Utilitarianism Today Essay Example for Free

Utilitarianism Today Essay Jurisprudence as we know it is an offshoot of philosophy and more precisely the philosophy that deals with questions of law. When one speaks of jurisprudence there are many theories, calculated analysis and profound philosophies which try, in each its own way, to guide the law as well as us in the end. Utilitarianism is one of them. The original concept of utilitarianism is simple which is, ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’, as utilitarianism’s best-known advocate, Jeremy Bentham, puts it. Stopping there however would not be doing justice to his theory. Bentham goes on to explain that, for every question whereby we judge whether an act is good or bad, the criterion to answer would be by its consequence. This consequence is taken in regard to the effect that particular act would have on human pleasure and pain, the two ‘sovereign masters that govern mankind’. Bentham was a man of numbers and to him, good government needs numbers. The importance of numbers to him is indisputable and if anything his propositions were almost always quantitative in nature. Going back to the pleasure and pains idea, Bentham proposed an elaborate and rather thorough guide to analyzing them. For this, he devised a list of pleasures including pleasures of wealth, power, skill and memories among others as well as a list of pains such as pains of regret, disappointment, enmity and awkwardness to name a few. All in all, Bentham lists a total of fourteen pleasures and twelve pains. The value or degree by which a pleasure or a pain is to be measured posed a problem and so Bentham also devised a calculus in which he takes into account seven factors that is, intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity and extent. John Stuart Mill, another prominent utilitarian, rejected Bentham’s view that all pleasures were to count the same. He argued that differing people would have been brought up in varying manners and as such the appreciation of certain pleasures would greatly differ from one person to another. Also, Bentham’s own definition at the time was to apply the test of utility to private acts as well as public measures but was limited to ‘acts’. It would only be years later that other philosophers would draw a distinction between what we now call ‘act-utilitarianism’ and ‘rule-utilitarianism’. Put simply, act-utilitarianism concerns itself with acts that consequently have the highest net happiness whereas rule-utilitarianism applies where an act is permitted by a general rule whereby following that rule would have the best outcome. John Austin, the well known jurisprudence philosopher, strongly believed that the test of utility should apply to rules. Today, utilitarianism can be used in almost every aspect of our daily lives, whether it be our daily decision making, public policy by governing bodies or simple moral questions we would usually turn to religion for. As can be seen, the test of utility does not discriminate in where it’s applied, merely in how it is used that is, whether to apply it upon the rule or the act. It is no surprise then that the subsequent result of two different applications will lead to distinctively different conclusions. To exemplify how the utility test works and how different conclusions can be made one shall look at the famous Iran-Contra affair and in particular Oliver North’s assessment of the facts at hand and how he reaches his conclusion. In the 1980s, when asked why he had lied to congress regarding his role in the aforementioned affair, North said, â€Å"lying does not come easily to me. But we all had to weigh in the balance the difference between lies and lives†. Here, the ‘good’ decision according to North would have been to lie about certain facts to save others from possible harm. In his mind this was probably the act that would have maximised pleasure and minimised pain by the greatest extent and therefore judged it to be the best course of action. Applying the test on a rule in this case might have led to a different outcome. If, for example, ‘always tell the truth’ was the general rule by which the test concludes to be the best consequence, it may prove to lead North to a different decision in this case. This, however, depends on which rule one wishes to follow. Had the rule been ‘always protect lives’ then North may as well answer in the same manner. The difficulty here lies in which test (act or rule) to use and how to apply it. The news piece that one has chosen, entitled ‘Government to measure people’s happiness’, talks about the British Government’s attempt at measuring the happiness of UK citizens. The reason behind the move, the article reads, is to track the nation’s progress apart from the usual yardstick that is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The article also mentions Jo Swinson, a Liberal Democrat MP and probable utilitarian, as saying â€Å"what gets measured gets done. While its not governments job to make people happy, regular measures of wellbeing will at least make sure it is taken into account†. Statically monitoring the people’s happiness by way of a national survey can be likened to Bentham’s plea for the foundation of a statistical-gathering society to compile facts, as factual information about actual state of affairs will support rational and informed decision making. It is no surprise Bentham wished to propose this as he was an advocate of official criminal statistics which he maintained would be ‘a measure of excellent use in furnishing data for the legislator to go to work upon. ’ Using numbers to evaluate the health of a nation’s citizens is not uncommon or unheard of as, stated beforehand, GDP used to be yardstick. However, in the current state of affairs Britain finds itself in, perhaps it is time to turn to a different set of numbers. Many, if not most, countries use their national statistics on GDP as the focal point for policy decisions and measurement of welfare. Despite this, Treasury minister Angela Eagle who has long been accustomed to analysing GDP and working in the pursuit of economic stability using such data, conceded herself that, although not completely ditching the traditional form, a happiness index would be ‘useful for policy making’. When comparing the use of the wellbeing index as opposed to the GDP, one looks at it from a financial standpoint and in particular, given regard to wealth, opportunity and welfare on questions of distribution. How should it be distributed? According to need, ensuring equality or maybe in accordance with merit? A long standing argument is that utilitarianism does not even consider these factors and on top of that shows no concern whatsoever with how it should be distributed. The utilitarian in this context would look only at achieving the goal of maximising welfare with how much there is in total. For example, given two societies, A and B, with A having a highly imbalanced distribution of welfare but an overall higher total of welfare than B which happens to have exact equal distribution, the utilitarian would point to A to be regarded as the more morally preferable society. Nigel Simmonds, a noted reader in jurisprudence, states that it would be a mistake to conclude that since the distribution does not concern the utilitarian, it does not mean that the question of how wealth, resources and opportunities is ignored. The argument for that would be that a more equal allocation of wealth, opportunity and resources is desirable because it would eventually lead to maximisation of welfare and happiness. Put simply, if one gives a pound to a millionaire it would make for a negligible contribution to his overall welfare. Give that same pound to a poor man for him to use, for instance to purchase a meal he would otherwise not be able to pay for, it would be a significant contribution to his welfare. Insofar as the distribution of wealth, opportunity and resources is concerned, the aim in this instance is for the utilitarian to seek the maximisation of welfare by way of equality. Using the wellbeing index in a way that could enable the government to pinpoint where certain communities are happy and unhappy can help legislators and policy-makers take necessary steps to promote the nation’s state of welfare. Funds could be better allocated towards communities that are in more need of an increase in welfare and happiness by providing facilities, education, healthcare and the like in the right areas While on the topic of economic welfare with regard to utilitarianism, one wishes to mention the economic analysis of law, a principle that has its roots in Bentham’s theory. Since the felicific calculus of the utility test is a difficult one to apply, as one cannot be certain of people’s reaction to alternative measures, the difference here lies in making simple assumptions on human behaviour. The assumption to be adopted here is that mankind will rationally maximise his satisfactions or pleasure. Accordingly, this entire theory uses this premise to achieve, by its definition, what one wishes and what one is willing to pay for that. Payment here is not taken in the strictest sense of monetary terms but can include time and effort. The theory takes on a dynamic principle that this payment is the medium by which a hypothetical market of happiness can be run. Between two individuals, it is easy to demonstrate how this would work. If Adam wishes to run his laundry business all day long without closing shop, and Gary wishes for silence in the night, each would offer a monetary value for either privilege. If Adam’s payment is greater than Gary’s satisfactions are maximised by allowing him to run his overnight business. Economic analysis calls this the ‘efficient’ solution and the most obvious difference with utility is where greatest happiness of the greatest number is replaced by overall efficiency. This movement, primarily attempted in the United States, was first applied to specific areas in law for example anti-trust legislation and nuisance laws. Richard Posner, in his book, Economic Analysis of Law, explains that he believes to have found a more systematic application of this approach which he claims can explain why many of the legal rules and institutions that exist are as they are and also inherent implications for how the law should be improved. This however, leads one to believe that economic analysis of the law concerns itself primarily with maximising economic criteria, begging the question, is this the highest ideal one would want for society? It takes a U-turn on the very basis by which the government had wished to evaluate happiness instead of relying on GDP as a measure of public wellbeing. Even the UKs National Statistician, Jil Matheson, who will oversee the happiness measurement, said: there is growing international recognition that to measure national well-being and progress there is a need to develop a more comprehensive view, rather than focusing solely on gross domestic product. † If the Judiciary were to use this wellbeing index in reference to adjudication, would that infringe on the established practice of judicial independence? One would point out that public opinion is a matter for which the courts do take into consideration when a case of great public interest is in question. The very notion that judges would look into these statistical analysis of numbered data seems highly implausible. The judiciary as we know it preserves the doctrine of separation of powers. This holds that the laws they would apply and uphold cannot be changed whatsoever without the proper due process of parliamentary approval. With regard to those highly publicised cases, a judge today cannot merely change the course of the law due to social pressure even if would produce the greatest net happiness. However, if a judge were to be utilitarian in nature, as one is sure there is at least a single judge of that calibre, he or she might apply a rule that passes the utility test which would state â€Å"judge according to the greatest net happiness† and as such that rule could undermine all other factors including upholding parliamentary legislation. If the same judge were to follow a rule stating â€Å"always follow the letter of the law† the same conclusion as if the other did not exist would apply as always following the law would pass the test as generally being the best solution to achieving the greatest happiness. One would now like to delve into the topic of rights with regard to utilitarianism in the light of the government’s wellbeing index plans. Human rights has been a major concern since the atrocities of the first and second World Wars. Most nations have adopted or are a signatory or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In order to understand utilitarianism’s concept of rights, it is best to leave alone the notion of ‘moral rights’ as it is fundamentally opposed within the theory. Given the example of two conflicting interests in rights, whatever means one would employ would still lead to the same conclusion where one gains and the other loses. As mentioned before, utilitarianism would guide us to act in a way that would produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number and in doing so would find the best possible balance to ensure the net outcome is highest. One refers back to the infamous London riots of mid-2011 where police had a difficult time controlling the crowds. In this instance, the police would have had in mind the rights of the law-breakers and in turn led to minimal crowd control which unfortunately spilled over and caused massive collateral damage. Had the test of utility been applied, officers of the force may have come to a conclusion that infringing a few citizens’ rights will save shops and business from the damage that they eventually incurred. Monmouth MP Mr Davies said that we have to decide where our priorities lie. Is it with the police in trying to maintain law and order? Or does it lie with the human rights of those who break the law? †. One could say the test of utility applied here might have concluded that the former would be the answer to maximising overall happiness of society that day taking into account the welfare of the shop owners and other victims of this tragedy. Or perhaps had the wellbeing index been formulated earlier and the government had helped to alleviate the pains of those who turned to rioting, none of it would have happened. That however, is a purely hypothetical analysis. With every applied theory comes the good and the bad, the success or failure to accommodate all aspects of governance and the uncertain impact it can have on society as a whole. Utilitarianism brings about a change in mindset and approach to dealing with today’s issues but it does come with the risk of failing to protect the most vulnerable members of society. A report has sparked some debate across the Atlantic over the issue of special education funding in Kansas, USA, where budget cuts amounting to over twenty million US dollars are being contemplated. This is no isolated incident however, as a Christian activist group points out that even with the appropriate budget, schools are ever increasing the channelling of those funds to other departments instead of the purpose it was allocated for. In this incident, Broward County in Florida used eighteen million dollars of its special education budget to save around seven hundred jobs which had no relation to special education. It is without a doubt a utilitarian process of maximising overall happiness but it did come with a cost. The losers in this case were the children in need of special education in the first place. It is a difficult time for the economy and budget cuts are to be expected but this highlights the problem inherent within utilitarianism. If you are one of the losers to this policy, then that is the way the cookie crumbles. Unfortunately it was a segment of society that already is vulnerable. Additionally, utilitarianism can lead to injustice and breach of established human rights, that is the right against unlawful detention. Imagine a nation duped by its own government, propagandised to fear and hate and in turn direct those feelings towards a certain legislation that purportedly helps fight terrorism but instead merely gives powers to the state to detain and interrogate terror suspects without due consideration towards his or her human rights. One might think of the US and its anti terror campaign and acknowledge the fact that Guantanamo Bay is not just a movie. A government, using any means necessary, has the potential to manipulate its people into believing that in order to be secure and protected must pass into law some draconian legislation. If people do believe so, a nationwide survey on happiness might conclude that citizens will only be happy if their need to feel said security is fulfilled and the test can succeed if the circumstances are right. If one were to disbelieve such a notion, this idea has indeed been materialised in North Korea where an entire nation is fed news and reports directly aimed to instil a variety of ideas in its people. Of course, it is largely hypothetical but at the same time utilitarianism is not a known and practiced doctrine worldwide and this uncertainty is precautionary in nature. Is utilitarianism the way to go? Has the British government taken the right steps and the right precautions in ensuring a wellbeing index will not be put to use in a negative way? Some critics of the move have instead shown a distinct unhappiness over the issue. Some are calling for the test to be used on itself as to whether it will produce the greatest happiness if used at all. If possible, it would be a fresh undertaking for law-makers to change their mindset on ethical or moral grounds. Alan Coddington, author, spoke of replacing traditional questions of â€Å"should it be done? † and â€Å"is that right? † with â€Å"what would be the totalled up sum of happiness if this is done? †. A wellbeing index does indeed sound like a good idea and one that might help ease the financial instability that Britain currently faces. It could lead to never before known facts and statistics that may trigger the government into acting in the interest of the people to ensure the greatest happiness from the greatest number, in this regard, of Britons. [ 1 ]. Jeremy Bentham, A Fragment on Government, (1776) [ 2 ]. JG Riddal, Jurisprudence, (2nd edn Oxford Press 2006) 154 [ 3 ]. M Freeman, R Harrison, Law and Philosophy Current Legal Issues, (vol 10 2007) 304 [ 4 ]. JW Harris, Legal Philosophies, (Butterworths 1980) 36 [ 5 ]. Harris, (n4) 39 [ 6 ]. Manuel Velasquez, Claire Andre, Thomas Shanks, S. J. , and Michael J. Meyer, ‘Calculating Consequence: The Utilitarian Approach to Ethics’ (1989) Issues in Ethics Vol 2 accessed 4th Jan 2012 [ 7 ]. BBC News, Government planning to measure peoples happiness (2010) accessed 26th Dec 2011 [ 8 ]. M Freeman, R Harrison, Law and Philosophy Current Legal Issues, (Oxford Press ,vol 10, 2007) 304 [ 9 ]. J Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham (Simpkin, Marshal and Co, 1843) 29 [ 10 ]. B Wheeler,’ Crunch Time for Happy Talk’, (BBC News 9th Oct 2008) http://news. bbc. co. uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7657465. stm accessed 2nd Jan 2012 [ 11 ]. NE Simmonds, Central Issues In Jurisprudence, (Sweet and Maxwell ,3rd edn, 2008) 29 [ 12 ]. Simmonds (n 11) 30 [ 13 ]. Harris (n4) 42 [ 14 ]. BBC News (n7) [ 15 ]. D Meyerson, Understanding Jurisprudence, (Routledge Cavandish, 2007) 119 [ 16 ]. Daily Record, ‘London riots: Human rights laws have made police sitting ducks’ accessed 9th Jan 2012 [ 17 ]. The Winfield Daily, ‘Let Senate Prevail on Special Ed Funding, (18th Feb 2011) accessed 7th Jan 2012 [ 18 ]. Chuck Colsen, ‘Shorting Special Needs: Utilitarianism and Budget

Concepts of Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Concepts of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Happy customers tell 4 to 5 others of their positive experience. Dissatisfied customers tell 9 to 12 how bad it was Quotes Mark Steven. This quote clearly states how important it is to satisfy and delight a customer in order to grow in business. Its a well known fact that business cant exist without customers. In the business, its important to work closely with your customers to make sure your business is for them and meet their requirements. Because its critical that you form a close working relationship with your client, customer service is of vital importance. Make your customers feel valued, wanted and loved. Customer Relationship Management is combination of people, processes and technology that seeks to understand a companys customer Apple Company is one of the unique companies in todays market. I am taking this company organization to evaluate the opportunities to maintain and increase revenue in their earlier stage. The Apple company was started in 1981and it went through several critical stages to become a unique company now a day. The company faced severe problems due to lack of customer relations and didnt meet the customers expectations as they advertised. The companys first introduced Lisa and Macintosh during 1981 to 1985, but failed to reach the people due to lack of customer relations. They didnt have clear idea what people were expecting and how much they can afford to buy a PC. During this period they introduced their pc with a high price and they didnt have a clue about the people expectations so their product became a failure and they were failing in other tasks due to inner battle with in the company. After learning the lesson they started to learn from the peoples expectations and started to work towards it like introducing Portable versions with networking capabilities and their master piece was SYSTEM 7. but again after this they started to fail in customer relations like failure of proper service centres and even though they introduced several other products like cameras , CD players and other stuffs they failed to involve with the customers when their expectation was to get a Pc with a camera and CD function . But other companies like Microsoft evolved in customer relations and upgraded their products to the customers expectations as possible as they could. So there on apple started to reinvent them what went wrong and they rectified it and moved to a unique company with profit from 1998 by keeping an alliance with other companies and even their rivals and started to evolve. They introduced apple store to have better customer relations, after this the company went on hike by evolving with the customer relations management. OBJECTIVE CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is a process or methodology used to learn more about customers needs and behaviors in order to develop stronger relationships with them. There are many technological components to CRM, but thinking about CRM in primarily technological terms is a mistake. The more useful way to think about CRM is as a process that will help bring together lots of pieces of information about customers, sales, marketing effectiveness, responsiveness and market trends. CRM helps businesses use technology and human resources to gain insight into the behavior of customers and the value of those customers. KEY POINTS IN CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT: CUSTOMER SATISFACTION Business term is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. It is seen as a key performance indicator within business and is part of the four perspectives of a Balanced Scorecard. If the apple had better knowledge of customer expectations and good knowledge in customer relations they could have become a successful company from the start. They thought that if they introduced a good product they can become successful but that resulted in vain. The CEO should have focused on the customer relation management also to gain knowledge from customers what people were expecting from them CUSTOMER DELIGHT Customers will be back for more and new customers will be introduced by them if your service is good and satisfactory. This will help to distinguish you as unique from the rest. It allows you to sell your product or service for more money than the competition. It allows you to make more return on your investment. It allows you to reward your employees. The apple failed to introduce their product in cheaper price this resulted to loose customer from the start of the introduction of their product .even if the customers bought the product they faced problems in how to handle it and lack of parts for repairs they have to wait for a long time. Normally when a company is introducing a product the people wont expect to spend a huge amount in unknown product if the apple introduced their product in cheaper price with initial discounts and had better service centers they would have done well. CUSTOMER LOYALTY Customer loyalty is viewed as the strength of the relationship between an individuals relative attitude and repeat patronage. The relationship is seen as mediated by social norms and situational factors. Cognitive, affective, and co native antecedents of relative attitude are identified as contributing to loyalty, along with motivational, perceptual, and behavioral consequences. Implications for research and for the management of loyalty are derived. The key to a successful business is a steady customer base. After all, successful businesses typically see 80 percent of their business come from 20 percent of their customers. Too many businesses neglect this loyal customer base in pursuit of new customers. However, since the cost to attract new customers is significantly more than to maintain your relationship with existing ones, your efforts toward building customer loyalty will certainly payoff. If the company is having a regular customer they should give some sort of discount in the new products for them .the apple failed to do so. If the company had looked after their regular customers by giving free Operating system upgrade or discount in their New Operating systems they could have got new customers from the regular customers and retained their market in well shape. Some steps to get customers whether they are regular or new are listed below. 10 WAYS TO BUILD CUSTOMER LOYALTY Communicate. Whether it is an email newsletter, monthly flier, a reminder card for a tune up, or a holiday greeting card, reach out to your steady customers. Customer Service. Go the extra distance and meet customer needs. Train the staff to do the same. Customers remember being treated well. Employee Loyalty. Loyalty works from the top down. If you are loyal to your employees, they will feel positively about their jobs and pass that loyalty along to your customers. Employee Training. Train employees in the manner that you want them to interact with customers. Empower employees to make decisions that benefit the customer. Customer Incentives. Give customers a reason to return to your business. For instance, because children outgrow dress quickly, the owner of a childrens dress store might offer a card that makes the tenth dress half price. Likewise, a dentist may give a free cleaning to anyone who has seen him regularly for five years. Product Awareness. Know what your steady patrons purchase and keep these items in stock. Add other products and/or services that accompany or compliment the products that your regular customers buy regularly. And make sure that your staff understands everything they can about your products. Reliability. If you say a purchase will arrive on Wednesday, deliver it on Wednesday. Be reliable. If something goes wrong, let customers know immediately and compensate them for their inconvenience. Be Flexible. Try to solve customer problems or complaints to the best of your ability. Excuses such as Thats our policy will lose more customers then setting the store on fire. People over Technology. The harder it is for a customer to speak to a human being when he or she has a problem, the less likely it is that you will see that customer again. Know Their Names. Remember the theme song to the television show Cheers? Get to know the names of regular customers or at least recognize their faces. LOYALTY PERCENTAGE A mere 5 % increase in customer retention can result in a 75% increase in customer value according to Fred Reichheld, author of Loyalty Rules. A great reason to pay attention to loyalty. Here are more benefits: grab more sales from existing customer base help spread word of mouth marketing identify product/service problems earlier improve profitability provide a competitive advantage Defining Customer Loyalty Customer loyalty is the practice of finding, attracting, and retaining your customers who regularly purchase from you. Customer loyalty is not customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is the basic entry point of good business practices. Your small business should provide satisfaction to all your customers. CRM, despite all the talk about it being one of the most profitable customer strategies of the decade, still allows room for failure. Top 10 Features to Look for in a CRM System: Sales-cycle analysis Integration to your back-office accounting system Open, industry-standard technology Seamless flow of information between corporate systems and remote employees Real-time reporting and analysis Automated workflow Contact and campaign management Multiple language and multicurrency capabilities to support global business Ability to easily customize your solution to fit your business needs Scalability to accommodate future business growth What are the Problems occur within CRM? Exorbitant Costs One of the problems with CRM is the huge investment needed to maintain a customer database. The additional expense comes because of the money needed for computer hardware, software, personnel etc. The costs involved are enormous and most often than not the resultant ROI from the CRM implementation fail to cover the costs involved. This leads to a negative feeling within the company about CRM and its successes and ultimately results in CRM collapse. Inadequate Focus on Objectives Secondly when starting off on a CRM strategy the objectives are clearly established and followed. Management and employees know fully well what is needed to work towards organizational goals. The goals themselves are clearly laid out after meticulous planning. However midway during the CRM implementation, when hard times hit, the organization loses sight of its goals and ultimately steers away from it. At times goals get interchanged and lose their importance. Companies find themselves work at home directory towards goals that are less important and forgetting the ones that really are. This is one of the fundamental and mostly felt problems in CRM. Insufficient Resources Sometimes in phased implementation of CRM, if conditions worsen within the company or without, organizations start lessening their budgets for the current phase. When funds are less, budgets strained, the necessary costs required for CRM success are not employed. As a result CRM starts failing midway. The most important aspect- that of maintaining consistency is lost. Organizations fail to utilize the necessary resources for success and thus result in failure. Inappropriate Metrics Organizations have basically failed to use the right metrics. Failure to choose the right method of measurement and implement it is one of the chief reasons why CRM fails. Different metrics have to be employed for the calculation of different goals. Companies seldom pause to analyze which metric is needed for which element and ultimately use the wrong one. This results in faulty measurement and CRM disappointments. Complex Systems CRM simple? The hype says so, the experts agree. Is this really the case? Organizations that have employed it though have a different opinion. They are witness to the fact that CRM packages can be highly complex, with vast amounts of intricacies. If this is the case then how do simple employees cope? The answer lies in sufficient training being given in order that they are able to comprehend and deal with the difficulties easily. Business Needs Most Important One of the chief mistakes companies make is letting the technology drive their CRM functionality. Whats happening is that companies are endeavoring to go to the industry leaders, gain the technology needed and then apply it to the business problems only to find that it isnt solving any of them. Instead they need to analyze their business problems first and then find the appropriate CRM solution for it. This backwards step is responsible for CRM failure. No Customer Focus Customer oriented strategy? Yes, CRM does play the part. Customer oriented employees? Now that requires an effort on the part of the organization. It needs to motivate employees to be absolutely customer centric. This involves tremendous effort on the part of the company but is highly essential. CRM problems arise because of employee reluctance to be more customers focused. The result is a highly expensive customer strategy being adopted by the company in an effort to retain customers, with reluctant, unfocussed employees implementing it. Slow Returns Another failure of CRM is its inability to provide quick returns on investment. Organizations find themselves waiting for years before they are able to see actual returns on their investment. Most experts view the low ROI (Return of Investment) as a major problem with CRM but fail to see that the long wait is just as difficult. Waiting for years to see their investments show results, tests patience and leads to both employees and management slackening their efforts in the implementation. The apple started to listen to customers expectations and kept on looking what they can do to improve their customer relations. So they introduced several ways and walk in centres and done what ever they could to satisfy the customer expectation like introducing Ipads Iphone, Mac book and etc if they done these things from the start of the company they could have been a very successful company Once the apple rectified and reinvented by following the above key points by having direct relation ship with the customers the company will grow into a unique company CONCLUSION Most CRM problems can be mitigated, resolved and ultimately obliterated. What is highly required is the ability to focus on the business needs, choose a CRM package that works towards it, employ the right resources and assume the right metrics. Adopting these measures would go a long way in alleviating CRM problems. The world is ready for the business minded people to move further with high aim and warm refreshing ideas to make the world bloom to a lovely spotlight that feels happy to glitter with most obvious and LOVELY Customers. The apple gained their knowledge after several critical stages and gained lot of customers and when they started to look after them the company began to become a challenger and better name in the industry and with in the people

Women Behaving Like Men in Antigone, Electra, and Medea Essay

Women Behaving Like Men in Antigone, Electra, and Medea Throughout Antigone, Electra, and Medea, many double standards between men and women surface. These become obvious when one selects a hero from these plays, for upon choosing, then one must rationalize his or her choice. The question then arises as to what characteristics make up the hero. How does the character win fame? What exactly is excellent about that character? These questions must be answered in order to choose a hero in these Greek tragedies. In historic Greece, the characteristics of a hero were for the most part left only for men to achieve. Heroes were viewed as those who were kind to friends, vicious to enemies. They were also men who risked their lives regularly everyday, fighting for not only their country, but also treasures such as women, gold, and armor, among other things. Women, however, rarely accomplished such things, for what made a good woman was her obedience to her husband, her loyalty to her family, and, for the most part, other functions that a housewife is usually considered to perform. In order to win renown, however, a woman was forced to commit actions normally left to men. Antigone, Electra, and Medea, do not attempt to be what was considered a â€Å"good† women in ancient Greece; rather, their actions become masculine, instead. This is why they were known in the ancient world. For example, the character Antigone attempts several times to bury the body of her beloved brother, Polyneices, despite the mandate of her uncle, King Creon, that anyone who does so would immediately be put to death. Through this action, her fame, or kleos, was achieved. Her rebellious nature to the king put her at risk of death... ... were performed because of wholesome motivations. Her love for Jason was for someone outside of her family, and according to the laws of pietas, her father should have come before Jason. In conclusion, it becomes obvious by these three plays that for a woman to achieve kleos in ancient Greece, she usually had to become more man-like in her role. The murders committed by Electra and Medea, the bravery of Antigone—all three of these were fulfilled by what would have normally been considered a man’s role. A woman could rarely be considered a hero unless she became like a man in her actions. Otherwise, she would be only a simple woman. Works Cited Euripides. Medea and Other Plays. Trans. Philip Vellacott. England: Penguin Books, 1963. Sophocles. Antigone, Oedipus the King, Electra. Trans. H. D. F. Kitto. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962.

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Trade-studies are used to figure out the best possible approach. Trade studies functions includes improving a particular aspect of the system design to figure out the best approach to be used given a well-defined set of technical choices and parameters [1]. The inputs of the trade study are the DDP of competing technical solutions or just one widely variable solution. These inputs can consist of models of those technical solutions, the stakeholder’s priority ranked operational requirements, system life-cycle considerations, and other data. The output of a trade-study is a decision on which technical route to follow based on the desired characteristics of the system within the alternatives being studied. The trade-study will also document the justification of the decision. The goal of this section is to explain the process that provides the trade study its justifying power, a little more detail on those inputs and outputs, when and how many trade studies are conducted, what t he sensitivity analyses are, and how alternatives are analyzed are related to trade-studies. AoA and trade-st...

The Laser Essay -- essays research papers

The Laser Before we can learn about the laser we need to know a little bit about light (since that is what a laser is made of). Light from our sun, or from an electric bulb, is called white light. It is really a mixture of all the different colours of light. The colours range from violet, indigo, and blue, to green, yellow, orange, and red. These make up the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Light is made up of particles, called PHOTONS, which travel in waves. The difference in the colour depends on the wavelength of the light. Violet light has the shortest wavelength while red has the longest. There are other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum which includes infra-red, radar, television radio and micro- waves (past red on the spectrum), and on the other end of the spectrum are the other invisible radiations, ultra- violet, X rays, micro waves and gamma rays. The wavelength of the light is important to the subject of the laser. A laser is made up of COHERENT light, a special kind of light in which the wavelengths of the light are all the same length, and the crests of these waves are all lined up, or in PHASE. The word Laser is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. What does that mean? Basically a laser is a device which produces and then amplifies light waves and concentrates them into an intense penetrating beam. The principles of the laser (and it's cousin the maser) were established long before these devices were succes...

Alliance Concrete Case Analysis Essay

The best estimate for 2006 are shown in the projections for Alliance Concrete. The company is expected to grow its Net Income by $2,350 million. If the company was to pay $3 million in dividends, it would be $11,349 million in retained earnings. If you make no investment in capital expenditure and make payments to your bank loan, the loan would come down to $57,660 million. If the company does not reinvest, it will be at a 50% chance of a problem occurring, which can cause more losses. Just as they did in 2004, not only did it cost $2.6 million to fix the problem but also the company had to close down for 2 weeks, hence the drop in sales for 2004. My recommendation to Alliance Concrete would be to pay off the $7,000 million obligation to the bank which is owed. This would be suggested so you do not default on a loan. It would also put you at the borrowing limit as well. If the company does default on the loan, it will not be a good look for the company. Stock prices and confidence in the company will drop, as people will think that the company cannot pay its bill. After paying off the debt to the bank, I would suggest to allocate the rest of the money towards capital expenditure. It will be necessary for the company to upgrade at least some of the equipment to lower the possibility of something going bad. It would be a total nightmare if the company ran into another problem like the one they faced in 2004, and it may lead to bankruptcy. They may not be able to recover because their debt would go through the roof. That being said, I would skip on the dividend payments and insure that the following year there will be a bigger payment to the stockholder, if everything goes well. The investment into the company would make the company operate better and may even generate more revenue. If I was to renegotiate with the bank, I would put forward the projection of growth. I would highlight the increase in sales and revenue along with showing the effort to pay down the banks loans. I would put forward the current and quick ratio, showing that we have enough money to liquidate the assets to cover our debt in worst case scenario. The company can argue that, even  though the real estate market is slowing down, the company is still showing growth, which is a good sign. If Alliance Concrete was to skip on dividend payments the argument that can be put forth would be that the company is growing and shows signs of great improvement, if we put money into it now. Also that, investment now in the company could mean even more dividend payments in the future. We could also argue that it needs to be skipped because the company needs to put back money into itself because we need to get repairs done. If we pay dividends now, it may not be the best for the company, because we will not be able to get the repairs done that are needed and will cost us more to fix and recover from that problem. After carefully looking at all aspects and possible situations I would suggest that the company skip on the dividends for this year, and invest its money back into the company along with paying of some of the debt. This will be beneficial for all. It will make the company grow all with paying of its loans. The stockholders can be assured that the company is growing and that there will be better dividend payments in the future.

“Fifth Business” by Robertson Davis Essay

Paul Dempster was born on December 28, 1908 to Amasa and Mary Dempster. He was suspected to be premature by about 80 days, but that was an estimate made by Dr. McCausland. Paul was described as â€Å"Red, of course, as all babies are red. But he was wrinkled like a tiny old man, and his head and back and much of his face was covered with weedy long black hair†(page 13), and â€Å"his cry was like the mew of a kitten†(page13). Dunny’s mother was pleased with the progress he was making, â€Å"I think little Paul is going to pull through. He’ll be slow, the doctor says, but he’ll be alright†(page 17), but Dr. McCausland was very wrong. Though Paul could neither read or write when he got older, he was very interested in the tricks that Dunny would show him â€Å"taking the coin from me and preforming the pass perfectly†(page 33). Paul’s home life was not one of the best. His mother was, what the town referred to as, simple and his father blamed her condition on his birth. He was also tormented by the other children in the town because of an incident in the gravel pit involving his mother and a tramp. This took a mental tole on him and shortly after the death of his father Paul ran away and joined the circus. Though his experience in the circus made him into Magnus Eisengrim, â€Å"The Great Magician†, he was still unable to free himself from his past. Paul also had much hostility towards Percy, the boy who was also a contributing factor in his premature birth. Paul was blamed by his father for the mental state of his mother but Paul found out as a child from Dunny that it was not his fault, but the fault of himself and his friend Percy. This hostility resulted in the mysterious murder of Percy and though it was never said that Magnus actually committed this act of violence it was pretty clear to the reader that the coincidence was to staggering to be anyone else. Though Paul does not play the role of that main character in The Fifth Business he does play an important role in the life of the character in which the novel revolves around. His is life alone gives meaning to the whole novel and defines Dunny. His birth and his legend are far from what would be expected of a Parsons son, but he lived his life the way he wanted and made the most of a talent with magic and congering.