Course Acct & Financial Analysis

1. What do you perceive as an immediate threat (or threats) confronting modern organizations now? What about opportunities? Please support your findings using financial references (e.g., Bloomberg, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist).

While there are a number of threats in the world that can wreak havoc on a business, I believe that the greatest threat comes from the very thing that can be an organizations greatest opportunity, embracing technology. We all have heard or experienced the threat that technology brings, whether it is in the form of phishing attacks from bogus phone call or spam emails, identity theft, computer viruses, or some other form of cyber-attack. I personally have had my personal identity information stolen from attacks on various government databases. For a business the threat of technology does not come just from cyber criminals trying to hack into their databases looking for proprietary information, it comes from the not understanding or using technology to digitally transform their business. According to Dell Technologies Digital Transformation Index, up to two thirds of business worldwide may be at risk of losing significant market and value over the next three to five years as digital change accelerates. A survey conducted by Dell technologies of 4,000 business leaders showed that only 53% are embracing digital technologies to bring new product and services to their consumers and only 27% utilize basic automated decision-making technologies (Newman 2017). However, this current threat could bring significant opportunity to companies that are willing to embrace technology and beat their competitors to the punch by bringing new products and services to the consumer base quicker and more efficiently, potentially allowing them to capture a greater portion of the market share. Embracing digital tools can help organizations develop and achieve 5 characteristics: agility, adaptability, velocity, creativity, and market leadership (Newman, 2017).

2. How do you see the financial reporting requirements for companies shifting in 10 to 20 years? Are they going to become more stringent or more relaxed? Are countries across the globe going to standardize their filings into a single system?

As the world becomes a smaller place due to the adoption of technology, I believe that a universal set of rules such as International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) will become the norm. With that being said, I believe that there are more relaxed standards within IFRS that would not be acceptable under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). This is primarily do to how both systems are structured, GAAP is rule based while IFRS is a principle-based system, which could lead to different interpretations of similar transactions. Depending on the system used accompany could report profits and losses at different level. For example, Cadbury reported in 2009 that it had IFRS based profits of $690 million, however, when these same numbers were used under GAAP the profits only totaled $594 million-a 14% difference (Sherman and Young, 2016).

3. What skills and knowledge do you hope to gain in this course, and what are your career goals for this course?

I hope that by taking this class that I will have a better understanding of how to evaluate a companys financial picture by looking at their financial reports and other financial information. I am not sure what my long-term goals for after I obtain my MBA, but one of my short-term goals is to improve my current professional position and move on to becoming a Program Manager.

For chegg: In reference to the above post, find common ground and/or remark on any differences in experience, interests, and goals. Was there anything in the posts that you perhaps had not considered? Ask questions if needed