Business Operations Metrics and Models

(BUS 199)

Do you ever wonder why companies with huge revenues lose market insight? And small companies dread the consequence of wasted marketing dollars? Why narrowing a product line might or might not reduce costs? This course will show you how to link metrics with results and how to assess the impact on profits of various management actions and even external events. We will present a framework to identify the basic building blocks — costs and revenues in a company — that combine to yield an operating profit or loss. This analysis can identify the economic impact of specific management decisions such as pricing, cost reductions, technology investments, marketing expense, and sales promotions. Students will use this systematic approach to create an operations model of their own companies, public companies, or startups of interest. Whether you are an investor or a manager, working in a small company with scarce resources, or a large company struggling to understand the impact of money spent, this approach will help in assessing past performance and identifying possible outcomes of future actions.

Sri Jagannathan, Director of Global Technology Partnerships, Intuit

Director of Global Technology Partnerships, Intuit Sri Jagannathan was Vice President of Technology for Softbank Emerging Markets, a $200M fund focused on early stage investments. Jagannathan has taught courses at Stanford, UC Berkeley, and IIT Madras. He received a PhD from UC Berkeley and a Sloan MS from the Graduate School of Business.

Avinash Agrawal, Founder, Jupiter 2x(Learning)

Avinash Agrawal is the founder of Jupiter 2x(Learning), an Internet-based educational services company. He also consults in global engineering strategy and implementation. In his twenty-five years in the industry, Agrawal has been in many different roles at both startups and large companies, including fifteen years at Sun Microsystems in engineering and general management. Agrawal received a PhD from UC Berkeley and a B.Tech. from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur.