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Customer Relationship Management

Customer relationship management

For the archaeological concept, see cultural resource management The generally accepted purpose of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is to enable organizations to better manage their customers through the introduction of reliable systems, processes and procedures for interacting with those customers. In today's competitive business environment, a successful CRM strategy cannot be implemented by only installing and integrating a software package designed to support CRM processes. A holistic approach to CRM is vital for an effective and efficient CRM policy. This approach includes training of employees, a modification of business processes based on customers' needs and an adoption of relevant IT-systems (including soft- and maybe hardware) and/or usage of IT-Services that enable the organization or company to follow its CRM strategy. CRM-Services can even replace the acquisition of additional hardware or CRM software-licences. The term CRM is used to describe either the software or the whole business strategy (or lack of one) oriented on customer needs. The main misconception of CRM is that it is only software, instead of whole business strategy. Major areas of CRM focus on service automated processes, personal information gathering and processing, and self-service. It attempts to integrate and automate the various customer serving processes within a company.

Architecture of CRM

There are three parts of application architecture of CRM: # operational - automation to the basic business processes (marketing, sales, service) # analytical - support to analyze customer behavior, implements business intelligence alike technology # co-operational - ensures the contact with customers (phone, email, fax, web, sms, post, in person)

Operational CRM

Operational CRM means supporting the so-called "front office" business processes, which include customer contact (sales, marketing and service). Tasks resulting from these processes are forwarded to employees responsible for them, as well as the information necessary for carrying out the tasks and interfaces to back-end applications are being provided and activities with customers are being documented for further reference. Operational CRM provides the following benefits:
- Delivers personalized and efficient marketing, sales, and service through multi-channel collaboration
- Enables a 360-degree view of your customer while you are interacting with them
- Sales people and service engineers can access complete history of all customer interaction with your company, regardless of the touch point According to Gartner Group, the operational part of CRM typically involves three general areas of business:
- Sales force automation (SFA): SFA automates some of the company's critical sales and sales force management functions, for example, lead/account management, contact management, quote management, forecasting, sales administration, keeping track of customer preferences, buying habits, and demographics, as well as sales staff performance. SFA tools are designed to improve field sales productivity. Key infrastructure requirements of SFA are mobile synchronization and integrated product configuration.
- Customer service and support (CSS): CSS automates some service requests, complaints, product returns, and information requests. Traditional internal help desk and traditional inbound call-center support for customer inquiries are now evolved into the "customer interaction center" (CIC), using multiple channels (Web, phone/fax, face-to-face, kiosk, etc). Key infrastructure requirements of CSS include computer telephony integration (CTI) which provides high volume processing capability, and reliability.
- Enterprise marketing automation (EMA): EMA provides information about the business environment, including competitors, industry trends, and macroenviromental variables. It is the execution side of campaign and lead management. The intent of EMA applications is to improve marketing campaign efficiencies. Functions include demographic analysis, variable segmentation, and predictive modeling occur on the analytical (Business Intelligence) side. Integrated CRM software is often also known as "front office solutions." This is because they deal directly with the customer. Many call centers use CRM software to store all of their customer's details. When a customer calls, the system can be used to retrieve and store information relevant to the customer. By serving the customer quickly and efficiently, and also keeping all information on a customer in one place, a company aims to make cost savings, and also encourage new customers. CRM solutions can also be used to allow customers to perform their own service via a variety of communication channels. For example, you might be able to check your bank balance via your WAP phone without ever having to talk to a person, saving money for the company, and saving you time.

Analytical CRM

In analytical CRM, data gathered within operational CRM are analyzed to segment customers or to identify cross- and up-selling potential. Data collection and analysis is viewed as a continuing and iterative process. Ideally, business decisions are refined over time, based on feedback from earlier analysis and decisions. Business Intelligence offers some more functionality as separate application software.

Collaborative CRM

Collaborative CRM facilitates interactions with customers through all channels (personal, letter, fax, phone, web, e-mail) and supports co-ordination of employee teams and channels. It is a solution that brings people, processes and data together so companies can better serve and retain their customers. The data/activities can be structured, unstructured,conversational, and/or transactional in nature. Collaborative CRM provides the following benefits:
- Enables efficient productive customer interactions across all communications channels
- Enables web collaboration to reduce customer service costs
- Integrates call centers enabling multi-channel personal customer interaction
- Integrates view of the customer while interaction at the transaction level

Improving customer service

CRMs are to improve customer service. Proponents say they can improve customer service by facilitating communication in several ways:
- Provide product information, product use information, and technical assistance on web sites that are accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
- Help to identify potential problems quickly, before they occur.
- Provide a user-friendly mechanism for registering customer complaints (complaints that are not registered with the company cannot be resolved, and are a major source of customer dissatisfaction).
- Provide a fast mechanism for handling problems and complaints (complaints that are resolved quickly can increase customer satisfaction).
- Provide a fast mechanism for correcting service deficiencies (correct the problem before other customers experience the same dissatisfaction).
- Identify how each individual customer defines quality, and then design a service strategy for each customer based on these individual requirements and expectations.
- Use internet cookies to track customer interests and personalize product offerings accordingly.
- Use the Internet to engage in collaborative customization or real-time customization
- Provide a fast mechanism for managing and scheduling followup sales calls to assess post-purchase cognitive dissonance, repurchase probabilities, repurchase times, and repurchase frequencies.
- Provide a fast mechanism for managing and scheduling maintenance, repair, and on-going support (improve efficiency and effectiveness).
- Provide a mechanism to track all points of contact between a customer and the company, and do it in an integrated way so that all sources and types of contact are included, and all users of the system see the same view of the customer (reduces confusion).
- The CRM can be integrated into other cross-functional systems and thereby provide accounting and production information to customers when they want it.

Improving customer relationships

CRMs are also claimed to be able to improve customer relationships . Proponents say this is so because:
- CRM technology can track customer interests, needs, and buying habits as they progress through their life cycles, and tailor the marketing effort accordingly. This way customers get exactly what they want as they change.
- The technology can track customer product use as the product progresses through its life cycle, and tailor the service strategy accordingly. This way customers get what they need as the product ages.
- In industrial markets, the technology can be used to micro-segment the buying centre and help coordinate the conflicting and changing purchase criteria of its members.
- When any of the technology-driven improvements in customer service (mentioned above) contribute to long-term customer satisfaction, they can ensure repeat purchases, improve customer relationships, increase customer loyalty, decrease customer turnover, decrease marketing costs (associated with customer acquisition and customer “training”), increase sales revenue, and thereby increase profit margins.

Technical functionality

A CRM solution is characterised by the following functionality:
- scalability - the ability to be used on a large scale, and to be reliably expanded to whatever scale is necessary.
- multiple communication channels - the ability to interface with users via many different devices (phone, WAP, internet, etc)
- workflow - the ability to trigger a process in the backoffice system, e. g. Email Response, ...
- assignment - the ability to assign requests (Service Requests, Sales Opportunities) to a person or group.
- database - the centralised storage (in a data warehouse) of all information relevant to customer interaction
- customer privacy considerations, e.g. data encryption and the destruction of records to ensure that they are not stolen or abused

Privacy and ethical concerns

CRMs are not however considered universally good - some feel it invades customer privacy and enable coercive sales techniques due to the information companies now have on customers - see persuasion technology. However, CRM does not necessarily imply gathering new data, it can be used merely to make "better use" of data the corporation already has. But in most cases they are used to collect new data. Some argue that the most basic privacy concern is the centralised database itself, and that CRMs built this way are inherently privacy-invasive. See the commercial version of the debate over the carceral state, e.g. Total Information Awareness program of the United States federal government.

Setting up a framework for CRM

- When you start setting up your CRM segment for your business you first want to see what profile aspects you feel are relevant to your business. Which information will provide you the keys to serve your customers in the best way possible? If you can look at your financial history for this information then what would you have liked to know about your customers in the past? What would have been the effects? And what information is not useful? Being able to eliminate unwanted information is a big aspect in implementing your CRM systems
- When designing your CRM's structure, always remember who your primary customers are. You want to keep more extensive information on them because they are your high-margin customers. You can keep less extensive details on the clients you identify as “low-margin”.

CRM in Business

In this day and age the use of internet sites and specifically e-mail, in particular, are touted as less expensive communication methods, compared to traditional methods like telephone calls. This revolutionary type of service can be very helpful, but it is completely useless if you are having trouble reaching your customers. It has been determined by some major companies that the majority of clients trust other means of communication, like telephone, more than they trust e-mail. Clients, however, are not the ones to blame because it is often the manner of connecting with consumers on a personal level making them feel as though they are cherished as customers. It is up to the companies to focus on reaching every customer and developing a relationship. CRM software can run your entire business. From prospect and client contact tools to billing history and bulk email management. The CRM system allows you to maintain all customer records in one centralized location that is accessible to your entire organization through password administration. Front office systems are set up to collect data from the customers for processing into the data warehouse. The data warehouse is a back office system used to fulfill and support customer orders. All customer information is stored in the data warehouse. Back office CRM makes it possible for a company to follow sales, orders, and cancellations. Special regressions of this data can be very beneficial for the marketing division of a firm.

External links

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- [http://www.crm-a.org/ CRM Association]
- [http://www.crmblog.org/ CRM Blog] Category:Marketing category:Information technology management Category:Office and administrative support occupations category:Electronic commerce

Cultural resource management

Cultural resources management (CRM) is a branch of archaeology concerned with the identification, maintenance, and preservation of significant cultural sites in the face of threat. Other titles for CRM would be rescue or salvage excavation. Possible threats include urban development, large-scale agriculture, mining activity, looting, erosion or unsustainable visitor numbers. It also stresses the importance of heritage interpretation and presentation in communicating the value of heritage to government and the public. It has its roots in the rescue archaeology and urban archaeology undertaken throughout North America and Europe in the years surrounding World War II and the succeeding decades. Salvage projects were hasty attempts to identify and rescue archaeological remains before they were destroyed to make room for large public-works projects or other construction. In the early days of salvage archaeology, it was nearly unheard-of for a project to be delayed because of the presence of even the most fascinating cultural sites, so it behooved the salvage archaeologists to work as fast as possible. Although many sites were lost, much data was saved for posterity through these salvage efforts. In more recent decades, legislation has been passed that emphasizes the identification and protection of cultural sites, especially those on public lands. In the United States, the most notable of these laws remains the National Historic Preservation Act. The administration of President Richard Nixon was most instrumental in passing and developing this legislation, although it has been extended and elaborated upon since. These laws make it a crime to develop any federal lands without conducting a cultural resources survey in order to identify and assess any cultural sites that may be affected. In the United Kingdom, PPG 16 has been instrumental in improving the management of historic sites in the face of development.

CRM techniques

While archaeological sites remain the primary focus for most CRM archaeologists, other work such as ethnohistorical projects and public outreach also fall within their purview. A phase of evaluation is considered important in assessing the significance of a threatened site. This can comprise a desk-based study, a wide-area survey or trial trenching. In North America, survey normally includes either walking ploughed fields in 5-10 metre transects or digging shovel test pits at the same intervals. The soil from the test pits is sifted through 6 mm mesh to look for artifacts. If artifacts are found, the next stage of investigation is usually digging and sifting a spaced grid of 1 m by 1 m trenches to determine how large or significant the site is. If no significant archaeological sites are found in the impacted area, construction may proceed as planned. If potentially significant remains are found, construction may be delayed to allow for excavation and evaluation of the site or sites found within the impacted area. This is done to determine the archaeological site's true significance. If archaeologists determine the site contains important/significant cultural remains, the adverse effects on the site must be mitigated. Site mitigation can involve avoiding the site through redesigning the development or excavating only a percentage of the site. These restrictions involve any federal project involving the possible disturbance of cultural resources and can also extend to state and private developments if they involve public waterways or federal funds. If archaeologists determine the site contains highly significant cultural remains, the adverse development effects on the site must be mitigated through a structured programme that is often long and expensive. Alternatively an important site may be designated as being protected by the state so that no development at all can take place. In the United Kingdom and Canada, all forms of development, public and private, are subject to archaeological requirements, while in the United States this work can only be undertaken in federally-funded projects or those on government-owned land.

The effect of CRM

CRM has been a mixed blessing for archaeology. Preservation legislation has ensured that no valuable site will be destroyed by construction without study, but the work of CRM archaeologists is not always sound. Some academic archaeologists do not take CRM work seriously because of its emphasis on site identification and preservation rather than intensive study and analysis. CRM firms obtain contracts through a bidding process; it is not unusual for the company responsible for construction to select the bid with the lowest price estimate, regardless of the soundness of the submitted plan, though this is not always the case. The impact of CRM has been considerable; given the large amount of construction, the bulk of archaeological work in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom is conducted through CRM channels. Unfortunately, the large number of reports written on the thousands of sites dug each year are rarely published in public forums. Some initiatives, notably the [http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/project/oasis/ OASIS project] of the Archaeological Data Service in the UK, are beginning to make the reports available to everyone.

Business intelligence

The phrase business intelligence (BI) may refer to: # a set of business processes # the technology used in these processes, and # the information obtained from these processes. Organizations typically gather such information in order to assess the business environment, and cover fields such as marketing research, industry or market research, and competitor analysis. Competitive organizations accumulate business intelligence in order to gain sustainable competitive advantage, and may regard such intelligence as a valuable core competence in some instances. Persons involved in business intelligence processes may use application software and other technologies to gather, store, analyze, and provide access to data (also known as business intelligence). Some observers regard BI as the process of enhancing data into information and then into knowledge. The software aims to help people make "better" business decisions by making accurate, current, and relevant information available to them when they need it. Generally, BI-collectors glean their primary information from internal business sources. Such sources help decision-makers understand how well they have performed. Secondary sources of information include customer needs, customer decision-making processes, the competition and competitive pressures, conditions in relevant industries, and general economic, technological, and cultural trends. Each business-intelligence system has a specific goal, which derives from an organizational goal or from a vision statement. Both short-term goals (such as quarterly numbers to Wall Street) and long term goals (such as shareholder value, target industry share / size, etc) exist. Industrial espionage may provide business intelligence by using covert techniques. A gray area exists between "normal" business intelligence and industrial espionage. Some people use the term "BI" interchangeably with "briefing books" or with "executive information systems". One can regard a business intelligence system as a decision-support system (DSS). Business performance management offers software-oriented business intelligence systems that some see as a new generation of business intelligence, though most people in the field use the terms interchangeably.

History

An early reference to non-business intelligence occurs in Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Sun Tzu claims that to succeed in war, one should have full knowledge of one's own strengths and weaknesses and full knowledge of one's enemy's strengths and weaknesses. Lack of either one might result in defeat. A certain school of thought draws parallels between the challenges in business and those of war, specifically:
- collecting data
- discerning patterns and meaning in the data (generating information)
- responding to the resultant information Prior to the start of the Information Age in the late 20th century, businesses sometimes took the trouble to struggle to collect data from non-automated sources. Businesses then lacked the computing resources to properly analyze the data, and often made commercial decisions primarily on the basis of intuition. As businesses started automating more and more systems, more and more data became available. However, collection remained a challenge due to a lack of infrastructure for data exchange or to incompatibilities between systems. Reports on the data gathered sometimes took months to generate. Such reports allowed informed long-term strategic decision-making. However, short-term tactical decision-making continued to rely on intuition. In modern businesses, increasing standards, automation, and technologies have led to vast amounts of data becoming available. Data warehouse technologies have set up repositories to store this data. Improved ETL and even recently Enterprise Application Integration tools have increased the speedy collecting of data. OLAP reporting technologies have allowed faster generation of new reports which analyze the data. Business intelligence has now become the art of sieving through large amounts of data, extracting information and turning that information into actionable knowledge. In 1989 Howard Dresner, a Research Fellow at Gartner Group popularized "BI" as a umbrella term to describe a set of concepts and methods to improve business decision-making by using fact-based support systems. Dresner left Gartner in 2005 and joined Hyperion Solutions as its Chief Strategy Officer.

Metrics / Key Performance Indicators

BI often uses Key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess the present state of business and to prescribe a course of action. More and more organizations have started to make data available more promptly. In the past, data only became available after a month or two, which did not help managers to adjust activities in time to hit Wall Street targets. Recently, banks have tried to make data available at shorter intervals and have reduced delays. For example, for businesses which have higher operational/credit risk loading (for example, credit cards and "wealth management"), A large multi-national bank makes KPI-related data available weekly, and sometimes offers a daily analysis of numbers. This means data usually becomes available within 24 hours, necessitating automation and the use of IT systems.

Application software types

People working in business intelligence have developed tools that ease the work, especially when the intelligence task involves gathering and analyzing large quantities of unstructured data. Tool categories commonly used for business intelligence include:
- OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) sometimes simply called "Analytics" (based on dimensional analysis and the so-called "hypercube" or "cube")
- Scorecarding, Dashboarding and Information visualization
- Data warehouses
- DM - Data mining
- Business performance management
- Document warehouses
- Text mining
- EIS - Executive Information Systems
- DSS - Decision Support Systems
- MIS - Management Information Systems
- GIS - Geographic Information Systems

Designing and implementing a business intelligence programme

When implementing a BI programme one might like to pose a number of questions and take a number of resultant decisions, such as:
- Goal Alignment queries: The first step determines the short and medium-term purposes of the programme. What strategic goal(s) of the organization will the programme address? What organizational mission/vision does it relate to? A crafted hypothesis needs to detail how this initiative will eventually improve results / performance (i.e. a strategy map).
- Baseline queries: Current information-gathering competency needs assessing. Does the organization have the capability of monitoring important sources of information? What data does the organization collect and how does it store that data? What are the statistical parameters of this data, e.g. how much random variation does it contain? Does the organization measure this?
- Cost and risk queries: The financial consequences of a new BI initiative should be estimated. It is necessary to assess the cost of the present operations and the increase in costs associated with the BI initiative? What is the risk that the initiative will fail? This risk assessment should be converted into a financial metric and included in the planning?
- Customer and Stakeholder queries: Determine who will benefit from the initiative and who will pay. Who has a stake in the current procedure? What kinds of customers/stakeholders will benefit directly from this initiative? Who will benefit indirectly? What are the quantitative / qualitative benefits? Is the specified initiative the best way to increase satisfaction for all kinds of customers, or is there a better way? How will customers' benefits be monitored? What about employees,... shareholders,... distribution channel members?
- Metrics-related queries: These information requirements must be operationalized into clearly defined metrics. One must decide what metrics to use for each piece of information being gathered. Are these the best metrics? How do we know that? How many metrics need to be tracked? If this is a large number (it usually is), what kind of system can be used to track them? Are the metrics standardized, so they can be benchmarked against performance in other organizations? What are the industry standard metrics available?
- Measurement Methodology-related queries: One should establish a methodology or a procedure to determine the best (or acceptable) way of measuring the required metrics. What methods will be used, and how frequently will the organization collect data? Do industry standards exist for this? Is this the best way to do the measurements? How do we know that?
- Results-related queries: Someone should monitor the BI programme to ensure that objectives are being met. Adjustments in the programme may be necessary. The programme should be tested for accuracy, reliability, and validity. How can one demonstrate that the BI initiative (rather than other factors) contributed to a change in results? How much of the change was probably random?.

Sales

:This article is about the commercial activity. For the commune in France, see Sales, Haute-Savoie. Sales, or the activity of selling, forms an integral part of commercial activity. Mastering sales is considered by many as some sort of persuading "art". On the contrary, the methodological approach of selling refers to it as a systematic process of repetitive and measurable milestones, by which a salesperson relate his offering enabling the buyer to visualize how to achieve his goal in an economic way. Selling is a practical implementation of marketing; it often forms a separate grouping in a corporate structure, employing separate specialist operatives known as salesmen (singular: salesman or salesperson). The successful questioning to understand a customers goal, the further creation of a valuable solution by communicating the necessary information that encourages a buyer to achieve his goal at an economic cost is the responsibility of the sales person or the sales engine (e.g. internet, vending machine etc). The primary function of professional sales is to generate and close leads, educate prospects, fill needs and satisfy wants of consumers appropriately, and therefore turn prospective customers into actual ones. From a marketing point of view, selling is one of the methods of promotion used by marketers. Other promotional techniques include advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and public relations. Various sales strategies exist, such as tit-for-tat which is best if ongoing dealings and interactions are expected. This insight is behind so-called consultative sales process which are used by Saturn to sell cars, as well as for some direct Business-to-Business sales. Several types of sales exist including direct, consultative, and complex sales. Complex sales varies from other types in that the customer plays a more pro-active role, often requiring proposal response to their Request for Proposal (RFP).

Forms

Modes of selling include:
- Direct Sales - involving face-to-face contact
- retail or consumer
- door-to-door or travelling salesman
- business-to-business
- Indirect - human-mediated but with indirect contact
- telemarketing or telesales
- mail-order
- Electronic
- web B2B, B2C
- EDI
- Agency-based
- consignment
- multi-level marketing
- sales agents (real estate, manufacturing) Types of sales include:
- Direct sales
- Consultative sales
- Complex sales

Critique of selling

In theory, the purpose of selling is to help a customer realize his or her goals in an economic fashion. However, in reality this is not always the case. Customers can be influenced to purchase a product or service that initially was not of interest to them. Some salespeople are trained in the art of selling customers things they don't need. Take for example the purchasing of a car: a consumer may have a set of cars in mind (called an evoked set) that she feels match her needs, wants and budget. She may seek the advice of a salesperson given that a salesperson can help her realize the right car given those criteria. This can be a socially useful function; salespeople have specialized knowledge of products that can help consumers make an informed decision. However, a salesperson may also talk a consumer into purchasing a more expensive or perhaps larger car then she needs or can afford. In this context, the salesperson may have usefully helped the customer re-evaluate her needs, thereby establishing a new set of appropriate choices among which included the newer or large car. This again would be a helpful and useful service provided by the salesperson. However, it is sometimes the case that customers purchase a product or service that was not initially intended and remains an inappropriate purchase after the fact. On the other hand, the consumer in this scenario can be held partially responsible for the inappropriate purchase; indeed, "A fool and his money are soon parted." (P.T. Barnum, English proverbs) This dysfunctional behaviour is encouraged by:
- incentives of salespeople to increase their total number of sales, especially where retailers keep track of sales or offer commission-based salaries
- incentives from the manufactures of products or the companies of service providers to salespeople to sell their products where other similar products offered by competitors are offered
- the incentive to sell a customer a product that is in need of being cleared out, despite the fact that a customer may be better to wait for the new product

References

Demographics

Demographics is a shorthand term for 'population characteristics'. Demographics include age, income, mobility (in terms of travel time to work or number of vehicles available), educational attainment, home ownership, employment status, and even location. Distributions of values within a demographic variable, and across households, are both of interest, as well as trends over time. Demographics is used in marketing research, opinion research, political research, the study of consumer behaviour, as well as in straightforward marketing, which is the primary topic of this article.

Demographics is an applied art

The term demographics is often used erroneously for demography, the study of human population and its structure and change. Whereas demography is a descriptive and predictive science, demographics is an applied art and science. In both cases however, the objects of study are the characteristics of human populations. In the case of demography the characteristics being studied tend to emphasize biological processes such as population dynamics, whereas demographics is also concerned with a wide range of economic, social, and cultural characteristics. Demographics is interested in any population characteristic that might be useful in understanding what people think, what they are willing to buy, and how many fit this profile.

Demographic variables

Marketers and other social scientists often group consumers into segments based on demographic variables. The most frequently used demographic variables are:
- age
- sex
- sexual orientation
- family size
- household size
- family life cycle
- income
- occupation
- education
- home ownership
- socioeconomic status
- religion
- nationality In addition to demographic variables, a population can be segmented based on psychographic, geographic, and behavioural variables. See market segment for a list.

Demographic profiles

Marketers typically combine several variables to define a demographic profile. A demographic profile (often shortened to "a demographic") provides enough information about the typical member of this group to create a mental picture of this hypothetical aggregate. For example, a marketer might speak of the single, female, middle-class, age 18 to 24 demographic. Marketing researchers typically have two objectives in this regard: first to determine what segments or subgroups exist in the overall population; and secondly to create a clear and complete picture of the characteristics of a typical member of each of these segments. Once these profiles are constructed, they can be used to develop a marketing strategy and marketing plan.

Demographic trends

Many demographic trends are quite easy to determine. This is due to the predictability of many demographic relationships. If, for example, the birth rate increases during certain years (as indeed happened during the baby boom years), we can determine that there will be an increase in the demand for baby food and diapers. In several years there will be an increase in the demand for toys and children's clothes; after a decade an increased demand for public education, video games and music CDs; after two decades an increased demand for university services, compact automobiles, rental apartments, wedding photographers, and furniture; after four decades an increase in the demand for houses, sedan cars, insurance, weight-loss centres, and investment services; after six decades an increased demand for health-care services and undertakers. Demographic trends have been used to explain everything from the demand for vacation properties, to the tennis craze of the 1970s, to election and stock market results. Of course no social phenomena is so simple as to be explicable with demographics alone, but it is a good start. This is the meaning of professor D. Foot's (1996) often quoted claim that "demographics explains about two-thirds of everything". Dr. Dychtwald (1989) describes the "aging of America" and convincingly argues that the changing age distribution of the American population is "the most important trend in our time". He considers the consequences of demographic facts like: the over 50 age group owns 77% of all financial assets in America, accounts for more than 50% of all new car sales (by value), spends more on travel and recreation than any other age group, etc. He asks what will happen to health care systems and social security entitlements (pension benefits) when the greying of America places additional demands on the system while simultaneously reducing the number of contributors into the system. Sterling and Waite (1998) describe this aging trend in terms of "generational warfare". They ask what will happen to the value of the real estate and financial assets when the aging baby boomers all try to sell them. How will the younger age cohort react to this? Other recent demographic trends include the rise of the two income family, the single parent family, and the nuclear family.

Generational cohorts

A generational cohort has been defined as "the aggregation of individuals (within some population definition) who experience the same event within the same time interval" (Ryder, N., The cohort as a concept in the study of social change, presented at the 1959 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association). The notion of a group of people bound together by the sharing of the experience of common historical events was first introduced by Karl Mannheim in the early 1920s. Today the concept has found its way into popular culture through well known epitomes like "baby boomer" and "gen-Xer". An interesting study by Strauss and Howe (The fourth turning) looked at generational similarities and differences going back to the 15th century and concluded that over 80 year spans, generations proceed through 4 stages of about 20 years each. The first phase consists of times of relative crisis and the people born during this period were called "artists". The next phase was a "high" period and those born in this period were called "prophets". The next phase was an "awakening period" and people born in this period were called "nomads". The final stage was the "unraveling period" and people born in this period were called "heros". The most recent "high period" occurred in the 50s and 60s (hence baby boomers are the most recent crop of "prophets"). The most definitive recent study was done by Schuman and Scott (1989) in 1985 in which a broad sample of adults of all ages were asked, "What world events over the past 50 years were especially important to them?". They found that 33 events were mentioned with great frequency. When the ages of the respondents were correlated with the expressed importance rankings, seven distinct cohorts became evident. Today we use the following descriptors for these cohorts:
- Depression cohort (born from 1912 to 1921)
- Memorable events : The Great Depression, high levels of unemployment, poverty, lack of creature comforts, financial uncertainty
- Key characteristics: strive for financial security, risk averse, waste not want not attitude, strive for comfort
- WWII cohort (born from 1922 to 1927)
- Memorable events: men leaving to go to war and many not returning, the personal experience of the war, women working in factories, focus on defeating a common enemy
- Key characteristics: the nobility of sacrifice for the common good, patriotism, team player
- Post-war cohort (born from 1928 to 1945)
- Memorable events: sustained economic growth, social tranquility, The Cold War, McCarthyism
- Key characteristics: conformity, conservatism, traditional family values
- Baby Boomer cohort #1 (born from 1946 to 1954)
- Memorable events: assassination of JFK, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, political unrest, walk on the moon, Vietnam War, anti-war protests, social experimentation, sexual freedom, civil rights movement, environmental movement, women's movement, protests and riots, experimentation with various intoxicating recreational substances
- Key characteristics: experimental, individualism, free spirited, social cause oriented
- Baby Boomer cohort #2 (born from 1955 to 1964)
- Memorable events: Watergate, Nixon resigns, the cold war , the oil embargo, raging inflation, gasoline shortages
- Key characteristics: less optimistic, distrust of government, general cynicism
- Generation X cohort (born from 1965 to 1976)
- Memorable events: Challenger explosion, Iran-Contra, social malaise, Reaganomics, AIDS, safe sex, fall of Berlin Wall, single parent families
- Key characteristics: quest for emotional security, independent, informality, entrepreneurial
- N Generation cohort also called Generation Y (born from 1983 to 2003 or 2007)
- Memorable events: rise of the internet, 9-11 terrorist attack, cultural diversity, 2 wars in Iraq
- Key characteristics: quest for physical security and safety, patriotism, heightened fears, acceptance of change

Demographic birth cohorts

The US Census Bureau considers the following demographic birth cohorts based on birth rate, which is measurable and reproducible:
- Classics (born from 1900 to 1920)
- (the last American cohort in which the population pyramid takes on the standard "step" form for males and females)
- Baby Bust (I) (born from 1921 to 1945)
- early cohort (born from 1921 to 1933)
- late cohort (born from 1934 to 1945)
- Baby Boomers (born from 1946 to 1964)
- Leading Edge Boomers (born from 1946 to 1957)
- Trailing Edge Boomers (born from 1958 to 1964)
- Baby Bust (II) (born from 1965 to 1976)
- Echo Boomers (born from 1977 to 1994)
- Leading Edge (born from 1977 to 1990)
- Trailing Edge (born from 1991 to 1994)
- Baby Bust (III) (born from 1995 to present) Subdivided groups are present when peak boom years or inverted peak bust years are present, and may be represented by a normal or inverted bell-shaped curve (rather than a straight curve). The subdivided groups may be considered as "pre-peak" and "post-peak". Although post-peak births (such as Trailing Edge Boomers) are in decline, and sometimes referred to as a "bust", there are still a relative large number of births.

Criticisms and qualifications

Demographic profiling is essentially an exercise in making generalizations about groups of people. As with all such generalizations we must be aware that many individuals within these groups will not conform to the profile. Demographic techniques are simplifications of reality and should not blind us to the richness of individual complexity. Most importantly, we must not prejudice our view of specific situations by setting up expectations about individuals based on generalizations about groups that they belong to. Demographic information is aggregate and probabilistic information about groups, not about specific individuals. Most demographic information is culturally specific. The generational cohort information above, for example, applies primarily to North America (and to a lesser extent to Western Europe). Serious errors result when demographic information is applied to groups other than ones similar to those in the original study.

References

- Foot, D. (1996), Boom, Bust and Echo: How to profit from the coming demographic shift, MacFarlane Walter & Rose, Toronto, 1996, ISBN 0-921912-97-8
- Dychtwald, K. (1989), Age Wave: The challenges and opportunities of an aging North America, St. Martins Press, New York, 1989, ISBN 0-87477-441-1
- Klauke, A. (2000) [http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-9214/coping.htm Coping with Changing Demographics] An analysis of the effect of changing demographic patterns on school enrollments and education.
- Sterling, W. & White, S. (1998), Boomernomics: The future of your money in the upcoming generational warfare, The Library of Contemporary Thought (Ballantine Publishing), New York, 1998, ISBN 0-345-42583-9
- Schuman, H. and Scott, J. (1989), Generations and collective memories, American Psychological Review, vol. 54, 1989, pp. 359-81
- Meredith, G., Schewe, C., and Haim, A. (2002), Managing by defining moments: Innovative strategies for motivating 5 very different generational cohorts, Hungry Minds Inc., New York, 2002, ISBN 0-7645-5412-3

External links

- [http://www.claritas.com/claritas/Default.jsp?ci=3&si=1&pn=demographics Demographics Data]
- category:Consumer behaviour category:Marketing category:Marketing research

Front office

In Business, front office refers to Sales and Marketing divisions of a company. It may also refer to other divisions in a company that involves interactions with customers. In Information Technology, front office may refer to an integrated CRM software.

WAP

:This is an article about the Wireless Application Protocol. For details of how to access Wikipedia see Wikipedia: WAP access. WAP can also refer to wireless access points. Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is an open international standard for applications that use wireless communication, for example Internet access from a mobile phone. WAP was designed to provide services equivalent to a Web browser with some mobile-specific additions, being specifically designed to address the limitations of very small portable devices. It is now the protocol used for the majority of the world's mobile internet sites, otherwise known as wap-sites. The Japanese i-mode system is the other major competing wireless data protocol.

Why was WAP created?

WAP is a protocol suite created for mobile devices such as PDAs and mobile phones, aiming at giving their users a richer data application experience that would enable "access to the Internet," as it was then put in terms. Before WAP became popular, it was nearly impossible for application providers to build interactive data applications that would allow, for example, business people on the go to catch an important e-mail or learn early on that they were losing money on their stocks; neither was it possible to build rich data applications allowing consumers to get sports results and the latest news headlines from their TV. WAP aimed at enabling this type of applications to be built on wireless technology. Before the WAP protocol was created, wireless handset data application capabilities were limited to rudimentary interfaces such as SMS (a messaging service) or USSD, a rudimentary browsing service. Some manufacturers had also come up with their own, proprietary "enhanced" application platforms such as HDML (by Unwired Planet, now Openwave), ITTP by Ericsson and TTML by Nokia. However, to enhance the overall size of their business opportunity, manufacturers decided to join forces on technology and extended an invitation to the rest of the wireless industry in building a common standard for wireless data applications: the WAP Forum was born. Following this union, the technology became part of the wireless industry's history when wireless carriers, throughout the late 1990's, rolled it out in their networks with mixed success (see below).

Technical specifications

WAP protocol suite

The WAP Forum proposed a protocol suite that would allow the interoperability of WAP equipment and software with many different network technologies; the rationale for this was to build a single platform for competing network technologies such as GSM and IS-95 (also known as CDMA) networks. +------------------------------------------+ | Wireless Application Environment (WAE) | +------------------------------------------+ \ | Wireless Session Protocol (WSP) | | +------------------------------------------+ | | Wireless Transaction Protocol (WTP) | | WAP +------------------------------------------+ | protocol stuff | Wireless Transport Layer Security (WTLS) | | suite +------------------------------------------+ | | Wireless Datagram protocol (WDP) | | +------------------------------------------+ / |
- Any wireless data network
- | +------------------------------------------+
- The bottom-most protocol in the suite is the WAP Datagram Protocol (WDP), which is an adaptation layer that makes every data network look a bit like UDP to the upper layers by providing unreliable transport of data with two 16-bit port numbers (origin and destination). WDP is considered by all the upper layers as one and same protocol, which has several "technical realizations" on top of other "data bearers" such as SMS, USSD, etc. On native IP bearers such as GPRS, UMTS packet-radio service, or PPP on top of a cicuit-switched data connection, WDP is in fact exactly UDP.
- WTLS provides a public-key cryptography-based security mechanism similar to TLS. Its use is optional.
- WTP provides transaction support (reliable request / response) that is adapted to the wireless world. WTP supports more effectively than TCP the problem of packet loss, which is common in 2G wireless technologies in most radio conditions, but is misinterpreted by TCP as network congestion.
- Finally, WSP is best thought of on first approach as a compressed version of HTTP. This protocol suite allows a terminal to emit requests that have an HTTP or HTTPS equivalent to a WAP "gateway"; the gateway translates requests into plain HTTP.

Wireless Application Environment (WAE)

In this space, application-specific markup languages are defined. The primary language of the WAE is WML, the Wireless Markup Language, which has been designed from scratch for handheld devices with phone-specific features. WML is an XML-compliant format. However, since XML documents can take up a lot of room, a specific compression technique for XML documents was developed (wireless binary XML, or WBXML).

Maintenance and evolutions

The official body developing WAP used to be the WAP Forum. The WAP Forum has consolidated (along with many other forums of the industry) into OMA (Open Mobile Alliance), which covers virtually everything in future development of wireless data services.

WAP 2.0

The new version of WAP, WAP 2.0, is a re-engineering of WAP using a cut-down version of XHTML with end-to-end HTTP, i.e. dropping the gateway and custom protocol suite used to communicate with it. Some observers predict that this next-generation WAP will converge with, and be replaced by, true Web access to pocket devices. Whether this next generation (Wireless Internet Protocol to mobile) will still be referred to as WAP is yet to be decided. XHTML MP (XHTML Mobile Profile), the markup language defined in WAP 2.0, is made to work in mobile devices. It is a subset of XHTML and a superset of XHTML Basic. A version of cascading style sheet called WAP CSS is supported by XHTML MP.

WAP Push

WAP Push, available since WAP 1.2, has been incorporated into the specification to allow WAP content to be pushed to the mobile handset with minimum user intervention. A WAP Push is basically a specially encoded message which includes a link to a WAP address. WAP Push is specified on top of WDP; as such, it can be delivered over any WDP-supported bearer, such as GPRS or SMS. In most GSM networks, however, GPRS activation from the network is not generally supported so WAP Push messages have to be delivered on top of the SMS bearer. On receiving a WAP Push, a WAP 1.2 or later enabled handset will automatically give the user the option to access the WAP content. In this way, the WAP Push directs the end user to a WAP address where particular content may be stored ready for viewing or downloading to the handset. The address could be a simple page or multimedia content (e.g. polyphonic ring tone) or a Java application. Using WAP Push, one can make it easier for end users to discover and access new mobile services.

Commercial status

Failure?

WAP was hyped at the time of its introduction, leading users to expect WAP to have the performance of the Web. One telco's advertising showed a cartoon WAP user "surfing" through a Neuromancer-like "information space". In terms of speed, ease of use, appearance and interoperability, the reality fell far short of expectations. This led to the unkind, but widely used phrases: "Worthless Application Protocol", "Wait And Pay", and so on. Critics advanced several explanations to the early failure of WAP. Some are technical criticisms:
- The idiosyncratic WML language, which cut users off from the true HTML Web, leaving only native WAP content and Web-to-WAP "proxified" content available to WAP users. However, others argue that technology at that stage would simply not have been able to give access to anything but custom-designed content.
- Under-specification of terminal requirements. In the early WAP "standards", there were many optional features and under-specified requirements, which meant that compliant devices would not necessarily interoperate properly. This resulted in great variability in phones' actual behavior. As an example, some phone models would not accept a page more than 1 Kb in size; others would downright crash. The user interface of devices was also underspecified: as an example, accesskeys (i.e. the ability to press '4' to access directly the fourth link in a list) were variously implemented depending on phone models (sometimes with the accesskey number automatically displayed by the browser next to the link, sometimes without it, and sometimes accesskeys were not implemented at all).
- Constrained user interface capabilities. Terminals with small black and white screens and few buttons, as the early WAP terminals were, are not very apt at presenting a lot of information to their user, which compounded the other problems: one would have had to be extra careful in designing the user interface on such a resource-constrained device.
- Lack of good authoring tools. The problems above might have been alleviated by a WML authoring tool that would have allowed content providers to easily publish content that would interoperate flawlessly with many models, adapting the pages presented to the User-Agent type. However, while some development kits existed, it was no such "magic software." Developing for the web was easy: with a text editor and a web browser, anybody could get started, thanks also to the forgiving nature of most desktop browsers' rendering engines; in comparison, the stringent requirements of the WML specifications, the variability in terminals and the time involved in testing on wireless terminals was considerably lengthened by the lack of widely available desktop authoring and emulation tools. Other criticisms are oriented towards the wireless carriers' particular implementations of WAP:
- Neglect of content providers. Some wireless carriers had assumed a "build it and they will come" strategy, meaning that they would just provide the transport of data as well as the terminals, and then wait for content providers to publish their services on the Internet and make their investment in WAP useful. However, content providers received little help or incentive to go through the complicated route of development. Others, notably in Japan (cf. below), had a more thorough dialogue with their content provider community, which was then replicated in modern, more successful WAP services such as i-mode in Europe or the [http://www.gallery.fr/ Gallery] service in France.
- Lack of openness. Most wireless carriers sold their WAP services that were "open", in that they allowed users to reach any service expressed in WML and published on the Internet. However, they also made sure that the first page that clients accessed was their own "wireless portal" which they controlled very closely. Given the difficulty in typing up fully qualified URLs on a phone keyboard, most users would give up going "off portal"; by not letting third parties put their own entries on the operators' wireless portal, some contend that operators cut themselves from a valuable opportunity. On the other hand, some operators argue that their customers would have wanted them to manage the experience and, on such a constrained device, avoid giving access to too many services.

Success?

However, WAP has seen huge success in Japan. While the largest operator NTT DoCoMo has famously disdained WAP in favor of its in-house system i-mode, rival operators KDDI (au) and Vodafone Japan have both been successful with the WAP technology. In particular, J-Phone's Sha-Mail picture mail and Java (JSCL) services, as well as au's chakuuta/chakumovie (ringtone song/ringtone movie) services are based on WAP. After being shadowed by the initial success of i-mode, the two smaller Japanese operators have been gaining market share from DoCoMo since spring 2001. Korea is also leading the world in providing advanced WAP services. WAP on top of the CDMA2000 network has been proven to be the state of the art wireless data infrastructure. According to the Mobile Data Association, June 2004 has seen a considerable increase of 42% in its recorded number of WAP pages viewed compared with the same period in 2003. This takes the total for the second quarter of 2004 to 4 billion. From 2003/2004, WAP has made a stronger resurgence with the introduction of Wireless services (such as Vodafone Live!, T-Mobile T-Zones and other easily-accessible services). Operator revenues are generated by transfer of GPRS and UMTS data which is a different model to the Web, and usage is up. People are starting to use WAP and the early failures have been masked, as the real point of the system – access to wireless services and applications – has come to the forefront. Spin off technologies, such as MMS (picture messaging), a combination of WAP and SMS, have further driven the protocol. Along with an appreciation of device diversity and the changes to underlying pages, to be more device-specific rather than being aimed at lowest common denominator, has allowed for the content presented to be more compelling and usable. Finally it looks like WAP is having its day.

Protocol design lessons from WAP

There has been considerable discussion about whether the WAP protocol design was appropriate. The initial design of WAP was specifically aimed at protocol independence across a range of different protocols (SMS, IP over PPP over a circuit switched bearer, IP over GPRS etc). This has led to a protocol considerably more complex than an approach directly over IP might have caused. Most controversial, especially for many from the IP side was the design of WAP over IP. WAP's transmission layer protocol, WTP, uses its own retransmission mechanisms over UDP to attempt to solve the problem of TCP's inadequacy for high packet loss networks.

External links

- [http://www.wapforum.org/ WAP Forum]
- [http://www.openmobilealliance.org/tech/affiliates/wap/wapindex.html WAP Specifications]
- [http://www.wapforum.org/what/WAPWhite_Paper1.pdf WAP Forum White Paper: WAP 2.0]
- [http://www.developershome.com/ WAP Tutorials]
- [http://developer.openwave.com/dvl/support/documentation/guides_and_references/xhtml-mp_style_guide/index.htm XHTML-MP Style Guide]
- [http://www.visualtron.com WAP Push Software]
- [http://www.visualtron.com/faq/index.php?op=cat&c=19 FAQ on WAP Push]
- [http://www.m-commerce.co.in m-commerce.co.in]
- [http://www.visualgsm.com/online_demo5.htm How to use WAP Push to deliver Polyphonic ringtones]
- [http://en.wapedia.org Wapedia] - Web page of project aiming to bring Wikipedia content to mobile devices (see also WAP URLs)

WAP URLs

WAP URLs currently active for use in WAP research and information access.
- [http://networker.optus.net.au/wap/index.wml Optus Zoo Australia]
- [http://wap.telstra.com/wap Telstra Australia]
- [http://www.click4wap.co.uk/ Click4WAP]
- [http://wap.maxpedia.org/ Maxpedia - mobile Wikipedia]
- [http://wap.ithaki.net/index.wml Ithaki WAP Search engine]
- [http://www.johnreed.co.uk/wapbrowser.html Browse the mobile web for free]
- [http://computer.howstuffworks.com/wireless-internet.htm How Stuff Works ] in depth research of WAP
- [http://slashdot.fizzl.net Slashdot's WAP portal] - Courtesy of Fizzl.net
- [http://en.wapedia.org Wapedia] - WAP page of project aiming to bring Wikipedia content to mobile devices (see above for web page)
- [http://www.argogroup.com Argogroup's WAP Device Diversity information whitepages] - source of wireless diversity information
- [http://openwap.org openwap.org] - open source development community for WAP (plus related news and information)
- [http://www.iwapvideo.com free wap videos for your mobile phone and ipod video.]
- [http://www.bapuli.co.nr/wapmsgr.htm Send messages among mobiles and between PC to mobiles through WAP.] Category:Internet protocols ko:WAP

Application software

Application software is a loosely defined subclass of computer software that employs the capabilities of a computer directly to a task that the user wishes to perform. This should be contrasted with system software which is involved in integrating a computer's various capabilities, but typically does not directly apply them in the performance of tasks that benefit the user. The term application refers to both the application software and its implementation. A simple, if imperfect, analogy in the world of hardware would be the relationship of an electric light—an application—to an electric power generation plant—the system. The power plant merely generates electricity, itself not really of any use until harnessed to an application like the electric light which performs a service that the user desires. The exact delineation between the operating system and application software is not precise, however, and is occasionally subject to controversy. For example, one of the key questions in the United States v. Microsoft antitrust trial was whether Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser was part of its Windows operating system or a separable piece of application software. As another example, the GNU/Linux naming controversy is, in part, due to disagreement about the relationship between the Linux kernel and the Linux operating system. Typical examples of software applications are word processors, spreadsheets and media player Multiple applications bundled together as a package are sometimes referred to as an application suite. Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org, which bundle together a word processor, a spreadsheet, and several other discrete applications, are typical examples. The separate applications in a suite usually have a user interface that has some commonality making it easier for the user to learn and use each application. And often they may have some capability to interact with each other in ways beneficial to the user. For example a spreadsheet might be able to be embedded in a word processor document even though it had been created in the separate spreadsheet application. User software tailors systems to meet the user's specific needs. User software include spreadsheet templates, word processor macros, scientific simulations, graphics and animation scripts. Even email filters are a kind of user software. Users create this software themselves and often overlook how important it is. In some types of embedded systems, the application software and the operating system software may be indistinguishable to the user, as in the case of software used to control a VCR, DVD player or Microwave oven.

Application software classification

Microwave oven See also: List of software applications, Software Selection

Databases

- DBMS

Other

- Educational Software

External links

- http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/
- [http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/A/application.html Definition of Application software @ Webopedia]
- [http://www.selectingsoftware.com SelectingSoftware.com - Business Software Directory] Category:Software engineering
- ko:응용 소프트웨어 ja:アプリケーションソフトウェア simple:Application

Communication channel

Channel, in communications (sometimes called communications channel), refers to the medium used to convey information from a sender (or transmitter) to a receiver.

Overview

A Channel can take many forms. Examples of communications channels include: # A connection between initiating and terminating nodes of a circuit. # A single path provided by a transmission medium via either #
- physical separation, such as by multipair cable or #
- electrical separation, such as by frequency- or time-division multiplexing. # A path for conveying electrical or electromagnetic signals, usually distinguished from other parallel paths. # The portion of a storage medium, such as a track or a band, that is accessible to a given reading or writing station or head. # In a communications system, the part that connects a data source to a data sink. # A specific radio frequency or band of frequencies, usually in conjunction with a predetermined letter, number, or codeword, and allocated by international agreement.
Examples: #
- Wi-Fi consists of unlicensed channels 1-13 from 2412MHz to 2484MHz in 5MHz steps. #
- Television channels such as North American TV Channel 2 = 55.25MHz, Channel 13 = 211.25MHz. # A room in the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network, in which participants can communicate with each other. All of these communications channels share the property that they transfer information. The information is carried though the channel by a signal.

Channel models

A channel can be physically modelled by trying to calculate the physical processes which modify the transmitted signal. For example in wireless communications the channel can be modelled by calculating the reflection off every object in the environment. A sequence of random numbers might also be added in to simulate external interference and/or electronic noise in the receiver. Statistically a communication channel is usually modelled as a triple consisting of an input alphabet, an output alphabet, and for each pair (i, o) of input and output elements a transition probability p(i, o). Semantically, the transition probability is the probability that the symbol o is received given that i was transmitted over the channel. Statistical and physical modelling can be combined. For example in wireless communications the channel is often modelled by a random attenuation (known as fading) of the transmitted signal, followed by additive noise. The attenuation term is a simplification of the underlying physical processes and captures the change in signal power over the course of the transmission. The noise in the model captures external interference and/or electronic noise in the receiver. If the attenuation term is complex it also describes the relative time a signal takes to get though the channel (technicaly called a phase shift). The statistics of the random attenuation are decided by previous measurements or physical simulations. Channel models may be continuous channel models in that their is no limit to how precisely their values may be defined. Communication channels are also studied in a discrete-alphabet setting. This corresponds to abstracting a real world communication system in which the analog->digital and digital->analog blocks are out of the control of the designer. The mathematical model consists of a transition probability that specifies an output distribution for each possible sequence of channel inputs. In information theory, it is common to start with memoryless channels in which the output probability distribution only depends on the current channel input.

Types of communications channels

- Simplex communication
- Duplex communication

References

- C. E. Shannon, A mathematical theory of communication, Bell System Technical Journal, vol. 27, pp. 379–423 and 623–656, (July and October, 1948)
- Amin Shokrollahi, [http://www.ics.uci.edu/~welling/teaching/ICS279/LPCD.pdf LDPC Codes: An Introduction] Category:Technical communication Category:Communication theory

Workflow

Workflow is the operational aspect of a work procedure: how tasks are structured, who performs them, what their relative order is, how they are synchronized, how information flows to support the tasks and how tasks are being tracked. As the dimension of time is considered in Workflow, Workflow considers "throughput" as a distinct measure. Workflow problems can be modeled and analyzed using Petri nets. While the concept of workflow is not specific to information technology, support for workflow is an integral part of groupware software. Distinction can be made between "scientific" and "business" workflow paradigms. While the former is mostly concerned with throughput of data through various algorithms, applications and services, the latter concentrates on scheduling task executions, ensuring dependencies which are not necessarily data-driven and may include human agents. Scientific workflows found wide acceptance in the fields of bioinformatics and cheminformatics in the early 2000s, where they successfully met the need for multiple interconnected tools, handling of multiple data formats and large data quantities. Also, the paradigm of scientific workflows was close to the well-established tradition of Perl scripting in life-science research organization, so this adoption represented a natural step forward towards a more structured infrastructure setup. Business workflows are more generic, being able to represent any structuring of tasks, and are equally applicable to task scheduling within a software application server and organizing a paper document trail within an organization. Their origins date back to the 1970s, when they were purely paper-based, and the principles from that period made the transition to modern IT infrastructure systems. As a way of bridging the gap between the two, significant effort is being put into defining workflow patterns that can be used to compare and contrast different workflow engines across both of these domains.

Workflow systems

Workflow diagram systems are defined as "systems that help organizations to specify, execute, monitor, and coordinate the flow of work cases within a distributed office environment". Workflow diagrams rely on the use of standardized graphical notations to describe workflow structures. The Business Process Modeling Notation is an example of this system. The system contains two basic components: first component is the workflow modeling component (sometimes called the specification module or the build time system), which enables administrations and analysts to define process and activities, analyze and simulate them, and assign them to people. The second component is the workflow execution component, sometimes called the run-time system. It consists of the execution interface seen by end-users and the workflow engine, an execution environment which assists in coordination and performing the processes and activities.

References

- Layna Fischer: Workflow Handbook 2005, Future Strategies, ISBN 0-9703509-8-8
- Layna Fischer: Excellence in Practice, Volume V: Innovation and Excellence in Workflow and Business Process Management, ISBN 0-9703509-5-3
- Holly Yu: Content and Work Flow Management for Library Websites: Case Studies, Information Science Publishing, ISBN 1591405343
- Wil van der Aalst, Kees van Hee: Workflow Management: Models, Methods, and Systems, B&T, ISBN 0-262-72046-9
- Setrag Khoshafian, Marek Buckiewicz: Introduction to Groupware, Workflow and Workgroup Computing, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-02946-7
- Rashid N. Kahn: Understanding Workflow Automation: A Guide to Enhancing Customer Loyalty, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-061918-3
- Dan C. Marinescu: Internet-Based Workflow Management: Towards a Semantic Web, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-43962-2
- Frank Leymann, Dieter Roller: Production Workflow: Concepts and Techniques, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-021753-0
- Michael Jackson, Graham Twaddle: Business Process Implementation: Building Workflow Systems, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-17768-4
- Alec Sharp, Patrick McDermott: Workflow Modeling, Artech House Publishers, ISBN 1-58053-021-4
- Toni Hupp: Designing Work Groups, Jobs, and Work Flow, Pfeiffer & Company, ISBN 0-7879-0063-X
- Gary Poyssick, Steve Hannaford: Workflow Reengineering, Adobe, ISBN 1568302657
- Dave Chaffey: Groupware, Workflow and Intranets: Reengineering the Enterprise with Collaborative Software, Digital Press, ISBN 1-55558-184-6
- Wolfgang Gruber: Modeling and Transformation of Workflows With Temporal Constraints, IOS Press, ISBN 1586034162
- Andrzej Cichocki, Marek Rusinkiewicz, Darrell Woelk: Workflow and Process Automation Concepts and Technology, Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 0792380991
- Alan R. Simon, William Marion: Workgroup Computing: Workflow, Groupware, and Messaging, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0070576289
- Penny Ann Dolin: Exploring Digital Workflow, Delmar Thomson Learning, ISBN 1-4018-9654-5
- Gary Poyssick: Managing Digital Workflow, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0130109118
- Frank J. Romano: PDF Printing & Workflow, Prentice Hall, ISBN 013020837X
- James G. Kobielus: Workflow Strategies, Hungry Minds, ISBN 0764530127
- Alan Rickayzen, Jocelyn Dart, Carsten Brennecke: Practical Workflow for SAP, Galileo, ISBN 159229006X
- Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Angela Ashenden: E-process: Workflow for the E-business, Ovum, ISBN 1902566653
- Stanislaw Wrycza: Systems Development Methods for Databases, Enterprise Modeling, and Workflow Management, Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, ISBN 0-306-46299-0
- Database Support for Workflow Management, Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 0-7923-8414-8
- [http://www.lri.fr/~mbl/cgi-bin/getpdf?Trends-CSCW/chap2.pdf Clarence A. Ellis: Workflow technology], Computer Supported Co-operative Work, M. Beaudouin-Lafon (ed.), John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK, 1999, pp. 29-54

External links

- Tools for business workflow
- [http://www.business-process-management.info/workflow/ Active Journal of Business Process Management - Workflow] Leading articles on workflow.
- [http://www.groiss.com/ @enterprise - workflow engine] is a webbased workflow engine (100% Java, integrated process monitoring).
- [http://www.flowring.com/flowring/en_page/index.jsp Agentflow] - A commercial Java-based workflow engine and design tool
- [http://objeng.ch/web-oe/sw-products/awf/awf-de.html Amazonas Worflow] - A commercial Java-based workflow engine and design tool with webbased client
- [http://sourceforge.net/projects/bie/ Business Integration Engine (BIE)] is a full-featured EAI server which allows companies to integrate disparate systems, create and manage agile business processes, and easily implement service oriented architectures.
- [http://www.aegeanet-system.com/index_e.html Aegeanet System]
- [http://bonita.objectweb.org/ Bonita] is an open source Cooperative Workflow System from ObjectWeb
- [http://Ing-Tech.com/ IngTech Corporation]
- [http://www.captaris.com/workflow/ Captaris Workflow], .NET-based BPM Workflow Solution, formerly known as Teamplate.
- [http://www.cosa.de/BPM_Produkte.html Business Process Management (BPM) by COSA]
- [http://wwwagr.informatik.uni-kl.de/forschung/comokit/ CoMo-Kit]
- [http://www.fujitsu.com/global/services/software/interstage/products/bpm/ Interstage BPM] - a web based workflow product from [http://www.fujitsu.com/global/services/software/interstage Fujitsu Interstage]
- [http://shark.objectweb.org/ Enhydra Shark] Open Source Java/XML Workflow Engine
- [http://www.eventhelix.com/EventStudio/ EventStudio - Workflows as Sequence Diagrams]
- [http://www.brightsoft.com/ FlowRunner] Offers BPM, workflow server and embeddable engine. Multiple form technologies are supported. Source code is available. Commercial.
- [http://www.ike.com/ iKE] Personal Assistant Service for Workflow Collaboration & Document Management
- [http://www.ilogs.at/ ils/process] provides a solution for running a business process project
- [http://www.intelladoc.com/ IntellaDOC PDF component for workflow systems]
- [http://jbpm.org/ JBoss jBpm] is a flexible, extensible workflow management system.
- [http://www.mycontrol.de/workflow/ MyControl Workflow Server]
- [http://www.manageability.org/blog/stuff/workflow_in_java/view Open Source Workflow written in Java] - A exhaustive list of Open Source Workflow Engines that are written in the Java language.
- [http://www.openflow.it/ OpenFlow] - Zope based opensource Workflow
- [http://www.opensymphony.com/ OpenSymphony] - an Open Source workflow core
- [http://openwfe.sourceforge.net/ OpenWFE] is an Open source WorkFlow Engine. It's written in Java, but it can also be accessed by Python and/or .NET applications
- [http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/integration/workflow/workflow_fov.html Oracle Workflow] Oracle Workflow delivers a complete workflow management system that supports business process based integration.
- [http://plflow.sourceforge.net/ PL/FLOW] workflow engine written in PL/SQL.
- [http://www.ring-pro.net Ring Pro] workflow for multimedia project (3D, Web, CDRom).
- [http://www.skelta.com/ Skelta Workflow.NET -A BPM Workflow Software]
- [http://www.vivtek.com/ VivTek] proposes a free tool-kit for workflow named [http://www.vivtek.com/wftk wftk] (under license GNU General Public License)
- [http://www.w4.fr/ W4] sells one of the main workflow core
- [http://www.webandflo.com/ Web and Flo Kontinuum] Web based Workflow Software and Solutions
- [http://www-306.ibm.com/software/integration/wmqwf/ WebSphere MQ Workflow] from IBM supports long-running business process workflows as they interact with systems and people.
- [http://www.EmeriCon.com/ EmeriCon] delivers comprehensive workflow implementation consulting services utilizing IBM workflow products.
- [http://www.wfmc.org/ Workflow Management Coalition] sets standards in areas of terminology, interoperability and connectivity between workflow products
- [http://yawl-system.com/ YAWL] is an open source workflow engine written in Java, and based on the [http://is.tm.tue.nl/research/patterns/ Workflow Patterns] research.
- [http://www.colosa.com/ COLOSA: BPM Solutions]
- [http://www.processmaker.com/ Business Process Management and Workflow Automation]
- Tools for scientific workflow
- [http://taverna.sourceforge.net/ Taverna] Open-source workflow system particularly focussed on bioinformatics applications
- [http://kepler-project.org/ Kepler] Open-source scientific workflow system, based on Ptolemy II
- [http://www.gridnexus.org/ GridNexus] UNC Wilmington scientific workflow grid computing project, also based on Ptolemy II
- [http://www-casc.llnl.gov/sdm/ SPA] Scientific Process Automation, scientific Problem Solving Environment (PSE) with an intuitive graphical user interface that allows scientists to easily create exploratory data flows (workflows). Also based on Ptolemy II
- [http://www.trianacode.org/ Triana] GUI based scientific workflow, for domain independent applications.
- Articles
- [http://is.tm.tue.nl/research/patterns/patterns.htm Workflow patterns]
- "[http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/dellen97knowledge.html Knowledge Based Techniques to Increase the Flexibility of Workflow Management]" by Barbara Dellen, Frank Maurer, Gerhard Pews
- [http://www.theserverside.com/articles/article.tss?l=Workflow The State of Workflow] May 2004 article by Tom Baeyens
- [http://www.wi-inf.uni-essen.de/FGFrank/ecomod/index.php?workflow=default&&lang=en Business Process Modelling vs. Workflow Management]
- [http://projects.niekom.de/workflow/wiki TYPO3 Enterprise Workflow Project] Category:Groupware zh-cn:工作流技术

Database

A database is an organized collection of data. The term originated within the computer industry, but its meaning has been broadened by popular use, to the extent that the European Database Directive (which creates intellectual property rights for databases) includes non-electronic databases within its definition. This article is confined to a more technical use of the term; though even amongst computing professionals, some attach a much wider meaning to the word than others. One possible definition is that a database is a collection of records stored in a computer in a systematic way, such that a computer program can consult it to answer questions. For better retrieval and sorting, each record is usually organized as a set of data elements (facts). The items retrieved in answer to queries become information that can be used to make decisions. The computer program used to manage and query a database is known as a database management system (DBMS). The properties and design of database systems are included in the study of information science. The central concept of a database is that of a collection of records, or pieces of knowledge. Typically, for a given database, there is a structural description of the type of facts held in that database: this description is known as a schema. The schema describes the objects that are represented in the database, and the relationships among them. There are a number of different ways of organizing a schema, that is, of modelling the database structure: these are known as database models (or data models). The model in most common use today is the relational model, which in layman's terms represents all information in the form of multiple related tables each consisting of rows and columns (the true definition uses mathematical terminology). This model represents relationships by the use of values common to more than one table. Other models such as the hierarchical model and the network model use a more explicit representation of relationships. Strictly speaking, the term database refers to the collection of related records, and the software should be referred to as the database management system or DBMS. When the context is unambiguous, however, many database administrators and programmers use the term database to cover both meanings. Many professionals would consider a collection of data to constitute a database only if it has certain properties: for example, if the data is managed to ensure its integrity and quality, if it allows shared access by a community of users, if it has a schema, or if it supports a query language. However, there is no agreed definition of these properties. Database management systems are usually categorized according to the data model that they support: relational, object-relational, network, and so on. The data model will tend to determine the query languages that are available to access the database. A great deal of the internal engineering of a DBMS, however, is independent of the data model, and is concerned with managing factors such as performance, concurrency, integrity, and recovery from hardware failures. In these areas there are large differences between products.

History

The earliest known use of the term data base was in June 1963, when the System Development Corporation sponsored a symposium under the title Development and Management of a Computer-centered Data Base. Database as a single word became common in Europe in the early 1970s and by the end of the decade it was being used in major American newspapers. (Databank, a comparable term, had been used in the Washington Post newspaper as early as 1966.) The first database management systems were developed in the 1960s. A pioneer in the field was Charles Bachman. Bachman's early papers show that his aim was to make more effective use of the new direct access storage devices becoming available: until then, data processing had been based on punched cards and magnetic tape, so that serial processing was the dominant activity. Two key data models arose at this time: CODASYL developed the network model based on Bachman's ideas, and (apparently independently) the hierarchical model was used in a system developed by North American Rockwell, later adopted by IBM as the cornerstone of their IMS product. The relational model was proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. He criticized existing models for confusing the abstract description of information structure with descriptions of physical access mechanisms. For a long while, however, the relational model remained of academic interest only. While CODASYL systems and IMS were conceived as practical engineering solutions taking account of the technology as it existed at the time, the relational model took a much more theoretical perspective, arguing (correctly) that hardware and software technology would catch up in time. Among the first implementations were Michael Stonebraker's Ingres at Berkeley, and the System R project at IBM. Both of these were research prototypes, announced during 1976. The first commercial products, Oracle and DB2, did not appear until around 1980. The first successful database product for microcomputers was dBASE for the CP/M and PC-DOS/MS-DOS operating systems. During the 1980s, research activity focused on distributed database systems and database machines, but these developments had little effect on the market. Another important theoretical idea was the Functional Data Model, but apart from some specialized applications in genetics, molecular biology, and fraud investigation, the world took little notice. In the 1990s, attention shifted to object-oriented databases. These had some success in fields where it was necessary to handle more complex data than relational systems could easily cope with, such as spatial databases, engineering data (including software engineering repositories,) and multimedia data. Some of these ideas were adopted by the relational vendors, who integrated new features into their products as a result; the independent object database vendors largely disappeared from the scene. In the 2000s, the fashionable area for innovation is the XML database. As with object databases, this has spawned a new collection of startup companies, but at the same time the key ideas are being integrated into the established relational products. XML databases aim to remove the traditional divide between documents and data, allowing all of an organization's information resources to be held in one place, whether they are highly structured or not.

Database models

Various techniques are used to model data structure. Most database systems are built around one particular data model, although it is increasingly common for products to offer support for more than one model. For any one logical model various physical implementations may be possible, and most products will offer the user some level of control in tuning the physical implementation, since the choices that are made have a significant effect on performance. An example of this is the relational model: all serious implementations of the relational model allow the creation of indexes which provide fast access to rows in a table if the values of certain columns are known. A data model is not just a way of structuring data: it also defines a set of operations that can be performed on the data. The relational model, for example, defines operations such as selection, projection, and join. Although these operations may not be explicit in a particular query language, they provide the foundation on which a query language is built.

Flat model

Some would disagree that this qualifies as a data model, as defined above. The flat (or table) model consists of a single, two-dimensional array of data elements, where all members of a given column are assumed to be similar values, and all members of a row are assumed to be related to one another. For instance, columns for name and password that might be used as a part of a system security database. Each row would have the specific password associated with an individual user. Columns of the table often have a type associated with them, defining them as character data, date or time information, integers, or floating point numbers. This model is, incidentally, a basis of the spreadsheet.

Network model

The network model (defined by the CODASYL specification) organizes data using two fundamental constructs, called records and sets. Records contain fields (which may be organized hierarchically, as in COBOL). Sets (not to be confused with mathematical sets) define one-to-many relationships between records: one owner, many members. A record may be an owner in any number of sets, and a member in any number of sets. The operations of the network model are navigational in style: a program maintains a current position, and navigates from one record to another by following the relationships in which the record participates. Records can also be located by supplying key values. Although it is not an essential feature of the model, network databases generally implement the set relationships by means of pointers that directly address the location of a record on disk. This gives excellent retrieval performance, at the expense of operations such as database loading and reorganization.

Relational model

The relational model was introduced in an [http://www.acm.org/classics/nov95/toc.html academic paper] by E. F. Codd in 1970 as a way to make database management systems more independent of any particular application. It is a mathematical model defined in terms of predicate logic and set theory. The products that are generally referred to as relational databases (for example, Ingres, Oracle, DB2, and SQL Server) in fact implement a model that is only an approximation to the mathematical model defined by Codd. The data structures in these products are tables, rather than relations: the main differences being that tables can contain duplicate rows, and that the rows (and columns) can be treated as being ordered. The same criticism applies to the SQL language which is the primary interface to these products. There has been considerable controversy, mainly due to Codd himself, as to whether it is correct to describe SQL implementations as "relational": but the fact is that the world does so, and the following description uses the term in its popular sense. A relational database contains multiple tables, each similar to the one in the "flat" database model. Relationships between tables are not defined explicitly; instead, keys are used to match up rows of data in different tables. A key is a collection of one or more columns in one table whose values match corresponding columns in other tables: for example, an Employee table may contain a column named Location which contains a value that matches the key of a Location table. Any column can be a key, or multiple columns can be grouped together into a single key. It is not necessary to define all the keys in advance; a column can be used as a key even if it was not originally intended to be one. A key that can be used to uniquely identify a row in a table is called a unique key. Typically one of the unique keys is the preferred way to refer to row; this is defined as the table's primary key. A key that has an external, real-world meaning (such as a person's name, a book's ISBN, or a car's serial number), is sometimes called a "natural" key. If no natural key is suitable (think of the many people named Brown), an arbitrary key can be assigned (such as by giving employees ID numbers). In practice, most databases have both generated and natural keys, because generated keys can be used internally to create links between rows that cannot break, while natural keys can be used, less reliably, for searches and for integration with other databases. (For example, records in two independently developed databases could be matched up by social security number, except when the social security numbers are incorrect, missing, or have changed.)

Relational operations

Users (or programs) request data from a relational database by sending it a query that is written in a special language, usually a dialect of SQL. Although SQL was originally intended for end-users, it is much more common for SQL queries to be embedded into software that provides an easier user interface. (Many web sites — including MediaWiki which is the engine that runs Wikipedia — perform SQL queries when generating pages.) In response to a query, the database returns a result set, which is just a list of rows containing the answers. The simplest query is just to return all the rows from a table, but more often, the rows are filtered in some way to return just the answer wanted. Often, data from multiple tables gets combined into one, by doing a join. Conceptually, this is done by taking all possible combinations of rows (the "cross-product"), and then filtering out everything except the answer. In practice, relational database management systems rewrite ("optimize") queries to perform faster, using a variety of techniques. The flexibility of relational databases allows programmers to write queries that were not anticipated by the database designers. As a result, relational databases can be used by multiple applications in ways the original designers did not foresee, which is especially important for databases that might be used for decades. This has made the idea and implementation of relational databases very popular with businesses.

Dimensional model

The dimensional model is a specialized adaptation of the relational model used to represent data in data warehouses in a way that data can be easily summarized using OLAP queries. In the dimensional model, a database consists of a single large table of facts that are described using dimensions and measures. A dimension provides the context of a fact (such as who participated, when and where it happened, and its type) and is used in queries to group related facts together. Dimensions tend to be discrete and are often hierarchical; for example, the location might include the building, state, and country. A measure is a quantity describing the fact, such as revenue. It's important that measures can be meaningfully aggregated - for example, the revenue from different locations can be added together. In an OLAP query, dimensions are chosen and the facts are grouped and added together to create a summary. The dimensional model is often implemented on top of the relational model using a star schema, consisting of one table containing the facts and surrounding tables containing the dimensions. Particularly complicated dimensions might be represented using multiple tables, resulting in a snowflake schema. A data warehouse can contain multiple star schemas that share dimension tables, allowing them to be used together. Coming up with a standard set of dimensions is an important part of dimensional modeling.

Object database models

In recent years, the object-oriented paradigm has been applied to database technology, creating a new programming model known as object databases. These databases attempt to bring the database world and the application programming world closer together, in particular by ensuring that the database uses the same type system as the application program. This aims to avoid the overhead (sometimes referred to as the impedance mismatch) of converting information between its representation in the database (for example as rows in tables) and its representation in the application program (typically as objects). At the same time object databases attempt to introduce the key ideas of object programming, such as encapsulation and polymorphism, into the world of databases. A variety of ways have been tried for storing objects in a database. Some products have approached the problem from the application programming end, by making the objects manipulated by the program persistent. This also typically requires the addition of some kind of query language, since conventional programming languages do not have the ability to find objects based on their information content. Others have attacked the problem from the database end, by defining an object-oriented data model for the database, and defining a database programming language that allows full programming capabalities as well as traditional query facilities. Object databases suffered because of a lack of standardization: although standards were defined by ODMG, they were never implemented well enough to ensure interoperability between products. Nevertheless, they have been used successfully in many applications: usually specialized applications such as engineering databases or molecular biology databases rather than mainstream commercial data processing. However, object database ideas were picked up by the relational vendors and influenced extensions made to these products and indeed to the SQL language.

Database Internals

Indexing

All of these kinds of database can take advantage of indexing to increase their speed, and this technology has advanced tremendously since its early uses in the 1960s and 1970s. The most common kind of index is a sorted list of the contents of some particular table column, with pointers to the row associated with the value. An index allows a set of table rows matching some criterion to be located quickly. Various methods of indexing are commonly used; B-trees, hashes, and linked lists are all common indexing techniques. Relational DBMSs have the advantage that indices can be created or dropped without changing existing applications, the application which indices to use. The database chooses between many different strategies based on which one it estimates will run the fastest. Relational DBMSs utilize many different algorithms to compute the result of an SQL statement. The RDBMs will produce a plan of how to execute the query, which is generated by analysing the run times of the different algorithms and selecting the quickest. Some of the key algorithms that deal with joins are Nested Loops Join, Sort-Merge Join and Hash Jo

Transactions and concurrency

In addition to their data model, most practical databases ("transactional databases") attempt to enforce a [[database transaction]] model that has desirable data integrity properties. Ideally, the database software should enforce the [[ACID rules, summarized here:
- Atomicity - Either all the tasks in a transaction must be done, or none of them. The transaction must be completed, or else it must be undone (rolled back).
- Consistency - Every transaction must preserve the integrity constraints -- the declared consistency rules -- of the database. It cannot place the data in a contradictory state.
- Isolation - Two simultaneous transactions cannot interfere with one another. Intermediate results within a transaction are not visible to other transactions.
- Durability - Completed transactions cannot be aborted later or their results discarded. They must persist through (for instance) restarts of the DBMS after crashes. In practice, many DBMS's allow most of these rules to be selectively relaxed for better performance. Concurrency control is a method used to ensure that transactions are executed in a safe manner and follow the ACID rules. The DBMS must be able to ensure that only serializable, recoverable schedules are allowed, and that no actions of committed transactions are lost while undoing aborted transactions.

Replication

Replication of databases is closely related to transactions. If a database can log its individual actions, it is possible to create a duplicate of the data in realtime. The duplicate can be used to improve Performance or Availability of the whole database system. Common replication concepts include:
- Master/Slave Replication: All write requests are performed on the master and then replicated to the slaves
- Quorum: The result of Read and Write requests is calculated by quering a "majority" of replicas.
- Multimaster: Two or more replicas sync each other via a transaction identifier.

Applications of databases

Databases are used in many applications, spanning virtually the entire range of computer software. Databases are the preferred method of storage for large multiuser applications, where coordination between many users is needed. Even individual users find them convenient, though, and many electronic mail programs and personal organizers are based on standard database technology. Software database drivers are available for most database platforms so that application software can use a common application programming interface (API) to retrieve the information stored in a database. Two commonly used database APIs are JDBC and ODBC.

Common Database Brands

(In alphabetical order)
- 4D
- Corel Paradox
- DB2
- FileMaker Pro
- FirebirdSQL
- Informix
- MS Access
- MS SQL Server
- MySQL
- Oracle
- PostgreSQL
- Sybase SQL Server

References

- The Codasyl Approach to Data Base Management. T. William Olle. Wiley, 1978. ISBN 0471995797
- Readings in Database Systems. Michael Stonebraker (ed). Morgan Kaufmann, 1988. (A collection of the most influential early papers on database technology from 1969 to 1988, with a preface analyzing their impact.)
- CNET News.com article, [http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5171543.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=news Study: Open-source databases going mainstream]
- [http://www.sprog.asb.dk/sn/lexicographicalbasis.htm Sandro Nielsen: Lexicographical Basis for an Electronic Bilingual Accounting Dictionary: Theoretical Considerations]
- [http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=66 Database @ sourceforge.net]
- [http://www.geocities.com/mailsoftware42/db/index.html Open Source database comparison] Category:Information technology Category:Data_management Category:Digital Revolution ko:%EB%8D%B0%EC%9D%B4%ED%84%B0%EB%B2%A0%EC%9D%B4%EC%8A%A4 ja:データベース th:ฐานข้อมูล

Customer privacy

Consumer privacy laws and regulations seek to protect any individual from loss of privacy due to failures or limitations of corporate customer privacy measures. They recognize that the damage done by privacy loss is typically not measurable, nor can it be undone, and that commercial organizations have little or no interest in taking unprofitable measures to drastically increase privacy of customers - indeed, their motivation is very often quite the opposite, to share data for commercial advantage, and to fail to officially recognize it as sensitive, so as to avoid legal liability for lapses of security that may occur. Consumer privacy concerns date back to the first commercial couriers and bankers, who in every culture took strong measures to protect customer privacy, but also in every culture tended to be subject to very harsh punitive measures for failures to keep a customer's information private. The Hippocratic Oath includes a requirement for doctors to avoid mentioning ills of patients to others, not only to protect them, but to protect their families - the same basic idea as modern consumer privacy law and regulation, which recognizes that innocent third parties can be harmed by the loss of control of sensitive information, and that therefore there is a responsibility beyond that to the 'customer' or 'client'. Today the ethical codes of most professions very clearly specify privacy measures beyond that for the 'consumer' of an arbitrary service. Those measures are discussed in other articles on medical privacy, client confidentiality and national security - and to a degree in carceral state (where no privacy in any form nor limits on state oversight or data use exist). Modern consumer privacy law in a recognizable form originated in telecom regulation, when it was recognized that a telco, especially a monopoly (known in most nations as a PTT), had access to unprecedented levels of information about not only the direct customer's communications habits and correspondents, but also that of those who shared his or her household. It was also often the case that telephone operators could hear conversations, inadvertently or deliberately, and were required to dial the exact numbers. The data gathering required for billing began to become an obvious privacy risk as well. Accordingly, strong rules on operator behavior, customer confidentiality, records keeping and destruction were enforced on telcos in every country. Typically only police and military authorities had powers to 'wiretap' or see records. Even stricter requirements emerged for banks' electronic records - in some countries financial privacy is a major focus of the economy, and penalties for violating it are severe and criminal penalties applied. In Austria in the 1990s mere mention of a client's name in a semi-public social setting was enough to earn a junior bank executive a stiff jail sentence. Through the 1970s many other organizations in developed nations began to acquire sensitive data, but there were few or no regulations in place to prevent them from sharing or abusing it. Customer trust and goodwill was generally thought to be sufficient in some nations, notably the United States, to ensure protection of truly sensitive data. 'Caveat emptor' applied. But in the 1980s much smaller organizations began to get access to computer hardware and software, and these simply did not have the procedures or personnel or expertise, nor less the time, to take rigorous measures to protect their customers. Meanwhile, via target marketing and rewards programs, they were acquiring ever more data. Gradually, customer privacy measures alone proved insufficient to deal with the many hazards of corporate data sharing, corporate mergers, employee turnover, theft of hard drives or other data-carrying hardware from work. Talk began to turn to explicit regulation, especially in the European Union, where each nation had laws that were incompatible, e.g. some restricted the collection, some the compilation, and some the dissemination of data, and it was possible to violate anyone's privacy within the EU simply by doing these things from different places in the European Common Market as it existed before 1992. Through the 1990s the proliferation of mobile telecom (which typically bills every call), the introduction of customer relationship management and the use of the Internet by the public in all developed nations, brought the situation to a head, and most countries had to implement strong consumer privacy laws, usually over the objections of business. The European Union and New Zealand passed particularly strong laws that were used as a template for more limited laws in Australia and Canada and some states of the United States (where no federal law for consumer privacy exists, although there are requirements specific to banking and telecom privacy). After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, privacy took a back-seat to national security in most legislators' minds. Accordingly concerns of consumer privacy in the United States have tended to go unheard as questions of citizen privacy versus the state, and the development of a police state or carceral state, have occupied advocates of strong privacy measures. Whereas it may have appeared prior to 2002 that commercial organizations and the consumer data they gathered were of primary concern, it has appeared since then in most developed nations to be much less of a concern than political privacy and medical privacy, e.g. as violated by biometrics. Indeed, people have been stopped at airports solely due to their political views recently (see No-fly list) and there appears to be little public will to stop practices of this nature. Privacy of body or habits may be 'dead', for all practical purposes, until political approaches or threats change.

Customer privacy

Customer privacy measures are those taken by commercial organizations to ensure that confidential customer data is not stolen or abused. Since most such organizations have a strong competitive incentive to retain an exclusive access to this data, and since customer trust is usually a high priority, most companies take some security engineering measures to protect customer privacy. However, these vary in effectiveness, and would not typically meet the much higher standards of client confidentiality applied by ethical codes or legal codes in banking or law, nor patient privacy measures in medicine, nor rigorous "national security" measures in military and intelligence organizations. Since they operate for-profit, commercial organizations also cannot spend an unlimited amount on precautions and remain competitive - a commercial context tends to limit privacy measures, and to motivate organizations to share data when working in partnership. This has led to many moral hazards and outrageous customer privacy violation incidents, and has led to consumer privacy laws in most countries, especially in the European Union, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The United States has no such law and relies on corporate customer privacy to ensure consumer privacy in general. Some services, notably telecom including Internet, imply collecting a vast array of information about user's activities in the course of things, and may also require consultation of this data to prepare bills. Telecom data must be kept for seven years in the US and Canada, to permit dispute and consultation about phone charges. Telecom regulation has always enforced a high level of confidentiality on these very sensitive customer communication bills and the underlying records. However, this approach has to a degree been outmoded as other industries also now gather sensitive data: Such common commercial measures as software-based customer relationship management, rewards programs and target marketing tend to drastically increase the amount of information gathered (and sometimes shared). These very drastically increase privacy risks, and have accelerated the shift to regulation, rather than relying on corporate desire to preserve goodwill.

External links

- [http://www.privacyinternational.org Privacy International] category:Electronic commerce category:Marketing category:Information technology management category:Business law category:Direct marketing

Customer privacy

External links

Persuasion technology

Persuasion technology is technology that can be used for presenting or promoting a point of view. Any technology designed and deployed for those purposes can be considered a persuasion technology. Such aids are regularly used in sales, diplomacy, politics, religion, military training, cult recruiting and management, and may potentially be used in any area of human interaction. Generally, persuasion technology is used to augment a human face-to-face or voice interaction, particularly in a selling or other situation where the persuader or 'seller' seeks to gain an edge on the recruit or 'buyer'. In this general sense, 'sellers' can be those promoting any particular point of view, and 'buyers' anyone they attempt to recruit. Political or religious views can be (and often are) promoted using the same general methods and technologies.

Examples

Examples of technologies that can be used for persuasive purposes are:
- Books and pamphlets.
- Impressive clothing, a method used since ancient times. Louis XIV for instance owned the lace factories which pumped out products useless for any purpose except emulating the King and thereby impressing others.
- Conventional mass media, such as print media, cinema, radio and television.
- Presentation software and hardware, such as PowerPoint or Keynote used with a data projector.
- Subliminal advertising.
- Computer simulation and modeling of electors and customers.
- Computer and video games with deliberate presuppositions behind their scenarios.
- Targeted mailing lists and email lists. Some technologies are used primarily for overt persuasion. Others are more suitable for a more subtle covert approach. However most can be used either way.

History

Persuasion is as old as humanity itself, and records exist to show that the available technology of the day has been used to assist with persuasion for many thousands of years, and has evolved over the centuries to become more effective. The earliest persuasive technologies were those that facilitated verbal communication. The first major advancement though was the technology that facilitated books, flyers, pamphlets, billboards and other forms of widely reproduced written and later visual communication. Sometimes these have a profound effect on culture - for example the Shanghai lady image in 1930s China. Today there are a plethora of electronic technologies that can be used for persuasive purposes. The key difference between "persuasion technology" in the modern sense and the persuasion that might have been used by a Roman emperor or a radical cleric supporting the reformation is the degree of reciprocal technical equality. In ordinary conversation unaided by persuasive technology, an individual may be more eloquent and persuasive than another individual, depending on their relative talents and training. But persuasive technology can give one interlocutor a technological edge and this might be the decisive factor. Improving intrusive technology e.g. RFID tags make this a rather more subversive process. There are recorded incidences of carpenters or stonemasons defeating highly respected scholars in classical rhetorical history. This would be more difficult today. Carpenters and stonemasons generally do not have the same access to persuasive technology as experts do.

Reciprocal equality

What distinguishes a persuasion technology from simple "persuasion" is that the individual being persuaded cannot easily respond by creating an equally effective counter-presentation in real time - a lack of reciprocal equality. The means used to achieve this dominance or advantage can be considered in two classes:
- Physical persuasion tools (usually electronic) which can be used to skew the balance of persuasive power between the participants. Examples include computers, broadcast equipment, pamphlets, photographs, charts, and the like.
- Methods of persuasion. These combine psychology with careful preparation. Salespeople and other professional persuaders, are commonly trained to work within a carefully prepared conceptual framework and have a series of contingency plans which structure and clarify the customer interaction for them. Whereas a typical buyer or recruit is interacting on an ad hoc basis, a well-trained and well-prepared persuader has a ready-made set of psychologically tested and effective strategies to deal with objections and overcome resistance. Supporters of the theory claim that the difference between mere salesmanship and a persuasion technology is the utilisation of well-researched quasi-scientific psychological (some say psychological warfare) methods to develop persuasive strategies and train the persuaders.

Criticisms of the theory

Detractors of the theory say that salesmanship, is as old as commerce itself, and persuasion is as old as human interactions. They claim that persuaders have always had the advantage in knowledge, preparedness, persuasion tools, and the researching of persuasive techniques. They claim that even though it is true that persuaders have become better at their art, the recruits have also become more sophisticated. Most people today are critical, even cynical, of persuasive techniques. The imbalance has not changed very much over the centuries. Some would even argue that parents today with all their persuasive technology, are not as effective in persuading their children as they were in previous centuries when children were relatively unaware of persuasive techniques. Advertisers claim that to be effective today, a message must be much more persuasive than decades ago and the reason they give is that the viewers of advertisements have become persuasion savvy. Viewers of persuasive technology today see it as a game or a challenge: they no longer see an advertisement as a credible source of information. The only solution to any imbalance that might exist, according to the detractors, is the further education of recruits and the wider dissemination of persuasion technology to all. This is the only way of creating a "level playing field". To the detractors, persuasion technology is a force for good. If there is a villain in this drama, it is the ignorance of those that can be easily influenced because of their reluctance to embrace and understand persuasive technologies and techniques. Detractors also see a serious logical flaw in the argument that a well researched persuasive technique gives a persuasive advantage relative to an equivalent and just as effective persuasive technique that has not been researched. Detractors also claim that the division of technology into two types, persuasive and non-persuasive, is a false dichotomy. Neither persuasive nor non-persuasive technology exists. All technology can be used for persuasive purposes. And all technology can be used for non-persuasive purposes. Even the most overtly persuasive technology, advertising, need not be persuasive. Marketers use advertisements for three purposes : 1) persuasion, 2) dissemination of information (useful during a new product launch or any time the consumer is not familiar with a product or how to use it), and 3) institutional (just getting the name of the company or institution out to the people). It is better to think of this division as two fictitious terminal points on a continuum. All real technologies lay on the continuum and can be categorized only by differences in degree, not differences in kind. So called persuasive technology is merely technology that tends to be used for persuasive purposes more often than so called non-persuasive technology.

Socio-political concerns

On the broader macro level, some types of persuasion technology (such as mass media) are largely controlled by a select few individuals. Alternative view points are seldom presented. Because media is paid for by advertising, advertisers tend to have an editorial influence too. It becomes quite difficult to establish any equality between those who control the media and their guests, and those who would wish to challenge them. Edward S. Herman has written extensively on this topic, and considers it a major social question. Concern has been expressed that such techniques disempower those who do not have knowledge of them and access to them. This is of particular concern in a democracy.

Use in business

Interestingly, the computer industry itself provides some examples of rejecting certain technologies simply for their power to persuade. Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems declared his company a PowerPoint-Free Zone, which was seen as a simple attack on his rival Bill Gates of Microsoft. But Lou Gerstner of IBM went further, and declared that no presentation technology at all would be used in his office, but that proposals would have to be presented on a single overhead slide with a single color of marker. He spoke strongly against the distraction of effort into persuasive presentations, and away from the core elements of business cases and real customer service. He did not, unlike Sun, ban his own salespeople from using these, a tacit acknowledgement that there was indeed power to sway decisions in such methods and technologies, and that he considered it an obligation to stockholders not to be himself swayed by it in his own office.

Use in education

Edward Tufte has decried the use of persuasion technology and the adoption of its style in education. "Particularly disturbing is the adoption of the PowerPoint cognitive style in our schools. Rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials. Elementary school PowerPoint exercises (as seen in teacher guides and in student work posted on the Internet) typically consist of 10 to 20 words and a piece of clip art on each slide in a presentation of three to six slides -a total of perhaps 80 words (15 seconds of silent reading) for a week of work. Students would be better off if the schools simply closed down on those days and everyone went to the Exploratorium or wrote an illustrated essay explaining something." [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html]

Total Information Awareness

The Information Awareness Office is a mass surveillance development branch of the United States Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It has a mission to "imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components and prototype, closed-loop, information systems that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness".

Introduction

The IAO originally had a mission of Total Information Awareness -- amended in May of 2003 to Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA). John Poindexter, former United States National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan served as the first head of the IAO. The IAO and its stated mission caught the attention of many Modulistics, conspiracy theorists and civil libertarians, particularly with its use of the pseudo-Masonic eye-in-pyramid symbol in its original logo. That logo featured the eye of Providence from the Great Seal of the United States gazing at the Earth, and the Latin motto scientia est potentia, meaning "knowledge is power". On approximately December 19, 2002, the pyramid logo disappeared without comment from the official IAO webpage, presumably in response to widespread criticism of its Masonic/Illuminati overtones. The biographies of senior staffers also disappeared. For the former page, see the archived mirror [http://web.archive.org/web/20020802012150/www.darpa.mil/iao/][http://www.thememoryhole.org/policestate/iao-logo.htm]. The IAO has the stated mission to gather as much information as possible about everyone, in a centralized location, for easy perusal by the United States government, including (though not limited to) Internet activity, credit card purchase histories, airline ticket purchases, car rentals, medical records, educational transcripts, driver's licenses, utility bills, tax returns, and any other available data. In essence, the IAO’s goal is to develop the capacity to recreate a life history of thoughts and movements for any individual on the planet on demand, which some deem necessary to counter the threat of terrorism. Critics claim the very existence of the IAO completely disregards the concept of individual privacy and liberties. They see the organization as far too invasive and prone to abuse. The first mention of the IAO in the media came from New York Times reporter John Markoff on February 13, 2002, with few details available as to the agency's role or activities. In the following months, as more and more information emerged about the IAO's full scope, protests among civil libertarians grew over what they see as the IAO's disturbingly Orwellian mission, especially within the larger framework of other invasive homeland security measures and policies implemented by the Bush administration. The integrity of Poindexter as head of the IAO also came under scrutiny, given his conviction on five felony charges for lying to Congress and deliberately altering and destroying documents pertaining to the Iran-Contra Affair, although those convictions were later overturned. On January 16, 2003, US Senator Russ Feingold introduced legislation to halt the activity of the IAO and the Total Information Awareness initiative pending a Congressional review of privacy issues involved. A similar measure introduced by Senator Ron Wyden would bar the IAO from operating within the United States unless specifically authorized to do so by Congress, and would shut the IAO down entirely 60 days after passage, unless either the Pentagon prepared a report assessing the impact of IAO activities on individual privacy and civil liberties, or the President certified the program's research as vital to national security interests. Congress passed legislation in February of 2003 halting activities of the IAO pending a Congressional report of the office's activities. Action in the US Congress to attempt to halt a specific internal Department of Defense project occurs extremely rarely, underscoring the grave threat to civil liberties and privacy that many lawmakers perceive in the Information Awareness Office. DARPA changed the name of the "Total Information Awareness" program to "Terrorist Information Awareness" on May 20, 2003, emphasizing in its report to Congress that the program is not designed to compile dossiers on US citizens, but rather to gather information on terrorist networks. Despite this name change and reassurance, the description of the program's activities remained essentially the same in the report, and critics continue to see the system as prone to massive Orwellian abuses. A Senate defense appropriations bill passed unanimously on July 18, 2003 explicitly denies any funding to Terrorist Information Awareness research, which will effectively kill the program if implemented. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3076849.stm] [http://wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59606,00.html] The Pentagon office that was developing a vast computerized terrorism surveillance system would be closed and no money could be spent to use those high-tech spying tools against Americans on U.S. soil, House and Senate negotiators have agreed on September 25, 2003. But they left open the possibility that some or all of the high-powered software under development might be employed by different government offices to gather intelligence from U.S. citizens and others abroad or from foreigners in this country.

Public protests against the Information Awareness Office

Extensive criticism of the IAO in the traditional media and on the Internet has come from both left-wing and right-wing civil libertarians, who see the unprecedented systematic categorization and access to information that it will enable as a grave threat to individual liberties, and another step farther down the slippery slope to a totalitarian state. On November 27, 2002, San Francisco Weekly columnist Matt Smith decided to illustrate the perils of information proliferation to John Poindexter personally by publishing a column containing Poindexter's home address and phone number, along with those of his next-door neighbors. The information quickly propagated through the Internet, and protestors created numerous [http://www.warblogging.com/tia/poindexter.php web sites] with this data, including satellite photographs of Poindexter's house.

IAO research

As part of the IAO's "Total Information Awareness" program the organization has started to research several new technologies: Effective Affordable Reusable Speech-to-text, or EARS, has a stated goal of "developing speech-to-text (automatic transcription) technology whose output is substantially richer and much more accurate than currently possible." This program focuses on broadcast and telephone human conversations in multiple languages, necessary for the computerized analysis of the massive amount of phone tapping the IAO now has the right to perform without a legal warrant. Futures Markets Applied to Prediction, or FutureMAP, intends to "concentrate on market-based techniques for avoiding surprise and predicting future events." It will analyze data from the world's economy in an attempt to predict political instability, threats to national security, and in general every major event in the near future. The IAO's stated strategy for this division states that "the markets must also be sufficiently robust to withstand manipulation". This statement has been interpreted as implying the intention of altering future events to further the goals of the United States. It may also refer to the possibility of persons manipulating the market mechanism in order to produce desired predictions. Genisys code-names the database system which the IAO plans to implement as the center of its information storage and processing. Currently used database systems designed in the 1980s do not have the capacity for the massive amount of data the IAO plans to gather. Genoa "provides the structured argumentation, decision-making and corporate memory to rapidly deal with and adjust to dynamic crisis management." In essence, the IAO intended this program to make conclusions and decisions based on available information, incorporating human analysis, corporate history, and a structured set of thinking. The IAO finished this research project in fiscal year 2002; there follows Genoa II, which effectively automates the collaboration between government departments. Human Identification at a Distance, or HumanID, "is to develop automated biometric identification technologies to detect, recognize and identify humans at great distances." This program intends to have the capability of implementing a face and gait identification system effective up to 150 meters at all times by fiscal year 2004. One such program, developed by Georgia Tech at a cost of nearly $1 million, identifies distinctive patterns in human walks via radar. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-2694090,00.html] Translingual Information Detection, Extraction and Summarization, or TIDES, aims to detect, translate, summarize, and extract information in speech or text in multiple languages. The IAO expected demonstration of machine capabilities and integration into Total Information Awareness systems in 2003. Wargaming the Asymmetric Environment, or WAE, focuses on developing automated technology capable of predicting terrorist attacks, identifying predictive indicators by examining individual and group behavior in broad environmental context. The WAE will also develop intervention strategies based on the motivation of specific terrorists.

References

- [http://web.archive.org/web/
- /http://www.darpa.mil/iao/ Archive.org] - 'Wayback Machine: searched for http://www.darpa.mil/iao/' (historical snapshots from TIA website, TIA's official homepage was, once upon a time, published at www.darpa.mil/iao - original website taken down), Internet Archive (June 12, 2002 - June 3, 2003)
- [http://www.eff.org/Privacy/TIA/feingold-s188.php EFF.org] - '108th Congress, 1st Session, S. 188: To impose a moratorium on the implementation of data-mining under the Total Information Awareness program of the Department of Defense and any similar program of the Department of Homeland Security, and for other purposes', (January 16, 2003)
- [http://www.eff.org/Privacy/TIA/20030728_citizen_dbprotect.php EFF.org (link to pdf)] - 'Citizens Protection in Federal Databases Act'
- [http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/poindexter.html FAS.org] - ': Overview of the Information Awareness Office' (Remarks as prepared for delivery by Dr. John Poindexter, Director, Information Awareness Office of DARPA)', John Poindexter, DARPATech 2002 Conference (August 2, 2002)

External links

Media coverage

- [http://news.com.com/2100-1023-980889.html News.com.com] - 'Pentagon database plan hits snag on Hill', Declan McCullagh, CNET (January 15, 200)
- [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15395-2003May20.html?nav=hptoc_tn WashingtonPost.com] - Pentagon Defends Surveillance Program Washington Post (May 20, 2003)
- [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19272-2003May21.html?nav=hptoc_tn WashingtonPost.com] - The Pentagon's PR Play', Cynthia L. Webb, Washington Post (May 21, 2003)
- [http://www.stlr.org/cite.cgi?volume=5&article=2 STLR.org] - 'Data Mining and Domestic Security: Connecting the Dots to Make Sense of Data' (abstract with pdf links to article), K. A. Taipale, Columbia Science and Technology Law Review
Critical views (established sources)

- [http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/Privacy.cfm?ID=14729&c=130 ACLU.org] - 'TIA: Total Information Awareness', American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) (January 16, 2004)
- [http://www.cato.org/research/articles/pena-021122.html CATO.org] - 'Information Awareness Office Makes Us a Nation of Suspects', Charles V. Peña, Cato Institute (November 22, 2002)
- [http://www.eff.org/Privacy/TIA/20031003_comments.php EFF.org] - 'Total/Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA): Is It Truly Dead? EFF: It's Too Early to Tell', Electronic Frontier Foundation
- [http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/ Epic.org] - 'Total "Terrorism" Information Awareness (TIA): Latest News' Electronic Privacy Information Center
- [http://www.sptimes.com/2003/01/24/Opinion/Unfocused_data_mining.shtml SPTimes.com] - 'A Times Editorial: Unfocused data-mining', St. Petersburg Times (January 24, 2003)
Critical views (less well recognized)

- [http://propagandamatrix.com/articles/december2004/061204tiaready.htm PropagandaMatrix.com] - Total Information Awareness Ready Before 9/11: Citizens For Legitimate Government' (December 6 2004)
- [http://www.thememoryhole.org/policestate/iao-logo.htm TheMemoryHole.com] - 'Information Awareness Office Website Deletes Its Logo', The Memory Hole
- [http://www.warblogging.com/tia/ WarBlogging.com] - 'Fight Total Information Awareness' (articles about TIA/IAO), Warblogging.com
Proponent views

- [http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/137dvufs.asp WeeklyStandard.com] - 'Total Misrepresentation', Heather Mac Donald, Cato Institute, vol 8, no 19 (January 27, 2003)
- [http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-levin021303.asp NationalReview.com] - 'Total Preparedness: The case for the Defense Department’s Total Information Awareness project', Jonathan Levin, National Review (February 13, 2003) Category:DARPA Category:Government databases in the United States Category:Surveillance

List of CRM vendors

While many of the vendors listed below provide what can be loosely termed customer relationship management (CRM) software, there are marked variations in these offerings and how they are used. Variations tend to be along several continuums: open source vs proprietary software, open standards vs proprietary standards, enterprise wide software vs standalone vignette software, and hosted software being Software as a Service (Saas) vs in-house software maintained and serviced internally. The problem for software purchasers is that not all CRM packages are neatly divided into these main types, and even if they are, a particular offering may vary in nature considerably to other software.

Open source offerings

There are many open source CRM projects. Below is a selection:
- Centraview
- Compiere
- Hipergate
- SugarCRM (open source distribution)
- vtiger CRM

Commercial vendors

Many companies supply CRM solutions, including:
- 24SevenOffice
- Centraview
- CRIXP Corp.
- Epicor
- FrontRange Solutions
- IBM
- Microsoft
- NetSuite
- Onyx Software Corporation
- Oracle
- PeopleSoft
- Pivotal Corporation
- Relenta CRM
- RightNow Technologies
- Sage
- Salesforce.com
- SAP
- Siebel Systems
- SugarCRM (commercial distribution)
- SuperOffice
- Terrasoft CRM
- Tustena CRM CRM vendors

ITIL

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a customizable framework of best practices that promote quality computing services in the information technology (IT) sector. ITIL addresses the organisational structure and skill requirements for an IT organisation by presenting a comprehensive set of management procedures with which an organisation can manage its IT operations. These procedures are supplier independent and apply to all aspects of IT infrastructure. Since the mid 1990's, ITIL has been promoted as a standard for IT Service Management and is similar to Information Services Procurement Library (ISPL), the Application Services Library (ASL), Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), and Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT). ITIL is built on a process-model view of controlling and managing operations. ITIL is published in a series of books, each of which covers one topic. The names ITIL and IT Infrastructure Library are Registered Trade Marks of the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), which is an Office of the United Kingdom's Treasury. The content of the books is protected by Crown Copyright. The recommendations of ITIL were developed in the late 1980's by the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), which merged into the OGC in April, 2001 and disappeared as a distinct organization. The CCTA created ITIL in response to the growing dependence on information technology to meet business needs and goals.

Benefits of ITIL

ITIL benefits the IT community in many ways.
- It is comprehensive.
- It creates a common vocabulary. ITIL creates a glossary of tightly defined terms, which lubricates communication.

Overview of the ITIL frameworks

ITIL is defined by a collection of books that describe guidelines for different aspects of best-practice data center management. Taken as a whole, ITIL presents a comprehensive view of the field. The subjects of the individual books are referred to as sets; currently there are eight. The sets are further divided into disciplines, each of which is focused on a specific subject. The eight sets and their disciplines are: # Service Delivery. What services must the data center provide to the business to adequately support it. ## IT Financial Management ## Capacity Management ## Availability Management ## IT Continuity Management ## Service Level Management # Service Support. How does the data center ensure that the customer has access to the appropriate services. ## Change Management ## Release Management ## Problem Management ## Incident Management ## Configuration Management ## Service Desk # Planning to Implement Service Management. How to start the changeover to ITIL. It explains the necessary steps to identify how an organisation might expect to benefit from ITIL and how to set about reaping those benefits. # Security Management. # ICT Infrastructure Management. What processes, organisation, and tools are needed to provide a stable IT and communications infrastructure. This is the foundation for ITIL service management processes. ## Network service Management ## Operations Management ## Management of local processors ## Computer installation and acceptance ## Systems Management # The Business Perspective. It explains the key principles and requirements of the business organisation and operation and how these relate to the development, delivery and support of IT services. # Application Management. How to manage the software development lifecycle, expanding the issues touched upon in Software development lifecycle and testing of IT services. # Software Asset Management. The following diagram shows the framework of ITIL. IT services From the beginning, the ITIL Framework has been publicly available (however, it is copyright protected). This means that any organisation can use the framework described by the OGC in its numerous books. Because of this, ITIL guidance has been used by a wide range of organisations including local and central government, energy, public utilities, retail, finance, and manufacturing. Very large organisations, very small organisations and everything in between have implemented ITIL processes. Each set in the diagram above represents a book. The Service Management set is the main discipline of ITIL split into two sections, Service Support and Service Delivery, the service management is concerned with delivering and supporting IT services that are appropriate to the business requirements of the organisations. There are four sets around the IT service management. First, planning to implement service management create the planning to implement ITIL inside an organisation. Then, the Business perspective investigate if the services are efficient on the business and control the cost/revenue for the services. The right side is the ICT infrastructure which deal more with technical issues. The last side is the Application Management which address the complex subject of managing applications from the initial business need, through the Application Management lifecycle, up to and including retirement.

Individual sets

Service Delivery

The scope and details of the Service Delivery set are defined in the book : The service delivery discipline looks at what service the business requires of the provider in order to provide adequate support to the business users (See Service support). The discipline consists of the following processes:
- Service Level Management
- Capacity Management
- IT Service Continuity Management
- Availability Management
- Financial Management Service support The diagram above shows the relationships between the processes. It is explained in the following subsections. ;Service Level Management : Service Level Management provides for continual identification, monitoring and review of the levels of IT services specified in the Service Level Agreements (SLAs). The process involves assessing the impact of change upon service quality and SLAs. The service level management process is in close relation with the operational processes to control their activities. ;Capacity Management : Capacity Management supports the optimum and cost effective provision of IT services by helping organizations match their IT resources to the business demands. The high level activities are: Application Sizing, Workload Management, Demand Management, Modeling, Capacity Planning, Resource Management, and Performance Management. ;IT Continuity Management : IT Continuity Management helps to ensure the availability and rapid restoration of IT services in the event of a disaster. The high level activities are: Risk Analysis, Manage Contingency Plan Management, Contingency Plan Testing, and Risk Management. ;Availability Management : Availability Management allows organizations to sustain the IT service availability in order to support the business at a justifiable cost. The high level activities are: Realize Availability Requirements, Compile Availability Plan, Monitor Availability, and Monitor Maintenance Obligations. ;IT Financial Management : IT Financial Management assesses the Total Cost Of Ownership.

Service Support

The scope and details of the Service Support set are defined in the book : The service support ITIL discipline ensures that the Customer has access to the appropriate services to support the business functions. Service Level Agreement To a business, customers and users are the entry point to the process model. They get involved in service support by asking:
- Asking for changes
- Needing communication, updates
- Having difficulties, queries. The service desk is the single contact point for the customers to record their problems. It will try to resolve it, if there is a direct solution or will create an incident. Incidents initiate a chain of processes: Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Release Management and Configuration Management (see following sections for details). This chain of processes is tracked using the Configuration Management Database (CMDB), which records each process, and creates output documents for traceability (Quality Management).

Service Desk

The Service Desk acts as the central point of contact between service providers and users/customers, on a day-to-day basis. It is also a focal point for reporting Incidents and making service requests. It handles incidents and requests, as well as providing an interface for other Service Management activities such as Change, Problem, Configuration, Release, Service Level and IT service Continuity Management. The Service Desk keeps users informed of the service events, actions and opportunities that are likely to affect them. The Service Desk is in the direct line of any impact on the Service Level Agreement and as such needs rapid information flows. To meet both Customer and business objectives, many organisations have implemented a central point of contact for handling Customer, User and related issues. This function is known under several titles, including:
- Help desk
- Call centre
- Service Desk The Service Desk differs from the Help desk and Call centre offering a more globally-focused approach, which integrates business processes into the Service Management infrastructure. It not only handles Incidents, Problems and questions, but also provides an interface for other activities such as customer Change requests, maintenance contracts, and software licences. The objective of the Service Desk are:
- Providing a single point of contact for customers
- Facilitating the restoration of normal operational service with minimal business impact on the customer within agreed levels (SLA) and business priorities. The common Service Desk functions include:
- Receiving calls, first-line customer liaison
- Recording and tracking incidents and complaints
- Keeping customers informed on request status and progress
- Making an initial assessment of requests, attempting to resolve them or refer them to someone who can
- Monitoring and escalation procedures relative to the appropriate SLAs
- Identifying problems
- Closing incidents and confirmation with the customers
- Coordinating second-line and third line support

Incident Management

The first goal of the incident management process is to restore a normal service operation as quickly as possible and minimize the impact on business operations, thus ensuring that the best possible levels of service quality and availability are maintained. 'Normal service operation' is defined here as service operation within Service Level Agreement (SLA). ITIL terminology defines an incident as: :Any event which is not part of the standard operation of a service and which causes, or may cause, an interruption to, or a reduction in, the quality of that service The definition means that an incident is a problem but without a root or cause. If the incident has a root, the incident become a problem or a known error (see the next section). Examples of incidents:
- Application
- service not available
- application bug
- disk-usage threshold exceeded
- Hardware
- system-down
- automatic alert
- printer not printing
- Service requests
- request for information/advice/documentation
- forgotten password The main incident management processes are the following:
- Incident detection and recording
- Classification and initial support
- Investigation and diagnosis
- Resolution and recovery
- Incident closure
- Incident ownership, monitoring, tracking and communication The incidents that cannot be resolved quickly by the Help desk will be assigned to specialist groups. A resolution or work-around should be established as quickly as possible in order to restore the service.

Relationship

Incidents are the result of failures or errors in the IT infrastructure . The cause of Incidents may be apparent and that cause be addressed without the need for further investigation, resulting in a repair, a Work-around or an request for change (RFC) to remove the error. The following diagram shows the relationship between incidents, problem, known errors and RFCs. request for change A problem can be a result of several incidents and it's possible that the Problem will not be diagnosed until several incidents have occurred. Handling a problem is different from handling an incident and therefore is covered by the problem management process. Then the problem becomes a Known error which means that the problem has been successfully diagnosed and for which a Work-around is known. Finally the request for changes (RFCs) is the procedure to modify the system by resolving the known error, this process is covered by the Change Management. A request for new additional service is often not regarded as an incident but as a Request for Change (RFC).

Problem management

The goal of Problem management is to minimize the adverse impact of Incidents and Problems on business that are caused by errors within the IT infrastructure, and to prevent recurrence of incidents related to these errors. A `Problem' is an unknown underlying cause of one or more incidents, and a `Known error' is a problem that is successfully diagnosed and for which a Work-around has been identified. The CCTA defines problems and Known errors as follows: A problem is a condition often identified as a result of multiple Incidents that exhibit common symptoms. Problems can also be identified from a single significant Incident, indicative of a single error, for which the cause is unknown, but for which the impact is significant. A known error is a condition identified by successful diagnosis of the root cause of a problem, and the subsequent development of a Work-around. Problem management is different than incident management. The principal purpose of problem management is the detection, resolution, and prevention of incidents; incident management records the incident. request for change The above diagram shows the details of the problem management process. The problem management process is intended to reduce the number and severity of incidents and problems on the business, and report it in documentation to be available for the first-line and second line of the help desk. The proactive process identifies and resolves problems before incidents occur. These activities are:
- Trend analysis;
- Targeting support action;
- Providing information to the organization. The Error Control Process is an iterative to process known errors until they are eliminated by the successful implementation of a change under the control of the Change Management process. The Problem Control Process aims to handle problems in a efficient way. Problem control identifies the root cause of incidents and reports it to the service desk. Other activities are:
- Problem identification and recording;
- Problem classification;
- Problem investigation and diagnosis. The standard technique for identifying the root cause of a problem is to use an Ishikawa diagram, also referred to as a cause-and-effect diagram, tree diagram, or fishbone diagram. An Ishikawa diagram is typically the result of a brainstorming session in which members of a group offer ideas to improve a product. For problem-solving, the goal will be to find the cause and effect of the problem. The following diagram is an example of a Ishikawa diagram. Ishikawa diagram Ishikawa diagrams can be defined in a meta-model. First there is the main subject, it's the backbone of the diagram what we try to solve or improve, the main subject is derived from a cause. The relationship between a cause and a effect is a double relation, a cause is result of effects, and the effect is the root of causes. But there is just one effect for several causes and one cause for several effects. The following example shows an application of the meta-model. Ishikawa diagram

Configuration management

Configuration Management is a process that tracks all of the individual Configuration Items (CI) in a system. A system may be as simple as a single server, or as complex as the entire IT department. Configuration Management includes:
- Creating a parts list of every CI (hardware or software) in the system.
- Defining the relationship of CIs in the system
- Tracking of the status of each CI, both its current status and its history.
- Tracking all Requests For Change to the system.
- Verifying and ensuring that the CI parts list is complete and correct. There are five basic activities of Configuration Management:
- Planning: The Configuration Management plan covers the next three to six months in detail, and the following twelve months in outline. It is reviewed at least twice a year and will include a strategy, policy, scope, objectives, roles and responsibilities, the Configuration Management processes, activities and procedures, the CMDB, relationships with other processes and third parties, as well as tools and other resource requirements.
- Identification: The selection, identification and labelling of all CIs. This covers the recording of information about CI's, including ownership, relationships, versions and unique identifiers. CIs should be recorded at a level of detail justified by the business need, typically to the level of "independent change".
- Control: This gives the assurance that only authorised and identifiable CIs are accepted and recorded from receipt to disposal. It ensures that no CI is added, modified, replaced or removed without the appropriate controlling documentation e.g. approved RFC, updated specification. All CIs will be under Change Management Control.
- Status Accounting: The reporting of all current and historical data concerned with each CI throughout its life-cycle. It enables changes to CIs and tracking of their records through various statuses, e.g. ordered, received, under test, live, under repair, withdrawn or for disposal.
- Verification and Audit: This is a series of reviews and audits that verifies the physical existence of CIs, and checks that they are correctly recorded in the CMDB. It includes the process of verifying Release and Configuration documentation before changes are made to the live environment.

Change Management

The CCTA defines the change management process this way: :The goal of the change Management process is to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes, in order to minimize the impact of change-related incidents upon service quality, and consequently improve the day-to-day operations of the organization. Change management is responsible for managing change process involving:
- Hardware
- Communications equipment and software
- System software
- All documentation and procedures associated with the running, support and maintenance of live systems. Any proposed change must be approved in the change management process. While change management makes the process happen, the decision authority is the Change Advisory Board (CAB), which is made up for the most part of people from other functions within the organisation. The main activities of the change management are:
- Filtering changes
- Managing changes and the change process
- Chairing the CAB and the CAB/Emergency committee
- Reviewing and closing RFCs
- Management reporting

Release Management

Release Management is used for platform-independent and automated distribution of software and hardware, including license controls across the entire IT infrastructure. Proper Software and Hardware Control ensure the availability of licensed, tested, and version certified software and hardware, which will function correctly and respectively with the available hardware. Quality control during the development and implementation of new hardware and software is also the responsibility of Release Management. This guarantees that all software can be conceptually optimized to meet the demands of the business processes. The goals of release management are:
- Plan to rollout of software
- Design and implement procedures for the distribution and installation of changes to IT systems
- Communicate and manage expectations of the customer during the planning and rollout of new releases
- Control the distribution and installation of changes to IT systems The focus of release management is the protection of the live environment and its services through the use of formal procedures and checks.

Planning To Implement Service Management

The scope and details of the Planning To Implement Service Management set are defined in the book : How to introduce ITIL practices into an existing organization.

Security Management

The scope and details of the Security Management set are defined in the book :

ICT Infrastructure Management

The scope and details of the ICT Infrastructure Management set are defined in the book : The Infrastructure Management set describes server installation and acceptance, operations management, system management, and network management.

The Business Perspective

The scope and details of the Business Perspective set are defined in the book : The Business Perspective covers a range of issues concerned with understanding and improving IT service provision, as a part of the entire business requirement for high IS quality management. These issues are:
- Business Continuity Management describes the responsibilities and opportunities available to the business manager to improve what is, in most organizations one of the key contributing services to business efficiency and effectiveness.
- Surviving Change. IT infrastructure changes can impact the manner in which business is conducted or the continuity of business operations. It is important that business managers take notice of these changes and ensure that steps are taken to safeguard the business from adverse side effects.
- Transformation of business practice through radical change helps to control IT and to integrate it with the business.
- Partnerships and outsourcing

Application Management

The scope and details of the Application Management set are defined in the book : The Application Management set covers the life-cycle of software development projects, with particular attention to gathering and defining requirements that meet business objectives.

Process theory

This section gives an introduction to process theory, which is the basis for ITIL process models. A process is a connected series of actions, activities, and changes etc, performed by agents with the intent of satisfying a purpose or achieving a goal. A process model enables understanding and helps to articulate the distinctive features of a process. When a process has been defined it should be under control to be manageable, the process control is the process of planning and regulating, with the objective of performing the process in an effective and efficient way. The output produced by a process has to conform to operational norms that are derived from business objectives. If products conform to the set norm, the process can be considered effective (because it can be repeated, measured and managed).If the activities are carried out with a minimum effort, the process can also be considered efficient. Process results metrics should be incorporated in regular management reports. process theory The model shown above is a generic process model. Data enters in the process, is processed and then the data comes out, the output has been measured and reviewed by the process control. This very basic description underpins any process description. A process is always organized around a goal. The main output of that process is the result of that goal. The approach underpins the `plan-do-check-act' cycle of any quality management system. Plan the purpose of your process in such a way that the process action can be audited for successful achievement and, if necessary, improved.

Certification

Examination and certification is managed via two independent bodies: EXIN - This is the [http://www.exin-exams.com/ Examination Institute for Information Science] ISEB - This is the [http://www.bcs.org/BCS/Products/Qualifications/ISEB/ Information Systems Examination Board]. These groups organise and control the certification activity. Both bodies accredit training organisations to guarantee a consistent level of quality in course delivery. Although no formal register of qualified individuals is maintained, a voluntary register is operated by the [http://www.certification-register.org ITIL Certification Register] There are currently 3 levels of certification offered: - The ITIL Foundation Certificate - The ITIL Practitioners Certificate - The ITIL Managers Certificate.

References

# Office of Government Commerce (UK). [http://www.ogc.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1878 CCTA and OGC]. Retrieved May 5, 2005. # Bartlett, John; Hinley, David; Johnson, Brian; Johnston, David; Keeling, Chris; Lloyd, Vernon; MacDonald, Ian; Mather, John; McLaughlin, Gerry; Rudd, Colin; Wheeldon, David; & Young, Rob (2001). ITIL, the key to managing IT Services: Best Practice for Service Delivery. London: The Stationery Office. ISBN 0-11-330017-4.

External links

- [http://www.itil.co.uk/ The OGC website]
- [http://www.itsmf.com/ IT Service Management Forum]
- [http://www.itil.org.uk/ The ITIL definition site]
- [http://www.itilcommunity.com The ITIL Forum]
- [http://itil.technorealism.org ITIL Wiki]
- [http://www.govtech.net/magazine/channel_story.php/95672 American ITIL] Category:Information technology management Category: Method engineering Category: Process management Category: Service management Category: IT governance Category: IT standards ja:ITIL

Marketing

Marketing is the process of planning and executing the pricing, promotion, and distribution of goods, ideas, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals." American Marketing Association. Many companies, particularly prior to the 1970s, were product-focused, employing teams of salespeople to push their products into or onto the market, regardless of market desire. A market-focused, or customer-focused, organization instead first determines what its potential customers desire, and then builds the product. Marketing theory and practice is justified on the belief that customers use a product or service because they have a need, or because a product has perceived benefit. Two major aspects of marketing are the recruitment of new customers (acquisition) and the retention and expansion of relationships with existing customers (base management). An emerging area of study and practice concerns internal marketing, or how employees are trained and managed to deliver the brand in a way that positively impacts the acquisition and retention of customers. Once a marketer has converted the prospective buyer, base management marketing takes over. The process for base management shifts the marketer to building a relationship, nurturing the links, enhancing the benefits that sold the buyer in the first place and improving the products/service continuously to protect her business from competitive encroachments. Marketing methods are informed by many of the social sciences, particularly psychology, sociology, and economics. Marketing research underpins these activities. Through advertising, it is also related to many of the creative arts.

Types of markets

The word market originally meant the place where the exchange between seller and buyer took place. Today we speak of a market as either a region where goods are sold and bought or particular types of buyer (summarized from Wells, Burnett, Moriarty, pg. 65–66). When strategizing specialists in marketing comment about markets they are usually referring to the different groups of people and/or organizations. The four major market groups are 1) consumer, 2) business to business, 3) institutional, and 4) reseller.

Product, price, promotion, and placement

In popular usage, the term "marketing" refers to the promotion of products, especially advertising and branding. However, in professional usage the term has a wider meaning that recognizes that marketing is customer centered. Products are often developed to meet the desires of groups of customers or even, in some cases, for specific customers. McCarthy divided marketing into four general sets of activities. His typology has become so universally recognized that his four activity sets, the Four Ps, have passed into the language. The Four Ps are:
- Product: The Product management aspect of marketing deals with the specifications of the actual good or service, and how it relates to the end-user's needs and wants.
- Pricing: This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts.
- Promotion: This includes advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and personal selling, and refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.
- Placement or distribution refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point of sale placement or retailing. These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix. A marketer can use these variables to craft a marketing plan. The four Ps model is most useful when marketing low value consumer products. Industrial products, services, high value consumer products require adjustments to this model. Services marketing must account for the unique nature of services. Industrial or b2b marketing must account for the long term contractual agreements that are typical in supply chain transactions. Relationship marketing attempts to do this by looking at marketing from a long term relationship perspective rather than individual transactions.

Technique

For a marketing plan to be successful, the mix of the four "p's" must reflect the wants and desires of the consumers in the target market. Trying to convince a market segment to buy something they don't want is extremely expensive and seldom successful. Marketers depend on marketing research, both formal and informal, to determine what consumers want and what they are willing to pay for. Marketers hope that this process will give them a sustainable competitive advantage. Marketing management is the practical application of this process. Most companies today have a customer orientation (also called customer focus). This implies that the company focuses its activities and products on customer needs. Generally there are two ways of doing this: the customer-driven approach and the product innovation approach. In the consumer-driven approach, consumer wants are the drivers of all strategic marketing decisions. No strategy is pursued until it passes the test of consumer research. Every aspect of a market offering, including the nature of the product itself, is driven by the needs of potential consumers. The starting point is always the consumer. The rationale for this approach is that there is no point spending R&D funds developing products that people will not buy. History attests to many products that were commercial failures inspite of being technological breakthroughs. The next big thing is a concept in marketing that refers to a product or idea that will allow for a high amount of sales for that product and related products. Marketers believe that by finding or creating the next big thing they will spark a cultural revolution that results in this sales increase. In a product innovation approach, the company pursues product innovation, then tries to develop a market for the product. Product innovation drives the process and marketing research is conducted primarily to ensure that a profitable market segment(s) exists for the innovation. The rationale is that customers may not know what options will be available to them in the future so we should not expect them to tell us what they will buy in the future. It is claimed that if Thomas Edison depended on marketing research he would have produced larger candles rather than inventing light bulbs. Many firms, such as research and development focused companies, successfully focus on product innovation. Many purists doubt whether this is really a form of marketing orientation at all, because of the ex post status of consumer research. Some even question whether it is marketing. Diffusion of innovations research explores how and why people adopt new products, services and ideas. A relatively new form of marketing uses the Internet and is called internet marketing or more generally e-marketing, affiliate marketing or online marketing. It typically tries to perfect the segmentation strategy used in traditional marketing. It targets its audience more precisely, and is sometimes called personalized marketing or one-to-one marketing.

Criticism of marketing

Some aspects of marketing, especially promotion, are the subject of criticism. See the main article Criticism of marketing.

External links

- [http://www.knowthis.com KnowThis.com - Marketing Virtual Library] – an extensive marketing reference site
- [http://www.sosig.ac.uk/roads/subject-listing/World-cat/market.html SOSIG Marketing directory] – a directory of marketing topics available on the web
- [http://www.mediapost.com/ Media and Advertising Directory]
- [http://www.tutor2u.net/revision_notes_marketing.asp Study notes on core marketing topics]
- [http://www.knowledge-community.com/Marketing Knowledge-Community.com] - The Community of Knowledge-Workers worldwide Category:Marketing ja:マーケティング

Customer experience management

Customer experience management (CEM) is "the process of strategically managing a customer's entire experience with a product or a company" (Schmitt, 2003, p. 17). Marketing research has shown that about 70 to 80% of all products are perceived as commodities, that is, seen as being more-or-less the same as competing products. This makes marketing the product difficult. Marketers have taken various approaches to this problem including: branding, product differentiation, market segmentation, and relationship marketing. Relationship marketing, (also called loyalty marketing) focuses on establishing and building a long term relationship between a company and a customer. There are several approaches that have been espoused including customer experience management, customer relationship management, loyalty programs, and database marketing.

CEM's critique of traditional marketing

The development of customer experience management originally started with a critique of three existing marketing concepts. It concluded that the following three concepts do not go far enough:
- Marketing concept--Since the 1970s there has been a gradual shift from a product-, technology-, and sales-focused orientation towards a customer- and market-oriented approach by determining the wants and needs of customers and satisfying them more efficiently or effectively as compared to competitors. However, the approach is still mostly functional, with similarities and differences between competitors being defined mostly by product features and customer benefits. In addition, the customer is perceived as being rational, which is in most cases not the case, as e.g. Kahneman and Tversky's Prospect theory has proven. Also, it is asserted that market research is mostly analytical leaving little room for qualitative assessments of customer relationhships towards products, services, or brands. It is claimed (by Shultz) that traditional marketing, in practice, takes an inside-out approach (starting with internal variables like production capabilities and available capital then moving to external variables like customer needs), rather than taking an outside-in approach as marketing theory requires.
- Customer relationship management is claimed to be deficient because it primarily consists of database and software programs used in call centers and thus, focuses too much on quantitative data. By doing this, it is led by transactions rather than a desire to build lasting relationships with customers.
- Customer satisfaction is an outcome-oriented attitude deriving from customers who compare the performance or value of the product with their expectations of it. It is claimed that the customer satisfaction approach depends too heavily on outcome oriented measures like satisfaction and too superficially on direct experiential measures. A customer is said to be satisfied when a product's performance is above the cutomer's expectations. Thus, traditional customer satisfaction techniques are deficient if they don't help firms to understand and manage customers' experiences, experiences that lead to the following equation: good experience = satisfaction. CEM recognizes, as does all of marketing since the early 1970s, that customers are a company’s most valuable asset. What makes CEM different from traditional marketing is that it claims that marketing theory has seldom been implemented adequately.

The CEM technique

CEM is a methodology that tries to overcome the gap between theory and practice by reformulating basic marketing principles. The result is that CEM stresses four aspects of marketing management :
- CEM focuses on all sorts of customer-related issues
- CEM combines the analytical and the creative
- CEM considers both, strategy and implementation
- CEM operates internally and externally Although all marketing management and strategic management does all of these, CEM supporters claim that they have a methodology that will yield better results. Being convinced that the marketing concept is too product-centered, Customer relationship management too focused on quantitative data, and customer satisfaction too functional, CEM looks for another perspective on the relationship of a consumer with a product or service. And what's key? The experience linked to it is the key. This enables companies to strategically manage a customer's experience with a brand and by doing so, achieve a truly customer focused management concept. To accomplish this, a framework is required based on clearly defined company objectives. So far, the following five steps have been suggested in the literature that should help managers understand and manage the "customer experience": Step 1: Analyzing the Experiential world of the customer
- analyze sociocultural context of the customer (needs/wants/lifestyle)
- analyze business concept (requirements/solutions) Step 2: Building the Experiential platform
- connection between strategy and implementation
- specifies the value that the customer can expect from the product (EVP = experiential value promise) Whereas steps 1 (Analysis) and 2 (Strategy) form the basis for CEM, steps 3, 4, and 5 are focusing on Implementation. Step 3: Designing the Brand experience
- experiential features, product aesthetics, “look and feel”, e.g. logos Step 4: Structuring the Customer interface
- all sorts of dynamic exchanges and contract points with customers
- intangible elements (i.e. value, attitude, behaviour) Step 5: Engaging in Continuous Experiential innovation
- anything that improves end customers' personal lives and business customers' working lives And finally, to bring all pieces together, a holistic approach is required that provides a linkage between the different steps and connects them with the organization:
- CEM integration
- CEM organization

Examples of CEM

Looking at the current business literature, it appears as if CEM might be following CRM as one of the leading concepts for the years to come. Several books have been written on "Experience" in the last decade and a half, not all of them actually using the term customer experience management. "Experience" authors include Bernd Schmitt, Jerry Zaltman, Pine/Gilmore, Patricia Seybold, Shaun Smith, and Gerhard Schulze to name just a few. The term customer experience management is being used most obviously by Bernd Schmitt. Various leading consultancies now offer CEM Consulting.

References

- Schmitt, B. (2003) Customer Experience Management, The Free Press, New York, 2001.
- Schmitt, B. and Simonson, A. (1997) In Marketing Aesthetics:The strategic management of brands, identity, and image The Free Press, New York, 1997.
- Pine, J. and Gilmore, J. (1999) The Experience Economy, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 1999. Category:Marketing strategies and paradigms category:Customer experience management

Information technology management

Information technology management is a combination of two branches of study, Information technology and Management. This aims at achieving the goals and objectives of an organisation through computers. Also called IT management, this name is a common business function within corporations. Strictly speaking, there are two incarnations to this definition. One implies the management of a collection of systems, infrastructure, and information that resides on them. Another implies the management of Information Technologies as a business function. The first definition is the subject of technical manuals and publications of various information technologies providers; while the second definition stems from the discussion and formation of ITIL. The ITIL has been in practice throughout regions of the world mainly conducted by IT service providers consulting companies. The relative paucity in the use of the best practice set can be attributed to a lack awareness among IT pratitioners. However the lack of ready-to-use tools also presents a significant barrier. Some organizations that value such practices tend to engage consultants to introduce the practice. Such implementations can conflict with the home-grown culture due to a lack of internal buy-in. Other organizations implement the practices by spending resources to develop in-house tools. Most in-house developed tools tend to focus on one or a few specific areas where the orgnizations feel the most pains. To reap the full advantages, tools will need to be integrated with the organization's IT data in the center. One notable mention is a relatively small but integrated tool on the market that seems to be developing in this direction: EITM.

Management Information Systems

Management Information Systems (MIS) are Information Systems, typically computer-based, that are used within an organization. WordNet describes an information system as "a system consisting of the network of all communication channels used within an organization". A management information system may also be defined as "a system that collects and processes data (information) and provides it to managers at all levels who use it for decision making, planning, program implementation, and control." An information system is comprised of all the components that collect, manipulate, and disseminate data or information. It usually includes hardware, software, people, communications systems such as telephone lines, and the data itself. The activities involved include inputting data, processing of data into information, storage of data and information, and the production of outputs such as management reports. As an area of study it is commonly referred to as information technology management. The study of information systems is usually a commerce and business administration discipline, and frequently involves software engineering, but also distinguishes itself by concentrating on the integration of computer systems with the aims of the organization. The area of study should not be confused with Computer Science which is more theoretical and mathematical in nature or with Computer Engineering which is more engineering. In business, information systems support business processes and operations, decision-making, and competitive strategies.

The functional support role

The business processes and operations support function is the most basic. It involves collecting, recording, storing, and basic processing of data. Information systems support business processes and operations by:
- recording and storing sales data, purchase data, investment data, payroll data and other accounting records
- processing these accounting records into income statements, balance sheets, ledgers, management reports, and other forms of financial information
- recording and storing inventory data, work in process data, equipment repair and maintenance data, supply chain data, and other production/operations records
- processing these operations records into production schedules, production controllers, inventory systems, and production monitoring systems
- recording and storing personnel data, salary data, employment histories, and other human resources records
- processing these human resources records into employee expense reports, and performance based reports
- recording and storing market data, customer profiles, customer purchase histories, marketing research data, advertising data, and other marketing records
- processing these marketing records into advertising elasticity reports, marketing plans, and sales activity reports
- recording and storing business intelligence data, competitor analysis data, industry data, corporate objectives, and other strategic management records
- processing these strategic management records into industry trends reports, market share reports, mission statements, and portfolio models
- use of all the above to implement, control, and monitor plans, strategies, tactics, new products, new business models or new business ventures.

The decision support role

The business decision making support function goes one step further. It is an integral part of making decisions. It allows users to ask "What if…?" questions: What if we increase the price by 5%? What if we increase price by 10%? What if we decrease price by 5%? What if we increase price by 10% now, then decrease it by 5% in three months? It also allows users to deal with contingencies: If inflation increases by 5% (instead of 2% as we are assuming), then what do we do? What do we do if we are faced with a strike or a new competitive threat? The most basic and most versatile business decision making tool is the spreadsheet, but spreadsheets are not user friendly. More sophisticated programs often seamlessly incorporate statistical decision making tools like sensitivity analysis, Monte Carlo analysis, risk analysis, break even analysis and Bayesian analysis. If, for example, you are using the information system to decide about a new product introduction, the program should incorporate tools like logit analysis, B.C.G. Analysis, conjoint analysis, contribution margin analysis, multi dimensional scaling, G.E. Multi Factoral analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis, discriminant analysis, Quality Function Deployment, preference regressions, and preference-rank translations.

The strategic support role

Information systems can support a company's competitive positioning. Here are three levels of analysis: 1. The supports for help in piloting the chain of internal value. They are the most recent and the most pragmatic systems within the reach of the manager. They are the solutions to reductions of costs and management of performance. They are typically named "Business Workflow Analysis" (BWA) or of "Business Management Systems p2p". Tool networks, they ensure control over piloting the set functions of a company. The real-time mastery in the costs of dysfunctions cause distances from accounts, evaluation and accounting that are presented in the evaluation and qualitative reports. 2. All successful companies have one (or two) business functions that they do better than the competition. These are called core competencies. If a company's core competency gives it a long term advantage in the marketplace, it is referred to as a sustainable competitive advantage. For a core competency to become a sustainable competitive advantage it must be difficult to mimic, unique, sustainable, superior to the competition, and applicable to multiple situations. Examples of company characteristics that could constitute a sustainable competitive advantage include: superior product quality, extensive distribution contracts, accumulated brand equity and positive company reputation, low cost production techniques, patents and copyrights, government protected monopoly, and superior employees and management team. The list of potential sustainable competitive advantage characteristics is very long. However, there are some commentators claim that in a fast changing and competitive world, none of these advantages can be sustained in the long run. They argue that the only truly sustainable competitive advantage is to build an organization that is so alert and so agile that it will always be able to find an advantage, no matter what changes occur. 3. Information systems often support and occasionally constitute these competitive advantages. The rapid change has made access to timely and current information critical in a competitive environment. Information systems, like business environmental scanning systems, support almost all sustainable competitive advantages. Occasionally, the information system itself is the competitive advantage. One example is Wal-Mart. They used an extranet to integrate their whole supply chain. This use of information systems gave Sam Walton a competitive advantage for two decades. Another example is Dell Computer. They used the internet to market custom assembled PC's. Michael Dell is still benefitting from this low-cost promotion and distribution technique. Other examples are eBay, Amazon.com, Federal Express, and Business Workflow Analysis Oberon-bwa.

The performance monitoring role

MIS are not just statistics and data analysis. They have to be used as an MBO (Management by Objectives) tool. They help:
- to establish relevant and measurable objectives
- to monitor results and performances (reach ratios)
- to send alerts, in some cases daily, to managers at each level of the organisation, on all deviations between results and pre-established objectives and budgets.

MIS as an elastic anomoly

There are numerous ways that a company, that has invested in information technology, can leverage this investment to create, grow, or maintain elasticity of the anomoly. # Leverage IT investment that supports their core competency. Successful firms tend to have one or two core competencies that they can do better than their competitors. It may be anything from new product development to customer service. Information technology is often an important input into this core competency. This IT investment in a company's core competency can be a significant barrier to entry for other companies. # Leverage IT investment in supply chain networks. Firms that are a part of an integrated supply chain system have established relationships of trust with suppliers. This usually ensures quicker deliver times, problem-free delivery and an assured supply. It can also entail price discounts and other preferential treatment. The inability of new entrants to get onto a supply chain/inventory management system can be a major barrier to entry. # Leverage IT investment in distribution channel management. As with supplier networks, investment in distribution channel management systems can ensure quicker delivery times, problem free delivery, and preferential treatments. The investment in this technology, and the experience gained in learning how to use it, can be an important barrier to entry. When the distribution channel management system is exclusive, it may give you some control over access to the retailers involved. # Leverage IT investment in brand equity. Often firms have invested large sums of money in brand advertising. This is facilitated by investment in marketing information systems and customer relationship management system. An indomitable brand name is a formidable barrier to entry. # Leverage IT investment in production processes (1). Information systems have become a necessity in managing large production runs. Automated systems are the most cost efficient way of organizing large scale production processes. These firms can obtain economies of scale in promotion, purchasing, and production; economies of scope in distribution and promotion; reduced overhead allocation per unit; and shorter break-even times more easily. This absolute cost advantage can be an important barrier to entry. # Leverage IT investment in production processes (2). Investment in IT allows a company flexibility in their overall output level. Michael Porter claims that economies of scale are a barrier to entry, aside from the absolute cost advantages they provide. This is because, a company producing at a point on the long-run average cost curve where economies of scale exist has the potential to obtain cost savings in the future, and this potential is a barrier to entry. # Leverage learning curve advantages from experience with IT. As a company gains experience using IT systems, they become familiar with a set of best practices that are more or less known to other firms in the industry. Firms outside the industry are generally not familiar with the industry specific aspects of using these systems. New entrants will be at a disadvantage unless they can redefine the industries best practices and leap-frog existing firms. # Leverage IT investment in mass customization production processes. IT controlled production technology can facilitate collaborative, adaptive, transparent, or cosmetic customization. This flexibility can increase margins, increase customer satisfaction, and be a significant barrier to entry. # Leverage IT investment in computer aided design (1). CAD systems facilitate the speedy development and introduction of new products. This can create proprietary product differences. Product differentiation can be a barrier to entry. # Leverage IT investment in computer aided design (2). CAD systems facilitate the speedy development and introduction of new products. Proprietary product differences can be used to create incompatibilities between competing products (as every computer user knows). These incompatibilities increase consumers’ switching costs. High customer switching costs is a very valuable barrier to entry (Just ask Bill Gates.). # Leverage IT investment in E-commerce. Company web sites can be personalized to each customers interests, expectations, and commercial needs. They can also be used to create a sense of community. Both of these tend to increase customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is an important barrier to entry. # Leverage IT investment in stability. Technologically sophisticated firms with multiple electronic points of contact with customers, suppliers, and others appear to be more stable. This monumental appearance of stability can be a barrier to entry. This is particularly true in financial services. # The simple fact that IT investment requires funds make it a barrier to entry. Anything that increases capital requirements is a barrier to entry.

Historical development

The role of business information systems has changed and expanded over the last four decades. In the incipient decade (1950s and '60s), “electronic data processing systems” could be afforded by only the largest organizations. They were used to record and store bookkeeping data such as journal entries, specialized journals, and ledger accounts. This was strictly an operations support role. By the 1960s “management information systems” were used to generate a limited range of predefined reports, including income statements (they were called P & L’s back then), balance sheets and sales reports. They were trying to perform a decision making support role, but they were not up to the task. By the 1970s “decision support systems” were introduced. They were interactive in the sense that they allowed the user to choose between numerous options and configurations. Not only was the user allowed to customize outputs, they also could configure the programs to their specific needs. There was a cost though. As part of your mainframe leasing agreement, you typically had to pay to have an IBM system developer permanently on site. The main development in the 1980s was the introduction of decentralized computing. Instead of having one large mainframe computer for the entire enterprise, numerous PC’s were spread around the organization. This meant that instead of submitting a job to the computer department for batch processing and waiting for the experts to perform the procedure, each user had their own computer that they could customize for their own purposes. Many poor souls fought with the vagaries of DOS protocols, BIOS functions, and DOS batch programming. As people became comfortable with their new skills, they discovered all the things their system was capable of. Computers, instead of creating a paperless society, as was expected, produced mountains of paper, most of it valueless. Mounds of reports were generated just because it was possible to do so. This information overload was mitigated somewhat in the 1980s with the introduction of “executive information systems”. They streamlined the process, giving the executive exactly what they wanted, and only what they wanted. The 1980s also saw the first commercial application of artificial intelligence techniques in the form of “expert systems”. These programs could give advice within a very limited subject area. The promise of decision making support, first attempted in management information systems back in the 1960s, had step-by-step, come to fruition. The 1990s saw the introduction of “strategic information systems”. This was largely because of developments in the subject of strategic management by scholars like M. Porter, T Peters, J. Reise, C. Markides, and J. Barney in the 1980s. Competitive advantage became a hot management topic and software developers were happy to provide the tools. The role of business information systems had now expanded to include strategic support. The latest step was the commercialization of the Internet, and the growth of intranets and extranets at the turn of the century.

Some currently well-known programs in information systems

- Research Center
- [http://www.ercis.de European Research Center for Information Systems], Münster
- Universities
- [http://www.carlsonschool.umn.edu/Page1447.aspx Department of Information and Decision Sciences], Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
- [http://www.bpa.arizona.edu/depts/mis/ Department of Management Information Systems], University of Arizona
- [http://www.bauer.uh.edu/disc/ Department of Decision and Information Sciences], University of Houston
- [http://www.cs.nyu.edu/csweb/Academic/Graduate/msis.html Master of Science in Information Systems], New York University
- [http://www.mism.cmu.edu Master of Information Systems Management], Carnegie Mellon University
- [http://si.umich.edu/ School of Information], University of Michigan
- [http://bschool.washington.edu/departments/mgtsci Management Science], University of Washington Business School, University of Washington, Seattle
- [http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/ School of Information & Management Systems], University of California, Berkeley
- [http://is.calpoly.edu/ Department of Information Systems], California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
- [http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/ Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences],University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- [http://www2.sis.pitt.edu/ School of Information Sciences], University of Pittsburgh
- [http://www.ci.fsu.edu College of Information], Florida State University
- [http://www.terry.uga.edu/mis/ Department of Management Information Systems], University of Georgia
- [http://mgt.gatech.edu/ College of Management], Georgia Institute of Technology
- [http://www.uic.edu/cba/cba-depts/ids/ Department of Information and Decision Sciences], University of Illinois at Chicago
- [http://www.tulane.edu/%7Euc/], Tulane University
- [http://weatherhead.case.edu/infosys/ Department of Information Systems], Case Western Reserve University
- [http://www.uwec.edu/cob/departments/mis/index.htm Department of Management Information Systems], University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire
- [http://www.iup.edu/mis-desci Department of Management Information Systems], Indiana University of Pennsylvania
- [http://isys.byu.edu Management Information Systems], Brigham Young University
- [http://sagp.kelley.indiana.edu/ Systems & Accounting Graduate Programs, Kelley School of Business, ], Indiana University
- [http://www.cba.ufl.edu/dis Department of Decision and Information Sciences], Warrington College of Business Administration, University of Florida
- [http://cba.ua.edu/mis/index.php Management Information Systems], University of Alabama
- [http://www.du.edu], University of Denver
- [http://www.wbs.ac.uk/faculty/subjects/oris.cfm Operational Research & Information Systems Group], Warwick Business School, University of Warwick
- [http://is.lse.ac.uk/ Department of Information Systems], London School of Economics
- [http://www.wi.uni-muenster.de Department of Information Systems], Münster School of Business Administration and Economics, University_of_Münster
- [http://mis.ucd.ie Department of Management Information Systems], University College Dublin - National University of Ireland, Dublin
- [http://www.sis.smu.edu.sg School of Information Systems], Singapore Management University
- [http://www.cgu.edu/is School of Information Systems and Technology], Claremont Graduate University
- [http://mis.umsl.edu/ Management Information Systems], University of Missouri - St. Louis

Associations and groups

- [http://www.isworld.org/ ISWorld]
- [http://www.informs.org/ INFORMS]
- [http://www.isa.calpoly.edu/ ISA]
- [http://www.aisnet.org/ AIS]

Sources of information on MIS

- [http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/library/subjects/web_sites_ism.html MIS Web sites (University of Bournemouth)]
- [http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~kimble/teaching/mis/mis_links.html MIS Links (University of York)]

Microenvironment

Michael Porter's 1979 framework uses concepts developed in IO economics to derive 5 forces that determine the attractiveness of a market. Porter referred to these forces as the microenvironment, to contrast it with the more general term macroenvironment. They consist of those forces close to a company that affect its ability to serve its customers and make a profit. A change in any of the forces normally requires a company to re-assess the marketplace.

Five forces

Four forces -- the bargaining power of customers, the bargaining power of suppliers, the threat of new entrants, and the threat of substitute products -- combine with other variables to influence a fifth force, the level of competition in an industry. Each of these forces has several determinants:
- The bargaining power of customers
- buyer concentration to firm concentration ratio
- bargaining leverage
- buyer volume
- buyer switching costs relative to firm switching costs
- buyer information availability
- ability to backward integrate
- availability of existing substitute products
- buyer price sensitivity
- price of total purchase
- The bargaining power of suppliers
- supplier switching costs relative to firm switching costs
- degree of differentiation of inputs
- presence of substitute inputs
- supplier concentration to firm concentration ratio
- threat of forward integration by suppliers relative to the threat of backward integration by firms
- cost of inputs relative to selling price of the product
- importance of volume to supplier
- The threat of new entrants
- the existence of barriers to entry
- economies of scale
- proprietary product differences
- brand equity
- switching costs
- capital requirements
- access to distribution
- absolute cost advantages
- learning curve advantages
- expected retaliation
- government policies
- The threat of substitute products
- buyer propensity to substitute
- relative price performance of substitutes
- buyer switching costs
- perceived level of product differentiation
- The intensity of competitive rivalry
- power of buyers
- power of suppliers
- threat of new entrants
- threat of substitute products
- industrial growth
- industry overcapacity
- exit barriers
- diversity of competitors
- informational complexity and asymmetry
- brand equity
- fixed cost allocation per value added This 5 forces analysis is just one part of the complete Porter strategic system. The other elements are strategic groups (also called strategic sets), the value chain, the generic strategies of cost leadership, differentiation, and focus, and the market positioning strategies of value based, needs based, and access based market positions.

Criticism and Extensions

Porter's framework has repeatedly been challenged by other academics and strategists. Kevin Coyne and Somu Subramaniam have stated that three dubious assumptions underlie the five forces: that buyers, competitors, and suppliers are unrelated and do not interact and collude; that the source of value is structural advantage (creating barriers to entry); and that uncertainty is low, allowing participants in a market to plan for others behavior. An important extension to Porter was found in the work of Brandenburger and Nalebuff in the mid-1990s. Using game theory, they added the concept of complementors, helping to explain the reasoning behind strategic alliances.

References

- Porter, M. (1979) "How competitive forces shape strategy", Harvard Business Review, March/April 1979.
- Porter, M. (1980) Competitive Strategy, The Free Press, New York, 1980.

External links

- [http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/porter.shtml Porter's Five Forces]
- [http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_porter_five_forces.html Porter's Five Competitive forces]
- [http://www.themanager.org/Models/p5f.htm Porters Five Forces - Management Models - Management Portal] Category:Business Category:Marketing category:Business intelligence Category:Marketing research category:Strategic management

Software as a Service

Software as a Service (SaaS) refers to a model of software delivery where a company adopts specific activities that provides customers access to software alleviating that customer from the maintenance and daily technical operation and support of business and/or consumer software. SaaS is a model of software delivery rather than a market segment; software can be delivered using this method to any market segment including home consumers, small business, medium and large business.

Key Characteristics of Software Delivered by SaaS

The key characteristics of SaaS software, according to analyst IDC include:
- Network-based access to, and management of, commercially available (e.g., not custom) software
- Activities that are managed from central locations rather than at each customer's site, enabling customers to access applications remotely via the Web
- Application delivery that typically is closer to a one-to-many model (single instance, multi-tenant architecture) than to a one-to-one model, including architecture, pricing, partnering, and management characteristics

Types of SaaS Providers

There are two types of SaaS providers. The first has often been referred to as an Application service provider (ASP) where a customer purchases and brings to a hosting company a copy of software, or the hosting company offers widely available software for use by customers, such as hosting Microsoft Office and making that available across the web to customer who pay a fee per month for access to the software. The second type of SaaS provider offer what is often called software on-demand, where a company offers to customers software specifically built for one-to-many hosting. This means that one copy of the software is installed for use by many companies who access the software across the web. In the first of these types of providers, a licensing fee and a monthly fee are quite separate being paid to the maker of the software and the hoster of the software as appropriate. The second type of hosting is where there is no division between licensing and hosting fees, and where there is little to no customization of software for each customer.

ASP vs SaaS

The reason for moving away from the term ASP or Application service provider is that this was the term used in the 1990s for a group of companies offering software across the Internet. These companies floundered at the time as markets were not sure of the security of business and personal data being transported across the Internet and second that the mindset of the time was that the web was too slow for running applications. There are still many in the IT industry who see SaaS simply as a re-branding of the term ASP, which they see as a discredited concept. Larry Ellison of Oracle Corporation saw the opportunity to build from the ground up applications which could service companies and which could make huge IT savings possible. The applications Ellison founded, NetSuite and Salesforce.com, have pioneered the way in running specially built applications for web delivery. The type of delivery is thus the major item being named using the term SaaS, whereas the term ASP is more about a business type.

SaaS providers

- 24SevenOffice
- NetSuite
- RightNow Technologies
- Salesforce.com
- Journyx
- eMeta Corporation
- Apptix

On-demand

IBMs View of On-demand Software Delivery

On Demand Business is the current (2005) slogan of IBM. The IBM On Demand glossary [http://www-306.ibm.com/e-business/ondemand/us/toolkit/glossary_o.shtml] gives the following definition of an on demand business: A company whose business processes—integrated end-to-end across the company and with key partners, suppliers and customers—can respond with flexibility and speed to any customer demand, market opportunity or external threat. An on demand business has four key attributes: it is responsive, variable, focused, resilient and based on flexible software delivery to power the business.

Benefits of the On-Demand Model

On-demand aids an enterprise to:
- Keep key software systems up to date, available, and managed for performance by experts.
- Improve the reliability, availability, scalability and security of internal IT systems.
- Access product and technology experts dedicated to available products.
- Reduce internal IT costs to a predictable monthly fee.
- Redeploy IT staff and tools to focus on strategic technology projects that impact the enterprise's bottom line.

External links

- [http://www.softwaremag.com/L.cfm?doc=1204-ThoughtLeadership-k_chandrasekhar Thought Leadership in On-demand Software Management] Category:Business models

Customer Reference Management

The purpose of Customer Reference Management is to improve practices related to having existing customers participate in sales and marketing activities. Common types of customer reference activities include: participation in a written case study, speaking on a telephone call with a potential customer or the media, or engaging in a event or seminar to share the story of a product or services success. In many ways Customer Reference Management is an extension of Customer Relationship Management, CRM but focuses more narrowly on how to measure and manage the interaction with a limited number of clients who are willing to speak on behalf of the vendor.

Category:Marketing

Category:Business Category:Service industries

Mumia abu-jamal

Mumia Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook April 24, 1954) is a journalist and political activist, most famous for his 1982 conviction and death sentence for the December 9th murder of officer Daniel Faulkner, and for the subsequent mass campaigns for and against him. Jamal had been awaiting execution in Pennsylvania from 1982 until December 2001 when Federal District Court judge William Yohn overturned his death sentence. However, Yohn reaffirmed Jamal's conviction, ruling that he will remain in custody indefinitely.

Supporters

William Yohn.]] Abu-Jamal's case has become a popular cause on the political left, within the anti-globalization movement, and among anti-death penalty activists as well as the black nationalist movement. Saving Mumia Abu-Jamal from the death penalty is a popular cause among people and organizations who insist he is innocent. Others, without concern for whether he is factually innocent, still believe that he did not receive a fair trial. A third group of supporters simply oppose the death penalty in general. A fourth group object to harsher penalties for killing a police officer than for killing an ordinary citizen. Many supporters have called for a new trial, his release from prison, or the commutation of his sentence to life in prison.

Detractors

Daniel Faulkner's family and the Fraternal Order of Police believe that Abu-Jamal killed Faulkner while Faulkner was engaged in a legal, justified arrest. In August 1999, the FOP's national biennial general meeting passed a resolution calling for an economic boycott of all individuals and businesses that had expressed support for freeing Abu-Jamal. Filmmaker Michael Moore has stated that he believes that Abu-Jamal is guilty of the Faulkner murder.[http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff10172003.html]

General Disagreements

Jamal's supporters say that since Jamal had taken a high profile position with the Black Panther Party as a teenager, he could have been a target of the FBI's COINTELPRO program, whose purpose was to harass, disrupt and destroy popular political groups such as the BPP. Several other Black Panthers who were convicted of various crimes, including murder, have been released when it was learned that the FBI withheld evidence which would have acquitted them, such as Geronimo Pratt. Jamal's detractors say that the critics of the trial amass numerous small errors to build their case for a larger conspiracy, and that the supporters of Jamal are unable to make a convincing case about the overall crime and Jamal's involvement with the murder of a police officer.

Disagreements about the trial process

Even among many of those convinced of Abu-Jamal's guilt, there is a strong belief that he did not receive a fair trial in the courtroom proceeding that produced his first-degree murder conviction.

Concerning the judge

Albert F. Sabo was the presiding judge for the trial. Jamal's supporters claim that :
- Sabo had a reputation in favor of the police and against defendants in criminal cases.
- Sabo had a reputation as a judge with a bias toward convictions. Amnesty International claims he has sentenced more men to die (31 total, only 2 of them white) than any other sitting judge in Pennsylvania. A review of the court records by The Philadelphia Inquirer showed "that most of the homicide judges in Philadelphia hear more murder cases than Judge Sabo with fewer death sentences."
- Every ruling Sabo made was against Jamal. Every objection by the prosecutors was sustained, and every objection by the defense was overruled, causing many to doubt Sabo's impartiality.
- A white court stenographer Terri Mauer-Carter alleged she and her boss Richard Klein, a Philadelphia judge, overheard Sabo saying he was going to "help them fry the nigger" shortly before the start of Abu-Jamal's trial. There is however no proof as of yet.
- Sabo was a Philadelphia judge whose assigned cases included crimes in all of Philadelphia, not just a 'heavily non-white district.' However, Jamal supporters note that this high conviction, high death sentencing judge was assigned a disproportionate share of minority defendants. Jamal's detractors answer that :
- The claim that Sabo has given more death sentences than anyone else is fabricated: no such statistics are collected, and so there is no way Abu-Jamal's supporters could know this.
- At any rate, it is the jury, not the judge, which convicts and gives death sentences. (However, see below regarding an error in the judge's sentencing instructions.)
- Sabo presided over a heavily non-white district, which accounts for the racial make-up of his defendants (whom he did not choose).

Concerning Mumia's defense

Lawyer Anthony Jackson was chosen by Abu-Jamal as legal counsel, after recommendation by his friends at the Black Journalists Association (Jackson knew Jamal before the murder). He then petitioned the Court to have the case assigned to him at public expense, to which the Court agreed. Afterwards, Jamal asked to represent himself, to which Judge Sabo agreed. However, after what the Court considered disruptive actions (according to court records, Jamal was removed 13 times from the courtroom for his disruptive behaviour), Jamal was warned that he would lose that right if he did not stop. When Jamal's behaviour continued, Jackson was reinstated as the defense lawyer. Jamal supporters contend that the reason Sabo changed his mind was that Jamal was actually doing a decent job in defending himself, which supposedly was typical of Sabo's bias against Jamal. Jamal repeatedly asked to be represented by, or at least assisted by, John Africa (who had also been noted for his disruptive courtroom behaviour). John Africa having no legal training, the court refused. Jamal objected to Jackson, and refused to cooperate with him, saying he was "functioning for the court system, not for [Jamal]", and that John Africa, not Jackson, was his real counsel. Jackson later alleged that Jamal didn't return to him some of the documents (such as witness statements) he had handed him when Jamal took over the defense. Mumia's defenders often describe this as a case where a public defender is thrust upon an indigent defendant (as happens in many cases), and say that he was picked by Sabo without Jamal's consent, specifically because he was not a very good lawyer. Jamal supporters claim that Jackson would later be disbarred for incompetence. Although Jackson is sometimes described by Mumia's defenders as having never defended a client in a murder case, he had served in twenty murder cases, with only six convictions and no executions prior to the Abu-Jamal case. It is sometimes claimed Jackson was allowed only $1500 to analyze evidence and to hire expert witnesses, though receipts indicate that the defense spent $13,000.

Concerning the jury

The racial composition of the jury was not recorded, but it is known at least two jurors were black (13% of the jury), as was a third accepted by the prosecution who was later dismissed for violating sequestration. The racial composition of Philadelphia at the time was 40% black. It is sometimes claimed that the prosecution requested the removal of many black potential jurors specifically because they were black. Both prosecution and defense were allowed up to twenty peremptory challenges, and the prosecution used fifteen of these, giving reasons for each. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which reviewed the case twice, did not conclude that racial bias was a factor in jury selection, which would have been grounds to order a new trial.

Other points

- Abu-Jamal's supporters claim that when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court first upheld Abu-Jamal's conviction in 1989, that ruling found no impropriety in the prosecutor using Abu-Jamal's teenage membership in the Black Panther Party to claim he harbored a desire to kill a police officer for over a decade, despite Abu-Jamal having no criminal record. Later, Federal District Court judge Yohn threw out the death sentence because of Sabo's incorrect instructions to the jury on just this point.

Witness Accounts

Eyewitnesses:
- William Cook, Mumia's brother, driving the Volkswagen pulled over by Faulkner.
- Robert Chobert, cab driver: "I saw Jamal standing over [Faulkner] and firing some more shots into him"
- Cynthia White: "[Abu-Jamal] came running out of the parking lot on Locust Street. He had a handgun in his hand. He fired the gun at the police officer about four or five times. The police officer fell to the ground. I started screaming." Jamal supporters claim that White was a prostitute who had been indicted and was threatened with prison if she testified in favor of Jamal, while if she testified against Jamal she would be able to continue her prostitution without police interference.
- Robert Harkins
- Alber Magilton
- Michael Scanlon Other witesses:
- Deborah Kordansky
- Veronica Jones
- Desie Hightower Jamal opponents have produced a map with the witness locations [http://www.danielfaulkner.com/Pages/map2.html here].

Robert Chobert's testimony

- According to Robert Chobert's testimony and statements, he was writing in his logbook when he heard the first shot and looked up. He had to look over or past Faulkner's car, with its flashing red dome light, to see the incident and saw the shooter only in profile. Chobert testified at trial that when he looked up, he saw Faulkner fall and then saw Abu-Jamal "standing over him and firing some more shots into him." Under cross-examination by Jackson, he stated: "I know who shot the cop, and I ain't going to forget it."
- Jamal supporters note Chobert's first recorded statement to police -- about which the jury was not told -- was that the shooter "apparently ran away", according to a report written on 10 December 1981 by Inspector Giordano. Giordano encountered Chobert upon reaching the scene about five minutes after the shooting. Giordano wrote: "[A] white male from the crowd stated that he saw the shooting and that a black MOVE member had done it and apparently ran away. When asked what he meant by a MOVE member, the white male stated, 'His hair, his hair,' apparently referring to dreadlocks."
- There are also discrepancies between Chobert's description of the shooter's clothes and weight and that of Abu-Jamal.
- Jamal supporters claim Chobert was under indictment for arson at the time, and his change of testimony may have been influenced by the charges pending against him.

Confession at the hospital

When Jamal was brought to Jefferson Hospital on the night of the killing, he struggled a moment with the police outside the Emergency Room entrance. At that time, several witnesses claim to have heard him shout "I shot the mother fucker and I hope the mother fucker dies". He then refused medical treatment and wasn't treated until a judge had issued a court order several hours later, at which time he was almost comatose. While the two police officers present (Gary Bell and Gary Wakshul) did not write anything concerning the alleged confession in their police report, a hospital security guard, Priscilla Durham, made a report to the hospital authorities the following day including that statement. While she was an acquaintance of officer Faulkner, she claims not to have known at that time who the man being brought in was. Officer Bell and Ms. Durham testified during the trial; Wakshul however was not heard until the 1995 hearings, but had made a written statement concerning the confession. Jamal's defense had originally not put Wakshul on their witness list. However, on the last day of the trial, the defense asked to hear Wakshul. By that time Wakshul, who had stayed around during the first week of the trial, was on vacation. Judge Sabo refused to extend the trial, and told the defense lawyer, Jackson, that he "goofed". The defense lawyer claimed Wakshul's testimony was crucial to the case (A "Brady witness"). In the 1995 hearings, Wakshul testified that he had indeed heard Jamal confess to the murder, and claimed that if he had written in his report "the Negro male made no comments" and made no mention of the statement until about two months afterwards, it was because of the great stress of seeing his partner die. Officer Bell had given a similar explanation during the trial. Jamal's supporters have argued that his background as a journalist made it unlikely that he'd make such an incriminating comment.

Objections

Jamal supporters claim:
- Several of the witnesses, such as Pamela Jenkins, report being forced to tear up their witness statements and instead sign statements incriminating Abu-Jamal at the scene. Jenkins was the lover and informant of Philadelphia police officer Tom Ryan. In her statement, Jenkins claimed that Ryan "wanted me to perjure myself and say that I had seen Jamal shoot the police officer." In 1996, Tom Ryan and five other officers from the same district went to prison after being convicted of charges of planting evidence, stealing money from suspects and making false reports. Their convictions resulted in the release of numerous prisoners implicated by the officers. Veronica Jones witnessed the killing and testified for the defense. She claimed she had been offered inducements by the police to testify that she saw Abu-Jamal kill Faulkner, stating that "they [the police] were trying to get me to say something the other girl [White] said. I couldn't do that." Jones went on to testify that "they [the police] told us we could work the area [as prostitutes ] if we tell them [that Abu-Jamal was the shooter]." However, Judge Sabo had the jury removed for this testimony and then ruled that Jones' statements were inadmissible evidence.
- Conflicting testimony and missing witnesses: Abu-Jamal's lawyers contend that a number of witnesses changed their original statements regarding what they saw on the night of the crime after being coerced, threatened or offered inducements by the police.

William Cook

- William Cook, Abu-Jamal's brother and an obvious eyewitness to the killing, did not testify for either side at trial. He was convicted in separate proceedings of assaulting Faulkner. Cook made a statement to the police on the night of the shooting, and another to Abu-Jamal's legal team in 1995. However, neither of these statements have been seen by Amnesty International.
- Abu-Jamal's supporters have alleged that in 1982, Cook was being intimidated by the police and feared being charged in connection with the killing and was therefore too frightened to testify. Cook was scheduled to testify during the 1995 hearing but failed to appear. Again it was alleged that this was due to fear of the police and of being arrested on unrelated charges in court. In his written denial of the 1995 appeal, Judge Sabo made negative assumptions regarding Cook's unwillingness to testify. Since 1995, the defense team has been unable to locate Cook despite numerous attempts.

Arnold Beverley

Another man, Arnold Beverley, confessed to the murder of Daniel Faulkner in 1999. However, neither Jamal, nor a single prosecution or defense witness could place Beverly at the scene of the crime, and his account of the killing is at odds with the known facts on numerous points. The Jamal legal team also waited nearly two years before attempting to enter Beverly's story as evidence into a possible retrial.
- Jamal's detractors also point out that it is common in high-profile murder cases for false confessions to be made to police.

Other points

- To date, neither Jamal nor Jamal's supporters have given a convincing alibi for his presence at the scene of the crime, unconscious, with what may have been the murder weapon.

Disagreements about ballistics

Gun Calibre

Abu-Jamal's gun was a .38 calibre weapon, and Dr. Paul Hoyer, who performed the autopsy, wrote in his notes that the bullet removed from Faulkner's body was ".44 cal". However, he testified that this was merely a guess he made before actually performing the autopsy, and this guess was not included in the autopsy report, as he had no ballistics training. The court accepted Dr. Hoyer as a ballistics expert. However, during the 1995 PCRA (Post Conviction Relief Act) hearing, Judge Sabo contended that the medical examiner was "not a ballistics expert" like the two ballistics experts (including Jamal's own) who have since testified the bullets removed from officer Faulkner were consistent with being fired from the .38 caliber Charter Arms revolver which was registered to Jamal and found at the scene. The incorrect guess may be explained by the fact that the bullet was a +P, which leaves a larger wound. Mumia's supporters also claim that the discrepancy between Dr. Hoyer's notes and Mumia's gun calibre was never made known to the jury.

Other points

Mumia's supporters claim that:
- The prosecution maintained that Officer Faulkner turned and fired at Abu-Jamal as he fell to the ground after being shot. Therefore, the entry of the bullet into Abu-Jamal should have been on a level or upward trajectory. However, according to the medical records, the overall pathway of the bullet was downwards.

Appeals, international response and prison life

Abu-Jamal's conviction has been upheld in both state and federal courts. In December 2001, a federal judge affirmed his murder conviction but ordered that Abu-Jamal should either receive a new sentencing hearing or have his sentence commuted to life in prison because of an error by the trial judge in presenting rules of sentencing to the jury. This decision was appealed by both sides and, as of August 2005, the appeal is still pending. In October 2003, Mumia Abu-Jamal was awarded the status of honorary citizen of Paris in a ceremony attended by former Black Panther Angela Davis. The mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, said in a press release that the award was meant to be a reminder of the continuing fight against the death penalty, which was abolished in France in 1981. The proposal to make Abu-Jamal an honorary citizen was approved by the city's council in 2001. In addition, organizations ranging from Amnesty International, the European Parliament, and the Japanese Diet to several national U.S. trade union federations (ILWU, AFSCME, SEIU, the national postal union) and the 1.8 million member California Labor Federation have declared the original trial unfair and either demand a new trial or Abu-Jamal's immediate release. Human Rights Watch noted serious concerns about the fairness of his trial, particularly the heavy reliance during the sentencing phase on information regarding his political beliefs and associations. According to Amnesty International's website, while they are "not in a position to say whether Mumia Abu-Jamal is innocent or guilty", they have concluded that the proceedings used to convict and sentence Mumia Abu-Jamal to death were in violation of minimum international standards that govern fair trial procedures and the use of the death penalty." Amnesty International is against the death penalty in all cases. "Free Mumia!" is still a cry of black civil rights movements. Since his imprisonment, Abu-Jamal has continued his political activism, publishing Live from Death Row, a book on life inside prisons, as well as making frequent commentaries on radio shows. While in prison, Abu-Jamal completed his Bachelor of Arts from Goddard College, and earned an Master of Arts from California State University, Dominguez Hills, both by distance education. He has recently endorsed rapper Immortal Technique and appears on his album Revolutionary Vol.2 several times. He calls it "truth in the form of hip hop."
- Jamal's opponents note that a December 9, 1998 episode of the ABC news program 20/20 claimed that the results of their four-month investigation was that Jamal did receive a fair trial and that many if not all of the arguments made by his supporters are based on incomplete information or information that is blatantly false. However, Jamal supporters contend that 20/20 had a strong bias against Jamal. A witness who testified in favor of Jamal (Jenkins) was discredited by 20/20 because she was prostitute, but the fact that a key witness who testified against Jamal (White) was also a prostitute was omitted by the program.

References

- Abu-Jamal, Mumia. Live from Death Row. HarperTrade, 1996. ISBN 0380727668
- Abu-Jamal, Mumia. We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party. South End Press, 2004. ISBN 0896087182
- Abu-Jamal, Mumia. Death Blossoms: Reflections from a Prisoner of Conscience. South End Press, 2003. ISBN 0896086992
- Abu-Jamal, Mumia. Faith of Our Fathers: An Examination of the Spiritual Life of African and African-American People. Africa World Press, 2003. ISBN 1592210198
- Abu-Jamal, Mumia. All Things Censored. Seven Stories Press, 2000. ISBN 1583220224
- Amnesty International. The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Life in the Balance (Open Media Pamphlet Series). Open Media, 2001. ISBN 158322081X
- Lindorff, David. Killing Time. Common Courage Press, 2002. ISBN 1567512283
- Williams, Daniel R. Executing Justice: An Inside Account of the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. St. Martin's Press, 2002. ISBN 0375761241

External links

- [http://www.freemumia.com Page of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, NYC].
- [http://www.mumia.org, page of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal].
- [http://www.freemumia.org, a pro-Abu-Jamal activism and advocacy page].
- [http://www.danielfaulkner.com danielfaulkner.com], a web site presenting the case against Abu-Jamal. Includes refutations of many defense assertions, some of which are listed above, and articles on the 2001 affirmation of the conviction.
- [http://www.sff.net/people/tbisson/mumia.html The Case of Mumia Abu Jamal], by Terry Bisson from New York Newsday, 1995.
- [http://www.grandlodgefop.org/faulkner/projamal.html Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal] as listed by the Fraternal Order of Police.
- [http://www.justice4danielfaulkner.com/index.html Justice4danielfaulkner.com] Transcripts of Mumia Abu Jamal's 1981 trial.
- [http://www.phila-tribune.com/120903-5-P1.htm Philadelphia Tribune article].
- [http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/usa/document.do?id=7FC249A275DAADCA8025687F00428638 Amnesty International on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal].
- [http://prisonradio.org/mumia.htm Archived files of Mumia Abu Jamal's essays read from death row].
- [http://ncadp.org National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty].
- [http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org Death Penalty Information Center].
- [http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff07162004.html The Mumia Case: Support from NAACP, But a Movement in Shambles], article by David Lindorff for Counterpunch, July 16 2004.
- [http://www.imao.us/archives/001037.html Fry Mumia] A website by people adamant about his guilt.
- [http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=43&ItemID=8603 On Philadelphia Court Judge Dembe's May 27/June 17, 2005, Decision on Mumia Abu-Jamal], by Michael Schiff Abu-Jamal, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Mumia

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Accident is a 1967 drama film based on a novel by Nicholas Mosley and directed by Joseph Losey with a script by Harold Pinter. It is the second writer/director collaboration of Pinter and Losey, preceded by The Servant and followed by The Go-

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Granule cell
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Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League
The Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League (Taiwan Minzhu Zizhi Tongmeng) is one of the eight legally-recognised political parties in the People's Republic of China that follow the direction of the Communist Party of China and are member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. United States for the state department or agency responsible for the overall corrections responsibity on each individual state. Each Department of Corrections (DOC) is responsible for their insitutions or prisons, halfway houses and community correction programs.

Hsiaogang Airport
Kaohsiung International Airport (IATA:KHH, ICAO:RCKH) is a midsize commercial airport located in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, Republic of China. It primary serves as a hub to countries in Southeastern Asia and as the backup to Chiang Kai-shek International Airport (TPE). Kaohsiung Internationa

Customer relationship management

Architecture of CRM

Operational CRM

Analytical CRM

Collaborative CRM

Improving customer service

Improving customer relationships

Technical functionality

Privacy and ethical concerns

Setting up a framework for CRM

CRM in Business

See also

External links

Cultural resource management

CRM techniques

The effect of CRM

Further reading

Business intelligence

History

Metrics / Key Performance Indicators

Application software types

Designing and implementing a business intelligence programme

See also (companies)

See also

Sales

Forms

Critique of selling

References

See also

Compare

Demographics

Demographics is an applied art

Demographic variables

Demographic profiles

Demographic trends

Generational cohorts

Demographic birth cohorts

Criticisms and qualifications

See also

References

External links

Front office

See also

WAP

Why was WAP created?

Technical specifications

WAP protocol suite

Wireless Application Environment (WAE)

Maintenance and evolutions

WAP 2.0

WAP Push

Commercial status

Failure?

Success?

Protocol design lessons from WAP

See also

External links

WAP URLs

Application software

Application software classification

Office suites

Computer-mediated communication

Multimedia

Analytical software

Collaborative software

Business software

Databases

Other

External links

Communication channel

Overview

Channel models

Types of communications channels

See also

References

Workflow

Workflow systems

See also

References

External links