Loading...

Messages

Proposals

Stuck in your homework and missing deadline? Get urgent help in $10/Page with 24 hours deadline

Get Urgent Writing Help In Your Essays, Assignments, Homeworks, Dissertation, Thesis Or Coursework & Achieve A+ Grades.

Privacy Guaranteed - 100% Plagiarism Free Writing - Free Turnitin Report - Professional And Experienced Writers - 24/7 Online Support

Strategic Financial Analysis

06/08/2020 Client: lyjly0515 Deadline: 7 Days


  1. Instructions

    Read the scenario below. Then draft a 3–4 page business memorandum to Linda Hoff, Stanford's CFO. In your memo, codify your findings and interpretations from the horizontal and vertical analyses and the level of alignment between the company's fiscal management and its strategic direction. Include an Excel spreadsheet as an attachment to the memo. In this memo you will:


    1. Review the year-over-year variances contained in the audited Stanford balance sheets and income statements, which are contained within the provided Week 5 Assignment Spreadsheet [XLSX] for fiscal years 2015 through 2018. You'll be expected to pay particular attention to the negative variances (color coded in "red") that you believe to be potentially the most impactful to Stanford.

    2. Speculate as to the reasons for the negative variances.

    3. Examine the common size balance sheets and income statements looking for abnormally low or high ratios based on what you know about the line item and what you observe in the data for the other fiscal years.

    4. Look for patterns in the line items over time (2015 through 2018) and identify any unusual findings that may need to be examined further.

    5. Make a judgement regarding the alignment of the organization's fiscal management with its strategic direction of the firm. Fiscal management is based on your horizontal and vertical analyses. The strategic direction is based on the vision, mission, and strategic priorities of Stanford.

    6. Purpose

      The purpose of this assignment is to familiarize you with financial statements, the need to align the financials with the strategic direction of the firm, and the process of performing a horizontal and vertical analysis of a company's balance sheets and income statements.

      The Scenario

      You're a Healthcare Administration Fellow at the prestigious Stanford Healthcare. You have been rotating through the various departments over the past 9 months and now you have the honor of working under the mentorship of Linda Hoff, Chief Financial Officer.

      Stanford Medicine includes Stanford Healthcare, Stanford Children's Hospital, and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford. This organization uses an integrated approach to strategic planning, which incorporates jointly agreed upon strategic priorities from its various entities. It also ensures a high degree of congruency in strategic focus by each entity. Before outlining the strategic priorities for Stanford Medicine, it is important to take note that a firm's directional strategy is comprised on three separate yet interwoven components: vision, mission, and goals (or, in this case, priorities). Armed with this knowledge, you have taken the necessary step and located and familiarized yourself with the vision, mission, and priorities of Stanford Medicine. Below is what you found. When examining a company's financials, it is prudent to keep the directional strategy of the company in mind. After all, in order to advance many strategic priorities, which include fulfilling the mission and positioning the organization to achieve it vision for the future, it will require proper management of the firm's scarce resources. Failure to properly manage the financial performance of the organization can compromise the company's ability to maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

      Our Vision

      Precision Health: Predict. Prevent. Cure. Precisely.

      We will heal humanity through science and compassion by leading the biomedical revolution in Precision Health.

      Our Mission

      Improving Human Health through Discovery and Care.

      Through innovative discovery and the translation of new knowledge, Stanford Medicine improves human health locally and globally. We serve our community by providing outstanding and compassionate care. We inspire and prepare the future leaders of science and medicine.

      Strategic Priorities

      A collaborative endeavor involving the entire community, the Stanford Medicine Integrated Strategic Planning process yielded a framework that is human centered and discovery led, focused on three overarching priorities for our enterprise.

      By enhancing our strengths and achieving our goals in these priority areas, we will amplify our preeminence and remain uniquely positioned to lead the biomedical revolution in Precision Health, ensuring our continued ability to guide health care through significant global changes.

      Value Focused




    • Provide a highly personalized patient experience.

    • Ensure a seamless Stanford Medicine experience.

    • Digitally Driven


    • Amplify the impact of Stanford innovation globally.

    • Deliver human-centered, high-tech, high-touch care and revolutionize biomedical discovery.

    • Lead in population health and data science.

    • Uniquely Stanford


    • Accelerate discovery in and knowledge of human biology.

    • Discovered here, used everywhere: advance fundamental human knowledge, translational medicine, and global health.

    • Ensure preeminence across all of our mission areas.

    • Variance Analyses

      Normally, managers are expected to examine positive and negative variances, and then speculate as to possible explanations for the observed variances. Following this initial assessment, managers would be expected to dig deeper into those variances of greatest concern to the organization in order to uncover the actual causes for the variances, and then implement necessary corrective actions. Digging into all variances would be costly and, quite frankly, a misuse of one's time and energy. The CFO has asked you to conduct a variance analysis of the company's consolidated balance sheets and income statements for fiscal years 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018, which you began. You have determined the variances for each account (line item) captured in the financials. Now that this first step has been accomplished, the CFO would like for you to pay particular attention to the negative variances contained in the spreadsheet; and focus more specifically on those variances you believe to be potentially the most impactful to Stanford.

      Once you've completed your variance analysis over time, which is referred to as a horizontal analysis, you are ready to create a common size balance sheet and income statement of each of the 4 fiscal years (2015 through 2018). You prepared the common sized financials, which are captured in your spreadsheet. Now, it is time to perform a vertical and horizontal analysis of these common size financials. The common size balance sheet allows you to see each asset relative to total assets, as well as each liability and net asset (in the case of non-profit organizations) relative to total liabilities and net assets. In a common size income statement, each line item is expressed as a percentage of total revenue or sales. Common sizing balance sheets and income statements allows firms to compare against one another even though they may be of different sizes. It also allows a firm to benchmark its financial performance against comparative groups. In this case, there isn't any comparative data to benchmark against; however, you can examine the ratios in each fiscal year and look to see if anything looks abnormally low or high based on what you know about the line item and what you observe in the data for the other fiscal years (vertical analysis). You can also look for patterns in the line items over time (2015 through 2018) and point out any unusual findings that may need to be examined further (horizontal analysis). In finance, it isn't uncommon for the organization to establish interim goals and targets for certain line items in the financials. The firm can compare its actual performance against the established goals and targets.

      Financial Management and Strategic Direction

      Once you've completed your horizontal and vertical analyses of the financial statements, you should be able to get a sense of how well management has managed the financial resources of the company in support of its strategic direction. In business, the strategic direction should be evident in its vision and mission statements and strategic priorities. The strategic priorities should help support the company's mission, and the mission should help advance the firm's vision for the future. Failure to effectively manage the company's financial resources can seriously compromise the firm's ability to fulfill its mission and subsequently the vision.

      Business Memorandum to CFO

      Using the analysis that you performed on Stanford Healthcare and trends that you identified, write a business memorandum to the CFO. In your memo, codify your findings and interpretations, and make a judgment regarding the alignment of the organization's fiscal management with its strategic direction of the firm. Attach your analysis in an Excel spreadsheet as an attachment to the memo. Your analysis and trends identified should take into account any feedback that you received from your professor and/or peers.

      Helpful hints: Negative variance is not always a bad thing. For example, you might see a slight increase in the operating costs; however, if you achieved a positive variance in the total operating revenue that outpaced the increase in operating costs, then that may be perceived as a positive outcome. Remember, you need to spend money to make money. We just want to make certain that operating costs/expenses don't outpace the growth in operating revenues. Also keep in mind that some variances are useful in explaining other variances even if these variances are associated with different financial statements. For example, you may see an increase in operating costs, which is a negative variance, but an increase in current assets, which is a positive variance. Furthermore, you should look for patterns over time. This can reveal both positive and negative trends that may provide insight into the variances you discovered. For example, you may have noticed that a certain expense has continued growth over the past 3 years (negative variance); however, the rate of growth year-over-year has been declining. It could be that Stanford has implemented some cost cutting measures that are showing signs of working.

      The specific learning outcome associated with this assignment is:


    • Audit financial statements and expenditures for alignment with organizational strategic priorities.





Homework is Completed By:

Writer Writer Name Amount Client Comments & Rating
Instant Homework Helper

ONLINE

Instant Homework Helper

$36

She helped me in last minute in a very reasonable price. She is a lifesaver, I got A+ grade in my homework, I will surely hire her again for my next assignments, Thumbs Up!

Order & Get This Solution Within 3 Hours in $25/Page

Custom Original Solution And Get A+ Grades

  • 100% Plagiarism Free
  • Proper APA/MLA/Harvard Referencing
  • Delivery in 3 Hours After Placing Order
  • Free Turnitin Report
  • Unlimited Revisions
  • Privacy Guaranteed

Order & Get This Solution Within 6 Hours in $20/Page

Custom Original Solution And Get A+ Grades

  • 100% Plagiarism Free
  • Proper APA/MLA/Harvard Referencing
  • Delivery in 6 Hours After Placing Order
  • Free Turnitin Report
  • Unlimited Revisions
  • Privacy Guaranteed

Order & Get This Solution Within 12 Hours in $15/Page

Custom Original Solution And Get A+ Grades

  • 100% Plagiarism Free
  • Proper APA/MLA/Harvard Referencing
  • Delivery in 12 Hours After Placing Order
  • Free Turnitin Report
  • Unlimited Revisions
  • Privacy Guaranteed

6 writers have sent their proposals to do this homework:

Writer Writer Name Offer Chat

Writers are writing their proposals. Just wait here to get the offers for your project...

Let our expert academic writers to help you in achieving a+ grades in your homework, assignment, quiz or exam.

Similar Homework Questions

Chartered accountants full membership - Information Systems and Effective Strategy Executionv - Margin call fire sale scene - Ohs risk management procedure - Sodium carbonate mixed with hydrochloric acid - The okay sign is an example of a nonverbal illustrator - Square root of 2 root 3 - Green machine 414rs manual - Ionic equation for cocl2 na2co3 - In the dying of anything brian patten - Mary kay sales tax - X7 arbroath to dundee - Mayton wood recycling centre - Brother printer unable to print 4f - The use of prenumbered checks is an example of - Create a virtual museum exhibit - Prolog tutorial for artificial intelligence - Physical assessment write up nursing - Chapter 5 dosage forms and routes of administration workbook answers - Toms shoes a dedication to social responsibility case study - Evidence based practice - Psychological testing principles applications and issues - 2015 maths advanced hsc - Mt waverley north primary school - Transient response of rc circuit - Nursing assignment - Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue - Two student responses please label each student response - Why did morrie become a teacher - Activity based costing - I need 1200 words total (3 pages 1.5 spacing) on BASED UPON THE PAPERS AND LECTURES, PLEASE COMPARE BRIEFLY SOCIAL MARKET - Southern bank and trust in clarkesville ga - Conflict resolution in nursing practice - General computer controls checklist - Parent News Article - Primary productivity lab answers - Part 61 manual of standards - Stakeholder theory of corporate governance ppt - Importance of marketing channels pdf - Http www strategicbusinessinsights com vals surveynew shtml - Australian paint approval scheme - Apply the fill - teal, accent 4, soft bevel text effect - EU Current Event * 300 words - Daphnia heart rate lab answers - Organizational behavior case study with solution pdf - Continuous training examples running - Robin williams core american values - Angelo kinicki management 9th edition mcgraw hill - Advertising expense debit or credit - East bankstown soccer club - Please consider the Leonardt Essay and at least one of the relevant "Is College Worth It" - Cantilever beam with udl - Reflection paper - 1/15 vernon street nundah - Science and Censorship - Chem 101 core concepts in chemistry textbook - Erm adoption and implementation in the higher education environment - 316-a5 - Economics - Global leadership the next generation marshall goldsmith - The wife's lament original text - Baldwin corp ended the year carrying - Nucleophilic substitution reactions lab report - What is the slope of 3 2 - Greg stone les miserables - Best hostels in warsaw - Sui sin far mrs spring fragrance analysis - Nursing care plan for impaired gas exchange in newborn - The adjustment of ________ is the rationing mechanism in market economies. - Introduction to criminal justice 9th edition bohm pdf - Week 7 activity - Author's purpose pie activity - Healthcare program policy evaluation - Engineering and design process worksheet - Op amp esd protection - Kinematic viscosity reynolds number - I need 1000 words to identify a natural capital sustainability problem - Who wants to be a millionaire question template - Skin sensitivity lab toothpicks answers - Bmach on my statement - Director of whale rider - Which actress majored in english literature at stanford university - Malcolm in the middle season 1 episode 1 - Where did agriculture originate - Research Outline - Recommendation report sample in technical writing - Nanda nursing diagnosis for endometrial cancer - Ccna 200-301 exam questions pdf - Cpa score release countdown 2018 - How is vitamin d linked to natural selection - Shl on demand candidates practice tests - Should cellphone be allowed in school essay - Accounting Assignment Help - Phonological representation of a word - Market orientation advantages and disadvantages - C++ car class with constructors and accessors - Driving lessons leek staffordshire - Clinical reasoning cycle collect cues - 4 beacons moreton bay - The Importance Of Human Resources Management To The Health Care System/ MHC6306