Current Intangible Business Costs

[WLOs: 1, 2] [CLO: 4]

Prior to beginning work on this assignment,

• Review the weekly lecture.
• Review the DargeanGrix Business Scenario document.
• Review the articles or webpages: Intangible Assets: They’re Not What You Think They Are (Links to an external site.), Intangible Values: The Building Blocks of Purpose (Links to an external site.), 28 Examples of Intangible Things (Links to an external site.), and Selling Intangibles: How to Sell What the Customer Can’t See. (Links to an external site.)
• Review the Intangible Benefits (Links to an external site.) entry.

Using the DargeanGrix Business Scenario document, evaluate the current costs of the situation to the organization. Provide a breakdown of the costs and the risks to the organization in the situation. Remember that costs are not only hard costs or dollar related; consider the intangible costs of reputation, perception, and lost productivity due to inefficiency, frustration, stress, mental health, workarounds, and any other kind of intangible cost. Remember that these intangible costs may not be readily quantifiable. However, you can include a narrative with examples that support these aspects. Your goal is to develop the ability to think beyond return on investment (ROI) and traditional costs as justifiers for new ideas.

In your paper,

• Analyze at least three intangible costs associated with the DargeanGrix Business Scenario.
• Explain the aspects that comprise the intangible elements.
• Evaluate the impact of each of the intangibles to DargeanGrix and to DargeanGrix’s business processes and assign a cost to each.
  • The cost may be a monetary one or it may be another form of valuation.
• Justify each of the assigned costs with a narrative explaining your rationale for each element.
  • Although not required, a table may be useful for visualizing the aspects.

The Current Intangible Business Costs paper

• Must be at least five double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA Style (Links to an external site.) as outlined in the Writing Center’s APA Formatting for Microsoft Word (Links to an external site.) resource.
• Must include a separate title page with the following:
  • Title of paper
  • Student’s name
  • Course name and number
  • Instructor’s name
  • Date submitted
• Must utilize academic voice. See the Academic Voice (Links to an external site.) resource for additional guidance.
• Must include an introduction and conclusion paragraph. Your introduction paragraph needs to end with a clear thesis statement that indicates the purpose of your paper.
  • For assistance on writing Introductions & Conclusions (Links to an external site.) as well as Writing a Thesis Statement (Links to an external site.), refer to the Writing Center resources.
• Must use at least two credible sources in addition to the course text.
  • The Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
  • To assist you in completing the research required for this assignment, view this Ashford University Library Quick ‘n’ Dirty (Links to an external site.) tutorial, which introduces the Ashford University Library and the research process, and provides some library search tips.
• Must document any information used from sources in APA Style as outlined in the Writing Center’s APA: Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.) guide.
  • Direct quotes are a great way to strengthen assertions and provide support. However, be sure to avoid using excessive direct quotes in lieu of original thought. Direct quotes will not meet the requirement for analysis, application, and critical thinking. Please ensure you do not overuse direct quotes so that you can avoid losing points for this.
• Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA Style as outlined in the Writing Center. See the APA: Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource in the Writing Center for specifications.