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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

admin2014-08-28  90
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.
The reason Unilever plans not to issue its financial forecast in 2009 lies in________.
选项 A、its willingness to share its goal with others
B、its rapid grasp of changes in the markets
C、the unstable economic situation
D、its reduction in the cost of prediction
答案C
解析 事实细节题。由定位句可知，联合利华不计划发布其2009年的财务预算的原因是：面临世界经济动荡不安的局势，一切事情都很难预测。可见，他们不发布财务预算就是因为世界经济不稳定(unstable economic situation)，C)符合题意。第四段第二句提到But some firms are reluctant to sharetheir goals with the wider world，然后举出了联合利华的例子，可见，后者是前者的补充说明，而A)与此处文意相反，故排除；由定位句可知，目前很难预测将要发生的事情，因此该公司不能很快掌握市场的变化形势，故排除B)；D)在文中未提及，故排除。
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