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Take a look at the world today and ask yourself, what do you see? In one simple word, business. Business is everywhere, and
everyone deals with it on a day to day basis. Most people don’t know what goes into a successful business, that there
is different teams that are crucial to the success or failure. You have to view any business as a big circle, if one part
falls out of line, then the business could sink. When they work together however, wonderful things can happen. What you
get down to is this, the one defining question. What makes a business either small or large, succeed or fail? What are the
key teams in an organization that makes it happen? In order to understand those questions, you have to look into both small
and large businesses and see what makes them tick. Look at the history of business and how it has evolved; look at technology
and other advancements. Then finally, you will be able to see the answer!
Business is comprised of many different levels. You have the lower levels which tend to be the workers, the core of the
organization. Without them you have nothing! Taking a step up you have your middle management, which are supervisors and
department mangers. Of course, their title describes exactly what they do, oversee the ground level employees and make sure
things are getting done. They are there to keep order, raise moral, and make it a better more productive department. Then
you have the highest level, which is executive level management. There you have your CEO, CFO and COO, all charged with the
responsibility of overseeing operations for the entire company as whole as they move towards their goal. The bottom level
reports to the 2nd level, 2nd level reports to the executive level, and business is good. That’s a general look at
what business is made up, both big and small all have levels. Each is charged with making decisions and trying to move forward.
Within an organization you have several different teams. You have your project managers, your financial managers under direction
of the CFO, also a Human Resource department tasked with helping employees and hiring new. Each company is split into parts
and given their responsibilities, without them business would be chaos.
First up we will take a look at what project management really is. It’s defined as “the discipline of defining
and achieving targets while optimizing the use of resources (time, money, people, space, materials, etc) over the course of
a project”. Wikipedia: Project Management, www.wikipedia.com. Basically, it means efficient management over a group
of people working on a project. The team is headed by the leader called the Project Manager, who oversees everyone. He makes
sure schedules line up correctly, that people have the things they need, and that things are done on time and correct. It’s
a very difficult task, especially in companies with limited resources. Every business needs to have things done, and done
correctly, which is why project management is becoming a vital part to the success of companies. However those companies
today do not take advantage of the potential of having a project management team come in and complete projects. Most businesses
today rely too heavily on in house techniques and people skills to complete things, often times having resources be wasted.
Peoples time, company space, and not to mention money are being thrown away because they didn’t take the time to hire
a manager to get the project done. A professor of project management once told me, “companies can do one of two things,
spend $70,000 on a good project manager and save hundreds of thousands, or they can spend nothing and waste millions”.
Today’s companies are beginning to understand the need for managers, and are hiring outside consultant companies to
come in and work for brief or long-term periods.
After project management you have the financial management teams. Perhaps the most crucial part of business, they are in
charge of the flow of money. Obviously you need to know how much your business has, and then budget it, so you don’t
over spend! They are tasked with the tedious job of tracking expenditures, watching money come in, and seeing where it goes.
This part of the company is run by an executive level manager known as the CFO (Chief Financial Officer). Over the last few
years, financial accounting has become a huge deal to all companies. Some world wide companies have been under lots of trouble
for scandals and embezzling money. Accurate financial accounting can be very beneficial to not only your business, but to
keep everyone out of trouble. You have companies like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and others who had executive level management
sent to prison for false financial accounting. Enron, for instance, lied about its financial statements saying that the business
was doing well. The CEO and CFO came out and said business was running well and nothing to worry about, when it turned out
they were losing millions. Back on point for a moment, it’s crucial that companies know exactly what they have. They
need to closely monitor what money is coming in, where it’s being spent, and what is being saved. Not only will it
help the company, but investors like to see accurate and truthful statements. Investors today play a huge role in company’s
success. If a company has lied about past financial activity, do you think people would want to give them more money to use?
Your answer, probably not!
Adding on to the scandals that have plagued the business world lately, we will look at the Enron case a little more. The
trial that has gone on for years has charged the CEO and CFO with over 30 charges of fraud, insider trading, lying to auditors,
and conspiracy. They are blamed for hiding millions of dollars in company debt, which was finally revealed after a quarterly
report in 2001. In the end, the company leaves behind over 31 billion in debt, share price of 0 and 21,000 people out of
the job. All because they lied about financial recordings. Instead of showing the debt, the created fake “partnerships”
to cover it. Next you have the story of a company name Tyco, the major diverse company around the world. Their former CEO
Dennis Kozlowski has been charged with stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the company which he spent on houses
and gifts to his friends. Amazingly enough, he was hailed as “one of the best managers in the country”. Cheating
Culture, http://www.cheatingculture.com/tyco.htm. Finally we come to MCI WorldCom, and their accounting scandal. The CFO
and other high ranking people were charged with falsifying the company financial reports to make it appear a lot stronger
then what it really was. It then in turn boosted the company stock which they sold quickly and made a fortune off of. During
an investigation, it was caught with 3.8 billion in fraud money lost, and they inflated the company’s worth by 11 billion.
As you can see, accounting scandals have run rampant as of late with many large billion dollar companies. They have all
been charged with falsifying their financial records to boost stock prices which in turn they sold off. You can see now,
that financial accounting “errors” can cost companies billions of dollars.
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