Introduction
The European Athletics championship is one of the Europe’s most prestigious athletics event and it has a rich history of bring together some of the best athletics of Europe and numerous series of records that have been set by the athletics. The idea of holding the event was devised in 1933, with the Hungarian Official Szilard Stankovits as the major mover of the event to take place. The first event took place in Torino, Italy in the year 1934.
The 2013 Athletics European Team Championship planning and delivery will bring with it numerous business opportunities. For instance, the event that was held in Helsinki 2012 recorded an 80 percent of the sponsorship revenue one year before the event was held. This is expected to reciprocate in Gateshead European Athletic Championship events of 2013.
The event had promised to bring business opportunities and this was evident from the interest that had been displayed by the enthusiasm shown by the business community. The event will require a sport clothing brand that will be worn by the athletes and another for the fans in attendance. This will prove a very profitable business opportunity for any company that is involved in making sportswear.
The event will also require rigorous media coverage and this proves to be a business opportunity for the companies in this industry. The organizing committee will be required to contract media houses. For instance, the Helsinki event saw the organizing committee contracting the Clear Channel and the CBS media as its partners.
The planning process needs to look at all the logistics necessary so as to ensure that the championship will be a success and also for it to surpass the already set standards by previous hosts. This cannot be possible without the organizing committee creating business opportunities for the residents and other international stakeholders who will be participating in the competition and would be willing to risk investing. The delivery process of the athletic competition will also provide the business community with business opportunities.
The planning process has to take into consideration a number of logistics in the transportation of guests who will be attending the event their luggage. This means that a good transport network will have to be put in place in order to ensure the efficient transportation of the guests from their areas of residence to the areas where the actual competition will be taking place in the stadium.
The transportation should be done in such a careful way that it will have to ensure the movement of the goods and the people will is timely and does not affect any of the activities schedule in the athletics championship. Bearing in mind that the competition attracts many VIPs, there should be specialized transportation system that takes care of the security of these people as the population density during the competition may pose a danger to the security operatives of the host city.
Apart from the identified transportation opportunity, the opportunities presented by the championship are numerous. There will be a business opportunity for the language translators. The athletic championship attracts persons from different nations and they cannot speak English for instance those from Germany.
This means that persons in England who know the different languages of the participants can play the role of acting as translators. These translators will ensure that the visitors will not have problems in misunderstanding some of the things in England for instance signs at the railway stations, bus stations and their areas of residence. They will have an easy stay in England during the competition.
The athletics and all the guests attending the championship will be having hotels and guest houses to stay in. This translates into business opportunities in the accommodation industry. The hotel owners will benefit from this opportunity. The hospitality industry also will have the opportunity to sell various foods as the population during the championships will remain high. The players in this industry must be prepared to serve various delicacies to cater for all of the people in attendance.
Another business opportunity that shall be brought about by the athletics championship is that of security. The security level in the country needs to be beefed up to ensure the safety of the visiting teams and all the guests is highly upheld. The security will have to be increased at the airports, the railway stations, the bus stations, in the hotels and the guest houses where these visitors will be staying.
In order for the government of England to remain vigilant in ensuring that this athletics event happens without the safety of the visitors being jeopardized it will have to ask freelancing security firms to offer some security such as VIP escort services. This means that a business opportunity has arisen for these firms and thus they should come up with all the logistics that will ensure that they will be able to provide the security to the required standards.
The event also brings fans of different characters thus posing a further security threat due to possibilities of acts of hooliganism. This will offer a business opportunity in the insurance industry by offering insurance cover against the shortcoming that comes with hooliganism.
Other insurance covers that can be offered by an insurance company include: cover on motor vehicle on the buses that will be carrying the athletics and the guests, travel insurance covers, personal and pubic liability insurance covers and the cover on the stadium hosting the event.
The championship needs a lot of publicity. This can only be achieved through rigorous advertising. This opens business opportunities for the media industry in the television and the newspapers. There are also opportunities on the constant updates of the events and events that are also open to the media fraternity.
The media also can utilize the entertainment opportunities that will be presented by the event. The guests who will be attending the event need to be entertained and this is a business opportunity for all those who are in the entertainment industry and they stand to reap a lot of benefit from this athletic championship event. This include the dancing, the music among others.
The event also has an official mascot used to represent the whole event. It also has official colors that are used to represent the whole event which provides an opportunity for the people in the textile industry. They can seize this opportunity to make a lot of money by making clothing items like scarves, t-shirts and caps that have the official colors of the event. This is a business opportunity that promises to thrive because as these products must be in high demand and therefore their supply should be necessitated.
All the above are a few of all the business opportunities that will come with the European Athletics Championships. A question then arises on which opportunity should the organization take advantage of and profit itself. This means that the management should come up with a decision on what opportunity to utilize.
An effective decision making process have a myriad of advantages to the business. First, according to Haines, (2008), an effective decision increases the profitability of the organization. Therefore, the management should ensure that they have a decision that will fully benefit the organization as a whole from the opportunities that are being presented by the European Athletics Championship.
Secondly, as noted by March, (2008), an effective decision making process reduces the uncertainties that come with the opportunities that are presented by European Athletic Championship. This is because with all the information required in coming up with the alternatives that best suits the organization reduces the risk that the organization is likely to run to and this is reduced by the effective fact finding steps in the decision making process.
Thirdly, an effective decision making process ensures that the alternative that is chosen by the management best fits the goals, desires and values of the organization and therefore ascertaining that the reasons for the organization are being served even in the decision making process.
An effective decision making process always ensures that the competency of the management is proven and it instills more confidence on the part of the relevant stakeholders in the organization and they can easily aid in raising of more capital or any other resource that the organization requires for it to take advantage of the business opportunity presented by the European Athletic Championship.
An effective decision making process ensures optimum use of resources in the organization and reduce the cost while taking advantage of the business opportunities brought by the athletics championship. Resources are always scarce and therefore, proper usage should be advocated for by the management in their decision making process and at the same attain the profitability objective.
Good allocation of resources always ensure that the organization will always have resources in the future from which they will take advantage of opportunities that are presented promise to be profitable. This means that a decision has to be made.
Decision making implies that the organization has to come up with a number of business opportunities viable to their organization that has been presented by the athletic championship from which they are to choose from. The identification of the alternatives is crucial, but the decision has to be made on the alternative that has the highest probability of maximum benefit to the organization as well as for a decision that has the best preferences to the organization management.
In order for the management to come up with the best decision it will follow this decision making process. The first step in the decision making process is to identify the first decision that is to be made together with the goals that the organization wants to achieve.
In this step the organization should identify the scope and limitations of the decision that they want to make on the basis of the effect of the decision on the organization on the time effect, that is, is the decision going to have a long run time effect on the organization or short run effect (Byrnes, 2002).
The management must clarify this and then decide whether to invest in that business opportunity or not. The next step in this decision making process is to get all the facts on the business opportunity that the organization want to invest in. The organization’s management should find as much information on the decision as possible and then evaluate the facts that they find on the decision.
The next step after the identification of the facts on the business opportunity is to develop and evaluate the alternatives available for the organization management on the business opportunities that are coming with the hosting of the European athletics championship in England (Byrnes, 2002). The management should make the list of the possible choices and then go to the next step, which is rating each of the alternatives.
This step involves the evaluation of the value that each of the business opportunity brings to the organization. They should look at the cost and the return on each of the alternative. After the evaluation of the alternatives, the next step is choosing of the best alternative. In this case, the management decides on what alternative to invest in with the anticipation of the highest gain possible from the chosen alternative (Kansal, 2006).
There are various techniques that are applied by the organizations in making decisions. It is worth noting that the organizations must have the proper channels that are utilized by the employees in giving ideas that are in turn processed to give meaningful information that is used by the management of the organization in making decisions. The data as provided by the employees of the organization should be timely and relevant to what the organization intends to do.
As far as opportunities are concerned, one of the opportunities that would be realized as a result of the 2013 Athletics European Team Championship is the increased foot traffic in the hotels. It is expected that a lot of people would travel from different places in world to come and participate in the 2013 Athletics European Team Championship.
This would create a lot of business for organizations in both hotel and transport industries. It is predicted that hotels will be fully booked by both the participants and the spectators. The full capacity that would be realized in the hotels would definitely increase the revenue collected by the stakeholders in these industries.
Another industry that would benefit from the 2013 Athletics European Team Championship is the transport industry. Both the participants and the spectators are expected to be moved from their hotels to the various venues that would hosts different sporting activities. The visitors who would have come to participate in the various games are expected to tour different places in the country.
The managements of various cities in the country are expected to provide security round the clock. Therefore, the tourism industry is another beneficiary of 2013 Athletics European Team Championship. People would not only tour the city of Gateshead where the championships would be held, but also other cities in the United Kingdom.
Thus business opportunities that are created as a result of 2013 Athletics European Team Championship need to be planned and thus accrue maximum benefits associated with such sporting activities in the city. The players in hotel, transport and tourism industries should roll their heads to ensure that not only the 2013 Athletics European Team Championship has become a success, but also the revenue in the aforementioned industries has increased drastically. The decision making revolves around the theory of rationality (Vance, 2006).
It is assumed that the decision maker is a rational person and thus he makes a rational decision. For decisions to be made there must be more than one course of action that is conflicting with the other options. The theory of rationality demands that a person makes decision that would accrue the maximum benefits as compared to the alternative course of action.
There are various techniques that have been developed scientifically to measure the benefits that are accrued when different courses of actions are undertaken. These decision making techniques include forecasting, decision-making-tree and the linear programming (Termini, 2009).
Forecasting
For any business organization that wants to be relevant in the market, it should apply forecasting techniques while making decisions. The forecasting technique ensures that the present data in the organizations is used to determine what the organization want achieved in the future.
The present state of affairs in the organization helps the management and other stakeholders in the organization to plan for the future. There are two methods of forecasting; the subjective or judgmental forecasting methods and the quantitative or the mathematical forecasting method. In the planning for the 2013 Athletics European Team Championship, businesses should apply the forecasting method in making decisions.
In judgmental forecasting the decision makers use judgment in decision and therefore no scientific method is applied in making the decisions. The management in hotels can use their judgment to know that the occupancy rate would increase during this time when the 2013 Athletics European Team Championship would start in the city. They would expect that the number of visitors in the city would increase due to the people coming to participate in the championship.
According to Streifer and Goens, 2004, the quantitative or the mathematical forecasting technique, the present data is used to determine the state of affairs in the organization. In quantitative forecasting scientific methods such as financial ratios and time series is applied in decision making. The current state of affairs in the organization is used to determine what the organizations want to attain in the future. The scientific methods applied in quantitative forecasting include use of scatter diagram and use of regression analysis.
The 2013 European Team Athletics Championship organizing committee can utilize the available information say from other cities that have organized a similar sporting activity to determine the number of people who would tour their city and thus help them plan adequately. The players in the tourism industry would also apply quantitative technique to know the number of people they expect to tour their town and therefore provide the necessarily resources that would be required such as transport facilities and security.
One of the main differences between the reality and the theory in forecasting is that there are other factors that may affect decision making that are not factored in the forecasting theory of decision making. These factors include the government advisories, the climate and the economic conditions at the time of decision making. In reality these factors would affect the accuracy of the forecasting as a method of decision making (Johnson, 2006).
Linear programming
Linear programming is an important tool that helps the management of the organization to make decisions especially in the events where the resources are scarce. In a nutshell, economic resources are scarce and thus it is the duty of the management to ensure that those resources are put in the activity that would bring the maximum returns to the organization.
Returns or profits in the organization are realized as a result of revenue maximization or costs minimization. Linear programming therefore is the technique that ensures that the available resources in the organizations are put in the best activity that ensures maximum profits are realized and the costs are significantly reduced.
Linear programming is an efficient and systematic procedure that helps decision makers to make quality decision in the organization. The organization’s resources include human capital, money, time, facilities and material. It is the duty of the decision makers to ensure that these resources are used optimally to ensure that highest return possible to the organization.
There are different linear programming methods that are applied by decision maker to aid them in making decisions. These methods include graphical method and simplex method. Graphical method is applied when the management wants to maximize contribution margin in the organization. It is worth noting that when that when the management maximizes the contribution margin in the organization, the profit maximization objective in the organization is realized.
To illustrate how the organization uses graphical method of linear programming in making decisions, assume that the organization produces two products; pens and pencils. Take the symbol “X” and “Y” to represent the number of pens and pencils produced by the organization respectively. The organization has two polisher and the three grinders. The organization has 120 hours and 80 hours of grinding and polishing-capacities respectively.
To produce one unit of a pen, 2 hours of grinding are needed, similarly, to produce a pencil 5 hours of grinding time is required. The week is assumed to have a maximum of 40 working hours. The profit margin of a pen is $3 and that of a pencil is $4. The equation expressing grinding time per week in hours is given as 2x + 5y ≤ 120 and the-polishing capacity in hours of the organization per week is given as
4x + 2y ≤ 80.
In summary the information illustrated above is given as;
When pens manufacturing is zero,
y ≤ 24 grinding-constraint
y ≤ 40 polishing-constraint
When the organization manufactures zero Pencils;
x ≤ 60 grinding constraint
x ≤ 20 polishing constraint
The variables are plotted on the graph paper to determine the feasible region within which the organization can produce both products and make maximum profits. A region outside the feasible region is not attainable. The advantage of graphical method is that is easy to interpret once the graph is draw. It is disadvantageous since it is technical to draw.
Decision tree
Decision tree is another technique that is applied by decision makers in making decisions. Decision tree is an illustration that shows different courses of action that can be taken in a sequence and the outcome and the consequence of each of the decision made. The outcomes of decision tree include the costs and benefits of the choices made (Vance, 2006).
The difference between what is in reality and theory is that not all decisions made have more than one alternative course of actions and that it is not necessarily that a decision has to follow a predetermined sequence. One must make judgment for the decision tree as a technique of decision making to be effective.
The benefit of decision tree is that it is in diagram form and thus easy to follow and analyze unlike other decision making techniques. The decision tree helps the decision maker to make the best decision given the necessary information and judgment. Thus, the various stakeholders in 2013 Athletics European Team Championship can apply the decision tree technique to make best decisions (Johnson, 2006).
In conclusion, the decision making is an important affair in the organization. The quality of decision made affect the profitability and thus the general performance of the organization. Therefore, it is of essence for the decision maker to apply the best technique that would ensure that the best decisions are made and thus the success of the organization.
Reference List
Byrnes, J., P. 2002. The nature and development of decision making: a self-regulation model.New York: Routledge.
Haines, S. 2008. The product manager’s desk reference. New York: McGraw-Hill Professional.
Johnson, S., E. 2006. New challenges, new tools for defense decision-making. Sans Francisco: Rand Corporation.
Kansal, B., 2006. Preface to Management . New Delhi: Ganga Dhar Chaudhary.
March,.J.,G .2008. A primer on decision making: how decisions happen. New York: McGraw-Hill Professional.
Streifer, P. & Goens, G. A. 2004. Tools and techniques for effective data-driven decision making. London: R&L Education.
Termini, M., J. 2009, Strategic project management: tools and techniques for planning, decision making, and implementation. Upper Saddle River: Cengage.
Vance, D., E. 2006. Financial analysis and decision making: tools and techniques to solve financial problems and make effective business decisions. Ney York NY: McGraw-Hill Professional.s