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The audience is seated. The lights dim and the room quiets. All eyes are on the dais. All too often, this is what is heard to open the speech or presentation: Hi, thank you for having me. It is an honor to be here with you today. My name is ____ _______, and I am going to be speaking to you today about_______. Looking around, here is what I tend to see: 1) People reviewing a physical copy of the program, their notes, even the labeling on the sugar on the table; 2) T-U-T/T-O-T Typing under table/typing on table. The smartphones are out in force; it is not unusual to see laptops, netbooks or tablets out and being utilized as well; 3) Eyes looking up. Eyes looking down; 4) Eyes looking everywhere but at the speaker. So how do you effectively open a speech or presentation? There are a number of effective ways to open a speech or presentation. Here are four: 1) A Quote Name a topic, and more often than not there is a great quote or saying that suits your subject matter perfectly. An example - one that I often use to open a presentaiton dealing with public speaking: It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. Mark Twain 2) A What If Scenario Drawing your audience into your presentation is important and doing it immediately works wonders. Getting your audience thinking right away by painting a scenario is very effective. 3) An Imagine Scenario Same thought process. Putting your audience members directly into the presentation by allowing each member to visualize a scenario is a great tool 4) A Question Rhetorical or literal; When someone is posed with a question, whether an answer is called for or not, that person intuitively answers, even if just in his or her mind, and now that person is involved. I will be periodically adding more opening tips. Stay tuned "Good morning, my name is Charles Boyd. I'm appreciative of your attendance today. The subject I wish to talk about is very important to me, and by the end of my talk with you, I believe you'll feel the same."
CONTROL REPORTS
Control reports are informational reports that tell management about a company's activities. Control reports are only for internal use, and therefore management directs the accounting department to develop tailor-made reporting formats. Accounting provides management with a format designed to detect variations that need investigating. In addition, management also refers to conventional reports such as the income statement and balance sheet, and to external reports on the general economy and the specific industry. Control reports need to provide an adequate amount of information so that management may determine the reasons for any cost variances from the original budget. A good control report highlights significant information by focusing management's attention on those items in which actual performance significantly differs from the standard. Managers perform effectively when they attain the goals and objectives set by the budget. With respect to profits, managers succeed by the degree to which revenues continually exceed expenses. In applying the following simple formula, Net Profit = Revenue - Expenses, managers realize that they exercise more control over expenses than they do over revenues. While they cannot predict the timing and volume of actual sales, they can determine the utilization rate of most of their resources; that is, they can influence the cost side. Hence, the evaluation of management's performance and the company's operations is cost control.
STANDARDS
For cost control purposes, a budget provides standard costs. As management constructs budgets, it lays out a road map to guide its efforts. It states a number of assumptions about the relationships and interaction among the economy, market dynamics, the abilities of its sales force, and its capacity to provide the proper quantity and quality of products demanded. An examination of the details of the budget calculations and assumptions reveals that management expects operations to produce the required amount of units within a certain cost range. Management bases its expectations and projections on the best historical and current information, as well as its best business judgment. For example, when calculating budget expenses, management's review of the historic and current data may strongly suggest that the production of 1,000 units of a certain luxury item will cost $100,000, or $100 per unit. In addition, management might determine that the sales force will expend about $80,000 to sell the 1,000 units. This is a sales expenditure of $80 per unit. With total expenditures of $180, management sets the selling price of $500 for this luxury item. At the close of a month, management compares the actual results of that month to the standard costs to determine the degree and direction of any variance. The purpose for analyzing variances is to identify areas where costs need containment.
actual sales expense came in less than the projected, with a per unit cost of $70. This is a favorable variance. But production expenses registered an unfavorable variance since actual expenditures exceeded the projected. The company produced units at $120 per item, $20 more than projected. This variance of 20 percent significantly differs from the standard costs of $100 and would likely cause management to take corrective action. As part of the control function, management compares actual performance to predetermined standards and makes changes when necessary to correct variances from the standards. The preparation of budgets and control reports, and the resulting analysis of variances from performance standards, give managers an idea of where to focus their attention to achieve cost reductions.
The effective implementation of a cost control and reduction program takes planning and time. It should be seen as a continuous process and one that will need ongoing attention. Instead of blindly trying to cut costs in the face of a crisis, Mitchell recommended that managers embrace cost cutting as a strategic issue and approach the task from a marketing perspective. "If you are going to talk about waste, you need to define what value is, because the opposite of waste is value," business school professor Dan Jones told Mitchell. "And you can only define value from the end customer's perspective. If you can really do thisif you really know what it is that doesn't add value to the customerthen you can start asking 'How can we get rid of that?' Otherwise, we are just saying 'Let's cut costs."
BIBLIOGRAPHY
"Bain Study Outlines Strategic Importance of Continuous Cost-Reduction Program." The Controller's Report. February 2004. Cost Reduction and Control Best Practices: The Best Ways for a Financial Manager to Save Money. Second Edition. Institute of Management and Administration (IOMA), 2005. Covington, Donna. "Cost Reduction Essential to Competition: A Global Look at Costs Gives the Big Picture and a Big Advantage." Industry Week. 16 December 2005. Horngren, Charles T., George Foster, and Srikant M. Datar. Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis. Prentice Hall, 1999. Meigs, Robert F., and Walter B. Meigs. Accounting: The Basis for Business Decisions. Ninth Edition. McGraw-Hill, 1998. Mitchell, Alan. "Corporate Dieting Can Make Your Company Fat." Management Today. May 1998. Patterson, Perry. Cost Reduction and Control Best Practices: The Best Ways for a Financial Manager to Save Money. John Wiley & Sons, 2002.
Accountability is the key concept for cost reductions. You have to ensure that you can compare figures and that people are accountable for those figures. Therefore you have to identify cost reductions possibilities and start eliminating these costs now! Although not all cost reduction methods have the same savings potential, they can help your organization to cut costs dramatically. Below is a list of 10 ways to save costs:
5. No-show Charging
All knowledge workers need to meet occasionally to discuss about their projects, have team meetings, develop strategies, etc. Although meetings are becoming more virtual a large portion of the meetings are still physical meetings. No-show is extremely expensive and about 25% of all planned meetings are no-shows. This blocks the limited meeting room capacity for other meetings forcing to hire additional meeting capacity or even worse to convert office space to meeting space. To cut costs instantly implement a no-show charge when cancelled too late. This has both a positive impact on your space usage as well as your conference room occupancy percentage.