Omni, Inc. manages a medical-expense reimbursement program for colleges and universities throughout the United States. University employees submit claims for reimbursement of medical expenses from reimbursement accounts established each year by the employees. Omni then processes reimbursement requests, verifies the legitimacy of each request, computes the deductible and co-payment required, determines whether the employee's expense reimbursement account has adequate funds available, and, if applicable, issues a reimbursement check to the eligible employee. Omni employs three different types of clerks who manage these reimbursement accounts: supervisors, senior clerical staff, and junior clerical staff. The supervisors are each paid $50,000 per year, senior clerical staff employees are paid $40,000 per year, while junior clerical staff employees are paid $35,000 per year. Based on prior experience, for every 150,000 claims processed per year, Omni needs to budget for one supervisor's position, two senior clerical staff positions, and six junior clerical staff positions. Last year, Omni processed 2 million reimbursement claims, and employed 14 supervisors, 30 senior clerical staff employees, and 83 junior clerical staff employees.

Required: 1. Based on the data provided, calculate the cost savings or excess staffing costs for Omni during the most recent year. (Assume that the policy of the company is to hire only full-time employees.) 2. a. What managerial insights are suggested on the basis of your analysis? b. If you were attempting to judge the processing efficiency of Omni's staff, what additional information might you want to have? 3. Over the years, alternative approaches to traditional budgeting practices have been proposed to facilitate budget preparation and usefulness. Compare/contrast the following alternative budgeting approaches to a traditional budgeting process: a. Zero Base Budgeting (ZBB) b. Activity-Based Budgeting (ABB) c. Kaizen budgeting