How the Internet may impact your career Essay

The evolutions and advances in technology have indeed expanded the frontiers of man. Every facet of man’s life has been changed by the new technological innovations that have been introduced. Life has become so much easier yet at the same time it seems however that life has also been turned into something more complicated. It cannot be denied, however, that the future of humanity lies in being able to embrace and adapt to technology. Technology has done a lot for human beings. Without the development in technology it is possible that the pyramids would never have been built and neither would we be able to communicate with each other from remote places all over the world. Given all of these effects of the internet, it comes as no surprise that fortunes and dreams can be made or undone on the internet. As a young individual who has so much planned in life, I feel that the internet presents a unique challenge and a myriad of opportunities. In the field of business, there have been various innovations that have been introduced with applications to the field of business. One of them is website development that is custom made to the test ad requirements of a certain company. Office animation tools like computers, telephones and fax machines are another set of technologically introduced changes that are very vital in today’s world. As such, the website as a platform that has aided business development into embracing the global markets is something that must not be overlooked. This is an enterprise arm of technology that has a lot of potential. As such this allows companies to advertise their products and also buy things through online links. This internet technology has really opened up the global market so that people can today transact business even without ever getting into physical contact with others. It is this feature of enterprise technology that I find myself intrigued with. As a marketing expert, I find enterprise technology to be very helpful in communication. I know that I will use the internet to carry out advertisement campaigns to various destinations. The internet is also very handy in getting the best ground to market goods and also to find very good suppliers of raw materials. The immense network that is available online can be a headache to those who are not well familiar with it but it can also be a gold mine of opportunities for people such as me who see the future of marketing and supply chain management hinged upon that internet backbone. It is hard to imagine life without email nowadays. The only efficient means of communication, with efficient meaning that the message is delivered within seconds, is either through the cellular phone or through email via the internet. It is even more impossible to imagine how people could work under circumstances that denied them access to the latest communication technologies or even technology at all. As the developments in the electronics and communications technology continues to improve and advance, it will no longer be far off to imagine a world where nobody is walking the streets and everyone is hooked up to their computers interacting with each other in a world where they can be their own gods and dictate their own destinies without even breaking a sweat. Instead of just seeing an image of another person online, it may actually be possible to experience the sensation of feeling and touching that person. Perhaps one of the most influential business innovations over the past years has been the growth of e-commerce transactions. The reason for this is that it has allowed several online business companies to take their businesses to another level. Where the internet was defined by being able to create money through hype and investing on the next big development, the growth of e-commerce transactions has removed all speculation and allowed the market forces to supply and transact in real time involving billions of dollars. One will be hard pressed to find companies that have not taken to the internet to expand their markets and even perhaps smooth out their logistics. It is not only the market access but the ease by which functions of business can be carried out online that makes this such an interesting development. A company that has a website can carry out all the business transactions over the internet. Various activities done over the website include advertising the products of the company, illustrating the various prices that are applicable for each of the items and also illustrating channels of delivery. Companies can develop a communication avenue over the internet so that they can collect views of people and also respond to any questions as they arise. Websites can also be used to advertise vacancies for employment especially when the company is in need of recruiting more people for empty positions. Enterprise technology has also provided an avenue through which companies can make more money to add to the revenue that is received in the company. As such, the growth of e-commerce online has made all of this possible. E-commerce provides a quicker and easier alternative. The enormous variety of items made available online makes cyberspace the largest mall in the entire world. A single search query on any internet browser will yield hundreds if not thousands of results. Combine that with the relative ease by which a person can also research on the pros and cons of items and a wise shopper is created. The variety on ebay, the largest online auction store in the world, is enough to fill the entire state of Texas. All the choices that are available online and the price advantage that is offered and the convenience all make the internet the shopping haven for any shopper. It is clear from this brief discussion that I see my career as being positively impacted by the internet. The boundless possibilities for anyone with the training but more importantly the perseverance that are available on the internet are sure to allow me to fulfill my dreams. I guess in the short term I will need to bide my time and learn more about this industry but in the long run I see myself becoming an innovator in this field. The business aspects such as e-commerce and trade online are but one facet of this internet. There are so many others there for other people. This is why I am confident that the internet will be able to help not only myself but those who are bold enough with their careers.

Where Do We Go From Here

His question was birthed from his desperation, because his baby daughter was about to die, she would never experience a prom, or graduate from college. L don't know if she was dying because she was a little black girl who may have been walking in Sanford with skittles and iced tea, or if her music was too loud in Jacksonville, or if she was coming from the corner store in Ferguson†¦ But in the moment of desperation, Jesus heads to the location of his house. I'm glad this evening, that Jesus will stop by the house and come and see about you†¦ It's at the location, that Jesus sets expiration on their mourning. Jesus says, â€Å"The child is not dead. She's only sleeping†.What they considered as fatal, Jesus sees as fruitful. Then Jesus gives her protection by taking her by the hand and saying â€Å"Daughter, Arise†. For the hand of God protects me, it lifts me, comforts me, and secures me! I need his hand. Short Version: 1 . As I close, I can hear Jarvis, the sy nagogue ruler, asking this same question which moved Jesus to the location of his house. And I'm glad this evening, that Jesus will stop by the house and come and see about you†¦ Secures me and it comforts me! Scriptural Reference ; Mark 5: 21 -43 2.The disciples were on a boat in a storm and asked the question to Jesus â€Å"Carets thou not that we perish? † , really meaning â€Å"Where do we go from here? â€Å". The storm is about to over take us, the winds are beating us in the face, the waves are swamping us in the boat and we are about to drown. Lord, â€Å"Where do we go from here? ‘ Jesus goes from where he was asleep to the location where they were afraid. And at this location, he put the wind on expiration. Then gave them protection by saying â€Å"Peace be still†.Scriptural Reference – Mark 4:35-41 Mary and Marsh's brother Lazarus was dead and Martha was furious with Jesus and said, â€Å"If you had been here our brother would not have died†. Her whole world was shattered at the loss Of her only brother. She essentially was crying â€Å"Where do we go from here? † But Jesus arrives at their location, and says show me where you laid him. At that location, Jesus gives expiration to the stone, the very thing that was holding him back and keeping him bound, Jesus tells to them to remove.And finally, Jesus gives him protection by removing the grave clothes from him Scriptural Reference – John 1 1 But I know that on one Friday†¦ From the 6th – 9th hour, Jesus Christ died†¦ The world wondered and pondered, â€Å"Where do we go from here? † , the one that†¦ They put him in a location oaf borrowed tomb all night Friday Then expiration came early on Sunday morning when he got up with all Power in his hands. Because He got up he gives me protection everyday of my life†¦ The blood covers me And now, This calls for a celebration†¦ Where Do We Go From Here His question was birthed from his desperation, because his baby daughter was about to die, she would never experience a prom, or graduate from college. L don't know if she was dying because she was a little black girl who may have been walking in Sanford with skittles and iced tea, or if her music was too loud in Jacksonville, or if she was coming from the corner store in Ferguson†¦ But in the moment of desperation, Jesus heads to the location of his house. I'm glad this evening, that Jesus will stop by the house and come and see about you†¦ It's at the location, that Jesus sets expiration on their mourning. Jesus says, â€Å"The child is not dead. She's only sleeping†.What they considered as fatal, Jesus sees as fruitful. Then Jesus gives her protection by taking her by the hand and saying â€Å"Daughter, Arise†. For the hand of God protects me, it lifts me, comforts me, and secures me! I need his hand. Short Version: 1 . As I close, I can hear Jarvis, the sy nagogue ruler, asking this same question which moved Jesus to the location of his house. And I'm glad this evening, that Jesus will stop by the house and come and see about you†¦ Secures me and it comforts me! Scriptural Reference ; Mark 5: 21 -43 2.The disciples were on a boat in a storm and asked the question to Jesus â€Å"Carets thou not that we perish? † , really meaning â€Å"Where do we go from here? â€Å". The storm is about to over take us, the winds are beating us in the face, the waves are swamping us in the boat and we are about to drown. Lord, â€Å"Where do we go from here? ‘ Jesus goes from where he was asleep to the location where they were afraid. And at this location, he put the wind on expiration. Then gave them protection by saying â€Å"Peace be still†.Scriptural Reference – Mark 4:35-41 Mary and Marsh's brother Lazarus was dead and Martha was furious with Jesus and said, â€Å"If you had been here our brother would not have died†. Her whole world was shattered at the loss Of her only brother. She essentially was crying â€Å"Where do we go from here? † But Jesus arrives at their location, and says show me where you laid him. At that location, Jesus gives expiration to the stone, the very thing that was holding him back and keeping him bound, Jesus tells to them to remove.And finally, Jesus gives him protection by removing the grave clothes from him Scriptural Reference – John 1 1 But I know that on one Friday†¦ From the 6th – 9th hour, Jesus Christ died†¦ The world wondered and pondered, â€Å"Where do we go from here? † , the one that†¦ They put him in a location oaf borrowed tomb all night Friday Then expiration came early on Sunday morning when he got up with all Power in his hands. Because He got up he gives me protection everyday of my life†¦ The blood covers me And now, This calls for a celebration†¦

Boo Radley, Misjudgment and Its Impact

Boo Radley, Misjudgment and Its Impact Before you judge someone, you need to get to know them first. A keen example of this statement is clearly shown within the novel To Kill A Mockingbird. After Scout comes home from a near death experience from Mr. Ewell on Halloween, Atticus tucks her into bed. She just walked Boo Radley home and was discussing a book Atticus was reading. She states how they chased him [the character in the book] but when they finally saw him he hadnt done any of those things he was real nice . Atticus responds saying that most people are when you finally see them. He is referring to Boo Radley, a character in To Kill a Mockingbird, that had helped Scout despite the rumors that he was a psycho. With this quote, Scout comes to closure with Boo Radley. She understands that he is not as evil as others depict him and is actually really nice. Atticus then states that most people are [nice] when you finally see them. Atticus is saying that although others might come off like theyre mean or not approachable, most people are actually really nice once you finally get to know them. After Heck Tate, the sheriff in To Kill A Mockingbird, confirms who killed Bob Ewell, Scout walks Arthur Radley home. She stands on Arthurs porch and then realizes that she had misjudged him. In the beginning of the novel, Scout believes that Arthur is a evil human being that would eat raw rabbit meat and stab his mother with scissors. As she stands on his porch, she begins to stand in his shoes and walk around in them. She realizes that Arthur is actually a really calm and caring person. In this scene, Scout is now fully understands Atticuss piece of advice. Walking around in Arthurs shoes helped Scout come to closure with the Radleys. She now understands that Arthur isnt truly a horrible person and that her assumptions were wrong. Others need to do what Scout did, and put themselves in others positions. They need to consider what others are going through before jumping to conclusions that are often wrong. These two scenes show that people shouldnt jump to conclusions about others t oo quickly because they might turn out to be different than you expected.

WK 2 forum Law enforcement Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

WK 2 forum Law enforcement - Essay Example Police officers have an increased rate of suicide, alcoholism, and divorce than most other occupations. The extended costs to be paid from police stress are also astounding, with premature retirement, high absenteeism, lower rates of discipline, and disability. Stress also possesses hidden costs such as crisis management actions that the police require to redo their shift schedules and poor community relationships (Ellison, 2011). Most police personnel also tend to suppress stress, which has negative impacts on the police officers, their families, and ultimately their career. Suppression of stress eventually evolves into defensive mechanisms, for example, detachment of officers from their emotional lives (Ellison, 2011). This suppression benefits the police officer in the occurrence of crises, proving a systemic and validated way to release suppressed emotions especially after critical occurrences. However, the officers also suppress anger and frustration towards their supervisors, which causes questioning of their leadership skills. Police stress also leads to a high rate of divorce among police officers since they use work as a way to deal with their stress, thus staying away from home and accepting punishing shifts (Ellison, 2011). Suicide rates from stress related issues also have hard-hitting effects on families, as the officer may have been the sole breadwinner in the family. Spill over from demands at work, work family conflict, and emotional exhaustion leads to high marital discord rates, as well as divorce. Administrators in Police Departments have attempted to develop programs aimed at addressing the issue of stress among its personnel. This change has, however, been very slow because of the because of the bureaucracy inherent in most police departments Kearn (Kearney, 2009). First line supervisors carry a

A genetically modified organism Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

A genetically modified organism - Research Paper Example Thus, in this paper I am going to examine the process of GMO production and storage in order to assess the risks connected with their consumption. Genetically modified organisms are organisms (bacteria, viruses, plants, animals) which genetics was changed in order for acquiring new functions. As genes are responsible for carrying the information in the sequences and structures of DNA, they define special characteristics of the organisms. Advances of biotechnology now permit to extract, change, and add various genes to the organisms. It is even possible to transfer genes between non-related organisms. Most often scientists add some genes to plants in order to make them stable to certain viruses (GMOs, 2010). Genetically modified organisms are used in medicine, agriculture, biology, textile production. Usually when people start speaking about genetically modified organisms they mean genetically modified crops which have become a part of everyday life of the consumers in the world. Tobacco was the first plant which received additional genes to resist herbicides. Later it was modified to be capable to resist insects and the ripening qualities of the crops were also changed. In 1995 Food and Drug Administration approved commercial usage of GM potato, corn, soya, and tomato, and the variety of plants with additional genes increase significantly (Swanson, 2013). People usually underestimate the quantity of GM crops that they consume. However, by the end of 2012 more than 144 kinds of plants received access to the market in the United States of America. So an impressive part of the crops consumed by Americans in the following years were genetically modified: according to the statistics of USDA 93% of all soy, 88 % of all corn, and 94% of cotton (Swanson, 2013). Today such products as tomatoes and cantaloupes with advanced ripening characteristics, beets and soybeans with improved herbicides

Management case study applying 10 management theories

Management applying 10 management theories - Case Study Example Bearing in mind that the traditional methods of competitive advantage may not apply to the modern business sector, market segmentation and appropriate targeting can also act as a competitive advantage. However, to take advantage of this, the organization ought to devise reliable ways of undertaking market research, which requires the right employees who can only be acquired through recruitment and selection. Although the organization may decide to undertake internal recruitment, it is usually recommended to undertake external recruitment through advertisements, referrals, and the Internet. This provides a new set of skills for the organization that can be used to capitalize on market segmentation and targeting. In spite of this advantage, this also requires additional resources that mean additional expenses that organizations take lengthy discussions to deal with. To accomplish the required outcomes, the organization ought to understand the impact that rational decision making can have towards the realization of this quest. Rational decision making incorporates several steps that begin with the identification of a problem, formulation of alternatives, implementation of the most appropriate solution, and evaluation of the impact that the implemented solution has. In most cases, this process favors logic, analysis as well as objectivity. Since marketing is an issue in the organization, as indicated in the case study, this provides information on the problem to be resolved while the next step would involve several alternatives that may include increasing supply or even identifying areas to supply specific products. This is because the research would provide information concerning customer preferences, which is very important to organizations. Once the most appropriate step has been agreed upon and implemented, the final step is very important

Starting up a business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Starting up a business - Essay Example This report proposes a business plan for starting-up of a business of computer sales and services in the national market of UK. The main aim of the business will be to attract customers by providing quality services as per the need and demand of the customers along with delivering latest computer technology spare-parts to deliver the customers with quality assistance. Undoubtedly, the task of rendering computer sales and services to a diverse client base as can be observed in the current demographic features of UK, will be a tricky strategic initiation. Further reports have also revealed a fall in the selling prices and a consequence fall in the profit margin enjoyed by organisations in the computer sales and service marketing industry. Apparently this indicates towards an increasingly challenging market structure owing to which the planned business will have to be quite focused with respect to quality and customer services through effective supply chain management. For instance, whe re on one hand the resource requirement can be observed as low during the time of initiation as no requirement of large sophisticated office spaces and other obligatory assets will be required apart from skilled human resources; on the other hand, over the long run, significant costs for availing innovative technology assistances and increasing the dais for serving the customers may be incurred and thus, the business might require continuous inflow of cash and apparently at an increasing rate for its continuation. (Curators of the University of Missouri, 2010). Notably, the business is planned to be instigated as a sole-proprietorship based small business concern which will have minimum responsibilities in terms of legal obligations and therefore, will have to witness minimum intervention from external parties. 1.2. Aim of the study Setting-up of a business is often signified as a complex procedure which requires considerable knowledge base of the entrepreneur which can only be suff iced with ample information related with the motive obtainable through a formal research process (Bergstrom, 2012). Based on this notion, this particular study will aim at: Identifying the business opportunities, market competition trends and required resources to instigate the business Devising proper marketing strategies for the targeted potential customers Forecasting the capital requirements and costs to be incurred during the instigation of the business and within a one year financial period Concluding if the business plan is viable and should be proceeded with on the basis of the obtained information and forecast reports 2.0. Literature Review Business start-ups are considered as a significant contributor towards the economic development process owing to which, governmental bodies have been observed to decipher a supportive approach to assist the small and medium sized business organisations. It is worth mentioning in this context that majority of the economic structure of UK constitute of small and medium sized organisations and set-up firms which have further created a substantial pressure to facilitate this particular dimension with ample scope for future development (European Union, 2011). In the similar context, Mahdjoubi (2004) affirmed that business plan is considered to be the important source of evidences required for decisions in investment screening. Scholars have provided various frameworks to structure the process of setting-up of an organisation which is often characterised as a complex phenomenon. As stated by Carter &

Ministry Integration Project Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Ministry Integration Project - Research Paper Example This act of modeling Christ Jesus in our own personal lives can serve as the strongest witness over whatever is preached in the pulpit. On the other hand, a single pastor is the symbol of integrity and celibacy in the presence of too many temptations in the world. That said, a married pastor that experiences chaos in his family life will act as a bad influence and at the same time be destructive to the congregation that they are ministering to and hence hinder his role and purpose as the Lord’s witness to the rest of the world. Pastor’s and to the larger extent Christians ought to have it together in their personal and family lives so as to act as a good example to the rest of the population that is composed of non- believers and believers of other faiths. A chaotic pastor’s or Christian’s life will offer little incentive to the non-believer since they will not see the need to substitute their current life with a chaotic life in the name of non-believers. A Christian leader who does not have any organized love and family relationship will not command any respect from his congregation since they will not hold him in such high regard. In the real world, families are not always perfect and this does not exclude the pastor’s family as well. There always tends to be conflict in married life. With this said, the minister always has a higher or greater responsibility to ensure that his marriage and family always tend to work even in the face of all these problems that afflict most if not every family. The minister of the church will always have a much greater responsibility in bringing up his children in the way of the Lord and also with respect and Love. This aspect does not mean that his family is expected to be perfect, but it means that he should handle his family problems with integrity and maturity so as to end up in the end with a united family as well as a

Analyis of financial objectives, financials projecttions and Essay

Analyis of financial objectives, financials projecttions and investment decisions - Essay Example These objectives are designed and reviewed at fixed intervals, discrepancies are identified and finally based on reviews suggestions are employed to meet the desired gaps. In same trend management of the company in the year end 2012 called up board meeting and planned company objectives for the next three years. This report is based on the review of the planned objectives. For the purpose, this report provided critical analysis of the set forth objectives along with its comparison with competitors’ objectives. Section II of the report has developed financials (comprising of income statement and balance sheet) for the next three years i.e. 2013- 2015 and has made an attempt to review level of alignment between objectives and financials. Section III of the report provides review of investment decision that company intends to make pertaining to cost of capital and its impact on shareholders wealth. Lastly, the report provides concluding remarks based on the overall review. 1- OBJ ECTIVE EVALUATION In the board meeting held in the ending of the current year, management has highlighted corporate objectives and future direction for the next three years. These objectives have been set based on the financial position for the current year 2012. Financial objectives for the next three years are as follows: 1- To maintain the profit margin around 24% 2- To ensure the current strong financial position is maintained 3- To satisfy shareholders by maintaining the dividend payout ratio of 50% ANALYSIS OF THE FINANCIAL OBJECTIVES Apparently the objectives appear to be suitable for the overall business. However, since the case do not provide detailed financial information, therefore, it is difficult to accept these objectives in alignment with the overall objectives across departments. For instance, maintaining profit margin at 24% refers that Aztec Catering has either plans to maintain the strong control over cost or would increase its prices to maintain to meet the objec tive or increase sales. Both options have their implications mainly for following factors: 1- Level of competition 2- Inflation 3- Only in case if all other things remain same Keeping under consideration, Aztec Catering is competing with Compass group which comparatively bigger business concern. Therefore, increasing price would divert its customer to the competitor and there is ample chance for Aztec Catering to lose customer base. On contrary, reducing overall cost or developing stronger control over cost items is the other option. As stated in the given option, objective of Compass group is to provide the best services to its customers refers that Compass group would provide more value added offerings to its customer. Providing value added products would increase cost while being bigger concern it can easily attain the benefit of economies while Aztec Catering in order to remain competitive has to increase its offerings as well that resultantly would rise in cost. Hence, there ar e all chances that cost would increase in a greater proportion than sales. Therefore, cost control appears somewhat difficult option. Considering the third option of increasing sales also require increased marketing and other activities that would also increase cost. Therefore, it with the given information it is difficult to infer the ways Aztec Catering would maintain the profit margin of 24%. The given information has also not accounted the other factors that increasing cost. For instance, for the target that have been set the given informa

The India Model Essay Example for Free

The India Model Essay India is currently listed among the countries having large economies. In fact, India has the fourth highest growth rate following Japan. India’s economic success is not the thing that should be taken into account but the path or the model they have chosen is worth noticing. Instead of relying on the usual method of exporting low priced manufactured goods to West, India depended upon its local markets. India focused more on services and high tech industry which were the main keys to their economic success. As, the Indians focused more on their domestic markets they were not that influenced from the economic worldwide recession which affected many other countries. One other remarkable thing about the model that India is following is the promotion of the entrepreneurs; India is encouraging a healthy competition among the private companies that are being established in the country. India has always promoted economic activities by removing trade barriers, lowering tax rates, encouraging competition, eliminating state monopolies, and liberating industries. India’s current trend of growth is likely to continue and even accelerate in the coming years. India started to develop rapidly in the era of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who appreciated the private sector in the country which was previously suppressed. India’s condition enhanced a lot since the start of 1990s. Telecommunications has revolutionized, interest rates are lowered, infrastructure has been developed and a big amount of capital has been raised. Even though India has progressed a lot, developing from an agriculture economy to service based economy, it missed out on the industrial revolution which could have changed the lives of millions who are forced to live in poverty. The lack of attention on industrial growth has made India’s middle step towards progress a little weak. This lacking is a result of bad policies set by earlier governments. After Independence Nehru tried to bring a government guided Industrial revolution. Since he did not have trust on the private firms he gave powers to the public sector, making it stronger. This step of his hampered all of the small scale industries, present in the country at that time, as they got helpless against the competition against mighty public sector. Since Nehru’s era government had been neglecting small scale industries, but in the recent year’s steps has been taken to encourage these small industries. It is predicted that in future years India will develop strongly in the industrial sector also. There are several other things that the current government has to modify in the current India model to make India a more successful state. The government has to provide confidence to the entrepreneurs so that the industrial sector can boost. It has to provide them with low priced energy sources, cut down indirect taxes; instead impose proper goods and services tax, designate economic zones which can reduce the regulatory burdens and abolish unjust labor laws. India’s success and glory lie in the hands of self confident and hardworking Indians. They are the ones who are going to determine India’s future. To conclude I would like to quote a famous saying that, â€Å"As you sow, so you shall reap†. So whatever the government does today to secure the talent of these brilliant minds will surely pay off them in the long run, for preserving and nurturing these outstanding Indian minds government has to take some measure to provide them with quality education, proper shelter, food and water. Laying foundations today is definitely going to waive off the harsh times tomorrow.

Innovation And Managing Innovation

Innovation And Managing Innovation There are different types of innovation. Joseph Tidd and John Bessant describe in their books four broad categories of innovation. (Tidd Bessant, 2009) Following these categories are referred as the 4Ps of innovation: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ product innovation changes in the things (products/services) which an organization offers à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ process innovation changes in the ways in which they are created and delivered à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ position innovation changes in the context in which the products/services are introduced à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ paradigm innovation changes in the underlying mental models which frame what the organization does For example, the new version of a car, a new bank account offer and a new home personnel computer are all examples of a product innovation. In comparison to a product innovation a change in the production process and machines used to manufacture the car or the home computer these examples are process innovations. Similar the example of the new bank account offer if this came up by changing procedures and sequencing in the bank office. Characteristic for services is the merge of a process and product innovation. For example a new weekend trip package could be combination of both types of innovations. The third type is the position innovation. In this context an innovation changes the perception of the customer through repositioning of the established product or process. For example, to use shower gel also to wash and clean clothes is a good example of a position innovation. Sometimes innovation opportunities emerge when people start to think outside the box. A very good example of a paradigm innovation is Henry Ford. He fundamentally changed the way of transportation people. He archived this neither by inventing the motor car (Invention of the motor car was 1999) nor because he changed the way of manufacture and produce an automobile (also the inventor of the conveyer production). His idea was to change the underlying model for the automobile production in this time. He changed the perspective of producing automobiles from handmade specialist product to a few wealthy customers to a mass product with a price a normal household could afford. The ensuing shift from craft to mass production was nothing short of a revolution in the way cars (and later countless other products and services) were created and delivered. This example shows that a paradigm innovation also requires intensive product and process innovation for example, in component design, in mach inery building, in the layout of the factory and in the social system around which work was organized. (Edelhoff, 2009) Not only Henry Ford changed an industry. In the last decades the shift to low-cost airlines and the increasing numbers of goods sold in the internet are recent examples of paradigm innovation changes in mental models. From Incremental to Radical Innovation Every Innovation is new, but the question is how new. So we can divide innovations between incremental and radical. (doing the same, better à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦..) For example, a new version of a car model is incremental while coming up with a completely new electric driven concept car which is made out of new light weight carbon fibre is radical. Similarly, further development of the accuracy and speed of a saw mill is not the same as replacing it with a computer-controlled laser cutting process. This example shows there are degrees of new innovation, running from minor, incremental improvements to radical changes which changes the way things are done and we use them. These changes are often present to a particular industry, but sometimes they are so radical and extensive that they are able to change the core of society. The major steps in todays communication and information technology have affected almost every person on this planet and will continue to gain importance. Figure : Dimension of innovation from incremental to radical from component- to system level Mapping Innovation Space In the figure below each of the 4Ps of innovation can take place along an axis. Hence the blue circle indicates the potential innovation space within a business can operate, the innovation is able to run from incremental to radical change. Whether the innovation utilizes all the space is a question of the innovation strategy. The way day-to-day change is approached within an organization differs from the approach how to handle a radical step change in products or processes. Here it is essential to keep in mind that the perceived stage of novelty is the important part and that this novelty is in the perspective of the observer. For example, in a giant, technologically advanced organization like Volkswagen or Siemens the tracking of goods from suppliers by RFID and GPS is used and implemented in day to day business while such an expensive process might be totally new and innovative for a small car dealership or food processor. (Kern, 2006) Figure : Innovation space Sustaining or Disruptive Quite a lot of innovations involve a discontinuous shift but very few bring something completely new which changes a market conditions dramatically. Most of them usually are incremental. In recent time lean thinking came up in the production and service sector, which underlines the huge possibilities of continue improvements within a firm. (Kohlstedde, 2007) However this continues improvement idea is hampered through the new approach of the platform concept or robust design. This idea bases on the development of a future general design which will dominate the market as well as used by the competitor. A good example for such a robust design is the Walkman originally developed by Sony. This first design of a portable cassette and radio player system dominated the market for the whole product lifetime of cassettes. Also car makers tend to change their development process from each single model to a platform strategy. (Wallentowitz, Freialdenhove, Olschewski, 2009) The Volkswagen AG int roduced platforms which are used for different brands of the company group. This not only saves costs but also helps them to dominate the market with faster model updates and exchanges. The platform and robust design strategy of firms is a powerful way of recover the high initial investments such as Research and Development as well as market analysis. The Challenge of Discontinues improvement The common innovation process happens in a set frame, following certain rules and ways of thinking. This game played by competitors is to innovate by doing what has been done before like product- or process innovations or even position- and paradigm innovations, but doing it better. In this competition of playing the same game some firms manage to do better than others and can gain a competitive advantage through these innovations, but the set of the game is accepted and do not change. Very rare something happens that breaks up this framework and changes how the game is played. This will not happen every day but when this arises the rules and boundaries of a market change rapidly. This will result in upcoming new opportunities and challenge the existing players in their way of working, thinking and doing business. A discontinues improvement occurs out of a technological and conditions stable market, where is a long period of continuous improvements and variations around a basic product or service. The strategy, before the discontinues improvement was, doing what we do, but better. When such an innovation happens one or more of the basic conditions like technology, markets, social, regulatory etc. change rapidly. Now the time of doing different begins and the rules of the game change so the opportunity space for new innovations appears. Such a rapid technology change is happening right now with the development of LEDs in the light market. From the invention of the originally light bulb in the late nineteenth century by Edison and Swan the light market gets more and more restricted by the government. Furthermore the development of the LED light was a major step for the whole market and will influence our daily life in the future. With this upcoming technology new enterprises emerge in the market as well as the inventor Shuji Nakamura with the company Nichia Corporation. This discontinues improvement faces the market dominating companies very hard. Either they adapt to the new light technology or they will lose market share very rapidly. In the process the underlying rules of the game change and a new opportunity space for innovation opens up. Do different conditions of this kind occur, for example, when radical change takes place along the technological frontier or when completely new markets emerge. An emerging example of this could be the replacement of the incandescent light bulb originally developed in the late nineteenth century by Edison and Swan (amongst others). This may be replaced by the solid state white light emitting diode technology patented by Nichia Chemical. This technology is 85% more energy efficient, has 16 times the life of a conventional bulb, is brighter, is more flexible in application and is likely to be subject to the scale economies associated with electronic component production. In their pioneering work on this theme Abernathy and Utterback developed a model describing the pattern in terms of three distinct phases. Initially, under discontinuous conditions, there is what they term a fluid phase during which there is high uncertainty along two dimensions: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ The target what will the new configuration be and who will want it? à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ The technical how will we harness new technological knowledge to create and deliver this? No one knows what the right configuration of technological means and market needs will be and so there is extensive experimentation (accompanied by many failures) and fast learning by a range of players including many new entrepreneurial businesses. Gradually these experiments begin to converge around what they call a dominant design something which begins to set up the rules of the game. This represents a convergence around the most popular (importantly not necessarily the most technologically sophisticated or elegant) solution to the emerging configuration. At this point a bandwagon begins to roll and innovation options become increasingly channeled around a core set of possibilities what Dosi calls a technological trajectory.38 It becomes increasingly difficult to explore outside this space because entrepreneurial interest and the resources which that brings increasingly focus on possibilities within the dominant design corridor. This can apply to products or processes; in both cases the key characteristics become stabilized and experimentation moves to getting the bugs out and refining the dominant design. For example, the nineteenth-century chemical industry moved from making soda ash (an essential ingredient in making soap, glass and a host of other products) from the earliest days where it was produced by burning vegetable matter through to a sophisticated chemical reaction which was carried out on a batch process (the Leblanc process) which was one of the drivers of the Industrial Revolution. This process dominated for nearly a century but was in turn replaced by a new generation of continuous processes which used electrolytic techniques and which originated in Belgium where they were developed by the Solvay brothers. Moving to the Leblanc process or the Solvay process did not happen overnight; it took decades of work to refine and improve each process, and to fully understand the chemistry and engineering required to get consistent high quality and output. The same pattern can be seen in products. For example, the original design for a camera is something which goes back to the early nineteenth century and as a visit to any science museum will show involved all sorts of ingenious solutions. The dominant design gradually emerged with an architecture which we would recognize shutter and lens arrangement, focusing principles, back plate for film or plates, etc. But this design was then modified still further for example, with different lenses, motorized drives, flash technology and, in the case of George Eastmans work, to creating a simple and relatively idiot-proof model camera (the Box Brownie) which opened up photography to a mass market. More recent development has seen a similar fluid phase around digital imaging devices. The period in which the dominant design emerges and emphasis shifts to imitation and development around it is termed the transitional phase in the Abernathy and Utterback model. Activities move from radical concept development to more focused efforts geared around product differentiation and to delivering it reliably, cheaply, with higher quality, extended functionality, etc. As the concept matures still further so incremental innovation becomes more significant and emphasis shifts to factors like cost which means efforts within the industries which grow up around these product areas tend to focus increasingly on rationalization, on scale economies and on process innovation to drive out cost and improve productivity. Product innovation is increasingly about differentiation through customization to meet the particular needs of specific users. Abernathy and Utterback term this the specific phase.* Finally the stage is set for change the scope for innovation becomes smaller and smaller whilst outside for example, in the laboratories and imaginations of research scientists new possibilities are emerging. Eventually a new technology emerges which has the potential to challenge all the by now well-established rules and the game is disrupted. In the camera case, for example, this is happening with the advent of digital photography which is having an impact on cameras and the overall service package around how we get, keep and share our photographs. In our chemical case this is happening with biotechnology and the emergence of the possibility of no longer needing giant chemical plants but instead moving to small-scale operations using live organisms genetically engineered to produce what we need. Table 1.2 sets out the main elements of this model. Although originally developed for manufactured products the model also works for services for example the early days of Internet banking were characterized by a typically fluid phase with many options and models being offered. This gradually moved to a transitional phase, build- ing a dominant design consensus on the package of services offered, the levels and nature of security and privacy support, the interactivity of website, etc. The field has now become mature with much of the competition shifting to marginal issues like relative interest rates. The pattern can be seen in many studies and its implications for innovation management are important. In particular it helps us understand why established organizations often find it hard to deal with discontinuous change. Organizations build capabilities around a particular trajectory and those who may be strong in the later (specific) phase of an established trajectory often find it hard to move into the new one. (The example of the firms which successfully exploited the transistor in the early 1950s is a good case in point many were new ventures, sometimes started by enthusiasts in their garage, yet they rose to challenge major players in the electronics industry like Raytheon.39) This is partly a consequence of sunk costs and commitments to existing technologies and markets and partly because of psychological and institutional barriers. 40 They may respond but in slow fashion and they may make the mistake of giving responsibility for the new development to those whose current activities would be threatened by a shift.41 Importantly, the fluid or ferment phase is characterized by co-existence of old and new technologies and by rapid improvements of both.41,42 (It is here that the so-called TABLE sailing ship effect can often be observed, in which a mature technology accelerates in its rate of improvement as a response to a competing new alternative as was the case with the development of sailing ships in competition with newly emerging steamship technology.43,44 Whilst some research suggests existing incumbents do badly, we need to be careful here. Not all existing players do badly many of them are able to build on the new trajectory and deploy/leverage their accumulated knowledge, networks, skills and financial assets to enhance their competence through building on the new opportunity. 42à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚   Equally whilst it is true that new entrants often small entrepreneurial firms play a strong role in this early phase we should not forget that we see only the successful players. We need to remember that there is a strong ecological pressure on new entrants which means only the fittest or luckiest survive. It is more helpful to suggest that there is something about the ways in which innovation is managed under these conditions which poses problems. Good practice of the steady-state kind described above is helpful in the mature phase but can actively militate against the entry and success in the fluid phase of a new technology.46 How do enterprises pick up signals about changes if they take place in areas where they dont normally do research? How do they understand the needs of a market which doesnt exist yet but which will shape the eventual package which becomes the dominant design? If they talk to their existing customers the likelihood is that those customers will tend to ask for more of the same, so which new users should they talk to and how do they find them? The challenge seems to be to develop ways of managing innovation not only under steady-state but also under the highly uncertain, rapidly evolving and changing conditions which result from a dislocation or discontinuity. The kinds of organizational behaviour needed here will include things like agility, flexibility, the ability to learn fast, the lack of preconceptions about the ways in which things might evolve, etc. and these are often associated with new small firms. There are ways in which large and established players can also exhibit this kind of behaviour but it does often conflict with their normal ways of thinking and working. Extensive studies have shown the power of shifting technological boundaries in creating and transforming industry structures for example, in the case of the typewriter, the computer and the automobile. Such transformations happen relatively often no industry is immune (see Box 1.3 for an example). Worryingly the source of the technology which destabilizes an industry often comes from outside that industry. So even those large incumbent firms which take time and resources to carry out research to try and stay abreast of developments in their field may find that they are wrong-footed by the entry of something which has been developed in a different field. The massive changes in insurance and financial services which have characterized the shift to online and telephone provision were largely developed by IT professionals often working outside the original industry.6 In extreme cases we find what is often termed the not invented here NIH effect, where a firm finds out about a technology but decides against following it up because it does not fit with their perception of the industry or the likely rate and direction of its technological development. Famous examples of this include Kodaks rejection of the Polaroid process or Western Unions dismissal of Bells telephone invention. In a famous memo dated 1876 the board commented, this telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.

Unequal Education in America: Urban vs Suburban Education Essay

Unequal Education in America: Urban vs Suburban Education The gap between the nation’s best and worst public schools continues to grow. Our country is based on freedom and equality for all, yet in practice and in the spectrum of education this is rarely the case. We do not even have to step further than our own city and its public school system, which many media outlets have labeled â€Å"dysfunctional† and â€Å"in shambles.† At the same time, Montgomery County, located just northwest of the District in suburban Maryland, stands as one of the top school systems in the country. Within each of these systems, there are schools that excel and there are schools that consistently measure below average. Money alone can not erase this gap. While increased spending may help, the real problem is often rooted in the complex issues of social, cultural, and economic differences. When combined with factors involving the school itself and the institution that supports it, we arrive at what has been widely known as the divide between the suburban and urban schools. Can anything actually be done to reverse this apparent trend of inequality or are the outside factors too powerful to change? The issue of equality in education is not a new problem. In 1787, our federal government required all territories petitioning for statehood to provide free education for all citizens. As part of this requirement, every state constitution included, â€Å"an education clause, which typically called for a â€Å"thorough and efficient† or â€Å"uniform† system of public schools† (School Funding 6). Despite this requirement, a â€Å"uniform† system of schools has yet to be achieved in this country for a variety of reasons, many of which I will discuss later on. During the early part of th... ...omic background when judging students. Money will not solve or make this problem go away, no matter how many social workers are hired. Schools will succeed despite their financial circumstances if they have the basic components of motivated students, parent support, caring teachings, and strong central leadership. While this is the typical model of a suburban school system, Wilson High School proves that it can work anywhere. When ones thinks of urban public schools, overcrowded classes, underpaid teachers, and a lack of resources often come to mind. The fact is these problems can happen anywhere. While the environment at Kennedy could never be compared to the worst DC high school, the assumptions made against these schools are the same. By erasing these notions and confronting the problems one by one, we will be one step closer to reaching equal education for all.

The Diary of Anne Frank Thanks to the Nazis :: Anne Frank

The Diary of Anne Frank   Thanks to the Nazis The Diary of Anne Frank Journeying back to the early nineteenth century, when Nazi forces occupied Germany during World War II, the lives of those living in this territory was spent in constant fear and anxiety. The Diary of Anne Frank leads readers through the harsh times of a family trying to escape imprisonment in concentration camps by Nazi soldiers, where death was almost certain. Born on June 12, 1929, Anne Frank was a German-Jewish teenager who was forced to go into hiding during the Holocaust. She and her family, along with four others, spent 25 months during World War II in an annex of rooms above her father's office in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. During the two years in hiding which Anne refers to as "a time when the ideals are being shattered and destroyed, when the worst side of human nature predominates, when every one has come to doubt truth, justice and God (pg.327)." Anne kept a diary that was given to her by her father, Otto Frank, on her birthday. Between June 1942 and August 1944, from Anne's thirteenth birthday until shortly after her fifteenth birthday, Anne recorded her feelings, her emotions, and her thoughts, as well as the events that happened to her. "†¦[I]deas, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered†¦yet in spite of everything I still believe that people are rea lly good at heart (pg. 327)." The diary is an accurate record of the way Anne grows up and matures, in the unfortunate situation she found herself. Given the circumstances in which the novel is written Anne gave a very vivid description of her surroundings and the feelings she encountered throughout her ordeal. The novel displays the grief and frustration that is experienced throughout the time spent in hiding. The emotions of the situation are captured in the text and gives validity to the pain and frustration encountered. Despite the amusing and enlightening side of the diary, that documents the process of her adolescence, it also provides a vividly terrifying description of what it was like to be Jewish hiding during the time the Nazis sought to kill all the Jews in Europe. After two years of living in the "secret annex", behind a bookcase, and having to be extremely quite during the day so that the workers in the office and warehouse below could not hear them the family was captured.

Malaria Life Cycle :: essays research papers

Page 1 of 6 Life Cycle of Malaria Page 2 of 6 Malaria is an ancient disease transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito that predates recorded history. Historically it was common in the swampy areas around Rome, and was believed that the tainted air in those locations made people very sick, the disease was therefore named malaria for the Latin root words bad air. Malaria is caused by small parasitic protozoa of the genus Plasmodium which infects both humans and mosquitoes in a cyclical process. It is carried by only by female mosquitoes residing in tropical and subtropical areas and is injected into unsuspecting human hosts by the bite of an infected mosquito. This particular Plasmodium is highly specific to infecting humans as we are the only vertebrates infected and the Anopheles mosquitoes are the vectors. (1). This papers main focus shall be the process by which a malarial plasmodium colonizes and infects a human host, the methods the body employs to control the infection and the continuous life cycle completed between the two hos ts. To understand any disease in humans one must first understand how it arrives into the body and what processes ensue. The following shall first describe the transmition of the disease and then the colonization that takes place. During a blood meal on a human a female mosquito must inject her saliva containing an anticoagulant agent to ensure and even flow of blood into the mouth (1). With the saliva comes malarial sporozoites which, within minutes of direct contact with the blood take an immediate route with the circulation of blood to the liver of the human (2). Research has indicated that once the sporozoites arrive in the livers sinusoidal cavities they stop their movement by using two major surface proteins, the circumsporozoite and the thormbospondin-related adhesive protein (3). Research Page 3 of 6 conducted by Pradel et al. suggests that the sporozoites use these surface proteins to attach to proteoglycans in the sinusoidal extracellular matrix to slow their travel through the liver and then bind to chondroiten and heparin sulfate proteoglycans on the Kupfer cells. The Kupfer cells then become the doorways through which the sporozoite leaves the circulatory system and enters the underlying hepatocytes. Once the sporozoites invade the hepatocytes they are protected from the immune system by a parasitophosphorous (4) vacuole that does not colocalize with the normal signals for acidifying organelles (2). Because the body doesn’t recognize the vacuole as a threat at this point it remains safely with in the hepatic cell where it will stay for 9-16 days and differentiate into haploid cells called schizont which contain nearly 30,000 compact cells called merozoites (1).

Democratic Origins and Revolutionary Writers, 1776-1820 Essay

James Fenimore Cooper (Photo courtesy Library of Congress) The hard-fought American Revolution against Britain (1775-1783) was the first modern war of liberation against a colonial power. The triumph of American independence seemed to many at the time a divine sign that America and her people were destined for greatness. Military victory fanned nationalistic hopes for a great new literature. Yet with the exception of outstanding political writing, few works of note appeared during or soon after the Revolution. American books were harshly reviewed in England. Americans were painfully aware of their excessive dependence on English literary models. The search for a native literature became a national obsession. As one American magazine editor wrote, around 1816, â€Å"Dependence is a state of degradation fraught with disgrace, and to be dependent on a foreign mind for what we can ourselves produce is to add to the crime of indolence the weakness of stupidity. † Cultural revolutions, unlike military revolutions, cannot be successfully imposed but must grow from the soil of shared experience. Revolutions are expressions of the heart of the people; they grow gradually out of new sensibilities and wealth of experience. It would take 50 years of accumulated history for America to earn its cultural independence and to produce the first great generation of American writers: Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. America’s literary independence was slowed by a lingering identification with England, an excessive imitation of English or classical literary models, and difficult economic and political conditions that hampered publishing. Revolutionary writers, despite their genuine patriotism, were of necessity self-conscious, and they could never find roots in their American sensibilities. Colonial writers of the revolutionary generation had been born English, had grown to maturity as English citizens, and had cultivated English modes of thought and English fashions in dress and behavior. Their parents and grandparents were English (or European), as were all their friends. Added to this, American awareness of literary fashion still lagged behind the English, and this time lag intensified American imitation. Fifty years after their fame in England, English neoclassic writers such as Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Oliver Goldsmith, and Samuel Johnson were still eagerly imitated in America. Moreover, the heady challenges of building a new nation attracted talented and educated people to politics, law, and diplomacy. These pursuits brought honor, glory, and financial security. Writing, on the other hand, did not pay. Early American writers, now separated from England, effectively had no modern publishers, no audience, and no adequate legal protection. Editorial assistance, distribution, and publicity were rudimentary. Until 1825, most American authors paid printers to publish their work. Obviously only the leisured and independently wealthy, like Washington Irving and the New York Knickerbocker group, or the group of Connecticut poets known as the Hartford Wits, could afford to indulge their interest in writing. The exception, Benjamin Franklin, though from a poor family, was a printer by trade and could publish his own work. Charles Brockden Brown was more typical. The author of several interesting Gothic romances, Brown was the first American author to attempt to live from his writing. But his short life ended in poverty. The lack of an audience was another problem. The small cultivated audience in America wanted well-known European authors, partly out of the exaggerated respect with which former colonies regarded their previous rulers. This preference for English works was not entirely unreasonable, considering the inferiority of American output, but it worsened the situation by depriving American authors of an audience. Only journalism offered financial remuneration, but the mass audience wanted light, undemanding verse and short topical essays — not long or experimental work. The absence of adequate copyright laws was perhaps the clearest cause of literary stagnation. American printers pirating English best-sellers understandably were unwilling to pay an American author for unknown material. The unauthorized reprinting of foreign books was originally seen as a service to the colonies as well as a source of profit for printers like Franklin, who reprinted works of the classics and great European books to educate the American public. Printers everywhere in America followed his lead. There are notorious examples of pirating. Matthew Carey, an important American publisher, paid a London agent — a sort of literary spy — to send copies of unbound pages, or even proofs, to him in fast ships that could sail to America in a month. Carey’s men would sail out to meet the incoming ships in the harbor and speed the pirated books  into print using typesetters who divided the book into sections and worked in shifts around the clock. Such a pirated English book could be reprinted in a day and placed on the shelves for sale in American bookstores almost as fast as in England. Because imported authorized editions were more expensive and could not compete with pirated ones, the copyright situation damaged foreign authors such as Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens, along with American authors. But at least the foreign authors had already been paid by their original publishers and were already well known. Americans such as James Fenimore Cooper not only failed to receive adequate payment, but they had to suffer seeing their works pirated under their noses. Cooper’s first successful book, The Spy (1821), was pirated by four different printers within a month of its appearance. Ironically, the copyright law of 1790, which allowed pirating, was nationalistic in intent. Drafted by Noah Webster, the great lexicographer who later compiled an American dictionary, the law protected only the work of American authors; it was felt that English writers should look out for themselves. Bad as the law was, none of the early publishers were willing to have it changed because it proved profitable for them. Piracy starved the first generation of revolutionary American writers; not surprisingly, the generation after them produced even less work of merit. The high point of piracy, in 1815, corresponds with the low point of American writing. Nevertheless, the cheap and plentiful supply of pirated foreign books and classics in the first 50 years of the new country did educate Americans, including the first great writers, who began to make their appearance around 1825. THE AMERICAN ENLIGHTENMENT The 18th-century American Enlightenment was a movement marked by an emphasis on rationality rather than tradition, scientific inquiry instead of unquestioning religious dogma, and representative government in place of monarchy. Enlightenment thinkers and writers were devoted to the ideals of justice, liberty, and equality as the natural rights of man. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Benjamin Franklin, whom the Scottish philosopher David Hume called America’s â€Å"first great man of letters,† embodied the Enlightenment ideal of humane rationality. Practical yet idealistic, hard-working and enormously successful, Franklin recorded his early life in his famous Autobiography. Writer, printer, publisher, scientist, philanthropist, and diplomat, he was the most famous and respected private figure of his time. He was the first great self-made man in America, a poor democrat born in an aristocratic age that his fine example helped to liberalize. Franklin was a second-generation immigrant. His Puritan father, a chandler (candle-maker), came to Boston, Massachusetts, from England in 1683. In many ways Franklin’s life illustrates the impact of the Enlightenment on a gifted individual. Self-educated but well-read in John Locke, Lord Shaftesbury, Joseph Addison, and other Enlightenment writers, Franklin learned from them to apply reason to his own life and to break with tradition — in particular the old-fashioned Puritan tradition — when it threatened to smother his ideals. While a youth, Franklin taught himself languages, read widely, and practiced writing for the public. When he moved from Boston to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Franklin already had the kind of education associated with the upper classes. He also had the Puritan capacity for hard, careful work, constant self-scrutiny, and the desire to better himself. These qualities steadily propelled him to wealth, respectability, and honor. Never selfish, Franklin tried to help other ordinary people become successful by sharing his insights and initiating a characteristically American genre — the self-help book. Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack, begun in 1732 and published for many years, made Franklin prosperous and well-known throughout the colonies. In this annual book of useful encouragement, advice, and factual information, amusing characters such as old Father Abraham and Poor Richard exhort the reader in pithy, memorable sayings. In â€Å"The Way to Wealth,† which originally appeared in the Almanack, Father Abraham, â€Å"a plain clean old Man, with white Locks,† quotes Poor Richard at length. â€Å"A Word to the Wise is enough,† he says. â€Å"God helps them that help themselves. † â€Å"Early to Bed, and early to rise, makes a Man healthy, wealthy, and wise. † Poor Richard is a psychologist (â€Å"Industry pays Debts, while Despair encreaseth them†), and he always counsels hard work (â€Å"Diligence is the Mother of Good Luck†). Do not be lazy, he advises, for â€Å"One To-day is worth two tomorrow. â€Å"Sometimes he creates anecdotes to illustrate his points: â€Å"A little Neglect may breed great Mischief†¦. For want of a Nail the Shoe was lost; for want of a Shoe the Horse was lost; and for want of a Horse the Rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the Enemy, all for want of Care about a Horse-shoe Nail. † Franklin was a genius at compressing a moral point: â€Å"What maintains one Vice, would bring up two Children. † â€Å"A small leak will sink a great Ship. † â€Å"Fools make Feasts, and wise Men eat them. † Franklin’s Autobiography is, in part, another self-help book. Written to advise his son, it covers only the early years. The most famous section describes his scientific scheme of self- improvement. Franklin lists 13 virtues: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility. He elaborates on each with a maxim; for example, the temperance maxim is â€Å"Eat not to Dullness. Drink not to Elevation. † A pragmatic scientist, Franklin put the idea of perfectibility to the test, using himself as the experimental subject. To establish good habits, Franklin invented a reusable calendrical record book in which he worked on one virtue each week, recording each lapse with a black spot. His theory prefigures psychological behaviorism, while his systematic method of notation anticipates modern behavior modification. The project of self-improvement blends the Enlightenment belief in perfectibility with the Puritan habit of moral self-scrutiny. Franklin saw early that writing could best advance his ideas, and he therefore deliberately perfected his supple prose style, not as an end in itself but as a tool. â€Å"Write with the learned. Pronounce with the vulgar,† he advised. A scientist, he followed the Royal (scientific) Society’s 1667 advice to use â€Å"a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expressions, clear senses, a native easiness, bringing all things as near the mathematical plainness as they can. † Despite his prosperity and fame, Franklin never lost his democratic sensibility, and he was an important figure at the 1787 convention at which the U. S. Constitution was drafted. In his later years, he was president of an antislavery association. One of his last efforts was to promote universal public education. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur (1735-1813) Another Enlightenment figure is Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, whose Letters from an American Farmer (1782) gave Europeans a glowing idea of opportunities for peace, wealth, and pride in America. Neither an American nor a farmer, but a French aristocrat who owned a plantation outside New York City before the Revolution, Crevecoeur enthusiastically praised the colonies for their industry, tolerance, and growing prosperity in 12 letters that depict America as an agrarian paradise — a vision that would inspire Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and many other writers up to the present. Crevecoeur was the earliest European to develop a considered view of America and the new American character. The first to exploit the â€Å"melting pot† image of America, in a famous passage he asks: What then is the American, this new man? He is either a European, or the descendant of a European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations†¦. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause changes in the world. THE POLITICAL PAMPHLET: Thomas Paine (1737-1809) The passion of Revolutionary literature is found in pamphlets, the most popular form of political literature of the day. Over 2,000 pamphlets were published during the Revolution. The pamphlets thrilled patriots and threatened loyalists; they filled the role of drama, as they were often read aloud in public to excite audiences. American soldiers read them aloud in their camps; British Loyalists threw them into public bonfires. Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense sold over 100,000 copies in the first three months of its publication. It is still rousing today. â€Å"The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind,† Paine wrote, voicing the idea of American exceptionalism still strong in the United States — that in some fundamental sense, since America is a democratic experiment and a country theoretically open to all immigrants, the fate of America foreshadows the fate of humanity at large. Political writings in a democracy had to be clear to appeal to the voters. And to have informed voters, universal education was promoted by many of the founding fathers. One indication of the vigorous, if simple, literary life was the proliferation of newspapers. More newspapers were read in America during the Revolution than anywhere else in the world. Immigration also mandated a simple style. Clarity was vital to a newcomer, for whom English might be a second language. Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence is clear and logical, but his committee’s modifications made it even simpler. The Federalist Papers, written in support of the Constitution, are also lucid, logical arguments, suitable for debate in a democratic nation. NEOCLASSISM: EPIC, MOCK EPIC, AND SATIRE Unfortunately, â€Å"literary† writing was not as simple and direct as political writing. When trying to write poetry, most educated authors stumbled into the pitfall of elegant neoclassicism. The epic, in particular, exercised a fatal attraction. American literary patriots felt sure that the great American Revolution naturally would find expression in the epic — a long, dramatic narrative poem in elevated language, celebrating the feats of a legendary hero. Many writers tried but none succeeded. Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), one of the group of writers known as the Hartford Wits, is an example. Dwight, who eventually became the president of Yale University, based his epic, The Conquest of Canaan (1785), on the Biblical story of Joshua’s struggle to enter the Promised Land. Dwight cast General Washington, commander of the American army and later the first president of the United States, as Joshua in his allegory and borrowed the couplet form that Alexander Pope used to translate Homer. Dwight’s epic was as boring as it was ambitious. English critics demolished it; even Dwight’s friends, such as John Trumbull (1750-1831), remained unenthusiastic. So much thunder and lightning raged in the melodramatic battle scenes that Trumbull proposed that the epic be provided with lightning rods. Not surprisingly, satirical poetry fared much better than serious verse. The mock epic genre encouraged American poets to use their natural voices and did not lure them into a bog of pretentious and predictable patriotic sentiments and faceless conventional poetic epithets out of the Greek poet Homer and the Roman poet Virgil by way of the English poets. In mock epics like John Trumbull’s good-humored M’Fingal (1776-82), stylized emotions and conventional turns of phrase are ammunition for good satire, and the bombastic oratory of the revolution is itself ridiculed. Modeled on the British poet Samuel Butler’s Hudibras, the mock epic derides a Tory, M’Fingal. It is often pithy, as when noting of condemned criminals facing hanging: No man e’er felt the halter draw With good opinion of the law. M’Fingal went into over 30 editions, was reprinted for a half-century, and was appreciated in England as well as America. Satire appealed to Revolutionary audiences partly because it contained social comment and criticism, and political topics and social problems were the main subjects of the day. The first American comedy to be performed, The Contrast (produced 1787) by Royall Tyler (1757-1826), humorously contrasts Colonel Manly, an American officer, with Dimple, who imitates English fashions. Naturally, Dimple is made to look ridiculous. The play introduces the first Yankee character, Jonathan. Another satirical work, the novel Modern Chivalry, published by Hugh Henry Brackenridge in installments from 1792 to 1815, memorably lampoons the excesses of the age. Brackenridge (1748- 1816), a Scottish immigrant raised on the American frontier, based his huge, picaresque novel on Don Quixote; it describes the misadventures of Captain Farrago and his stupid, brutal, yet appealingly human, servant Teague O’Regan. POET OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION: Philip Freneau (1752-1832). One poet, Philip Freneau, incorporated the new stirrings of European Romanticism and escaped the imitativeness and vague universality of the Hartford Wits. The key to both his success and his failure was his passionately democratic spirit combined with an inflexible temper. The Hartford Wits, all of them undoubted patriots, reflected the general cultural conservatism of the educated classes. Freneau set himself against this holdover of old Tory attitudes, complaining of â€Å"the writings of an aristocratic, speculating faction at Hartford, in favor of monarchy and titular distinctions. â€Å"Although Freneau received a fine education and was as well acquainted with the classics as any Hartford Wit, he embraced liberal and democratic causes. From a Huguenot (radical French Protestant) background, Freneau fought as a militiaman during the Revolutionary War. In 1780, he was captured and imprisoned in two British ships, where he almost died before his family managed to get him released. His poem â€Å"The British Prison Ship† is a bitter condemnation of the cruelties of the British, who wished â€Å"to stain the world with gore. † This piece and other revolutionary works, including â€Å"Eutaw Springs,† â€Å"American Liberty,† â€Å"A Political Litany,† â€Å"A Midnight Consultation,† and â€Å"George the Third’s Soliloquy,† brought him fame as the â€Å"Poet of the American Revolution. † Freneau edited a number of journals during his life, always mindful of the great cause of democracy. When Thomas Jefferson helped him establish the militant, anti-Federalist National Gazette in 1791, Freneau became the first powerful, crusading newspaper editor in America, and the literary predecessor of William Cullen Bryant, William Lloyd Garrison, and H.L. Mencken. As a poet and editor, Freneau adhered to his democratic ideals. His popular poems, published in newspapers for the average reader, regularly celebrated American subjects. â€Å"The Virtue of Tobacco† concerns the indigenous plant, a mainstay of the southern economy, while â€Å"The Jug of Rum† celebrates the alcoholic drink of the West Indies, a crucial commodity of early American trade and a major New World export. Common American characters lived in â€Å"The Pilot of Hatteras,† as well as in poems about quack doctors and bombastic evangelists. Freneau commanded a natural and colloquial style appropriate to a genuine democracy, but he could also rise to refined neoclassic lyricism in often-anthologized works such as â€Å"The Wild Honeysuckle† (1786), which evokes a sweet-smelling native shrub. Not until the â€Å"American Renaissance† that began in the 1820s would American poetry surpass the heights that Freneau had scaled 40 years earlier. Additional groundwork for later literary achievement was laid during the early years. Nationalism inspired publications in many fields, leading to a new appreciation of things American. Noah Webster (1758-1843) devised an American Dictionary, as well as an important reader and speller for the schools. His Spelling Book sold more than 100 million copies over the years. Updated Webster’s dictionaries are still standard today. The American Geography, by Jedidiah Morse, another landmark reference work, promoted knowledge of the vast and expanding American land itself. Some of the most interesting if nonliterary writings of the period are the journals of frontiersmen and explorers such as Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and  Zebulon Pike (1779-1813), who wrote accounts of expeditions across the Louisiana Territory, the vast portion of the North American continent that Thomas Jefferson purchased from Napoleon in 1803. WRITERS OF FICTION. The first important fiction writers widely recognized today, Charles Brockden Brown, Washington Irving, and James Fenimore Cooper, used American subjects, historical perspectives, themes of change, and nostalgic tones. They wrote in many prose genres, initiated new forms, and found new ways to make a living through literature. With them, American literature began to be read and appreciated in the United States and abroad. Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) Already mentioned as the first professional American writer, Charles Brockden Brown was inspired by the English writers Mrs. Radcliffe and English William Godwin. (Radcliffe was known for her terrifying Gothic novels; a novelist and social reformer, Godwin was the father of Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein and married English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. ) Driven by poverty, Brown hastily penned four haunting novels in two years: Wieland (1798), Arthur Mervyn (1799), Ormond (1799), and Edgar Huntley (1799). In them, he developed the genre of American Gothic. The Gothic novel was a popular genre of the day featuring exotic and wild settings, disturbing psychological depth, and much suspense. Trappings included ruined castles or abbeys, ghosts, mysterious secrets, threatening figures, and solitary maidens who survive by their wits and spiritual strength. At their best, such novels offer tremendous suspense and hints of magic, along with profound explorations of the human soul in extremity. Critics suggest that Brown’s Gothic sensibility expresses deep anxieties about the inadequate social institutions of the new nation. Brown used distinctively American settings. A man of ideas, he dramatized scientific theories, developed a personal theory of fiction, and championed high literary standards despite personal poverty. Though flawed, his works are darkly powerful. Increasingly, he is seen as the precursor of romantic writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. He expresses subconscious fears that the outwardly optimistic Enlightenment period drove underground. Washington Irving (1789-1859). The youngest of 11 children born to a well-to-do New York merchant family, Washington Irving became a cultural and diplomatic ambassador to Europe, like Benjamin Franklin and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Despite his talent, he probably would not have become a full-time professional writer, given the lack of financial rewards, if a series of fortuitous incidents had not thrust writing as a profession upon him. Through friends, he was able to publish his Sketch Book (1819-1820) simultaneously in England and America, obtaining copyrights and payment in both countries. The Sketch Book of Geoffrye Crayon (Irving’s pseudonym) contains his two best remembered stories, â€Å"Rip Van Winkle† and â€Å"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. † â€Å"Sketch† aptly describes Irving’s delicate, elegant, yet seemingly casual style, and â€Å"crayon† suggests his ability as a colorist or creator of rich, nuanced tones and emotional effects. In the Sketch Book, Irving transforms the Catskill Mountains along the Hudson River north of New York City into a fabulous, magical region. American readers gratefully accepted Irving’s imagined â€Å"history† of the Catskills, despite the fact (unknown to them) that he had adapted his stories from a German source. Irving gave America something it badly needed in the brash, materialistic early years: an imaginative way of relating to the new land. No writer was as successful as Irving at humanizing the land, endowing it with a name and a face and a set of legends. The story of â€Å"Rip Van Winkle,† who slept for 20 years, waking to find the colonies had become independent, eventually became folklore. It was adapted for the stage, went into the oral tradition, and was gradually accepted as authentic American legend by generations of Americans. Irving discovered and helped satisfy the raw new nation’s sense of history. His numerous works may be seen as his devoted attempts to build the new nation’s soul by recreating history and giving it living, breathing, imaginative life. For subjects, he chose the most dramatic aspects of American history: the discovery of the New World, the first president and national hero, and the westward exploration. His earliest work was a sparkling, satirical History of New York (1809) under the Dutch, ostensibly written by Diedrich Knickerbocker (hence the name of Irving’s friends and New York writers of the day, the â€Å"Knickerbocker School†). James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) James Fenimore Cooper, like Irving, evoked a sense of the past and gave it a local habitation and a name. In Cooper, though, one finds the powerful myth of a golden age and the poignance of its loss. While Irving and other American writers before and after him scoured Europe in search of its legends, castles, and great themes, Cooper grasped the essential myth of America: that it was timeless, like the wilderness. American history was a trespass on the eternal; European history in America was a reenactment of the fall in the Garden of Eden. The cyclical realm of nature was glimpsed only in the act of destroying it: The wilderness disappeared in front of American eyes, vanishing before the oncoming pioneers like a mirage. This is Cooper’s basic tragic vision of the ironic destruction of the wilderness, the new Eden that had attracted the colonists in the first place. Personal experience enabled Cooper to write vividly of the transformation of the wilderness and of other subjects such as the sea and the clash of peoples from different cultures. The son of a Quaker family, he grew up on his father’s remote estate at Otsego Lake (now Cooperstown) in central New York State. Although this area was relatively peaceful during Cooper’s boyhood, it had once been the scene of an Indian massacre. Young Fenimore Cooper grew up in an almost feudal environment. His father, Judge Cooper, was a landowner and leader. Cooper saw frontiersmen and Indians at Otsego Lake as a boy; in later life, bold white settlers intruded on his land. Natty Bumppo, Cooper’s renowned literary character, embodies his vision of the frontiersman as a gentleman, a Jeffersonian â€Å"natural aristocrat. † Early in 1823, in The Pioneers, Cooper had begun to discover Bumppo. Natty is the first famous frontiersman in American literature and the literary forerunner of countless cowboy and backwoods heroes. He is the idealized, upright individualist who is better than the society he protects. Poor and isolated, yet pure, he is a touchstone for ethical values and prefigures Herman Melville’s Billy Budd and Mark Twain’s Huck Finn. Based in part on the real life of American pioneer Daniel Boone — who was a Quaker like Cooper — Natty Bumppo, an outstanding woodsman like Boone, was a peaceful man adopted by an Indian tribe. Both Boone and the fictional Bumppo loved nature and freedom. They constantly kept moving west to escape the oncoming settlers they had guided into the wilderness, and they became legends in their own lifetimes. Natty is also chaste, high-minded, and deeply spiritual: He is the Christian knight of medieval romances transposed to the virgin forest and rocky soil of America. The unifying thread of the five novels collectively known as the Leather-Stocking Tales is the life of Natty Bumppo. Cooper’s finest achievement, they constitute a vast prose epic with the North American continent as setting, Indian tribes as characters, and great wars and westward migration as social background. The novels bring to life frontier America from 1740 to 1804. Cooper’s novels portray the successive waves of the frontier settlement: the original wilderness inhabited by Indians; the arrival of the first whites as scouts, soldiers, traders, and frontiersmen; the coming of the poor, rough settler families; and the final arrival of the middle class, bringing the first professionals — the judge, the physician, and the banker. Each incoming wave displaced the earlier: Whites displaced the Indians, who retreated westward; the â€Å"civilized† middle classes who erected schools, churches, and jails displaced the lower-class individualistic frontier folk, who moved further west, in turn displacing the Indians who had preceded them. Cooper evokes the endless, inevitable wave of settlers, seeing not only the gains but the losses. Cooper’s novels reveal a deep tension between the lone individual and society, nature and culture, spirituality and organized religion. In Cooper, the natural world and the Indian are fundamentally good — as is the highly civilized realm associated with his most cultured characters. Intermediate characters are often suspect, especially greedy, poor white settlers who are too uneducated or unrefined to appreciate nature or culture. Like Rudyard Kipling, E. M. Forster, Herman Melville, and other sensitive observers of widely varied cultures interacting with each other, Cooper was a cultural relativist. He understood that no culture had a monopoly on virtue or refinement. Cooper accepted the American condition while Irving did not. Irving addressed the American setting as a European might have — by importing and adapting European legends, culture, and history. Cooper took the process a step farther. He created American settings and new, distinctively American characters and themes. He was the first to sound the recurring tragic note in American fiction. WOMEN AND MINORITIES Although the colonial period produced several women writers of note, the revolutionary era did not further the work of women and minorities, despite the many schools, magazines, newspapers, and literary clubs that were springing up. Colonial women such as Anne Bradstreet, Anne Hutchinson, Ann Cotton, and Sarah Kemble Knight exerted considerable social and literary influence in spite of primitive conditions and dangers; of the 18 women who came to America on the ship Mayflower in 1620, only four survived the first year. When every able-bodied person counted and conditions were fluid, innate talent could find expression. But as cultural institutions became formalized in the new republic, women and minorities gradually were excluded from them. Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753-1784) Given the hardships of life in early America, it is ironic that some of the best poetry of the period was written by an exceptional slave woman. The first African-American author of importance in the United States, Phillis Wheatley was born in Africa and brought to Boston, Massachusetts, when she was about seven, where she was purchased by the pious and wealthy tailor John Wheatley to be a companion for his wife. The Wheatleys recognized Phillis’s remarkable inte.

Quocirca Insight Report: Operations Management in UK Financial Services

QUOCIRCA INSIGHT REPORT November 2007 Contacts: Sharon Crawford Quocirca Ltd Tel +44 7989 243830 sharon/[email  protected] com Operations Management in UK Financial Services How effectively is technology being applied to help to monitor and improve operations performance? The extremely competitive nature of the financial services industry today and the changing landscape of customer expectations and their approach to investing in financial products, puts an onus on suppliers to consider how well they are dealing with new and existing customers’ business transactions. Much is written about the frontline call centre operations, but this report focuses on the back office activities, the operational area where complex applications and enquiries are processed. This research investigates how technology is being applied to manage and improve operations. ? Operations management is a critical business task contributing significantly to the overall performance of financial services companies Over 90% of UK financial services companies set and publish operational targets. Reducing processing times and costs are targeted alongside measuring the quality of work done. Production Management methodologies such as Lean and Six Sigma are being applied extensively to manage work throughput. The UK has embraced the use of specific operations management systems 85% of UK financial services companies report having specific systems in place to support operations management. Reporting, document and process management tools and to a lesser extent, staff forecasting and scheduling applications are all components of such systems. Such systems have had an impact on improved operations The survey shows that introducing operations management systems has led to improved customer service, reduced costs and better staff utilisation. However, despite a reasonable degree of satisfaction with such systems, there is room for improvement. Also, although staff attitudes should be important, motivation and staff satisfaction levels have shown lower levels of improvement. Real ime visibility of work is vital Visibility of who is doing what at any point in time, with the ability to reallocate work during the day, is stated as being very important to effective operations management but this is not always an integral part of the operations management system. Although continuous improvement to operations management performance is desired, obstacles do exist. The survey found that staff resistance to change and to being monitored, competing demands of other revenue generating priorities and dealing with legislation, were all di fficulties faced when trying to introduce initiatives to improve operations. Against this, establishing a return on investment (ROI) for operations management improvements can be difficult. Many systems in place today are based on client/server technologies but there is desire to move toward pure web applications This opens the door for Software as a Service offerings (SaaS). However, SaaS is not perceived as a way to support operations management systems. Is this because there are genuine doubts about SaaS or due to a lack of understanding of the potential benefits of the SaaS model? Bob Tarzey Quocirca Ltd Tel +44 1753 855794 ob. [email  protected] com ? ? REPORT NOTE: This report has been written independently by Quocirca Ltd to address certain issues found in today’s organisations. The report draws on Quocirca’s extensive knowledge of the technology and business arenas, and provides advice on the approach that organisations should take to create a more effective and efficient environment for future growth. During the preparation of this re port, Quocirca has spoken to a number of suppliers and customers involved in the areas covered. We are grateful for their time and insights. ? ? ? Conclusions Operations management is a complex area to which to apply technology. Control and continuous improvement require effective matching of a variety of tasks and timing with resource and skills. The investment needed to put detailed applications in place is significant but has been found to be effective in many organisations that have done so. There is potential to improve further by using systems that allow real-time visibility of the progress of dealing with customers’ business. An independent study by Quocirca Ltd. www. quocirca. com Operations Management in Financial Services Page 2 Introduction Performance Management in the financial services industry is vital and well supported by the suites of Corporate Performance Management software that enable these companies to budget, plan and report in an accurate and timely fashion. Underpinning successful performance management is the need for predictable and controllable day to day operations management, both front and back office. Much has been written in the media about the use of tools to achieve this in call centres in businesses today. This report is based on research was carried out to investigate the extent to which software applications are used to monitor and measure the effectiveness of handling customer business – focusing on the back office operations and specifically addressing organisations in the UK. attempting to include some measurements of the costs of rework, (figure 2). Figure – 2 Do organisations attempt to quantify and measure business value of perational measures? 0% Reduced Costs Number of complaints Customer Response times Staff utilisation Staff satisfaction Re-work Detailed quantifiable measures None, but plan to Other Some measures Not directly related 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Operations Management is a critical business task All the organisations that were interviewed set and publish achievement metrics against customer service level agreements, with 93% setting different targets for different types of customers. 5% of organisations interviewed set and publish performance levels against targets for operational staff and use both team and individual measurements although monitoring individual performance is more difficult and given a lower degree of importance. It is interesting to note the types of measures that are used and the research found that there is an increasing focus on measuring the quality of work alongside the expected measures of costs and speed of processing work (figure 1). Figure – 1 There is some weight given to measuring staff satisfaction and linking this to financial returns for the business. Quocirca believes that it is important to consider the impact of systems on staff satisfaction and that any attempt to apply technology to improve operations management should take account of the way in which the system impacts on the staff dealing with customer business. Production control and continuous improvement Operations management is often associated with production of physical goods and methodologies such as lean and six sigma are used to address quality and efficiency improvements. These approaches study the work stations, the efficiencies of moving work from one to the other, space and time improvements and so on. The philosophies can arguably be applied to moving paperwork through an office, each work station being a person with specific skills. Quocirca tested this with the Operations Managers in the survey and a surprising 100% say they operate a philosophy of continuous improvement, with 66% using either lean or six sigma approaches. Use of these methodologies has changed since they were first introduced by Frederick Taylor, when employees were often considered to be a liability, with organisations applying streamlining and lean manufacturing principles to keep employee costs down. The approach to increasing productivity was based on a carrot and stick approach reward success, punish failure – together with making the tasks quite granular so that individuals could become extremely quick and skilled at a limited set of tasks. Today employees are considered to be assets – the only appreciating asset in many organisations. Organisations use words like engagement, empowerment and job satisfaction when talking about their approach to employee productivity. And in general, although it is easy to forget that this is not true of all employees, staff do like to feel that they can add value and participate in decisions that may affect them. Gaining the buy-in of employees is an important factor when introducing systems to monitor staff productivity and the quality of work being done. Prioritisation of operational factors measured 0% Quality/error rates Time taken for a process Cost of processing No of complaints Speed of response 5 – Most important 4 3 2 1 – Least important 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Although quality of work is ranked as being of the highest priority, the performance targets set for both team and individual measurement still put productivity above measurements of quality and good customer service. This could be because productivity is easier to monitor or because, in reality, cost measurements are associated with the level of work throughput. Measuring staff satisfaction is given a much lower priority in general, with only 24% of organisations stating that this measurement is very important for teams, 11% for individuals. There is evidence however, that organisations are aware of the costs of re-work and of handling customer complaints. When asked about establishing a return on investment for operations management systems, many organisations are  © 2007 Quocirca Ltd www. quocirca. com September 2007 Operations Management in Financial Services Page 3 Use of software applications 85% of those interviewed have specific applications to measure and monitor operations with over 80% expressing that these systems are satisfactory or very satisfactory. Some shortfalls were noted which included the difficulties in monitoring individual performance and in measuring the qualitative aspects of work. Those that have these specific applications report significant improvements (figure 3) but it is surprising that the use of an application does not have a more far reaching impact, despite being considered to be successful. Figure – 3 Figure – 5 How important is it to: 0% Know, at any point in time, who is doing what? Reallocate work during the day? 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 5 – Very important 4 3 2 – Not important at all Impact of operations management system on: 0% Improved customer service Reduced operational costs Enhanced quality of applications Improved staff utilisation Improved staff motivation Major Impact Some Impact No Impact 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% This is likely to require specific systems focused on defining the steps involved in a process and then measuring throughput, over and above the use of standard BI (business intelligence) tools to measure the overall metrics of work throughput. Obstacles to improving operations Despite the high level of importance that this survey found was attributed to operations management improvements, and to investing in specific systems to enable this, obstacles do exist, notably: ? staff resistance to change and to being monitored ? other priorities in the organisation which included dealing with legislation and responding to introduction of new revenue generating products ? establishing an ROI. Figure – 6 It is perhaps the complexity of what actually comprises such an application – which includes management information systems (MIS), document and process management as well as scheduling and forecasting capabilities. Quocirca believes that it is complex to bring such technologies together into a comprehensive application supporting the full requirements of operations and there is room for those vendors that focus on specific elements to develop a purpose built product to support operations management. Figure – 4 What are the main obstacles to improving operations management? 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Essential components of an operations management solution 0% Management information system Document management Workload scheduling Staff forecasting Process management 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Staff resistance to being monitored/measured Staff resistance to change Establishing an ROI Other priorities in organisation Major problem Somewhat of a problem Minor problem Not a problem Technology usage 4 3 2 1 – Not important 5 – Very important Real-time visibility of work Applying production management techniques to work throughput should mean that it is possible to know exactly where a piece of work is at any time. The key issue is whether this would apply to tracking a piece of customer business, be that an application for a new product or a query or claim against a product. The survey found that having real-time visibility of work and being able to re-allocate to the appropriate person was important. This may mean an overhead of logging individual actions on an operations management system, but it is clear that this is perceived as beneficial.  © 2007 Quocirca Ltd The operations management systems in use today are predominantly client/server (61%) but when asked what technology would be expected to be in use in two years’ time, there was a shift to pure web technology (91%). Respondents were also asked about hosted offerings either as pure hosted or as software as a service (SaaS). Neither of these was perceived to be important to operations management delivery today or in two years’ time. Technically there is nothing to prevent the move to SaaS applications and it could be a lack of awareness of what the benefits of SaaS are, that produced this response. However, it is likely that operations is perceived as very specific to each financial services organisation and that this would put it behind other areas of the business in the move to SaaS technologies. September 2007 www. quocirca. com Operations Management in Financial Services Page 4 Interview Sample Distribution The information presented in this report was derived from 75 interviews with senior IT influencers and Operations Managers completed in May 2007. It was important to get an even balance of views so 46% of the respondents were directly involved in operations management with 54% representing the IT function. The sizes of the organisations contacted, selected by the number of employees to be a representative sample of UK Financial Services organisations, were 5000+ employees, 57% ; 1000 – 5000 employees, 43%. The Financial Services organisations were spread over Insurance and Assurance, Retail and Investment Banking, Pensions and Building Societies. About eg eg is the leading provider of Operations Management solutions that form a rapid performance improvement programme to Improve Customer Service Delivery. Operations Management improvements are made through the deployment of two core products/services: ? ? Proprietary operational intelligence software packages Training and development for Managers and Team Leaders in Production management methodology g’s proprietary software package eg operational intelligence ® including eg work manager ® has been developed and refined over the last 15 years and form a comprehensive work, resource and performance reporting tool. It enables clients to gather information about the key factors affecting performance and, using eg’s operational management techniques identify appropriate decisions and actions that improve efficiency and redu ce costs within weeks. When implemented with the eg principles of operational management ® methodology, eg operational intelligence ® provides the opportunity for eg’s clients to double their productivity and dramatically improve customer service levels almost immediately. It also forms a foundation for continuous improvements in subsequent years. For more information, please contact: Sophie Goodwin Spreckley Partners Ltd T: +44 (0)20 7388 9988 E: [email  protected] co. uk About Quocirca Quocirca is a primary research and analysis company specialising in the business impact of information technology and communications (ITC). With world-wide, native language reach, Quocirca provides in-depth insights into the views of buyers and influencers in large, mid-sized and small organisations. Through researching perceptions, Quocirca uncovers the real hurdles to technology adoption – the personal and political aspects of an organisation’s environment and the pressures of the need for demonstrable business value in any implementation. This capability to uncover and report back on the end-user perceptions in the market enables Quocirca to advise on the realities of technology adoption, not the promises. Sponsorship of specific studies by such organisations allows much of Quocirca’s research to be placed into the public domain at no cost. Quocirca’s independent culture and the real-world experience of Quocirca’s analysts ensure that our research and analysis is always objective, accurate and challenging. Quocirca reports are freely available to everyone and may be requested via www. quocirca. com. Contact: Quocirca Ltd Mountbatten House Fairacres Windsor Berkshire SL4 4LE United Kingdom Tel +44 1753 754 838  © 2007 Quocirca Ltd www. quocirca. com September 2007