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  3. Yet with economies in free fall, managers also need up-to-date information about what is happening to their businesses, so that

Yet with economies in free fall, managers also need up-to-date information about what is happening to their businesses, so that

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问题     Yet with economies in free fall, managers also need up-to-date information about what is happening to their businesses, so that they can change course rapidly if necessary. Cisco, an American network-equipment giant, has invested over many years in the technology needed to generate such data. Frank Calderoni, the firm’s CFO, says that every day its senior executives can track exactly what orders are coming in from sales teams around the world, and identify emerging trends in each region and market segment. And at the end of each month, the firm can get reliable financial results within four hours of closing its books. Most firms have to wait days or even weeks for such certainty.
    Admittedly, Cisco’s financial results have not made happy reading recently because, in common with many other large technology companies, it has seen demand for its products decline in the downturn. In early February it announced that its fiscal second-quarter revenues of $9.1 billion were 7.5% lower than the same period in 2008 and that its profit had fallen by 27% , to $1.5 billion.
    In response to hard times, Cisco plans to cut $1 billion of costs this year by, among other things, making use of its own video-conferencing and other communications technologies to reduce the amount its executives travel. It is also using these facilities to relay information from employees on the ground to its senior managers, and to get instructions from Cisco’s leaders back out to its 67,000 staff. A rapid exchange of information and instructions is especially valuable if the company wants to alter course in stormy times.
    If everybody in a company can rapidly grasp what they have to do and how it is changing, they are more likely to get the job done. But some firms are reluctant to share their goals with the wider world. Unilever, a big Anglo-Dutch consumer-goods group, has decided against issuing a 2009 financial forecast to investors, arguing that it is difficult to predict what is going to happen, given the dangerous state of the world economy. "We’re not just going to provide numbers for the sake of it," explains James Allison, the company’s head of investor relations. Other companies that have decided not to provide annual earnings estimates for 2009 include Costco, a big American retailer, and Union Pacific, an American railway company.
    Some firms, such as Intel, seem to have chosen to take things quarter by quarter. The giant chipmaker(芯片制造商)said in January that it would not issue an official forecast for the first quarter of 2009 after its fourth-quarter 2008 profit decreased by 90% . Several retail chains have also stopped providing monthly sales estimates because they cannot see what the future holds. Retailers, chipmakers and firms in many other industries may have a long wait before the economic fog finally lifts.
What can we know about the giant chipmaker, Intel from the passage?
选项 A、It did not issue its first-quarter forecast for the great decrease in January.
B、Intel’s chain stores used to report sales estimates by year.
C、Only retailers and chipmakers are greatly influenced.
D、Intel’s profit decreased greatly in 2008’s last quarter.
答案D
解析 事实细节题。由定位句可知，根据大型芯片生产巨头英特尔一月份的声明，2008年第四季度其利润下降了90％，因此该公司不会正式发布其2009年第一季度的预算；可见，该公司2008年最后一个季度的利润大幅下降，D)符合题意。该公司没有发布2009年第一季度官方预测的原因是2008年最后一季度公司利润下降，并不是因为当月利润的减少，故排除A)；该段第三句提到Several retail chainshave also stopped providing monthly sales estimates，可见，他们原来是按月上交销售预测，并不是按年，故排除B)；最后一句指出Retailers，chipmakers and firms in many other industries may have a longwait…可见，除了零售商和芯片制造商外，其他很多行业也受到了影响，故排除C)。
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