Essay on Yes Please

Essay on Yes Please Essay on Yes Please Sony Corporation of America, located in New York, NY, is the US headquarters of Sony Corporation, based in Tokyo, Japan was founded in 1964. Sony's principal US businesses include Sony Electronics incorporated,, sony Mobile Communications USA incorporated, Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC, Sony network entertainment incorporated, Sony Pictures Entertainment incorporated, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony dash ATV music publishing LLC, and Sony Online Entertainment LLC. with some 900 millionbSony devices in hands and homes worldwide today, a vast array of Sony movies, television shows and music, and the PlayStation Network and the Sony Entertainment Network, Sony create some delivers more in 15 minutes Berrien says to people than anyone else on earth. Sony is a company that inspires and Cecil's curiosity, and who's vision is to use the unlimited passion for technology, content and services to the liver groundbreaking excitement and entertainment. With honesty and integrity Sony s trive to create things for every kind of imagination in doing so, the company will continue to expand an emerging markets, develop new businesses and a separate innovation, all to generate new value for investors and new experiences for consumers. Top three competitors for Sony Electronics, INC. are Panasonic Corporation of North America, Philips Electronics North America Corporation, and SANYO North America Corporation. The comapny that was to become Panasonic started in 1918. Panasonic Corporation of North America is based in Secaucus, NJ, is the principal North American subsidiary of Osaka, Japan-based Panasonic Corporation and the hub of its branding, marketing, sales, service, product development in the U.S. and Canada. For more than 50 years, panasonic has the delighted American consumers with innovations for home and business. Panasonic consumer electronics and technology products range from award winning VIERA High Definition Plasma and LCD TVs and LUMIX Digital Cameras. Philips Electronics North America was founded in 1981. Philips has got everything you need from an early-morning shave to a late night TV fix. The US on arm of Dutch company Royal

Meaning of Interpreted or Compiled in JavaScript

Meaning of Interpreted or Compiled in JavaScript Computers cannot actually run the code that you write in JavaScript (or any other language for that matter). Computers can only run machine code. The machine code that a particular computer can run is defined within the processor that is going to run those commands and can be different for different processors. Obviously, writing machine code was difficult for people to do (is 125 an add command or is it 126 or perhaps 27). To get around that problem what are known as assembly  languages were created. These languages used more obvious names for the commands (such as ADD for adding) and thus did away with the need to remember the exact machine codes. Assembly languages still have a one to one relationship with the particular processor and machine code that the computer converts those commands into. Assembly Languages Must Be Compiled or Interpreted Very early on it was realized that easier to write languages were needed and that the computer itself could be used to translate those into the machine code instructions that the computer can actually understand. There were two approaches that could be taken with this translation and both alternatives were chosen (either one or the other will be used depending on the language being used and where it is being run). A compiled language is one where once the program has been written you feed the code through a program called a compiler and that produces a machine code version of the program. When you want to then run the program you just call the machine code version. If you make changes to the program you need to recompile it before being able to test the changed code. An interpreted language is one where the instructions are converted from what you have written into machine code as the program is being run. An interpreted language basically gets an instruction from the program source, converts it to machine code, runs that machine code and then grabs the next instruction from the source to repeat the process. Two Variants on Compiling and Interpreting One variant uses a two-stage process. With this variant, the source of your program is compiled not directly into the machine code but instead is converted to an assembly-like language that is still independent of the particular processor. When you want to run the code it then processes that compiled code through an interpreter specific to the processor so as to get the machine code appropriate to that processor. This approach has many of the benefits of compiling while maintaining processor independence since the same compiled code can be interpreted by many different processors. Java is one language that often uses this variant. The other variant is called a Just in Time compiler (or JIT). With this approach, you dont actually run the compiler after you have written your code. Instead, that happens automatically when you run the code. Using a Just in Time compiler the code isnt interpreted statement by statement, it is compiled all in one go each time when it is called to be run and then the compiled version that it just created is what gets run. This approach makes it look a lot like the code is being interpreted except that instead of errors only being found when the statement with the error is reached, any errors detected by the compiler result in none of the code being run instead of all of the code up to that point being run. PHP is an example of a language that usually uses just in time compilation. Is JavaScript Compiled or Interpreted? So now we know what interpreted  code  and compiled code  mean, the question we next need to answer is what does all of this have to do with JavaScript? Depending on exactly where you run your JavaScript the code may be compiled or interpreted or use either of the other two variants mentioned. Most of the time you are ​running your JavaScript in a web browser and there the JavaScript is usually interpreted. Interpreted languages are usually slower than compiled languages. There are two reasons for this. Firstly the code to be interpreted actually has to be interpreted before it can be run and  secondly, that has to happen every time that the statement is to be run (not only every time you run the JavaScript but if it is in a loop then it needs to be done every time around the loop). This means that code written in JavaScript will run slower than code written in many other languages. How does knowing this help us where JavaScript is the only language available for us to run across all web browsers? The JavaScript interpreter itself that is built into the web browser is not written in JavaScript.  Instead, it is written in some other language that was then compiled. What this means is that you can make your JavaScript run faster if you can take advantage of any commands that JavaScript provides that allow you to offload the task to the JavaScript engine itself. Examples for Getting JavaScript to Run Faster An example of this is that some but not all browsers have implemented a document.getElementsByClassName() method within the JavaScript engine while others have yet to do so. When we need this particular functionality we can make out code run faster in those browsers where the JavaScript engine provides it by using feature sensing to see if the method already exists and only creating our own version of that code in JavaScript when the JavaScript engine doesnt provide it for us. Where the JavaScript engine does provide that functionality it should run faster if we use that rather than running our own version written in JavaScript. The same applies to any processing that the JavaScript engine makes available for us to call directly. There will also be instances where JavaScript provides multiple ways of making the same request. In those  instances, one of the ways of accessing the information may be more specific than the other. For example document.getElementsByTagName(table)[0].tBodies and document.getElementsByTagName(table)[0].getElementsByTagName(tbody) both retrieve the same  nodelist  of the  tbody  tags in the first table in the web page however the first of these is a specific command for retrieving the  tbody  tags where the second identifies that we are retrieving  tbody  tags in a parameter and other values can be substituted to retrieve other tags. In most  browsers, the shorter and more specific variant of the code will run faster (in some instances much faster) than the second variant and so it makes sense to use the shorter and more specific version. It also makes the code easier to read and maintain. Now in many of these  cases, the actual difference in the processing time will be very small and it will only be when you add many such code choices together that you will get any noticeable difference in the time your code takes to run. It is fairly rare though that changing your code to make it run faster is going to make the code significantly longer or harder to maintain, and often the reverse will be true.There is also the added benefit that future versions of JavaScript engines may be created that speed up the more specific variant even further so that using the specific variant may mean that your code will run faster in the future without you having to change anything.

Mrketing orienttion in reltion to sles orienttion nd production Essay

Mrketing orienttion in reltion to sles orienttion nd production orienttion - Essay Example Pillsbury on the bsis of vilbility of high-qulity whet nd proximity of wter power. Mjor concern ws with mnufcturing-not mrketing. ccording to compny executive, compny philosophy in the er of mnufcturing dominnce might be stted s follows: "We re professionl flour millers. Blessed with supply of the finest North mericn whet, plenty of wter power, nd excellent milling mchinery, we produce flour of the highest qulity. Our bsic function is to mill high-qulity flour, nd of course (nd lmost incidentlly), we must hire slesmen to sell it, just s we hire ccountnts to keep our books." The second er ws one of sles orienttion. In the 1930's, competition hd become more significnt nd the problems of reching the mrket hd grown much more complex. Compny officils becme somewht wre of consumer wnts nd needs, nd formed commercil reserch deprtment to develop fcts bout mrkets. More ttention ws given to strengthening the distributing orgniztion, consisting of wholesle nd retil grocers. Compny philosophy in this er is described s follows: "We re flour milling compny, mnufcturing number of products for the consumer mrket. We must hve first-rte sles orgniztion which cn dispose of ll the products we cn mke t fvorble price. We must bck up this sles force with consumer dvertising nd mrket intelligence. We wnt our slesmen nd our delers to hve ll the tools they need for moving the output of our plnts to the consumer."third er of mrketing orienttion did not begin until the erly 1950's. The compny hd experienced substntil post-World Wr II sles growth in new products, principlly cke mi xes. It relized tht it could produce hundreds of new products, nd fced the necessity of selecting the best ones. It ws considered essentil to build into the compny orgniztion new function which would coordinte the heretofore seprte compny responsibilities of selling, dvertising, mrketing reserch, nd product plnning, nd provide guidnce for other res. This function ws clled "mrketing," nd mrketing developed the criteri for determining which products to mrket. Emphsis shifted from mnufcturing nd mere sles considertions to determintion of which products would best fit the needs of the compny's customers. Compny policy for the 1950's ws stted s follows: "We mke nd sell products for consumers."mrketing oriented firm is now defined s n "orgniztion culture tht most effectively cretes the necessry behviors for the cretion of superior vlue for buyers nd, thus, superior performnce for the business." (Nrver nd Slter, 1990, p. 21) This definition implies tht the firm needs to understnd buyer nee ds nd competitive cpbilities nd weknesses, nd it needs to perform ctivities gered to chieving superior customer stisfction. The firm's corporte culture is systemticlly committed to creting customer vlue. The rtionle is tht the more compny understnds nd meets the rel needs of its consumers, the more likely it is to hve hppy customers who come bck for more, nd tell their friends. This process cn entil the fostering of long term

Eroding Local Control & The Influence and Climate of the Courts - 8 Essay

Eroding Local Control & The Influence and Climate of the Courts - 8 - Essay Example In a state where white flight is particularly prevalent, such as Texas, this disparity can cause massive difference in the amount of money spent, per pupil, in different educational districts, if each county is divided into many districts. Wealthier areas will thus provide more money per pupil, because the average property value per pupil will be higher, than other districts where those values are lower. This can create massive disparities in the facilities available – children of wealthy districts will get excellent gyms, music programs, laboratories and so on while children in less fortunate areas will get few if any of those things. Reducing the total number of districts in a state can correct for this problem by pooling money from wealthy and less wealthy areas together, reducing the disparity between money spent per pupil. Wealthier areas will still have advantages in terms of outside fundraising, but this can be diminished if districts are larger and more diverse. 2. The case in this Tennessee county is one of optimal size and scaling of costs. There are some costs that cost progressively more as the size of something increases (for instance, the larger the diamond the rarer it is, so a diamond that is twice the size of another one will often cost four times as much), while other costs go down (for instance buying products in bulk can reduce prices). As payroll is one of the most strenuous costs of school districts (Brimley et. al., 2008), the situation described here has some financial pitfalls, because some levels of administration will be repeated. For instance, the curriculum needs of each individual school district is probably very similar – it would be difficult to believe that students in one section of a Tennessee county need to learn different things from those in another, so that level of administration could be combined easily at significant savings. Furthermore, the upper echelons of administration would also not need to be

Strategic Information System Essay Example for Free

Strategic Information System Essay 1. Introduction Given the rise of competition in the modern business industry, it is essential for firms to apply strategic use of information system (IS) to achieve competitive advantage (CA). In the recent years, top management of firms have little interest in the relationship between IS functions and corporate strategy leading to many problems because of failure in achieving strategies. According to Holsapple (2000), modern organizations are increasingly seen as knowledge-based enterprises in which proactive knowledge management is important for competitiveness. One of the major factors in competitive environment is knowledge management and companies for achieving the competitive advantage should concentrate in its IS. IS plays an important role in business operations as well as financial and non-financial aspects of the firm such as decision making as a big role of management. There has a growing realization to make ISs of strategic importance to an organization in the 80’s and 90’s. Systems that shape or support business unit’s competitive strategy are known as Strategic IS (Callon 1996, an Neumann 1994). According to Turban et al (2006), SIS is the ability to significantly change the manner in which business is conducted in order to give the firm strategic advantage. Porter (1996) believes that competitive advantage is at the core of a firm success or failure, such advantage seeks lead to control the market and to larger-than-average profits. This research paper provides information on how organizations apply strategic use of IS/It to achieve competitive advantage over its competitors. This paper pays particular attention to factors influencing the success or failure of organization attempts at gaining or enhancing competitive advantages, and how competitive advantages can be sustained. 1.1Background IS is a set of interrelated elements that collect (input), manipulate (process), store, and disseminate (output) data and information and provide a reaction (feedback mechanism) to meet an objective (refer to Figure 1). Figure 1.1: The Components of an Information System IS is a combination of people’s activities and information technologies that supports organisation’s operation and decisions making and strategies for competitive advantage. IS plays a vital role in business operation and financial and non-financial aspect such as decision-making. IS are classified either operations or management information systems. They are being grouped this way to identify the major roles each plays in the operations and managements of a business. An Information System consists of five basic resources: i) People Resources (end users and IS specialist) ii) Software Resources (programs and procedures) iii) Hardware Resources (machines and medias) iv) Data Resources (data and knowledge bases) v) Network Resources (communications media and network support) SISs are systems used to supports or shape a business unit’s competitive strategy (Callon, 1996, and Nerumann, 1944). It is characterised by its ability significantly revamp the way in which a business is conducted in order to provide the firm strategic advantage. SIS is classified by its ability to change the manner a business is conducted, in order to achieve strategic advantage for the firm (Turban et al, 2006). SISs play strategic roles helping firm to gain competitive advantage or reduces competitive disadvantage by changing goals, products or processes through information systems. A competitive strategy is a broad-based formula for how a business is going to compete, what its goals should be, and what plans and policies will be required to carry out those goals (Porter, 1985). Through its competitive strategy, firms seek a competitive advantage in the industry advantage over competitors in measures such as cost, quality, or speed. The success or failure of a firm fully depends on its competitive advantage against its competitors (Porter and Millar, 1985, and Porter, 1996), such advantage seeks to lead to control of the marker and to larger-than-average profits. Through contribution to strategic goals of an organization and ability to increase performance and productivity, SIS aids an organization gain a competitive advantage over its competitors. SISs enable firms to gain competitive advantage and benefit greatly at the expense of those subjected to competitive disadvantage (Turban et al, 2006). SIS focus on improving the firm’s competitive position through increasing employees’ productivity, streamlining business processes and making better decisions (Turban et al, 2006). An organization can survive and succeed in the long run as long as it have effectively develops strategies to go up against the five competitive forces that shape the structure of competition in its industry. The Porter five competitive forces are: Businesses can counter the threat of competitive forces in which they face by implementing one or more of the five basic competitive strategies. The five basic competitive strategies are: i) Cost Leadership Strategy ii) Differentiation Strategy iii) Innovation Strategy iv) Growth Strategies v) Alliance Strategy An organization can counter the forces of competition from its competitors by implementing one, some or all the strategies in different degrees. 2.Companies using IS/IT to gain competitive advantages 2.1Cigna HealthCare CRM System In 1999, Cigna HealthCare decided to upgrade its outdated and almost extinct CRM system to improve the efficiency of business operations and then improving customer satisfaction. Cigna was operating nearly two-decade-old CRM systems to handle its daily operation needs. It had multiple units for different roles such as membership enrollment, processing medical claims and verifying customer eligibility and they were not interconnected. Furthermore, Cigna received numerous complaints from doctors as the old and disintegrating processing systems delayed their medical benefits claim payment and was heftily slapped with a US$ 300,000 fine on 29th January 2001. Cigna’s Chief Information Officer (CIO), Andrea Anania planned to combine the information from the different information systems and develops a new integrated systems to handle all the process. Anania goal was for the CRM system to act like a â€Å"one-stop† portal, thus improving efficiency. Cigna awarded a budget of US$ 1 billion to develop the CRM system, which aims to reduce human intervention while speeding up the processing time of medical claims. During the implementation of the CRM, Cigna had a net loss of US$ 398 million for fiscal year 2002. This project had already exceeded the original budget of US$1 billion and had done substantial financial damaged to Cigna. 2.2Bank of America – MasterNet System Bank of America (BoA) developed Master Net trust accounting system in 1982 with a plan completion date of 31 December 1984. MasterNet consist of a large trust accounting system, TrustPlus, and eight smaller systems that augmented the core system. In 1986, migration process was greatly affected by technical problems such as poor response time and day long system crashes. In 1988, BoA announced that its trust business was being given to a subsidiary as it could no longer handle the operation requirements after a $78 million loss in the MasterNet project . 2.3 American Airlines – Knowledge Management System American Airlines understand the needs to analyze data collected through their computer reservation system, SABRE, an automated system with the ability to check flight and seats availability and making a reservation for customer developed in 1960s with IBM. In 1990, AA developed a knowledge management system, SMARTSTM (Sales Management and Report Tracking System) as a tool to leverage CRS reservation data and AA internal historical data on performance and bookings. SMARTS is able to run analysis for AA to develop finely tailored scheme based on AA’s market shares. The combination of SABRE and SMARTS creates the expertise exploitation capability for AA whose impact can be systematically assessed against the access to reservation system, which has become market-standard for competitive parity. 2.4 Wal-Mart – Point-of-Sale System Successful implementations of IS into daily practices have aided Wal-Mart in their quest to maintain the position of low cost leader (Thomas Wailgum, 2007). Wal-Mart had adopted the â€Å"point-of-sale† system; a computerized system which identifies sales of individual items, updates information into its server and modifies the on-hand quantity automatically. The system also analyzed data mined from the universal bar code and effectively transformed data collected from bar codes to useful information such as keeping track of sales trends for individual items as they are identified as an individual entity. 2.5Lesson Learned and Success Factors The author believed that the failure of Cigna CRM system was due to poor leadership and communication skills of Cigna’s CIO. Anania did not consulted professional to design the IT systems architecture required for transformation, instead she pooled 1400 employees from Cigna’s IT department and formed a team, made up of experienced project managers and new hires. Anania made an unethical decision to migrate 3.5 million customer’s data at one go instead of 10,000 per group to the new platform with out testing the integrity of the system due to pressing date lines leading to serious customer service problems surfacing immediately. As Cigna had lay off majority of its service center employee, believing that the new CRM will improved its productivity with lesser human input therefore leading to a shortage of experience staffs. Feedbacks and input from stakeholders was ignored by the managements during the development of the system, thus leading to the down fall of the CRM system and hitting Cigna with substantial financial damaged. The author feels if Cigna’s management culture had led to the failure of the IS. MasterNet have a leader who have a vision of technology but was not well versed technically and was too involve in other problems to focus on the project. BoA made two critical mistakes in handling of MasterNet. Firstly, BoA did not understand the difficulty involved and scope of MasterNet and sufficiently assess it risks when it was proposed. Secondly, BoA failed to take necessary fire-fighting actions when the project rolled out of control to minimize damage. The management only took notice of MasterNet when it performed so badly that it merited $23 million loss. Many mistakes made with respect to MasterNet were not specifically related to IS. The combinations of SMARTS and SABRE have assisted AA to become a market-standard for competitive parity. SMARTS is a system with ability to organize data by city, zone and territory of sales representative with analytical and presentation capabilities. SMARTS was design to provide reliable detailed information to sales representatives to influence travel agencies behavior strategically. Previously, sales representatives doesn’t have complete information about market shares and performance data of travel agencies in his territory and the job consisted mainly preserving a good working relationship with the travel agent. With the aid of SMARTS, the sales representatives are able to analyse market trends in detail and could easily identify opportunities than before, thus maximising productivity. Through the use of SMARTS system, AA’s intangible sales knowledge is enhanced as it is able to interpret movements in share and market. Aside to that, SMARTS help representatives highlight weak markets to the travel agency mangers to focus on. According to Mr. Jack Williams, Senior Vice-President of AA, SMARTS have introduced a huge culture change in their sales-force associated with the leveraging of the expertise as a result of the information in the system thus bringing an enormous advantage to AA, not easily copied by their competitors. The introduction of the barcode system have help Wal-Mart to maintain its low cost leadership. This system helped Wal-Mart to speed up its checkout cashier efficiency and eliminate problems of cashier keying in the wrong price for a product by scanning the barcode as previously the cashier have to manually key in the prices of all the goods according to the price tag. Aside to that, Wal-Mart was able to track its stock level and placed order when required. The system also has the ability to identify slow running products and prevents Wal-Mart from overstocking them. Through improving its information system, Wal-Mart has created a high barrier of entry for any company who wishes to enter the chain hyper-market industry. 3.Discussion Factors influencing organization to use IS as it business strategy are relatively dependent on internal and external forces of the business surrounding environment (Bob William, 2009). Internal forces that require considered and looked into are the current financial position of the firm. Budget required for IS implementation are considerably high, management allocating the funds for investment must be ensured minimal or perfect deployment of the IS. On top of that, employees capabilities also plays an important role during IS implementation. Firm needs to ensure that employees are at least computer literate and will have no problem operating or accessing the new system, else additional cost may be bared by the firm for training. The firm also needs to access the efficiency and effectiveness of its existing system and whether there is a need to upgrade or revise the current system to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors. Changes in consumer tastes, preference and purchasing pattern are external factors driving organization to implement IS. Consumers are becoming more IT savvy and surveys have shown customer swaying their purchasing pattern to electronic purchase due to convenient and time saving (James D. Gwartney, 2006). Companies need to understand and study consumer expectation and needs in order to analyse and implement business strategies to ensure business growth. Therefore, both internal and external factors are important consideration for implementation of IS to gain a competitive advantage as they complement each other. From the above examples, correct implementation of IS will give the firm a competitive advantage over its competition. Firms must understand their position from Porter’s five competitive forces and develop strategies and counter it to maintain competitive. As Howard et al, (1999) believed that competitive advantage could be gained if strategy development and ISs design are addressed simultaneously. Porter’s model identifies five competitive forces that affect competitive advantage in the market place. In order to establish a profitable and sustainable position, company needs to develop strategies of performing activities differently from its competitors to overcome these five forces. Strategy| Definition| Example| Strategic use of IS| Business Benefits| Cost Leadership| Produce products and/or services at the lowest cost in the industry| Dell Computer| Online build to order| Lowest-cost producer| Differentiation| Offer different products, services, or product features| Moen Inc| Online customer design| Increase in market share| Innovation| Introduce new products and services, put new features into existing products and services, or develop new ways to produce them| American Airlines| Analyse data| Market Leadership| Growth| Increase market share, acquire more customers, or sell more products| Wal-Mart| Merchandise ordering by global satellite network| Market Leadership| Alliance| Work with business partners in partnerships, alliances, joint ventures, or virtual companies| Wal-Mart/ Procter Gamble| Auto inventory replenishment by supplier| Reduced inventory cost/increased sales| Information systems can be used to help firms gain competitive advantage with the help of Porter’s competitive forces model for analyzing competitiveness and proper implementation of IS. According to Michael Porter, the main types of competitive advantage are low cost provider, differentiation and focus. Companies have use porter’s model to increase competitive edge and also demonstrated how IS can enhance competitiveness of corporation (Turban et al. 2006). Finally, firms need to sustain competitive advantages gained from the implementation of IS. In the real world, competitive advantage doesn’t normally last very long and is generally not sustainable over the long term (O’Brien 2011). When a firm gains competitive advantage over its competitors through innovation, competitors figure out how it was done through organizational learning. To neutralize the effect, competitors adopt the same or similar innovation and what was once a competitive advantage is now a competitive necessity. When these occur, firm needs to figure out new innovation to gain a competitive edge and the cycle starts. 4.Conclusion Technologies have changed the way business operates today. Manual processes in the past are now being automated and electronic communications have been heavily introduced in today’s business world. IS have evolved over the years and offer new possibilities to gain competitive advantage. Many businesses today have realized the important of technology and power it possess, but fail to understand the possible benefit achievable. The author learned that through proper planning and implementation of IS will lead to a competitive advantage gain for the organization. With the aid of IS, it will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of staff in the organization which in turn will save labor and consumable cost. 5.Reference Ahlemann Frederik. (2009). Towards a conceptual reference model for project management information system. International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 27, No.1, pp. 19-30 Ankit Bhatnagar. (2006). Strategic Information System Planning: Alignment of ‘IS/IT’ Planning and Business Planning, Unitee New Zealand. Amber S., Brooke W., Cheri E., Ismael M. Wesley B. (2011). Wal-Mart Information System Benjamin, R.I., D.W. Long, and M.S. Moron (1990). Electronic Data Interchange: How Much Competitive Advantage?. Long Range Planning, 23:1, pp. 29-40. Bruns, W,J, and F,W, McFarlan (1987). Information Technology Puts Power in Control Systems, Harvard Business Review, Sep-Oct, pp. 89-94 Callon, J. D., (1996). Competitive Advantage through Information Technology. New York: McGraw Hill, USA. Christiaanse, Ellen., Venkatraman, N. (2002). Beyand Sabre: An empricial test of expertise exploitation in electronic channels. MIS Quarterly, Vol. 26, No.1, pp. 15.38. Davenport, T.H., M. Hammer, and T.J. Metisto (1989). How Executives Can Shape Their Company’s Information Systems, Harvard Business Review. H. Russell Johnston and Michael R. Vitale (1988). Creating Competitive Advantage With Inter-organizational Information Systems. MIS Quartely, Jun 1988, pp. 153-165. Ives B., and G. P. Learmouth (1984). The Information System as a Competitive Weapon. Communication of the ACM Jeffery. G. Szilagyi. Bank of America’s Masternet System: A Case study in Risk Assessment Jeremy A. (2011). Supply Chain Management at Wal-Mart Johnston, H.R. and Carrico, S. R. (1988). Developing Capabilities to use Information Strategically. MIS Quarterly, pp. 37-48. Mahmood Hemmatfar (2010). Competitive Advantages and Strategic Information System. International Journal of Business and Management, Vol. 5, No 7, pp 158-169 M. Vinaya Kumar (2007). CRM Implementation Failure at Cigna Corporation, ICFAI Center for Management Research. Porter, M. E. (1996). What is a Strategy? Harvard Business Review, November – December 1996, pp 45-59. Porter, M. E. (2001). Strategic and the Internet. Harvard Business Review, Vol. 79, No. 3, pp 62-74. Porter, M.E., and V. E. Millar (1985). How information gives you competitive advantage. Harvard Business Review, Vol. 62, No. 4, pp. 149-158. Ross, J. W. et al. (1996). Develop Long-Term Competitiveness through IT Assets. Sloan Management Review, Vol. 60, No 4, pp. 132-148. Teo, T. S. H. (2000). Using the Internet for Competitve Intelligence in Singapore. Competitive Intelligence Review, Vol. 8 Issue 2, pp. 16-23.

Journey Motif Essay -- essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In literature, the Journey is often a metaphor for discovery. The journey motif is used in Coleridge’s â€Å"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.† It is also shown in Hawthorne’s â€Å"My Kinsman, Major Molineux† and â€Å"Young Goodman Brown.† In these stories, each main character changes sometime between the beginning and the end of the story. In addition, religion plays a part in each of these stories. Typically, in journey literature the hero encounters several obstacles that he or she must overcome. In Coleridge’s â€Å"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,† the Mariner shows negativity. The Mariners moral vision is so impaired that his comparisons are persistently pessimistic. This pessimism is seen repeatedly in the similes that he uses. He describes life-in-death whose skin is â€Å"...

Project Management Plan Essay

Projects in a business are always set up to bring some beneficial change or add value to what the business already have (Knutson and Bitz, 1991). They are therefore set with goals that have to be accomplished. In a business organization, there are staff members given responsibility by the manager or the human resource manager based on their qualification and experience, on the kind of job they are assigned. Project management is always given to a project manager. A project manager has the responsibility to ensure that the planning, organizing and management of the project resources, comes to an end with the successful completion of the objectives (Knutson and Bitz, 1991). One of the roles of a project manager as has been noted is planning of the resources available for a specific project. Project Management Plan A project management plan answers the four W’s. Why, what, when and who (Kimmons, 1990). LRH product company (who), intends to present a trade show (what), in Kansas City as a marketing strategy for the benefit of the company (why), in the quest to increase company sales. The project is due in ten weeks (when) from the start of preparations to the show. The project manager has been provided with all the resources required. This paper aims at giving the rest of the steps needed in a work breakdown structure of a project management plan, that the objectives and the requirements of its completion, are already provided. Completing the Project Management plan The first steps of the project management plan have been done. They are, identification of the project goal, which is to participate in a trade show for marketing purposes and what the project requires to ensure that the goal is met, which is already done. The next steps in a project management plan that have not been completed and need to be done are scheduling and development of support plans (Spinner, 1992). Scheduling: What the project needs to deliver, should be accomplished in order to consider the project as a successful one. For delivery purposes, tasks on the appropriate selected deliverables have to be identified and written down on a list to guide the planner. The tasks are identified while considering the amount of time or effort needed to complete the task and the qualified person to complete the task (Spinner, 1992). In the description given, these tasks and the relevant people needed for the project to deliver had already been identified, but the next steps in scheduling had not been done . The next step is to calculate the effort required for each deliverable plus the delivery date. It is important for the project manager to select an appropriate software for this kind of calculation. Normally it is PERT that is used, which is a software used to evaluate the total time the project will take to be completed and the total time the tasks will take to complete the project (Spinner, 1992). If in any case the project manager finds out that the provided time for project completion is not enough, he/she has to inform the sponsor/manager to get more time. In the case of this assignment, the project manager could ask to start the project earlier if the time allocated is found not to be enough. Support plans: The next step in the management plan is to develop support plans. These include plans that should be involved in the project management plan either included in it or not. They are such as, the human resource plan, communication plans, that indicate who should be informed about the issues of the project and risk management plans, that give identified risks to the project and how to deal with each. When preparing a project plan, a project manager can decide to select a tool of project planning that he/she feels appropriate for formulating the plan. This is where the Gantt charts, which gives a project schedule from the start to the end, showing the terminal and the summary elements as well as the structure used for the work breakdown, is used (Spinner, 1992).