ZIFFPAGE TITLEBaseline Goals
By Mel Duvall | Posted 2005-01-13

Technology and business executives who fail to manage the psychology of their projects do so at their own peril. Elisabeth Nash knew she'd have to coax good people onto a project to overhaul the processes and systems at the mortuary giant. Yet, they might

Baseline Goals:
- Increase sales of packaged funerals from 14% of Service Corp.'s North American transactions in 2002, to more than 16% in 2004.
- Increase gross margin on funeral transactions to more than 20% in 2004, up from 18.9% in 2003.
- Increase gross margin on cemetery business to as much as 17% in 2004, compared to 13.5% in 2003.
- Decrease the ratio of net debt to cash from 6 to 1 in 2003, to as low as 5 to 1 in 2004.