XVII. Read and translate Dialogues 1 - 2. Act them out

Dialogue 1. Financial Control

- There’s no doubt we’ve got to tighten up on financial control. Peter, you are in charge of credit control. What do you suggest?

- Well, I’ve been looking at our payment terms – in other words how long we have to wait for payment – we must reduce the average delay in pay­ment. It’s nearly 45 days now from the date we send out the invoice. We’ve got to get it down to near 30 days. It’s not easy. The sales people always argue it is better to wait for payment rather than lose a customer, but I think we can tighten up on reminders, statement and so on.

- What about our payments to suppliers?

- Well, that’s more difficult. We are a small firm dealing with big suppli­ers. They don’t have to help us. Still, maybe one or two of our older suppli­ers could give us better payment terms.

- Right. Let’s look at some more general cost-cutting measures we can take. I’m interested in support services training and personnel development

- Look. I think we simply mustn’t cut these services. They are our long­-term investment in people.

- Maybe, but we’ve got to reduce costs somehow. We can’t cut in the production area.

- But our training budget is already very limited. Most of the training programmes are long-term.

- I’m not saying we have to stop any existing programmes but perhaps we should look carefully at future training courses.

- Well, I can let you have details of what we plan. I think you’ll see that: they are all worthwhile investments.

- I’m sure. Anyway, let me have the programme and we’ll discuss it later. We’ll have to stop now. I’ve got another meeting.

- I must be off too. Good-bye.

Dialogue 2. The Budget Meeting

- Let’s get started. Now, you’ve seen the budget proposals for next year. Have you got anything to say?

- I think the research figure is too low. We should increase it by at least 5%.

- Well, we could do that, but it means less money for the other depart­ments. I think it should stay the same.

- I agree. We can reduce the figure for marketing that would allow us to increase the budget for research.

- I felt marketing needed a good figure this year. They’ve got a big launch mid-year. I think they couldn’t manage with less.

- I’m sure they could and...

- Just a moment. Let’s look at the other two department budgets. That’s production and sales.

- Well, we can’t cut the production budget, that’s for sure. I don’t know about sales.

- Why do you say we can’t cut the production budget? They had a big investment last year. I’m absolutely certain, they could manage on less this year.

- Maybe you are right. Production ought to manage with less money this year, having spent so much last year.

- I’ll tell you what: a small cut in the production budget might mean we could increase the research figure.

- Right you are. I’ll put that to the Production Manager. Finally, what about sales?

- I think it’s a bit high. They might save a bit by spending less on the after-sales side.

- If you ask me, my answer will be: we should spend more on sales.

- That’s out of the question. The figure shouldn’t be changed.

LET’S STUDY

E-banking services

Thanks to multiplicity of channels, banks use multichanneled strategy which offers many distributive channels to clients along with financial service which seems to be attractive. The level of complicated service changed from simple marketing service into complicated interactive service thanks to new information technologies and information techniques. It also influenced bank functioning from interactive into proactive, supporting the client (the concept of partnership e-banking). The changes of e-banking led to creation of new e-services dependent on used accessible channel such as:

− Bills payments,

− Funds transfer among accounts ,

− Orders instructions,

− stocks and shares trade,

− credits acceptance,

− accepting credit cards applications,

− reviewing the calendar of dates and deadlines,

− reviewing the history of carried out operations,

− tax accounts,

− sending orders and messages by means of text message system,

− aggregation of financial services

as well as associated financial services i.e. insurance, leasing, investment or retirement services.

LET’S THINK AND RENDER