Management Planning Control Activities 13-17

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Activity 16: Practical application

1. Merits of suggested ideas

a. Within this method, the cost is reduced primarily by an automatic system, which will certainly cut down the cost by turning off lights and computers if they are not in use. This practice reduces the dependence on people’s willingness and attitude towards saving energy since not all of them care for this issue. It also provides fast reaction without incurring extra human cost to monitor and check for the usage of lights and computers regularly.

b. Using budgeting practice will bring certain effects on the level of cost since people will be more responsible if they know a set of budgeted amount has been placed. Apparently, when the decrease of cost is allocated with manager’s performance reward, it will increase their awareness and encourage them to be more responsible to reduce the level of energy. Instead staying at their offices all day, they will take more walk around the building and have instant reaction if there are lights or computers not in use. They will certainly take more actions to lower the energy costs, such as: frequently remind students and staffs to turn off equipment when they leave the room or ask for the cleaning crew to do so.

2. Recommended strategy

In terms of energy saving, UTS can launch an annual campaign with the aims at increasing awareness of students and staffs about cost reduction. Specifically, they can introduce it in the orientation week starting at the beginning of each semester, in which a brief presentation will be presented about the target level of energy cost, the vision of UTS in this problem, and its call for help from all people in the campus. Moreover, since each student and staff is given their ID number, which they use to book a room or log in the computer, UTS can base on that to measure the amount of energy each of them will save when they turn off the lights and computers before they leave the room. If they reach a certain number, they can choose one in a set of rewards ranging from a reduce in library fine, a book discount or a free meal in the university campus.

The above suggestion will assist in lowering the cost of energy incurred by leaving lights and computers unattended. By presenting the idea, it will make students know about the issue and the goal of UTS so that they will take it more seriously since they know there is a target for it, not just a normal recommendation before they leave the room. Moreover, by attaching the level of saved energy to their personal reward, it will certainly encourage them to take more actions to cut the cost so that they will get something in return. It is a win-win process, the university can lower the cost, students can get their benefits by helping UTS in completing its target energy savings.

Activity 17: Operation of responsibilities centres

1. Key activities

- Discovering new applications for existing technologies

- Developing new technological solutions

- Planning technology development

2. Key control problems

- Personnel control: There is normally shortage of human resource manager so that managers usually take charge of hiring and firing employees. They evaluate employees through interview so that this method may subject to personal bias as the criteria totally depend on managers. There is not much standard in hiring requirement which may create some fluctuation in organizational structure.

- Action control: As this is a fast-changing business, developing a set of standard and constant structure for action control may be difficult sometimes as each project has its own requirement, based on which different set of control should be implemented. The traditional control, but still useful is monitoring, which allows managers to assess employees’ abilities by watching their actions and working styles.

- Result control: It is difficult to measure non-financial information as it is costly to do so without making sure about the benefit of them to the company.

3. Key activity and responsibility centre

With the key activity of developing new technological solutions, investment centre should mainly relate to this activity. Indeed, in the process of development, company may incur an enormous amount of money to invest in facilities as well as resources to come up with new ideas or technology in this specific case. Therefore, the budget for investment should be clearly planned with specific number and scope that need to be invested on to avoid wasting valuable resource.

4. Supplement control

In terms of development process, another control that could be taken into consideration is action control in which the activities and work process of employees should be clearly controlled and monitor to ensure profitable products will be created. This type of control will help prevent undesirable actions or outcome to the company, also keeps employees on track of their work so that no resource is wasted.

Another key control is result control in which the final product will be evaluated and assessed its potential in generating profit or whether it truly reflects the beginning goals of the company or not. The combination of type of control will improve the internal control and final result of the company in developing new technologies.

5. Potential challenges

In terms of modern technology firms, they operate in a fast-pace economic environment which requires changes and innovation instantly. Therefore, applying traditional control method by assigning to responsibility centre may sometimes create obstacle in achieving company’s objectives and goals since the degree of flexibility is fairly low. For example, with a large development project, a tight budget and investment control may prevent potential ideas, which may result in incurring extra money, to be considered and developed. This situation mostly happens in start-up company as their budget is low and every dollar spent should be seriously examined.