题目内容
Section B – TWO questions ONLY to be attempted
Ambion is the third largest industrial country in the world. It is densely populated with a high standard of living. Joe Swift Transport (known as Swift) is the largest logistics company in Ambion, owning 1500 trucks. It is a private limited company with all shares held by the Swift family. It has signifi cant haulage and storage contracts with retail and supermarket chains in Ambion. The logistics market-place is mature and extremely competitive and Swift has become market leader through a combination of economies of scale, cost effi ciencies, innovative IT solutions and clever branding. However, the profi tability of the sector is under increased pressure from a recently elected government that is committed to heavily taxing fuel and reducing expenditure on roads in favour of alternative forms of transport. It has also announced a number of taxes on vehicles which have high carbon emission levels as well as reducing the maximum working hours and increasing the national minimum wage for employees. The company is perceived as a good performer in its sector. The 2009 fi nancial results reported a Return on Capital Employed of 18%, a gross profi t margin of 17% and a net profi t margin of 9？15%. The accounts also showed a current liquidity ratio of 1？55 and an acid test ratio of 1？15. The gearing ratio is currently 60% with an interest cover ratio of 8.
10 years ago the northern political bloc split up and nine new independent states were formed. One of these states was Ecuria. The people of Ecuria (known as Ecurians) traditionally have a strong work ethic and a passion for precision and promptness. Since the formation of the state, their hard work has been rewarded by strong economic growth, a higher standard of living and an increased demand for goods which were once perceived as unobtainable luxuries. Since the formation of the state, the government of Ecuria has pursued a policy of privatisation. It has also invested heavily in infrastructure, particularly the road transport system, required to support the increased economic activity in the country.
The state haulage operator (EVM) was sold off to two Ecurian investors who raised the fi nance to buy it from a foreign bank. The capital markets in Ecuria are still immature and the government has not wished to interfere with or bolster them. EVM now has 700 modern trucks and holds all the major logistics contracts in the country. It is praised for its prompt delivery of goods. Problems in raising fi nance have made it diffi cult for signifi cant competitors to emerge. Most are family fi rms, each of which operates about 20 trucks making local deliveries within one of Ecuria’s 20 regions.
These two investors now wish to realise their investment in EVM and have announced that it is for sale. In principle, Swift are keen to buy the company and are currently evaluating its possible acquisition. Swift’s management perceive that their capabilities in logistics will greatly enhance the profi tability of EVM. The fi nancial results for EVM are shown in Figure 1. Swift has acquired a number of smaller Ambion companies in the last decade, but has no experience of acquiring foreign companies, or indeed, working in Ecuria.
Joe Swift is also contemplating a more radical change. He is becoming progressively disillusioned with Ambion. In a recent interview he said that ‘trading here is becoming impossible. The government is more interested in over regulating enterprise than stimulating growth’. He is considering moving large parts of his logistics operation to another country and Ecuria is one of the possibilities he is considering.
Required:
(a) Assess, using both fi nancial and non-fi nancial measures, the attractiveness, from Swift’s perspective, of EVM as an acquisition target. (15 marks)
(b) Porter’s Diamond can be used to explore the competitive advantage of nations and could be a useful model for Joe Swift to use in his analysis of countries that he might move his company to.
Examine using Porter’s Diamond (or an appropriate alternative model/framework) the factors which could infl uence Swift’s decision to move a large part of its logistics business to Ecuria. (10 marks)
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Since 1970 the authority has had its own internal Information Technology (IT) department. However, there has been increasing criticism of the cost and performance of this department. The CEO has commented that ‘we seem to expand the department to cope with special demands (such as the millennium bug) but the department never seems to shrink back to its original size when the need has passed’. Some employees are lost through natural wastage, but there have never been any redundancies in IT and the labour laws of the nation, and strong trade unions within the authority, make it diffi cult to make staff redundant.
In the last few years there has been an on-going dispute between managers in the IT department and managers in the fi nance function. The dispute started due to claims about the falsifi cation of expenses but has since escalated into a personal battle between the director of IT and the fi nance director. The CEO has had to intervene personally in this dispute and has spent many hours trying to reconcile the two sides. However, issues still remain and there is still tension between the managers of the two departments.
A recent internal human resources (HR) survey of the IT department found that, despite acknowledging that they received above average pay, employees were not very satisfi ed. The main complaints were about poor management, the ingratitude of user departments, (‘we are always being told that we are overheads, and are not core to the business of the authority’) and the absence of promotion opportunities within the department. The ingratitude of users is despite the IT department running a relatively fl exible approach to fulfi lling users’ needs. There is no cross-charging for IT services provided and changes to user requirements are accommodated right up to the release of the software. The director of IT is also critical of the staffi ng constraints imposed on him. He has recently tried to recruit specialists in web services and ‘cloud computing’ without any success. He also says that ‘there are probably other technologies that I have not even heard of that we should be exploring and exploiting’.
The CEO has been approached by a large established IT service company, ProTech, to form. a new company ProTech-Public that combines the public sector IT expertise of the authority with the commercial and IT knowledge of ProTech. The joint company will be a private limited company, owned 51% by ProTech and 49% by the city authority. All existing employees in the IT department and the IT technology of the city authority will be transferred to ProTech who will then enter into a 10 year outsourcing arrangement with the city authority. The CEO is very keen on the idea and he sees many other authorities following this route.
The only exception to this transfer of resources concerns the business analysts who are currently in the IT department. They will be retained by the authority and located in a new business analysis department reporting directly to the CEO.
The CEO has suggested that the business analysts have the brief to ‘deliver solutions that demonstrably offer benefi ts to the authority and to the people of the city, using information technology where appropriate’. They need to be ‘outward looking and not constrained by current processes and technology’. They will also be responsible for liaising between users and the newly outsourced IT company and, for the fi rst time, defi ning business cases with users.
In principle, the creation of the new company and the outsourcing deal has been agreed. One of the conditions of the contract, inserted by the fi nance director, is that the new company achieves CMMI level 5 within three years. The current IT department has been recently assessed as CMMI level 2. ProTech has recently been assessed at CMMI level 3.
Required:
(a) Evaluate the potential benefi ts to the city authority and its IT employees, of outsourcing IT to ProTech-Public. (12 marks)
(b) The role of the business analyst is currently being re-designed.
Analyse what new or enhanced competencies the business analysts will require to undertake their proposed new role in the city authority. (7 marks)
(c) Explain the principles of CMMI and the advantages to ProTech-Public of achieving CMMI level 5. (6 marks)
以下行为正确的是()。
短期和临时通行证有效期满，申办单位应及时回收，统一保存，保存期满()后方可销毁。
门禁的开通由门禁系统管理部门根据通行证的()授予使用权限。
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