The process of deciding which long - term investments a firm should make is known as; capital structure investment procurement capital budgeting opportunity evaluation 2. Firms must allocate scarce resources in a manner that; increases shareholder wealth maximizes societal benefit maximizes management's income decreases taxes he first step in the capital budgeting process is; Evaluate the opportunities Select the best projects Identify possible projects Implement the project The practice of evaluating a project's results and comparing those with the initial projections is known as a(n); Post audit Implementation Comparison Forecasting The capital budgeting technique that is the easiest to compute but theoretically deficient is; Net present value Internal rate of return Payback period Profitability Index