Ashby Associates is an architectural firm located in Barbados that has been in practice only a few years. The market for architectural services is very competitive. To compete successfully, Ashby must deliver quality services at a low cost. Ashby presents the following data for 2018 and 2019.

	2018	2019
1. Number of jobs billed	40	50
2. Selling price per job	$32,000	$30,000
3. Architect labour hours	24,000	27,000
4. Cost per architect labour hour	$35	$36
5. Architect/software support capacity (number of jobs the firm can do)	60	60
6. Total cost of software-implementation support	$168,000	$180,000
7. Software-implementation support-capacity cost per job (row 6/row 5)	$2,800	$3,000

Architect labor-hour costs are variable costs. Architect (software) support costs for each year depend on the Architect support capacity that Ashby chooses to maintain each year (that is, the number of jobs it can do each year). Architect support costs do not vary with the actual number of jobs done that year.

Required:

i. Is Ashby Associates strategy for 2019 one of product differentiation or cost leadership? Explain. (2 marks) Please type your response in order for me to copy and paste and you will surely get a thumbs up.

ii. For each of the four perspectives (Financial, Customer, Internal Business Process, Learning and Growth) identify and describe two (2) key measures that you would include in Ashbys 2019 balanced scorecard and your reasons for doing so. (12 marks) Please type your response in order for me to copy and paste and you will surely get a thumbs up.

The following tabular format is recommended:

PERSPECTIVES	MEASURES	REASONS

iii. How might a consideration of social and environmental issues present an opportunity for Ashy Associates to pursue a product differentiation strategy? (6 marks)

Please type your response in order for me to copy and paste and you will surely get a thumbs up.