Keywords

• Ansoff's Matrix - shows the strategies that a firm can use to expand, according to how risky they are.
• Asset - anything that a business owns.
• Balance sheet - a snapshot of a firms finances at a particular time.
• Barrier to entry - an obstacle that makes it harder for companies to enter the market.
• Benchmarking - identifying how to improve your business by comparing it's performance, products and processes against those of another firm.
• Big data - a term used to describe the vast quantities of data that can be collected from various sources.
• Blake Mouton Grid - a grid used to define managers according to how much they care about employees compared to production.
• Boston Matrix - a matrix that compares a firms products based on their market growth and share.
• Bowmans strategic clock - shows the positioning strategies based on different combinations of price and perceived added value/ benefits.
• Breakeven analysis - identifies the point where a companies total revenue equals to their total costs.
• Budget - forecasts future earning and future spending.
• Capacity utilisation - how much of it's maximum capacity a business is using.
• Capital - a companies wealth in the form of money or other assets.
• Capital expenditure - money used to buy fixed assets.
• Carrols pyramid of CSR - a diagram showing four elements of CSR layers in a pyramid.
• Cash flow - money that moves in and out of the business over a set period of time.
• Centralisation - a way to structure a business where all decisions come from a few key people.
• Channel of distribution - the route a product takes from the producer to the consumer.
• Competitive advantage - the way that a company offers customers better value products/ services than a competitor does. This can be through a lower price or product features.
• Confidence interval - a range in which you can say, with certain level of confidence that a value lies.
• Confidence level - a percentage showing how confident you are that a value falls within a confidence interval.
• Consumer price index - this measures changes in prices of a sample if consumer goods and services. It measures inflation.
• Contingency plan - a plan preparing for an event that is unlikely to happen, just in case it does.
• Contribution - the difference between the selling price and the variable costs of a product.
• Core competence - a unique feature of a business that gives them a competitive advantage.
• Corporate objective - a goal of the business as a whole.
• Corporate social responsibility - a companies contribution to society.
• Correlation - the relationship between two variables.
• Cost push inflation - when rising costs push up prices.
• Creditor - someone who owes the business money.
• Critical path - in network analysis, the series of activities that is critical in the timing of the overall project.
• Current ratio - a liquidity ratio that compars he current assets to the current liabilities.
• Debt capital - the capital raised by borrowing.
• Debtor - someone who owes the business money.
• Decentralisation - a way to structure the business where decisions are shared across the company.
• Decision tree - a method of analysing the expected pay offs of different business decisions.
• Delayering - reducing the number of levels of hierarchy in the organisation.
• Demand pull inflation - when a rise in disposable income means there is too much demand for too few goods, leading to the business increasing prices.
• Demographic change - a change in the structure of a population.
• Depreciation - loss of value over time, often occurring in fixed assets.