.

Conversations About Job Performance: A Communication Perspective on the Appraisal Process

Conversations About Job Performance: A Communication Perspective on the Appraisal Process

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Organizational appraisals systems are often ineffective and result in unnecessary spending on the part of a company and unnecessary anxiety on the part of employees. Written for practitioners and advanced students, this book presents an alternative approach to the performance appraisal process that focuses on communication rather than evaluation. In this communication-centered approach to performance, the appraisal process is designed to facilitate meaningful and open interaction between employees and their supervisors.

Working with Economic Indicators: Interpretation and Sources

Working with Economic Indicators: Interpretation and Sources

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Read the full review from Choice Magazine Editors who ‘recommend’ this book in the June issue! Executives and managers hear or read headlines about recent economic data nearly every business day. Most important economic statistics are the products of programs designed to collect and analyze data to report summary results at regular intervals. Properly interpreted, these economic indicators provide useful barometers for different aspects of the economy and identify trends that aid better planning decisions. Economic indicators are available at the national level, state level, and even the regional and municipal level. This text focuses on economic indicators for the overall U.S. economy, identifying major categories of economic indicators and describing the key indicators in each of the categories. The text will also provide guidance for interpreting indicators expressed in terms of an index (which reports values as percentage of a base period value) or in real dollar values (which remove the impact of inflation.) Most key economic indicators are reported promptly on the World Wide Web and provided as formatted time series that can be readily downloaded and analyzed. The text will include links to the sources for key economic indicators as well as websites that maintain calendars of upcoming announcements and consensus forecasts of the indicators shortly prior to a formal announcement. This book is a companion to two other Business Expert Press by the authors that address managerial economics and time series data/forecasting. Together these books will equip the manager and the student with a solid understanding of economic indicators and how to analyze them.