In the first story, the main fault for the poor performance is places into operations. Forecasted variable operating costs were much lower than the actual costs. This fact resulted into higher cost of production and thus higher consumer price. As we can see, a lot of loss came from the manufacturing side: milk, sugar and carton variances were unfavorable from both price and quantity prospective. For this reason, realistic standard prices are the key. Boston Creamery is a big company which can easily find suppliers with favorable prices. Besides, average and lowest market prices for milk and sugar should be monitored and taken into consideration. For example, if the increase in sugar prices is predicted, company can negotiate lower prices when buying bigger volumes. Fixed costs can be examined by estimating needed amount of workers as well as evaluation of the production methods and technologies. Different possibilities for cutting both variable and fixed costs should be explored and implemented.
Second story presents the values in a way that marketing performance is illustrated as poor. Actually, the problems with the new budget started at the stage of its development, when Mr. Peterson simply took the previous year’s estimated volume as a figure for the new budget. As it says in the case “he felt that there was plenty of time in later years to refine the system …” However, the correct estimations are the essential part for development of the accurate budget. No goals or objectives were set for the upcoming year, no performance measures were set. As we know, the goals should be a little bit more challenging, so that workers have a better motivation. In this case, management was “playing safe” when using last year’s performance figures. Obviously, the size of the t ...