SWOT and Strategy

EXPRESS_17600 | Introduction_Video

Welcome. My name is Stan Sloane, Chairman of the Hisco Corporation. We're delighted you took the opportunity

to join our team. I can promise you a lot of hard work will be necessary to turn this business into a profitable

business and position ourself for the long term.

I have long believed that one of the best ways to learn is to get experience on the job and was told by HR that you

were completely up to the challenge. You will make mistakes in the short term. That will become key learnings that

will benefit all of us in the long term. I expect you will look very carefully at our educational objectives in the

simulation introduction file.

Our product is a medical reader that was designed to improve data management for the hospital market. The end

user is typically a nurse or a physician's assistant. Our initial market analysis, that was verified by external

consultants, revealed that approximately 40% of a nurse's time was consumed in non-patient activities. It was this

analysis that led to the development of the reader.

There are three companies in our embryonic industry-- our business Hisco as well as Redex and Matek. Redex

and Matek have proven to be very powerful competitors that promise not to stand still.

Our product is in the infancy phase of the lifecycle. And we believe that exponential growth is possible. We need to

compete with a quality product at an attractive price. And we need to let people know how good we are. We must

invest in our future now and continuously. Mr. Fix-it, our R&D manager, has ensured me we have a variety of

investments we can take advantage of in the pipeline.

Appropriate pricing will be critical for our success. We cannot afford to sacrifice earnings for market share. I will be

watching product margins closely and expect to see significant improvement by the end of the year. Profitable

growth and cash flow generation in the long term is essential to our survival.

And regarding cash flow, we have set up a line of credit to help support your investments. Naturally, exceeding the

line will have negative consequence. I can promise you you will learn a lot about accounting variance analysis or

how well you do relative to a prior time period or a plan. Variance analysis is critical to understanding the drivers of

a business and being able to course correct if necessary.

You can catch up on the history of Hisco in the preliminary reading material. Another aspect of background

reading that has helped me is the TRI Corporation equation series for business leaders. I hope you take the time

to peruse this series.

While you will only be running the business for the next year, you will constantly need to balance the decisions

While you will only be running the business for the next year, you will constantly need to balance the decisions

made in the short term with creating economic value in the long term. We'll be asking you how you are leaving the

business as a going concern and why a potential investor would want to participate in our future.

The board and I wish you well. Thanks for joining our team. And to a very long term relationship.