Week 2 Case Analysis: Conference Decision Case

Date: September 2, 2005

In less than two weeks, an accounting system user’s conference is scheduled to be held in New Orleans, Louisiana on September 13–16, 2005. Unfortunately, Hurricane Katrina has struck the city leaving a wake of destruction. Based on what you see on television, the hotel and the city cannot possibly accommodate this or any conference for the foreseeable future.

Approximately 200 attendees are scheduled to attend, flying in from all over the country. All attendees pre-paid their registration fee for the conference.

With a lot of competition in the marketplace, getting the users to participate in the annual user’s conference is critical to retain current customers. During the conference, several product enhancement ideas are developed by the users, and this input is often used in future releases of the product.

Potential new customers are invited to the event and their involvement often leads to securing new contracts for the accounting system as they gain confidence in the system seeing others use it.

As head of the group that puts on the conference, you are faced with making a determination of what to do with this year’s conference. You are getting calls from the registered attendees asking what to do.

Senior management feels that the conference is critical to ensure continued customer engagement and fears that cancelling the conference altogether, the company will lose the momentum it has developed over the past few years.

Other considerations:

Keeping the original dates and moving to a different city may drastically increase costs due to the short advanced notice. Will people cancel because of the higher hotel costs? If the date is changed, will the speakers and attendees still be able to attend? Having worked with the local Convention & Visitor’s Bureau and the hotel, you worry about how their businesses will survive with all of this destruction and wonder what you can do to help. Using the same information from last week’s Case Analysis, build on the work you did last week by identifying the following.

Define the objectives for the Conference Decision Case. The objectives should be separated into fundamental and means objectives. Identify the alternatives for the case. For additional resources pertaining to this assignment, please review – an Overview of Decision Making Objectives can be found ATTACHED here. An example utilizing fundamental and means objectives can be found ATTACHED here.

Submit your definition of the problem in a MS Word document-Input your responses in the template found ATTACHED

Overview of Decision Making Objectives
How to clarify what you’re really trying to achieve with your decision
Pause and think about your objectives. What do you really want? What do you really need?
What are your hopes? Your goals? Answering these questions honestly, clearly, and fully puts you on track to making the smart choice.
Objectives form the basis for evaluating the alternatives open to you. They are your decision criteria. A full set of objectives can help you think of new and better alternatives, looking beyond the immediately apparent choices.
Let your objectives be your guide.
Sometimes, the process of thinking through and writing out your objectives can guide you straight to the smart choice. The objectives you set will help guide your entire decision-making process, from defining alternatives at the outset, to analyzing those alternatives, to justifying the choice you ultimately make.
• Objectives help you determine what information to seek.
• Objectives can help you explain your choices to others.
• Objectives determine a decision’s importance and, consequently, how much time and effort it deserves.
Watch out for these pitfalls.
Often, decision makers take too narrow a focus. First, most people spend too little time and effort on the task of specifying objectives. Second, getting it isn’t easy. While you might think you know what you want, your real desires might actually be submerged.
For important decisions, only deep soul searching will reveal what really matters to you.
The more relentlessly you probe beneath the surface of obvious objectives, the better the decisions you’ll ultimately make.
Master the art of identifying objectives.
Identifying objectives is an art, but it’s an art you can practice systematically. Follow these five steps:
Step 1: Write down all the concerns you hope to address through your decisions. Flesh out your list by trying some of these techniques:
Compose a wish list.
Think of the worst possible outcome.
Consider the decisions impact on others.
Ask people who have faced similar situations what they considered when making their decision.
Consider a great, even if unfeasible, alternative.
Consider a terrible alternative.
Think about how you would explain your decisions to someone else.
When facing a join or group decision, one involving family or colleagues, first have each person follow the above suggestions individually.
• Step 2: Convert your concerns into succinct objectives such as a short phrase consisting of a verb and an object (Minimize costs).
• Step 3: Separate ends from means to establish your fundamental objectives.
The best way to do this is to follow the advice of the common Japanese saying. You don’t really understand something until you ask five times why? Asking Why? Will lead you to what you really care about your fundamental objectives, as opposed to your means objectives. Means objectives represent way stations in the progress toward a fundamental objective, the point at which you can say .I want this for its own sake. It is a fundamental reason for my interest in this decision. Fundamental objectives constitute the broadest objectives directly influenced by your decision alternatives.
• Your fundamental objectives depend on your decision problem. A means objective in one decision problem may be a fundamental objective in another.
• Separating means and fundamental objectives is critical because both kinds of objectives play important but different roles in the decision making process.
Each means objective can serve as a stimulus for generating alternatives and can deepen your understanding of your decision problem.
Only fundamental objectives should be used to evaluate and compare alternatives.
• Step 4: Clarify what you mean by each objective.
• Clarification will lead to better understanding, which in turn will l help you state the objective more precisely and see more clearly how to reach it. In addition, when it comes time to choose, you’ll be better prepared to appraise whether or not the objective is being met. For many objectives, the bottom line will be obvious.
• Step 5: Test your objectives to see if they capture your interests.
• Use your list to evaluate several potential alternatives, asking yourself if you would be comfortable living with the resulting choices. See if your objectives would help you explain a prospective decision to someone else.

Practical advice for nailing down your objectives:
• You will more readily identify your fundamental objectives if you keep the following considerations in mind.
o Objectives are personal
o Different objectives will suit different decision problems
o Objectives should not be limited by the availability of or ease of access to them
o Unless circumstances change markedly, well thought-out fundamental objectives for similar problems should remain relatively stable over time o If a prospective decision sits uncomfortably in your mind, you may have overlooked an important objective.

MGMT530 – Conference Decision
Week 2 Case Analysis Template

1. Define the Objectives for the Conference Decision Case. Objectives should be separated into fundamental and means objectives.

2. Identify the alternatives for the case.
Fundamental Objectives (used to evaluate and compare alternatives)

Means Objectives (used to generate alternatives and deepen your understanding of the decision problem)

Alternatives

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