((((MYCROLAB)))) group project Report in subject of NEW PRODUCT Essay

((((MYCROLAB)))) group project Report in subject of NEW PRODUCT MAMAGEMENT - Essay Example Market segmentation, targeting and positioning are the three major approaches which are applied by the marketing departments in their endeavors to achieve organizational goals. Of the three steps mentioned above segmentation is the first one to take on. In market segmentation, segment variables are identified and the market is segmented accordingly. The segmentation allows the company to focus on the demands of the targeted market and fulfill its demands. It seeks to differentiate between various segments of a market and addresses to the needs and requirements of each market. In this way they make products and introduce services which are specifically meant for that particular segment of the market only. There are various approaches that can be applied in the segmentation of market. Company would thus, be able to create its identity in all its major market segments. Different marketing and communication strategies could be applied for each segment keeping in mind, the respective cons umers in the segments. (Dickensin, 1987) The market is segmented according to the Business market segmentation. The segmentation has been done according to the following bases: geographic segmentation, customer type and buying behavior. Geographic segmentation gives us secondary segment which includes metropolitan and regional hospitals. Customer types and buying behavior usage patterns blend together to give us the primary segment -who are medical practitioners and local GPs- and tertiary segment including medical charities and humanitarian support organizations. In market segmentation, we have grouped customers and non-customers with similar characteristics. These characteristics include similar economic, biographic and usage behavior. Biographics are considered because Mycrolab is a health related diagnostic system and is mostly used by people in health services or people with health issues or health conscious. Moreover product related segmentation have also

Investigating and Analyzing Opportunities and challenges of implementing ERP solution projects in SMBs Essay Example for Free

Investigating and Analyzing Opportunities and challenges of implementing ERP solution projects in SMBs Essay To accomplish research objectives, the mixed method approach to research will be used. Both qualitative and quantitative data will be instrumental in investigating and analyzing the opportunities and challenges of implementing ERP solution projects in SMBs. Data will be obtained from primary and secondary data, such as books and scholarly articles about theories and models in ERP planning and implementation, and the findings or outcomes of integrating ERP in SMBs in actual situations from other studies. Key individuals from performing, including ERP solutions integrators, and receiving organizations, such as CEOs in receiving organizations, will also be interviewed to gain qualitative data that will address the research goals. The field study approach will be applied to obtain qualitative and quantitative data. The analysis of the qualitative and quantitative data that will follow the contrastive approach. The number of studies that look into the actual outcomes of ERP solutions is limited and the contrastive approach to analyzing data and perceived outcomes of the study will contribute to empirical knowledge regarding the actual or practical situations that take place when implementing ERP solution projects in running and managing SMBs. The succeeding discussions will provide details on the methods and approaches that will be applied to fulfill the objectives of the research. Research Design Field Study ApproachThe field study approach of qualitative and quantitative research will be used at different stages in the study to gather data and determine the opportunities and challenges of implementing ERP solution projects in SMBs. Scholars emphasized the value of a field study design in a theory-oriented research. Schwab (2005, p. 85) noted that the field study approach is instrumental in testing theories or models. â€Å"Field studies â€Å"are frequently used to test conceptual models with a number of independent variables† (Schwab, 2005, p. 85). One primary objective of the study is to compare and contrast theories in ERP and its integration to SMB business functions and processes to actual practices and outcomes experienced by performing and receiving organizations. The field study approach will be utilized gain qualitative and quantitative data from independent variables that will consist of participants from performing and receiving organizations. The data obtained from the field study will be tested against theories and models discussed in the Literature Review. The field study approach enables the researcher to understand a phenomenon within the actual context or environment in which it occurs through direct observation or interaction with the target population. The purpose of the field study approach is aligned with the objectives of the research. The lack of existing literature is one reason that prompted the study. Gaining practical data from performing and receiving organizations through the field study approach will validate and evaluate the reliability of existing literature about the process and outcomes of ERP implementation in SMBs. Qualitative data will be obtained by conducting interviews with receiving and performing organizations. The number of participants from receiving and performing organizations will be equally divided. Five participants from receiving organizations (CEOs, CIOs, and IT managers) and five participants from performing organizations (project managers or ERP solutions integrators) will be selected as the sample population based on the availability of the participants. The formal interviews will be guided by specific themes that are aligned with the objectives of the study to address research questions. The formal interview with participants from performing organizations, including ERP solutions integrators or project managers will focus on three key areas: project controlling, project monitoring, and risk management. The interview questions will be designed to draw the practices or strategies implemented by the participants in order to control or monitor ERP projects in SMBs and techniques in risk management to prevent or address potential risks accordingly. The perceived outcomes of project managers and ERP solutions integrators will also be determined and evaluated based on the actual outcomes of ERP projects in SMBs. The quantitative data will also be obtained from performing organizations. The success of project planning, management and implementation of ERP project integrators may be determined by evaluating the various areas in ERP implementation. The project plans that were completed will be the primary source for quantitative data. The project plans and the actual outcomes of implementation will be evaluated to determine how successful ERP integrators were in accomplishing project plans for client SMBs. Information from receiving organizations will also be instrumental in validating the success of ERP project solutions and in determining the opportunities and challenges that commonly occur during the implementation process. The formal interviews with participants from the receiving organizations will focus on four areas: change management opportunities upon implementation of ERP projects, the challenges that arise during ERP implementation, the quality of the implemented solution or its alignment to the goals of the receiving organization, and the satisfaction of the receiving organization throughout the project life span. The responses from the receiving organizations will determine whether ERP project solutions implemented by performing organizations opened up opportunities for growth and development in the former and identify accompanying challenges in ERP implementation that other SMBs should be prepared for when adopting ERP in business operations. The primary data will be obtained through the field study approach. The secondary data that will primarily be used in writing the Literature Review will be obtained from the Body of Knowledge PMI, Prince2 Body of Knowledge, and professional journal works. The various theories and models in ERP implementation and how the process is integrated to SMB business practices will be the focus of research to obtained secondary data. The PMI and Prince2 will serve as the basis or standard of evaluating the efficiency and success of ERP project plans implemented in receiving organizations.

Plea Bargains and Mandatory Sentencing Essay -- essays research papers

Plea Bargains and Mandatory Sentencing I would like to take this time to explain my position on Plea Bargains and Mandatory Sentencing. I will show both pros and cons for each topic, as well as give you my personal brief on which one I support. There are two types of plea bargains : The first one is a charge bargain. When the prosecutor allows a defendant to "plead guilty to a lesser charge†, or to only some of the charges that have been filed against him. For example, a defendant charged with burglary may be offered the opportunity to plead guilty to "attempted burglary". A defendant charged with Drunk Driving and Driving with License Suspended may be offered the opportunity to plead guilty to just the drunk driving charge. The second plea bargain is when a defendant is told in advance what his sentence will be if he pleads guilty. This can help a prosecutor obtain a conviction if, for example, a defendant is facing serious charges and is afraid of being hit with the "maximum" sentence. Typically, sentence bargains can only be granted if they are approved by the trial judge. Many jurisdictions severely limit sentence bargaining. Sentence bargaining sometimes occurs in high profile cases where the prosecutor does not want to reduce the charges against the defendant, usually for fear of how the newspapers will react. A sentence bargain may allow the prosecutor to obtain a conviction to the most serious charge, while assuring the defendant of an a...

American Dream- the Epic of America

I believe the American Dream is belief in the freedom that allows all citizens and residents of the United States to achieve their goals in life through hard work. Today, it often refers to one's material prosperity, which is dependent upon one's abilities and work ethic, and not on a rigid class structure. As James Truslow Adams states in his book The Epic of America which was written in 1931: â€Å"The American Dream is â€Å"that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the f ortuitous circumstances of birth or position. For some people, it is the opportunity to achieve greater material prosperity than was possible in their countries of origin. For others it is the opportunity for their children to grow up and receive an education and its consequent career opportunities. It is the opportunity to make individual choices without the restrictions of class, caste, religion, race, or ethnic group. For others in this the dream of choice and flexibility, that is the ability to wake up in the morning and decide to drive, cycle or take public transportation to work.Some say that the American Dream has become the pursuit of material prosperity – that people work more hours to get bigger cars, fancier homes, the fruits of prosperity for their families – but have less time to enjoy their prosperity. Others say that the American Dream is beyond the grasp of the working poor who must work two jobs to insure their family’s survival. Yet others look toward a new American Dream with less focus on financial gain and more emphasis on living a simple, fulfilling life.Thomas Wolfe said, â€Å"†¦to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity †¦. the right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can combine to make him. â€Å". Is this your American dream? I believe most of you will say yes because that is my dream also. Ultimately, most Americans would like to achieve the American Dream of financial independence. Yet it is the means to achieving it that are essential to the nation's ethical foundations.It seems that many Americans covet the easy road to the Dream and in the process undercut the core values that established the Dream in the first place. Equally culpable are the big businesses that capitalize on the quest for the Dream. In an ironic sense, such businesses are fulfilling the Dream for themselves while dangling the possibility of the Dr eam over the heads of the public. There can be little doubt that the producers of the millionaire games shows, the state lotteries, and lawyers are getting rich on other people's yearning for the American Dream.

How effectively did the Soviet Union control Eastern Europe from 1945 to 1968?

In 1945, it was very important that Stalin gained control over his sphere of influence; WW2 had come to an end, and the future of the Soviet Union was at an unstable point. From 1945-8 Stalin used a series of ‘salami' tactics to gain control over the Eastern European countries. This would involve setting up communist parties within a country, winning a coalition government, and ultimately, taking over to run a full communist regime. This was effective in the sense that Stalin, in the space of three years, was able to takeover seven different countries. However, out of these, only one country – Albania – allowed the takeover without any opposition, the other countries gave more of a struggle. There was obviously some backlash against Stalin's actions, as they did not run smoothly, and this is why he probably had to use more severe tactics when trying to take control over Eastern Europe. In Bulgaria (1945), Stalin had all opposing party members executed, and was only then able to take full control. After this, Stalin had no problems gaining power over such countries – without further opposition, as the same techniques were used in Poland and Czechoslovakia two to three years later. This shows that Stalin did not want to give way to chance, seeing what would happen in each country gradually, by using the minimum force needed. He wanted to be sure of total control, and therefore used the necessary tactics to succeed – it appears that the most extreme were the most effective. Stalin was able to keep such a tight ‘following' due to the fear and propaganda that followed his infamous Red army. He had placed them within his sphere as a warning to the people. If they opposed, they would be dealt with by the Red Army through means of ‘re-education'. They kept an eye over the people, and crushed any sort of uprising. This would have been a deterrent enough for anybody looking to rebel against communism. This proved to be effective as there are no real incidences where the Red army have been called in to sort out a situation (apart from in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, but that was under different circumstances). When Stalin saw the lure of the Marshall Plan, he definitely felt under pressure to counteract this – coming up with Comecon 1949. This shows he was desperate, as firstly, this goes against communist views, as the idea was to send money to communist countries to aid them in their economic process. This was a bribe, nonetheless; but it worked. No countries already within the control of the Soviet Union left the sphere – if they were tempted by money, they could still have it, and Stalin would still have control. They only probably stayed with Stalin out of the fear of the consequences, and therefore this tactic was successful due to previous attempts of control, mainly because of the Red Army. Stalin finally dies in 1953, and Khrushchev takes over. He introduces a new relaxed policy, and looks to ‘de-Stalinise' Eastern Europe, hoping to promote better relations with the West. Subsequently, other countries within the sphere wanted a more liberal government, and started to rebel. This shows that Stalin himself, along with his attitude and thinking, was an effective way to keep control over Eastern Europe. he was not a liberal man, he insinuated fear and death throughout the people, who dared not oppose. Now that there is a more liberal leader in office, the people feel this is the opportunity they need to express their feelings. What Khrushchev may have done wrong, was to initiate an ‘instant' change, which could not be done on a large scale in regards to the whole of Eastern Europe at one given time. Stalin was effective in what he did, as he used gradual changes to implant his policy. 1953 also saw riots in Czechoslovakia, where people where burning Soviet flags and demolishing Stalin statues – this was an obvious attack on Soviet power. However, the riots were quickly put down by the Red army, but the consequences were not great ones, and therefore encouraged strikes in East Germany to occur. East Germans aired their grievances about wage cuts, but the Red army was called in to crush all uprising. 400 people were killed; Khrushchev was reverting back to Stalin's old methods, however people were not put off, as there are further problems in Hungary in 1956. Does this mean that the Red Army were no longer feared, or was there a change in attitude from the people? A level of both, most likely, but why? This leads back to Stalin and fear that he as an individual imposed on the countries. Khrushchev did not have that same effect, and from then on, people were more open to oppose him, knowing they could probably get away with a lot more. There was also a problem with East Germany, and how the collapse of it could have been crucial, in terms of ‘winning' the Cold War. Germany had been one of many significant factors in the Cold War, and a collapse in Germany would mean a collapse in Soviet power if the West were to reclaim it. This might have been a short term cause for the Warsaw Pact in 1955 – the Soviet's version of NATO – this not only gained support against the West, but also helped to unite a dividing sphere. This does not prove to be of any worth (at this time) as in the following year, Hungary has a revolution. There main aim was to get rid of Rakosi – a mini Stalin – through mass demonstrations, which later turned into street fighting. Oddly, Khrushchev introduces Nagy as the new leader of Hungary, instead of sending in the Red army. Was it now that he realised that the Red army did not have so much of an effect that it used to? This is the first time compromising had been used, but quickly backfired. Riots continued, and Nagy had declared Hungary would be leaving the Warsaw Pact. The S.U. was looking at losing control over one country, and sure enough, others would follow. The Soviets again, reverted back to trusted methods, calling in the Red Army to crush all uprising – killing Nagy in the process. The exact same happened with Czechoslovakia in 1968. It now seems that from 1945-68, there were times when the Soviet had complete control over Eastern Europe, and others, quite the opposite. Stalin had realised that in order to have control, he would have to use extreme tactics – the fear of the Red Army, propaganda etc. He also knew that with complete control, there was no edge way for choice or compromise with the people. This is where Khrushchev went wrong, expecting to have complete control when he gave individual countries more power. Knowing of such a relaxed attitude, the people then took advantage of this, and were no longer scared of the repercussions, as there is uprising after uprising under Khrushchev's rule. By the mid-50's effective control is on its way to becoming highly non-existent.

Understand and Prevent Memory Leaks in Delphi

Understand and Prevent Memory Leaks in Delphi Delphis support for object-oriented programming is rich and powerful. Classes and objects allow for modular code programming. Along with more modular and more complex components come more sophisticated and more complex bugs. While developing applications in Delphi is (almost) always fun, there are situations when you feel like the whole world is against you. Whenever you need to use (create) an object in Delphi, you need to free the memory it consumed (once no longer needed). Surely, the try/finally memory guarding blocks can help you prevent memory leaks; its still up to you to safeguard your code. A memory (or resource) leak occurs when the program loses the ability to free the memory it consumes. Repeated memory leaks cause the memory usage of a process to grow without bounds. Memory leaks are a serious problem if you have a code causing memory leak, in an application running 24/7, the application will eat up all the memory available and finally make the machine stop responding. Memory Leaks in Delphi The first step to avoiding memory leaks is to understand how they occur. What follows is a discussion on some common pitfalls and best practices for writing non-leaking Delphi code. In most (simple) Delphi applications, where you use the components (Buttons, Memos, Edits, etc.) you drop on a form (at design time), you do not need to care too much about memory management. Once the component is placed on a form, the form becomes its owner and will free the memory taken by the component once the form is closed (destroyed). Form, as the owner, is responsible for memory deallocation of the components it hosted. In short: components on a form are created and destroyed automatically Examples of Memory Leaks In any non-trivial Delphi application, you will want to instantiate Delphi components at run time. You will, also, have some of your own custom classes. Lets say you have a class TDeveloper that has a method DoProgram. Now, when you need to use the TDeveloper class, you create an instance of the class by calling the Create method (constructor). The Create method allocates memory for a new object and returns a reference to the object. varzarko : TDeveloperbeginzarko : TMyObject.Create;zarko.DoProgram;end; And heres a simple memory leak! Whenever you create an object, you must dispose of the memory it occupied. To free the memory an object allocated, you must call the Free method. To be perfectly sure, you should also use the try / finally block: varzarko : TDeveloperbeginzarko : TMyObject.Create;tryzarko.DoProgram;finallyzarko.Free;end;end; This is an example of safe memory allocation and deallocation code. Some words of warning: If you want to dynamically instantiate a Delphi component and explicitly free it sometime later, always pass nil as the owner. Failure to do so can introduce unnecessary risk, as well as performance and code maintenance problems. Besides creating and destroying objects using the Create and Free methods, you must also be very careful when using external (files, databases, etc) resources.Lets say you need to operate on some text file. In a very simple scenario, where the AssignFile method is used to associate a file on a disk with a file variable when you are finished with the file, you must call CloseFile to free the file handle to begin used. This is where you do not have an explicit call to Free. varF: TextFile;S: string;beginAssignFile(F, c:\somefile.txt) ;tryReadln(F, S) ;finallyCloseFile(F) ;end;end; Another example includes loading external DLLs from your code. Whenever you use LoadLibrary, you must call FreeLibrary: vardllHandle : THandle;begindllHandle : Loadlibrary(MyLibrary.DLL) ;//do something with this DLLif dllHandle 0 then FreeLibrary(dllHandle) ;end; Memory Leaks in .NET? Although with Delphi for .NET the garbage collector (GC) manages most memory tasks, it is possible to have memory leaks in .NET applications. Heres an article discussion GC in Delphi for .NET. How to Fight Against Memory Leaks Besides writing modular memory-safe code, preventing memory leaks can be done by using some of the third-party tools available. Delphi Memory Leak Fix Tools help you catch Delphi application errors such as memory corruption, memory leaks, memory allocation errors, variable initialization errors, variable definition conflicts, pointer errors, and more.

Globalisation and Sustainability essays

Globalisation and Sustainability essays The world was once vast and unknown. Communication was once dreaded as messages would take exceeded amounts of time from one point of destination to the next. Countries would not know of each others affairs for months because the world was large beyond anyones imagination. But as soon as technology reared its head the world rapidly became smaller. It modified everything within its grasp. Communication that once took months could now take seconds. Travelling abroad that would have taken years now took hours. Every institution that fell into this form of globalisation changed. It is obvious to see that governments have also been effected by globalisation in such ways that they can either imitate or contrast with each other. Yet a controversy exists about the issue on the effect of globalisation on governmental power. On one side of the argument globalisation is considered as a force that weakens the power of government whereas others debate the contrary, claiming that there is no effect and power remains constant. Still both arguments fail because of the extremity that they impose. A better argument would be that globalisation does effect government power, not to the point of weakening, but ensuring that no abuse of power occurs unknowingly. Globalisation is simply a tool that enables the actions of governments to be monitored by other countries and world organisations. With comparison of Australian and Canadian environmental policy, it will be clear that actions taken by the government have been influenced (not controlled) by globalisation. The idea of the world becoming a small interactive village is what many would consider the effect of globalisation. Boundaries are no longer an issue and can be crossed with an easy click of the mouse. But globalisation is far from being a new concept that came along with technology. It has existed since humans have had curiosity. The exploring of new lands, the disc...