Aldi and cost strategy

When you go shopping to Aldi you will not find too much variety, you will not find a fancy place and you will not find a relaxed atmosphere. You will find fairly good products at very good prices.

Aldi has a cost saving strategy that is reflected on aspects such as the products being displayed on the pallets (they use the floor as part of the warehousing), and the staff being cross trained in order to work on the tills, clean or bring out more pallets with products. Other interesting activities are the fact that you need a pound to use the trolley and then you get it back when you put the trolley back where you found it, the incredible speed of the tills (which means that you put all your stuff in the trolley and then pack them in a big table behind the tills) and the charge for plastic bags (even though this is a more common practice by other supermarkets as well).

I imagine Aldi is able to negotiate good prices with its suppliers by buying big volumes for all its stores in Europe. This, and the fact that the operational costs must be very low, enables Aldi to have such cheap prices.

I guess I'm happy by saving money and getting out of the place as soon as possible, but probably is not a shopping experience that will suit everyone, but is the cost saving shopping experience.

New section in the GMAT

I just read this post on Business Week about the new GMAT. This is highly relevant for all my friends that are planning to apply to an MBA in the next couple of years.The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) announced that the GMAT will have a new section to measure advanced reasoning skills.

The reason for this change is that the Business Schools want to test the applicants as if they were really in the class room, therefore some audio and chart interpretation will be added. I guess that if technology allows a better evaluation of prospects then is fine to make some changes, but it appears that the strong competition from the GRE test has something to do with this.

So guys, if you want to do the GMAT the old way you better do it before 2012.

* Image from www.mbaforbetterfuture.com

Preparing the GMAT part 1: quantitative and verbal

I will write how I prepared the GMAT just to let you know about my experience, maybe it will be helpful for you. But before I begin you must realise that the amount of preparation needed to take the GMAT depends on different variables, for example the score you are aiming at, how is your English level and if you have taken tests like the GMAT before (i.e. multiple choices and not a lot of time).