Counsumer Behavior Essay Example for Free

Counsumer Behavior Essay Absolute threshold Differential threshold †¢How does sensory adaptation affect advertising effectiveness? How can marketers overcome sensory adaptation? †¢Discuss the differences between the absolute threshold and the differential threshold. Which is more important to marketers? Explain your answer. For each of these products—chocolate bars and bottles of expensive perfume—describe how marketers can apply their knowledge of differential threshold to packaging, pricing, and promotional claims during periods of (a) rising ingredient and materials costs and (b) increasing competition. 2. Key Concepts Contrast Figure and ground †¢How do advertisers use contrast to make sure that their ads are noticed? Would the lack of contrast between the advertisement and the medium in which it appears help or hinder the effectiveness of the ad? What are the ethical considerations in employing such strategies? †¢What are the implications of figure-ground relationships for print ads and for online ads? How can the figure-ground construct help or interfere with the communication of advertising messages? †¢Find three examples of print advertisements that use some of the stimulus factors discussed in the chapter to gain attention. For each example, evaluate the effectiveness of the stimulus factors used. 3. Key Concepts Selective perception Perceptual mapping †¢Define selective perception. Thinking back, relate one or two elements of this concept to your own attention patterns in viewing print advertisements and TV commercials. †¢Select a company that produces several versions of the same product under the same or different brands (one that is not discussed in this chapter). Visit the firm’s Web site and prepare a list of the product items and the benefits that each item offers to consumers. Are all these benefits believable and will they persuade consumers to buy the different versions of the product? Explain your answers. †¢Construct a two-dimensional perceptual map of your college using the two attributes that were most influential in your selection. Then mark the position of your school on the diagram relative to that of another school you considered. Discuss the implications of this perceptual may for the student recruitment function of the university that you did not choose.

A Critique of Data warehousing in Enterprise Resource Planning Systems

A Critique of Data warehousing in Enterprise Resource Planning Systems INTRODUCTION General Background There are different ways in which companies have collected and accessed the data in order to support and enhance the business. Since 1990s, with the emergence of the concept of business data warehouse, companies have been instituting data warehousing for data mining, data analysis, reporting and other business intelligence purpose (Matthias et al., 2003). Bill Inmon in 1990, defined data warehousing as à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“a subject-oriented, integrated, non-volatile, and time-variant collection of data in support of managements decisions. He also stated that the à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“data warehouse contains a very useful source of data for the explorer and data miner. The data found in the data warehouse is cleansed, integrated, organized. And the data is historicalà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  (Inmon W. H, 2002). Data warehouse is also defined as the à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“architecture used to maintain critical historical data that has been extracted from operational data storage and transformed into formats acce ssible to the organizations analytical communityà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  (Anne Marie, 2009). In the same decade, with the success of Material Requirements Planning 2 (MRP II) and its evolution to Enterprise resource planning (ERP), various companies implemented ERP software as à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“integrated suitesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  that automate core corporate activities and helps the corporate managers to coordinate the common functions of an enterprise (Gibson et al., 1999). ERP can be defined as à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“techniques and concepts for integrated management of business as a whole from the viewpoint of the effective use of management resources to improve the efficiency of enterprise management. ERP packages are integrated (covering all business functions) software packages that support these ERP conceptsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  (Alexis Leon, 2008). For every critical business decision taken, information is the foundation. To facilitate this, all functional areas of the organization are integrated using ERP (Chou, 2005). Most ERP vendors have an integrated business suite containing busi ness intelligence (BI) tools to access their data modules directly. However, data warehousing in ERP system is a complicated task that requires the use of various types of inputs like the historical data, and the information that are external to the ERP system (Peng and Nunes, 2008; Chaudhuri et al., 1997). Although ERP systems can integrate all business transaction data into their master databases for organizational planning, it may not be a solution for data analysis and decision support process. Selection of ERP, implementation and integration with BI is the costly and risky processes in the companys life span (Baki et al, 2005). This paper reviews the value of data warehousing in ERP systems. It identifies the power and the capabilities ERP and Data Warehousing. And, reviews the claims made by ERP vendors about their integrated BI solution. The conclusion is provided in the last section. Research Objectives The paper presents the study of features and claims by ERP vendors on its ERPs efficiency of the data warehousing in ERP system. This study attempts to critically review and question the claims by ERP vendors on their efficiency of Data warehousing in ERP systems. Research objective is also to identify those issues that occur in Data warehousing in ERP systems, and then map them in the research framework, perhaps with more detail related to the dimensions that are found. The issues are defined with the viewpoints of vendors and consultants. This paper will provide an overview of the issues and challenges that the intersection of these two IS concepts are creating. Research Design An overview of the importance of the information technology sector and a synopsis on enterprise resource planning systems are presented first, followed by a discussion on the research problem and the academic and practical motivations for undertaking the present study. The study is a review of literature, and claims made by prominent ERP vendors on the data warehousing in ERP system. Critical Literature Review The research design of this study consists of theoretical risk ontology through a critical literature review. A critical literature review was conducted by first searching for the appropriate literature. Initial phase of the literature research attempted to search and retrieve the secondary literature sources like journals, books and newspapers that are directly related to data warehousing in ERP, and data mining. In this process it was identified that current research studies on data warehousing in ERP system focus mainly on ERP selection, implementation, integration with data warehouse, and business intelligence (Chou et al, 2005; Shehab et al, 2004; Davenport, 1998; Themistocleous et al, 2006). The process involved a search of prominent Publisher of journals in information services like ACM Portal, Emerald, Wiley Interscience and Web search engine Google Scholar and IEE Explore. Journals and databases were searched by generating key words and search terms with initial reading and brainstorming. I decided to focus my study on articles that discuss the ERP and particularly the integration with BI. This paper presents the critical literature review about the data warehousing in ERP systems. ERP SYSTEMS Definition of ERP ERP system is a software package that integrates the flow information through the company, including financial, accounting, human resources, supply chain, and customer information. Yen et al (2002) defined ERP system as à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“a business management system that integrates all facets of the business, including planning, marketing and manufacturingà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ . An integrated ERP system can cover wide range of functionalities like reporting, planning, budgeting, forecasting, strategy management, scorecards, and risk management (SAP, 2009) and integrate them into one unified database. It automates core corporate activities by incorporating best practices to facilitate rapid decision making, cost reduction, and greater managerial control (Holland et al, 1999). For example, functional modules such as manufacturing, warehouse management, human resources, finance, customer relations management, supply chain management were all once stand alone software applications, typically having its own database and network (tech-faq, 2009). Best practices are incorporated as a result of the long development history of the ERPs. ERP market is led by companies like SAP AG, Oracle Corporation, Sage Group, Microsoft Corporation and Infor Global Solutions (Wikipedia, 2009). Importance of ERP An important reason for implementing ERP is that, it can help companies re-engineer their business process and compete in the market. Davenport (1998) says that à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“for managers who have struggled, at great expense and with great frustration, with incompatible information systems and inconsistent operating practices, the promise of an off-the-shelf solution to the problem of business integration is enticingà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ . Following are the benefits of ERP systems over the distributed stand alone departmental systems (Yen et al, 2002): * Business process automation a unified enterprise view of the business that encompasses all functions and departments. Improvement in the supply chain via the use of e-communication and E-commerce. * Timely access to management information an enterprise database where all business transactions are entered, recorded, processed, monitored and reported There are many reasons why organizations find ERP system very attractive. The primary reasons focus on the frustrations in using the existing stand alone systems. Convincing reasons for a purchasing ERP system may include (Chen, 2001): * Efficiency of the current system Inability of the existing stand alone systems to support organizational needs * Failure in the distributed system The use of multiple points of input using multiple application which leads in duplicated effort of capturing and storing the data in existing system * Maintenance overhead in the current system The requirement of extensive resources (man and machine) for maintenance and support of the system. * Competition Competition in the global market and the desire to reengineer its business process * Company growth The growth of the enterprise and subsequent incompatibility of several legacy information system * E-commerce Inability of employees to respond easily to questions or information requested by key customer or suppliers ERP systems provide a common platform and business practices across the enterprise that allows the real-time access. According to Davenport (1998), ERP solutions are designed to solve the fragmentation of information in large business organisations, and integrate all the information flowing within a company. ERP failures ERP system implementation can either reap huge benefits for successful companies or it can be disastrous for organizations that fail to manage the implementation process (Holland et al, 1999). The selection and acquisition of ERP software is a risky and challenging task. And a wrong purchase may adversely affect the organization. Themistocleous states many reason for the failure of ERP system. For example, * Resistance from the employs against the change in the system * Differences between organisations and consultants as a result of cost overruns and projects delays. * Non-flexibility in ERP software forces organisation to abandon their way of doing business * Conflict with the business strategy of the organization Selecting ERP and implementation In-house software system development is generally expensive, time consuming and often covered by uncertainties and integration of various incompatible software systems may not function well with each other. If different software packages are being used, data may not be consistent. On the other hand purchasing off-the-shelf ERP software packages can solve problem. Holland et al (1999) says that à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“the companies are radically changing their information technology strategies by purchasing pre-packaged software instead of developing IT systems in-houseà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ . There are different strategic approaches to ERP software implementation. It can be implemented with either a minimum deviation from the standard settings that the ERP vendor provides or with the customization of a system to suit local requirements (tech-faq, 2009). As discussed by Yusuf et al (2004) in the case study about the implementation of ERP in Rolls-Royce in partnership with Electronic Data Services (EDS), ERP implementation is a complicated task. The project implementation problems faced while implementing are * Cultural Problems Some of the functions and processes of the new system did not receive full appreciation from the employee. So, the implementation team had to resolve this by illustrating the improvements made to the company as a whole. Also extensive trainings were provided to the employees of Rolls-Royce. * Business Problems Because of the rigidity in the business structure of SAP R/3 ERP, employees of Rolls-Royce adjusted their working practices in order to fit SAP. * Technical Problems As the system required the retrieval of old data from legacy system which were in de-normalized form, Rolls-Royce had to run legacy system in parallel with the ERP until the expensive process of extracting the old data from legacy system was normalized, screened and stored in a sensible data format in the new database. Implementation of ERP and planning of the resources required to run the enterprise is not the end of the road for ERP. Organization will realize the full potential of ERP when it is used and properly managed (Yusuf et al, 2004). One of the main difficulties experienced by ERP implementations have been the costly development of additional software to summarize and retrieve the information for generating the reports (Themistocleous et al, 2001). A company that plans to invest into ERP needs to have a good strategy and a clear idea about the cost of ERP system. Implementation slowdowns the routine works within an organization. Customization is costly and time consuming (Yen et al, 2002). As outlined by Peng and Nunes (2009), reasons like insufficient user training, loss of in-house IT experts, bankruptcy of system vendor and barriers like inefficient communication between functional divisions can cause ERP post implementation failures Analytical and forecasting functions of ERP: Business managers will have different information needs for planning and decision making (Peng and Nunes, 2009). Decision support system can reduce the time, cost and improve efficiencies. Analytical and forecasting functions are the skills, processes used to support decision making and forecasting. Analytical and forecasting features of ERP can be accessed by managers using an interface such as web-based or graphical interface via the internet or intranet (Marnewick, 2005). If an organization does not take advantage of decision support systems, it cannot take complete advantage of the data and may lose its competitive edge. Most ERP systems today have highly integrated databases and business intelligence (BI) tools to access their data modules directly (Chou, 2005). ERP vendors, data warehousers, and third-party tool vendors have numerous products and solutions for using the ERP data. There are 3 major solutions for ERP data (searchSAP, 2009): 1. Solutions from third-party vendors that analyze data within ERP systems 2. ERP-based solutions that analyze data within ERP systems 3. ERP-based solutions that build data warehouses outside their ERP systems An ERP-based data warehouse is a classical, external data warehouse or data mart built with tools offered by an ERP vendor (Russom, 2007). ERP reports are generated using the existing ERP schema as the foundation for building the standard reports. Integrated business intelligence system pulls the data from ERP systems to a data warehouse and enables to perform data analysis and deliver superior reporting for making timely and accurate decision (Chou et al, 2005). Closer integration of corporate wide data warehousing data with ERP data potentially enhances companies return on their ERP and data warehouse investments (Wiley, 2009). ERP contains a set of analytical tools to facilitate sales planning. Yen et al (2002) says that à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“many companies deploy data warehouses for facilitating the data analysis in ERP. They will buy packaged analytic applications that include a data warehouse, analytical tools, and predefined data models to accelerate the data analysis in ERPà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ . But, in spite of deploying ERP and an integrated data warehousing and BI, there is no guarantee that the forecast generated is up to the accuracy. As discussed by Peng and Nunes, one of the reasons for inaccurate forecasting is due to inherent difficulties in predicting the fluid market. This results in significant impact in companies. ERP systems are usually designed to record business transactions data, make changes to existing data, reconcile data, keep track of business transactions, run predefined business reports, and manage business transactions. In contrast, analytical systems are designed to examine large volumes of data and then to generate essential information for decision-making. There are five major software vendors offering ERP solutions to business worldwide. According to reports from Gartner Dataquest, quoted by destinationcrm (destinationcrm, 2006) SAP is the market share leader in ERP, followed by Oracle, Sage, Microsoft Dynamics and SSA Global Technologies. DATA WAREHOUSING AND DATA MINING Data Warehousing Bill Inmon (2002) says that the à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“data warehouse contains a very useful source of data for the explorer and data miner. The data found in the data warehouse is cleansed, integrated, organized. And the data is historicalà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ . To help managers and decision makers retrieve information they need from tremendous amount of data reside in database, many enterprises have built system environments focusing on data warehousing technology, deployed that as an integral part of a decision support systems (DSS). Data warehouse is responsible for providing information needed for supporting executive decision making. As a result, data warehousing technology has been integrated into ERP systems (Zhang et al, 2006). Yusuf et al (2004) defines Data warehouse as à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“an integrated collection of data. The data is stored centrally and is extracted from operational, historical and external databasesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ . Data warehouses are used for decision support. Historical, summarized and consolidated data is more important than detailed, individual records. Data Mining Data mining is the study and extraction of patterns from a large set of data. It can be defined as the process of analyzing data from different viewpoints and summarizing it into useful information for planning and increase revenue. It allows users to analyze data from many different dimensions or angles, categorize it, and summarize the relationships identified (Anderson, 2009). Data mining can also be defined as the à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“practice of automatically searching large stores of data to discover patterns and trends that go beyond simple analysisà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  (Oracle, 2009). Data mining uses sophisticated mathematical algorithms to slice the data and evaluate the probability of future events. The key properties of data mining are (thearling, 2009): 1. Automatic discovery of patterns 2. Prediction of likely outcomes 3. Creation of actionable information Data Mining is widely used in applications such as product analysis, demand and supply analysis, understanding consumer research marketing, investment trend in stocks real estates, telecommunications, e-commerce and so on (Chou et al, 2005). However, a database which is new and which has only a current piece of information is not suitable for data mining as it can never detect trends and long term patterns of behaviour. Historical data is very essential for data mining as historical data contains valuable chunk of information hidden in it. Mature data is crucial for understanding the seasonality of business and the larger cycles of business to which every corporation is subject (Inmon, 1996). Data mining uses data from data source in order to provide users with meaningful indicators. Data from ERP systems is used as data source. Modern ERP systems provide advanced BI tools out of the box, avoiding the hassle of connecting a stand-alone BI system, and lowering the cost which is a critical capability to consider ERP for midsize companies, with limited staff and resources to maintain multiple systems (Newcomer, 2009). After implementing the ERP system in organizations, they tend to concentrate more on the return on investment (ROI). Chou et al (2005) says that à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“In order to justify their return-on-investment (ROI), more and more organizations are turning to BI tools that make data collected by ERP, customer relationship management (CRM), and other data-intensive applications meaningfulà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ . Since a BI system includes technologies for reporting, analysis, and sharing information, many ERP vendors have integrated these solutions with ERP systems to truly maximize the ROI of ERP. The integration of BI and ERP systems can strengthen corporate decision-making capability through utilizing the analytical capability of BI system and data managerial capability of ERP system (Chou et al, 2005). Business Intelligence (BI) can help in competition analysis, market research, economical trends, consume behaviour, industry research, and geographical information analysis and so on. Business Intelligence using data mining helps in decision-making (Naxton, 2006). ERP VENDOR CLAIMS Modern ERP systems may provide advanced BI tools, avoiding the hassle of connecting a stand-alone BI system, and lowering the cost. Integrated business intelligence contains a broad category of analytical applications that help companies in making decision based on the data in their ERP systems (Moller, 2005). Oracle and SAP are currently the only major ERP vendors with such offerings. Analytical applications can be broadly classified as follows: Financial Analytics Financial analysis refers to an assessment of the viability, stability and profitability of a business, sub-business or project (Wikipedia, 2009). It is concerned with optimising the profitability of the business. When used effectively it can provide a competitive differentiator. Financial analytics helps the business focus on the most important customers and the most profitable products and services (Brook, 2009). It helps them to (Schroeck, 2001): * Understand the overall performance of the organization * Identify ways to measure and maximize the value of intangible assets (eg. Services) * Effectively manage enterprise-wide investments and reduce operating costs * Forecast variations in the marketplace, * Optimize the capabilities of information systems, and * Business processes improvement. Integrated analytics allow organizations with an ERP infrastructure to facilitate reporting and tools required for decision-makers. Oracle E-Business Suit (EBS) is one suite of applications that contains ERP and integrated BI. Oracle says that à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“Oracle Financial Analytics helps front-line managers improve financial performance with complete, up-to-the-minute information on their departments expenses and revenue contributionsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ . SAP Business Suite is a range of software modules with an integrated Business Intelligence. SAP states that à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“SAP ERP provides powerful analytic software that enables powerful financial analysis to help you analyze your business, develop business plans and budgets, and track performance during execution.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  (SAP AG, 2009). Few of the features and functions that support financial analytics as stated by SAP are * Financial and management reporting Providing a set of tools to meet the financial and management reporting needs. * Planning, budgeting, and forecasting Support traditional budgeting, rolling forecasts, and collaborative planning, such as cost center planning. * Working capital and cash flow management Optimize cash flow, including cash flow calculations and middle- and long-term planning. Sales Analytics Sales analytics is a procedure involving the gathering, classifying, comparing, and studying of company sales data. It may simply involve the comparison of total company sales in two different time periods. Or it may entail subjecting thousands of component sales (or sales-related) s to a variety of comparisons, like comparison with s for earlier periods of time (Wikipedia, 2009). SAP says that the SAP sales analytic help the organization to obtain the data necessary to proactively address trends and measure success and revenue shortfalls. Oracle states that analytics solutions provided by its E-business suite dramatically improve the effectiveness of sales people by providing real-time, actionable insight into every sales opportunity at the point of customer contact. With more accurate sales forecasts and enhanced identification of potential problems and opportunities, Oracle Sales Analytics helps close business faster and increase overall sales revenue. It lists the following benefits: * Resource allocation Identifying critical opportunities so that executives can assign the appropriate resources to increase the chance of winning * Sales forecasts Analyzing pipeline opportunities to determine actions required to meet sales targets. Provide the information about sales documents, such as opportunities, sales orders and sales contracts. Thus, help in future revenue forecasting. Integrated sales planning and analysis enables sales managers to understand the financial status and overall effectiveness of the sales organization quickly and easily. These scenarios help users obtain the data necessary to proactively address trends, measure customer retention and revenue shortfalls, and assess future opportunities (SAP, 2009). Operational Analytics Operational analytics is a process that facilitates delivery of the in-depth and focused analysis of the performance of each key operational area of the business. Operational Analytics try to provide comprehensive and focused analysis of every aspect of the operational area of a company (Information Management, 2007). Oracle says that à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“Oracles Business Intelligence Suite delivers real-time operational analytics that enable you to make better business decisions fasterà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ . Operational analytics is also a part of SAP business suite. SAP says that à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“SAP ERP provides features and functions for operational analysis to help you optimize the entire supply chain, improve revenues, and increase customer satisfactionà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ . Few of the features and functions that support financial analytics as stated by SAP are: * Manufacturing reporting Provides various standard reports and analyses detailing production-related information. * Customer service analysis Used for monitoring financial trends, costs, and revenues per customer, as well as service contracts and operations. * Sales planning Used for opportunity planning and analysis and partner planning. * Sales analysis Provides an accurate overview of current sales performance and an overview of sales force effectiveness. Workforce Analytics Workforce Analytics is a powerful decision-making platform using business intelligence tools that offer to the management at every level the right and timely information at point of decision making process for a better visibility and accountability in regards to workforce-related issues (Information Management, 2007). Workforce Analytics is used by HR professionals, and line managers. It provides an analysis option that gives real-time insight into your workforce. They can identify trends at an early stage and make well-informed decisions, enabling you to manage your human capital more effectively, predict human-capital investment demands, and track workforce costs and the ROI associated with HR projects (Wikipedia, 2009). The focus is to analyse current and historical employee data to identify key relationships among variables and use this to provide insight into the workforce they need for the future. Oracle says that Oracle workforce analytics in the e-business suite à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“provides the strategy management and performance tracking needed to measure the effectiveness of HR initiatives. It helps to evaluate and communicate company performance, staffing, turnover, HR readiness, compensation, and competencies.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Managers need information that will help guide your strategic decisions. Implementing an Enterprise Resource System (ERP) that integrates all the information and processes into one coherent environment is a first and major step towards improved decision-making. But capturing and processing data is not sufficient to give the insight into the business that decision makers need today. Only when coupled with a business intelligence system can your ERP software enable users analyse and act on that data quickly and effectively. IT industrial leader, Microsoft quotes that à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“Forecaster for Microsoft Dynamics ERP helps you manage financial performance through accurate budgeting and planningà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  (Microsoft, 2009). A CRITIQUE OF VENDOR CLAIMS Data Warehousing In todays ever-competitive business climate, the ability to understand business conditions and gain timely insight into business performance is essential for survival. Business users have long faced the challenge of being unable to easily analyze business data in their enterprise resource planning (ERP) environment. Oftentimes, the reporting tools available are too complex for business users to utilize effectively, and IT experts do not have the business background to sufficiently understand business users analytical needs. The delay in IT departments turnaround time can quickly render information irrelevant and outdated by the time it is available to business users. ERPs serve as transaction engines in many organizations. It provides mission-critical operational workflow but do not support decision support systems (DSS) directly (Inmon, 2000). Therefore, the need to source a data warehouse from the ERP system and other legacy systems is obvious. Many organisations are now discovering that the solution to leveraging investment decisions in and retrieving useful data from, an ERP system is to undertake a Data Warehousing initiative in conjunction with the implemented ERP system. But, the harsh reality of ERP systems implementation, to the expense of those organisations that invested resources in the initiative, is that ERP only gets data into the system, it does not prepare data for use and analysis (Inmon, 2000). ERP systems lack certain functionality and reporting capabilities. It has been realised that ERP systems are good for storing, accessing and executing data used in daily transactions, but it is not good at providing the information needed for long term planning and decision making (Radding, 2000) as ERP systems are not designed to know how the data is to be used once it is gathered (Inmon, 2000). Consequently, in the post-implementation phase organisations are often dismayed to find that they havent improved their an alytical and decision support capabilities (Inmon, 2000; Radding, 2000) as ERP systems do not provide an environment for decision support activities such as analysing historical trends, drawing conclusions, scenario building and planning. Business Intelligence using Data Warehouse built on ERP System Analytical and forecasting features are provided by the business intelligence tools that are linked to the data warehouse. Some of the common functions of Business Intelligence technologies are reporting, analytics, data mining and benchmarking (Wikipedia, 2009). Integration of ERP and BI can provide a consolidated analysis of the data and user-friendly reporting capabilities and help users make and correct decisions and gain advantages over their competitors. Financial analytics, sales analytics, operational analytics and workforce analytical, may provide the facility to analyze relationships and understand trends that ultimately support business decision. However, few of the challenges faced by data warehousing in ERP systems are in its capability of providing a valuable and accurate reporting service, data analysis and forecasting. Chou et al says (2005) says à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“Organizations recognize the wealth of information within ERP systems, the challenge lies in the ways of min ing themà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ . The lack of historical transaction data in the database containing the data from ERP is the most significant obstacle in successfully implementing a BI on ERP system. One of the key elements in accurate forecasting like trend reporting is the need for historical data. Most of the ERP vendors claim that the reports and forecasts generated by ERP or a BI that is integrated with ERP environment are of high accuracy. Zhang et al (2006) says that à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“although ERP system is powerful, a serious challenge is how to make use of previous experiences and knowledge to support managerial decision makingà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ . Still the research has to be carried out to know the accuracy of the reports as ERP system does not contain the historical data in the enterprises data warehouse. Traditionally, the enterprise data warehouse needs historical data. When a large amount of historical data starts to stack up in the ERP environment, the ERP environment is usually purged, or the data is archived to a remote storage facility. When an enterprise data warehouse needs to go back in time and bring in historical data that has not been previously colle

The Worldly Impact of Television Essay example -- Television Media TV

The Worldly Impact of Television The television had a very monumental role the world’s history. The television was first introduced in the early 1950’s. This new phenomenon of television took awhile for many people to catch on to, but once this device was received there was no looking back. The television set the stage for many things such as world news, local news, entertainment, and sports. The television allowed what used to be listeners to be able to view what was going on with their television set. The television got its big chance in the early 1950’s with the end of WWII. This time was known as the golden age which followed the great depression. The returning soldiers brought a new sense of hope to the American public which in turn led to the buying of many new houses and television sets. In 1945, there were 8,000 television sets produced (Watrall notes). It was also in this year that the first â€Å"television set extravaganza† was broadcasted at Yankee Stadium (â€Å"History of Television†). It was in Yankee stadium where the Joe Louis—Bill Conn heavyweight competition took place which led to be a success that had an average of 150,000 viewers watching from about 5,000 television sets (Watrall notes). As the 1950’s went on it started to become a norm for people to have a television set in their home. In 1953 color broadcasting arrived in the U.S., but it was not until the 1960’s that the public started purchasing color television set s (â€Å"History of Television†). As time would continue to pass and technology would continue to get better so did television. Today, television is something many people take for granted. In today’s society 99% of all households in this country have at least one television set (Potter 61). There... ... Television from day one to what it is now has probably had one of the biggest overall affects on the world public. All of the main events that have happened since the early 1940’s have been broadcasted on television giving the audience a chance to see it. This also goes for the world of sports. Every major sporting event that has taken place can be found on television such as the Olympics, Super bowl, World Cup, Stanley Cup, Kentucky Derby, and the World Series can all be found on television. The television is completely different from how it started off as being but what is has become today has surpassed everybody’s original expectations. Works Cited Potter, James W. Media Literacy. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications Inc, 2001. "History of Television." Hi-Tech Productions. 1996 www.high-techproductions.com/historyoftelevision.html Watrall. Lecture notes

Eating Disorders :: essays research papers

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fattest one of all? -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Unknown Men and women of all ages, races and incomes get eating disorders. Almost eighty percent of people with eating disorders started with dieting. Experts estimate one in four college women are bulimic. Did you know ninety percent of women overestimate their weight and everyday fifty six percent of women are on a diet. It is also not surprising that eating disorders are on the increase because of the value society places on being thin. Women especially are given the message at a very young age in order for them to be happy and successful they have to be thin. Did you also know the average model weighs twenty three percent less then an average woman. According to medical standards they fit into having a disorder. Diet commercials are constantly appearing on television screens telling us that losing weight will make everyone happy. Over five million American men and women suffer from eating disorders. (Vollstadt 45) Depression, shame, and agonizing sense of isolation is caused by eating disorders, they disrupt families, schools, and damages careers. It’s unfortunate, but in today’s society, people have forgotten that it’s what’s on the inside that counts, not what’s on the outside.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One percent of teenage girls in the US develops anorexia nervosa and up to ten percent of those may die as a result.(AABA 3) Anorexia nervosa is a disorder in which preoccupation with dieting and thinness leads to excessive weight loss. The individual may not acknowledge that his or her weight loss or restrictive eating is a problem. Most women and an increasing number of men are motivated by the urge to become thin. Anorexics usually strive for perfection. They usually have a low self-esteem and sometimes feel that they don’t deserve to eat. Denying the problem occurs most of the time. There are many warning signs for anorexia. Some of the signs are having a noticeable weight loss, becoming withdrawn, lots more exercise, fatigue, weakness in muscles, headaches, and a different attitude towards others. There’s many more, but just look at the ones here and say that they aren’t dangerous. There are also many medical conditions to go with this disease like hair loss, bloating, cold hands and feet, etc. Some people wear baggy clothes to make themselves feel skinnier then they already are and they still feel the urge to lose more weight.

Comparing Lamb to the Slaughter to The Speckled Band Essay -- English

Comparing Lamb to the Slaughter to The Speckled Band 'Lamb to the Slaughter' and 'The Speckled Band' are both murder mysteries. Like most murder mysteries each of the stories have a murderer, a victim and characters acting in a suspicious or unusual way. 'Lamb to the Slaughter' is a 20th century story about a woman called Mary who kills her husband, Patrick Maloney, using a leg of lamb. This seems quite surprising at first as she seems quite loving and devoted to him- 'she loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man.' However a lot of Mary Maloney's behaviour in the first scene does seem quite worrying and peculiar. It seems that she is almost obsessed with her husband and this is shown by the way she is constantly trying to please him. Although the murder is a crime of passion Mrs Maloney manages to deal with it quite well. She is very calculating when realising quite what she has done and providing herself with a convincing alibi. When the detectives arrive to investigate the murder they seem to be taking it very seriously, however they don't really seem to consider Mrs Maloney as a real suspect. There is one point in the story where one of the detectives says 'acted quite normal very cheerful impossible that she' but this is an idea which is soon discarded. After a while the attitude of the detectives becomes more relaxed and not so professional. Mrs Maloney takes advantage of this by asking the detectives to stay for dinner. She then goes on to feed them the leg of lamb thus destroying the evidence. There is a moment of irony towards the end because when talking about the murder weapon one of the detectives says 'Probably right under our very nose' just as they are eating the leg of lamb. ... ...and' and 'Lamb to the Slaughter' are very diverse. In 'Lamb to the Slaughter' Mr and Mrs Maloney both lived in a 'warm and clean' home. The atmosphere is of a happy and content household. In 'The Speckled Band' the murder takes place in an old, grey, stone house. The setting seems colder and emptier. The fact that Roylott keeps animals such as cheetahs and baboons adds a darker adds a more sinister feel to the story. This is more typical of a murder mystery but it may not have seemed so unusual when it was first written in the 19th century. I think the author of ' Lamb to the Slaughter' wants the reader to see Mrs Maloney as quite cunning and deceitful. He does this by showing that Mrs Maloney can use the fact that she was married to Mr Maloney and that she is six months pregnant to her advantage. Holmes would probably not have fallen into this same trap.

How to Make Mongolian Dumplings

Do you love eating or cooking yummy foods from different cultures? Well I do. I love eating and cooking many different meals from different cultures and countries, but my traditional Mongolian Dumplings are the best. My purpose of my speech is to teach you how to make Mongolian traditional dumplings with cabbage salad in your own kitchen. There are very easy three steps such as collecting ingredients, preparation and process of making dumplings and cabbage salad.First of all, for the ingredients all you need to have is: 3 cups of all purpose flour, 1 ? pounds of beef, 2 carrot, 1 cabbage, 4 cloves of garlic, ? onions, white vinegar, vegetable oil, 2 teaspoons of salt and little bit of black ground peeper for better taste. You can find these ingredients about in any grocery store you like to shop for your groceries. When you have all the ingredients of the dumplings we can go to the preparation. First, prepare the dough mixture. Put about 3 cups of flour into a large mixing bowl.Slowl y mix in ? cup water to make dough that is not too dry or too moist. Knead the dough on a floured board for a few minutes. Cover it with the bowl and let it sit or rest as the Mongolians say for 15 minutes. In the mean time, finely mince or cut the beef and place it in a bowl, and add the shredded carrot, chopped cabbage, garlic and onions. Vegetarians often replace the meat with mashed potatoes, cabbage and carrots, or if you like lamb meat or pork you can replace the meat but I love it with horse meat.Anyway, add additional spice to taste into meat, along with salt. Finally mix in about half cup of water to give the meat its juices. After the dough has rested, knead it again for 2 to 3 minutes and then slice it into long strips about 1† wide. Roll each strip on floured board to make long dough snakes, which you then cut into small pieces, about 1†by 1†. Squish each piece flat in the palms of your hands to make what look like small round cookies. Lightly coat thes e pieces with flour in the bowl and then flatten each with a rolling pin into a thin round piece of dough.Now you are ready to make dumplings. Holding the dough piece in the palm of your one hand, scoop a heaping teaspoon of the meat mixture into the middle of the dough piece. With the thumb of one hand and the fingers of the other, fold the dough up and over the meat, pinching the edges together to create the dumpling shape. Mongolians make dumplings in different shapes: mouse shaped, rose shaped, flower shaped, and even some other shapes I don’t even know how to name them, but the round yurt- shaped dumplings are the most common.Round yurt- shaped dumplings have usually small holes at the top of each dumpling where the edges of the dough come together and the steam will escape out. Now dip the bottom of each dumpling in vegetable oil to keep it from sticking to the base of the steamer pan and then place each onto a steamer pan, making sure that they are not touching to each other. Steam the dumplings in a boiling steamer for 15 minutes. While you are waiting for dumplings to get cooked you can start making the cabbage salad; it takes about 10 minutes to make it.All you have to do is chop the cabbage and carrot into very thin strips, mix them with 5-6 tablespoon of vegetable oil or olive oil is even better, half teaspoon of salt, maybe a pinch or two sugar and add white vinegar as much as you wanted until you get the satisfying taste, and you made Mongolian cabbage salad. Before taking the dumplings out of the steamer, it is important to waft air over them with the steamer lid for 30 seconds or so, so as to keep the flour from becoming doughy.Now pile the dumplings onto a serving plate and take immediately to the table to serve with cabbage salad and milk tea. Mongolians are usually eat dumplings with their fingers, biting into each and then sucking out the hot juices before consuming rest of the dumplings. We also love to eat dumplings dipped in soy s auce, ketchup, and even hot chili sauce. Now you have all the information to make Mongolian dumplings in your own kitchen with these 3 easy steps.

‘The Making of Modern Russia’, 1856-1964

a) To what extent do these sources agree that Russian government policy on agriculture consistently failed and that peasants resisted it under both Tsarist and Communist rule? Source1 concerns the emancipation statute of 1861. Western historian Ronald Hingley cites the introduction of redemption payments â€Å"serfs resented receiving too little land for their needs† this undermines the fundamental aims of the policy. Source 1 makes reference to how the Mir was in charge of paying the redemption payments for the whole village. Hingley points out that â€Å"individual peasants were bound in various ways to their village communes†; peasants were detained in their villages until the payments were received. Hingley notes the creation of Special Courts delegated to discipline unruly peasants â€Å"the flogging of recalcitrant peasants† this is evidence of peasant rebellion, mainly due to the fact they were in a poorer position after emancipation than they were before the policy was introduced. Source 1 suggests agricultural policies were a failure, and provoked peasant uprising, due to the hope the emancipation edict gave peasants of being free. Source 2, meanwhile, presents a mixed view on Stolypin's agricultural reforms. Unlike Source 1 from 1992, this piece of evidence was documented circa 1906. It is therefore unaffected by later analysis or post-Communist interpretation. The first quote is from Stolypin himself, stating that the government has placed â€Å"its wager† on the â€Å"sturdy and the strong†, this indicates that past agricultural reform, such as emancipation have failed, as further â€Å"wagers† or reforms were needed. The other two quotes deal with Stolypin's reforms more directly. The second quote is from a Tsarist Official. It provides direct evidence of rebellion by peasants towards Stolypin's reforms â€Å"The peasants were very hostile to the Law of 9 November† rebellions were commonplace, peasants feared that if land belonged to an individual as opposed to the commune, a consequence would be some would be left with nothing. The third quote is from a peasant, it is important to not that 10% of the peasants in Russia did take up Stolypin's proposals. Segei Semenov endorses Stolypin's reforms anticipating a â€Å"bright new future† this challenges the notion that all agricultural policies consistently failed. Stolypin's reforms were based on good principles that could have revitalized agriculture in Russia. This does suggest that this reform did bring some success, but the general consensus confirms that many peasants preferred social security resulting in the failure of the policy. Source 3 is an excerpt from a meeting between Churchill and Stalin during the Second World War. We se Stalin's personal view regarding the collective farm policy, it is thus a subjective piece of evidence. Stalin implies suggests that the collective farm policy was a failure; he refers to the policy as â€Å"a terrible struggle†. Stalin insinuates peasant resistance against the policy, stating some kulaks were â€Å"wiped out by their labourers† the resistance was a product of peasant reluctance to work on collectivised farms. The farms provided little reward or incentive to the actual peasants growing the grain resulting in the dramatic deterioration of the quality and quantity of the grain. Source 3 ends with an important comment that food supply had been â€Å"vastly increased† this indicates policy victory. However modern evidence undermines Stalin's statement, STATISTIC more and more people were dying of famine during the period of collectivization. Although, Source 3 opposes the view that agricultural policy failed, its reliability is debateable and should be questioned before it is taken into account. Source 4 is an extract from Eduard Shevardandse's ‘The future belongs to Freedom' Source 4 describes the Virgin Land Schemes introduced by Khrushchev/. One must note that the writer was a Communist Youth League activist, and may have been more likely to exaggerate the support the peasants actually gave to the scheme. There is no mention of opposition to the scheme, on the contrary Shevardandse describes the â€Å"trains packed with young volunteers† this stands for optimism on part of peasantry towards the scheme. Source 5 confirms the implication in Source 4 of support in some measure for the project as the scheme did successfully increase the amount of grain produced between 1958 to 1965 from 100 to 114. While the evidence in Source 4 may be true to some extent, the reliability of the source is questionable. The other factor source 4 presents is the relative success of the scheme. Source 5 does seem to disagree with the statement that the policy failed due to the increase in grain production. In Source 4 it is suggested that the policy could have been a triumph had it not been for â€Å"stupid decisions† which weighed down many successes. These â€Å"ill-conceived strategies† included lack of coherence between the crops and the terrain, and deficiency of storage place for the grain, consequently the â€Å"crops rotted in the fields†. Source 5 reinforces the feeling that the scheme was a failure, as the agricultural output during the seven year plan only increased by 14%, the target for 1965 was 170, only 114 was achieved. Source 6 also argued that Khrushchev's policy was for the most part unsuccessful. However the failure is blamed on Khrushchev's inheritance of â€Å"a generation of neglect†. The reliability of some sources must be taken into consideration. Some sources suggest subjectivity and bias such as Sources 3 and 4. Policies such as Stolypin's land reforms and Khrushchev's Virgin Land Schemes are shown to have limited success, but ultimately they both failed to reach targets required. By and large, all the sources do converge in the belief that most of the agricultural policies did fail consistently to a degree. Similarly there is evidence that it was resisted by Peasantry both under Tsarist and Communist rule.