Option 1. Taking advantage of Foreign Exchange
Many global companies hold global meetings for their executives. While working at Tetra Pak, one session I attended made it to the Guinness world of records (see here) by being the largest ice village.
Your company organizes an annual event for 100 executives. The budget is 1 million dollars for three days. This includes all traveling expenses, hotels, meals, and entertainment. It works out to $10,000 per executive.
The executives are coming from
30% North America
30% Europe & Middle East
30% Asia
10% Oceania & Pacific
Some executives mentioned that we should take advantage of the currency’s depreciation in Europe, Japan, Turkey, Argentina, and other countries and hold the meeting there instead of in New York.
Prepare a recommendation showing how we could save on the cost by hosting the convention in a location other than New York. Focus on the depreciation of other currencies compared to the dollar for the last three years.
Option 2
Explaining Sales growth
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Instructions
- Prepare a table to explain sales growth versus a prior period. You can use any period you like.
- Identify the four most relevant growth drivers for the two periods you are comparing. Use that if your company provides the impact due to volume, pricing, foreign exchange, etc. It’s the preferred option.
- If they don’t, use what they provide (don’t make up the numbers). Examples include:
Regions (e.g., China, India, Europe, or North America),
Business units (e.g., skincare, cosmetics).
Pick four drivers, not 2, 3, 6, or 7. You can then use the template provided and save a lot of time.
Tips
- Get the data the way that the company shows. If they show it by region, use regions. If they show it by categories, use categories.
- Pick a period for which more data is available (the annual report has the most data). Don’t compare periods impacted by exceptional events such as the pandemic, and skip all comparisons to 2020 (don’t compare 2020 vs. 2019, 2021 vs. 2019 is better). Don’t mix drivers: if you grab from the annual report the drivers by region, don’t mix it with drivers by product. Pick one or the other.
See a short video about this session here