There are a number of ways in which managers of teams in companies like APATRAPA, that have team members spread across the world, can meet the challenges this brings.

• Use of technology to communicate and to tie the team together
  Team members spread around the world often find it difficult to visualise and identify with the wider team they are part of. APATRAPA is already utilising technology to improve communication. It could extend this to the use of shared resources held on a central server, for example an intranet.
  Communication is key to managing any team as it allows information to flow and for relationships to be built. Geographically dispersed teams are no different – it is just the type of communication which is different (being more often electronic rather than face-to-face).
  The team manager must be creative in their use of technology and willingness to use it. They should identify the types of communication which work best for their team and use them wherever possible.
• Consistent induction and training processes
  It is important that all team members work in a similar way and all have the same understanding and knowledge. This can be difficult to achieve with team members based in different locations. A single, consistent induction and training programme can help ensure a consistent levels of expectation, knowledge and performance across the whole team.
• Clear lines of authority and role responsibility
  A person’s authority and responsibility is often communicated in part by their personality and ‘in person’ interactions with others. With geographically dispersed teams, relying upon electronic communication, these clues and informal discussions to establish responsibility are often absent.
  It is essential therefore that all team members are aware of the team structure, roles and responsibilities – these must be clear and available for all to see. For example, in global organisations, it is essential people know who is responsible for a particular customer or contract that operates in different regions.
• Be aware of possible cultural differences
  Employees who live in different locations and cultures may have different personal goals. For example, some cultures are more work focused than others, with the achievement of promotion and status a key motivator. A manager of a geographically dispersed team should be aware of differences between goals of individuals within their team and to try to ensure all act in a way that helps achieve the organisation’s goals. This may require devoting more time managing and mentoring employees than if they were in one central location.
• Build team spirit

Building a sense of team spirit and cooperation can be more difficult when team members are spread around the world. Employees who only communicate by email or other electronic means do not share the spirit of collaboration to the same degree and communications become more pressured in tone and demands. For example an employee may only hear from another when their work is late or something has gone wrong.
A manager of a dispersed team should encourage collaboration between employees. This may be achieved through face-to-face team building events but could also be achieved through giving employees projects to achieve as a team.

• Introduction stage. The product or service offers something new to customers. There are unlikely to be any competing products, but heavy advertising costs may be incurred to raise customer awareness. Design changes may be required as customer needs become better understood. A business needs to establish an operational capability that allows it to be flexible and capable of adapting and changing.
• Growth stage. The volume of demand for the product increases, and there are likely to be more competitors in the market. Product features may become important between different suppliers. The main objective for the operations function could be to keep up with the growing demand. Speed of response to customer orders and reliability of supply could also be significant. Quality standards will have to be maintained or improved in response to the growing competition, and cost and price are likely to be much more significant.
• Market maturity. Demand levels off. Some early competitors are likely to have left the market, which might now be shared by a small number of organisations. Product design will be largely standardised, although organisations might try to develop new varieties of the product to extend its life cycle. Organisations in the market are likely to compete on price and/or on value for money (product differentiation). To remain competitive, it will be important to achieve low costs through productivity improvements, while still providing reliability of supply.
• Decline stage. Total demand declines and competitors will start to withdraw from the market. There will nevertheless be excess capacity in the industry, and the remaining organisations will compete on price. Cost targets will remain the key operational objective. The company may also decide to stop making and selling the product, and to focus its energies instead on another developing/growing product.

• Anti-virus software
  Anti-virus software, such as McAfee or Norton, search systems for viruses and remove them. Anti-virus programs include an auto-update feature that downloads profiles of new viruses, enabling the software to check for all known or existing viruses. Very new viruses may go undetected by anti-virus software (until the anti-virus software vendor updates their package – and the organisation installs the update).
• A firewall
  External email links can be protected by way of a firewall that may be configured to virus check all messages, and may also prevent files of a certain type being sent via email (eg .exe files, as these are the most common means of transporting a virus). Firewalls can be implemented in both hardware and software, or a combination of both. A firewall disables part of the telecoms technology to prevent unauthorised intrusions.
• Encryption
  Data that is transmitted across telecommunications links is exposed to the risk of being intercepted or read during transmission (known as ‘eavesdropping’). Encryption is used to reduce this risk and involves scrambling the data at one end of the line, transmitting the scrambled data, and unscrambling it at the receiver’s end of the line. A person intercepting the scrambled data is unable to make sense of it.
• Electronic signatures
  One way of providing electronic signatures is to make use of what is known as public key (or asymmetric) cryptography signatures. Public key cryptography uses two keys – public and private. The private key is only known to its owner and is used to scramble the data contained in a file. The received ‘scrambled’ data is checked against the original file using the public key of the person who signed it.
• Authentication
  Authentication is a technique of making sure that a message has come from an authorised sender. Authentication involves adding extra data in a form previously agreed between sender and recipient.
• Dial-back security
  Dial-back security operates by requiring the person wanting access to dial into the network and identify themselves first. The system then dials the person back on their authorised number before allowing access.

• Employees should, as human beings, be protected from needless pain and suffering.
• Employers and employees have legal obligations to take reasonable measures to promote healthy and safe working.
• Accidents, illness and other causes of absence and impaired performance cost the organisation money.
• A business’ corporate image and reputation as an employer (its employer brand) may suffer if its health and safety record is bad: this might alienate customers and potential employees.

• To provide safe systems (work practices).
• To provide a safe and healthy work environment (well-lit, warm, ventilated, hygienic and so on).
• To maintain all plant and equipment to a necessary standard of safety.
• To support safe working practices with information, instruction, training and supervision.
• To consult with safety representatives appointed by a recognised trade union.
• To appoint a safety committee to monitor safety policy, if asked to do so.
• To communicate safety policy and measures to all staff, clearly and in writing.
• To identify employees who are especially at risk (legislation often cites pregnant women, young workers, shift-workers and part-time workers).
• To provide appropriate training in safety matters.
• To provide information to employees (including temporary workers) about health and safety.
• To employ competent safety and health advisors

• Taking reasonable care of themselves and others affected by their acts or omissions at work.
• Co-operating with the employer in carrying out their duties (including enforcing safety rules).
• Not interfering intentionally or recklessly with any machinery or equipment provided in the interests of health and safety
• To inform the employer of any situation that may pose a danger to themselves or others.
• To provide information to employees (including temporary workers) about health and safety.

The IASB states that there are four principal characteristics- understandability, relevance, reliability/faithful representation and comparability.
(a) Understandability: Information provided to users must not be so complex that a user with a reasonable knowledge of business and economic activities and accounting, and a willingness to study the information with reasonable diligence, would not be able to understand it. There is a fine balancing act needed here by those preparing financial statements to ensure that all information relevant to users is given to them even though it may be complex.
(b) Relevance: To be useful, information must be relevant to the decision-making needs of users. Relevance is closely related to its predictive role- that is the extent to which the information helps users to predict the organisation’s future and so make decisions about it. For example, the attempt by a potential investor to predict future profitability and dividend levels will be at least partly based on the financial statements. A sub characteristic to relevance is materiality- information is material and therefore relevant if its omission or misstatement could influence the economic decisions of users. Materiality depends of the size of the item or error judged in the particular circumstances.
(c) Reliability/Faithful representation: Information has the quality of reliability when it is free from material error and bias and can be depended upon by users to represent faithfully that which it either purports to represent or could reasonably be expected to represent. There is quite often a conflict between relevant and reliable information. Information may be relevant, but so unreliable in nature or representation that its recognition may be potentially misleading. For example, if the validity and amount of a claim for damages under a legal action are disputed, it may be inappropriate for the business to recognise the full amount of the claim in the statement of financial position as this would provide unreliable information. However, to ensure relevance, it would be appropriate to disclose the amount and circumstances of the claim in a note to the accounts.
(d) Comparability: Users need to be able to compare financial statements of a business through time in order to identify trends in its financial position and performance. Users also need to be able to compare one business with another and, therefore, the measurement and display of the financial effect of transactions and other events must be carried out in a consistent way for different entities. Thus, we have the need for accounting standards from this characteristic.

a) Investors are those who provide risk capital i.e. mainly shareholders. They are concerned with the risk inherent in and the return provided by the business. They need information to help them determine whether they should buy, hold or sell their holdings. They also need information to assess the ability of the business to pay dividends.
b) Employees of the business and their representative groups are interested in information about the stability and profitability of their employer. They need to assess the likelihood of future employment and increase or decrease in remuneration packages. They will also be interested in retirement benefits and employment opportunities/advancement.
c) Lenders: These consist of debenture holders, banks, lessors, other financial institutions, other businesses etc. They are interested in information that enables them to determine whether their loans, and the interest attached to them, will be paid when due.
d) Suppliers and other trade payables: These are people the business owes money to. They are interested in information that enables them to determine whether amounts owing to them will be paid when due. Many suppliers will also be interested in the long term survival of the business if the business is their major customer.
e) Customers or trade receivables: Customers have an interest in information about the continuance of the business especially if they have bought goods with guarantees etc. if the business is a major supplier of goods to them they will wish to know that that supply will continue into the future.
f) Governments and their agencies: Governments are interested in the allocation of resources within a country and of course the collection of revenues such as taxes from individual businesses. They will require information on the activities of the business to regulate them, determine taxation policies and assess the basis for national income and similar statistics.
g) The general public: The most interested ‘public’ are generally those that live in close proximity to the business. They will wish to know if the business makes a contribution to the local economy and what effect it has on the local environment, for example in terms of pollution. They will wish to know the number of people the business employs from the locality, their patronage of local suppliers and the possible effect on the locality if the business ceases to operate.                                 (Any 4)

Relationship marketing

• The aim of relationship marketing is to maximise customer retention and satisfaction through two-way communication, rather than to directly increase sales through traditional promotion messages and advertising.
• Relationship marketing recognises the long-term value of building customer relationships through dialogue.

Customer care

• Customer care is concerned with winning and retaining customers and considers customers and customer satisfaction key to success, and the ultimate aim of all activities.
• Open communication with customers is considered vital. This ensures customers are kept informed and encourages customers to raise any issues they have. All involved in the organisation, including ‘back-office’ staff, work towards achieving customer satisfaction.

Customer service

• Customer service is a narrower concept than customer care. Customer service focuses on how the organisation interacts with clients. This is most apparent in sales and post-sales service.
• Customer service is an important element of an organisation’s offering for both products and services. High quality customer service before, during and following a sale helps to create customer loyalty. Therefore, customer service is part of customer care.

• Make the most out of every customer interaction.
• Ensure offers and promotions are relevant to customers.
• Value customers and treat them with respect.
• Listen to customer comments and complaints.
• Act on customer comments and complaints.
• Reward customers for loyalty

There are four types of quality cost – prevention, appraisal/inspection, internal and external failure. Prevention and appraisal costs are known as conformance costs, internal failure and external failure costs are known as non-conformance costs.

• Prevention cost –
  The cost of building quality into the product design or service design, the cost of training staff in quality improvement and error prevention and the cost of prevention devices (e.g. fail-safe features)
• Appraisal cost or inspection cost –
  The cost of inspecting finished goods or services, and other checking devices such as supplier vetting. Customer or client feedback forms (although these may be a way of keeping service staff ‘on their toes’)
• Internal failure cost –
  Cost of materials scrapped due to inefficiencies in stockholding procedures. Cost of materials and components lost during production or service delivery Cost of output rejected during the inspection process.
  Cost of re-working faulty output cost of reviewing product and service specifications after failures or customer dissatisfaction.
  Losses due to selling faulty output cheaply, and
  Not charging for a service so as to pacify dissatisfied and angry customers or clients.
• External failure cost
  Cost of product liability claims from customers or clients.
  Cost of repairing products returned by customers, including those forming part of service.
  Cost of replacing sub-standard products including those included with a service.
  Delivery costs of returned units or items.
  Cost of the customer services section and its operations.
  Loss of customer goodwill and loss of future sales.

• Team working is not suitable for all jobs – although some managers do not like to admit this.
• Teamwork should be introduced because it leads to better performance, not because people feel better or more secure.
• Team processes (especially seeking consensus) can delay decision-making. The team may also produce the compromise decision, not the right decision.
• Social relationships might be maintained at the expense of other aspects of performance.
• Group norms may restrict individual personality and flair.
• ‘Group think’ (Janis): team consensus and cohesion may prevent consideration of alternatives or constructive criticism, leading the team to make risky, ill-considered decisions.
• Personality clashes and political behaviour within a team can get in the way of effective performance.