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  • JVM memory management & garbage collection book?

    - by Max
    Hi. Could anyone advice a book (or any other source) that would thoroughly reveal internals of JVM memory management & garbage collection (optimization, work, circular references, pecularities, discussions for various JVM impls...)? [What I've found so far are separate articles devoted to various aspects but no weighty tome :). Some good materials for Hotspot implementation are here. ] Thanks a lot for any advice you give.

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  • Configuration Deployment to Linux Systems

    - by William
    Hello, I'm looking for a nice way to add / remote ips (and possibly interact with an asset inventory system to track where ips are), start / stop processes, download logs, and all around genearal system admin duties from one place. It's okay if I require more than 1 program. That would still be better than having 50 million terminals open and trying to trace ip assignments etc on whiteboards. I'd also like to know if anyone knows any good asset management programs. Best Regards, William

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  • Sql Server Managmenet Studio Alternative - Are there any?

    - by JohnM2
    I am looking for lightweight MS SQL Server Managmenet Studio (2005) alternative (open source/freeware is a bonus). Something more like HeidiSQL for MySQL. LINQPad is not an option (although it's great for learning Linq). It can only query database (and has many cons for my needs). I am looking for management/alteration functionality also, not only making queries and viewing the results.

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  • Alternatives to phpSchedule?

    - by paulw1128
    Currently we have a lightly customised version of phpSchedule for booking our development/test machines (including a raft of VMs), which no-one uses. It's slow, time-consuming to use, out of date, and therefore pretty much useless. Getting a new system in place suddenly appeared on the management radar, as there's been complaints that people are being blocked by not being able to get any machines to do development testing on (running our product on a desktop machine is not an option). Does anyone have any recommendations for alternative booking systems that are worth investigating?

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  • [C] Texture management / pointer question

    - by ndg
    I'm working on a texture management and animation solution for a small side project of mine. Although the project uses Allegro for rendering and input, my question mostly revolves around C and memory management. I wanted to post it here to get thoughts and insight into the approach, as I'm terrible when it comes to pointers. Essentially what I'm trying to do is load all of my texture resources into a central manager (textureManager) - which is essentially an array of structs containing ALLEGRO_BITMAP objects. The textures stored within the textureManager are mostly full sprite sheets. From there, I have an anim(ation) struct, which contains animation-specific information (along with a pointer to the corresponding texture within the textureManager). To give you an idea, here's how I setup and play the players 'walk' animation: createAnimation(&player.animations[0], "media/characters/player/walk.png", player.w, player.h); playAnimation(&player.animations[0], 10); Rendering the animations current frame is just a case of blitting a specific region of the sprite sheet stored in textureManager. For reference, here's the code for anim.h and anim.c. I'm sure what I'm doing here is probably a terrible approach for a number of reasons. I'd like to hear about them! Am I opening myself to any pitfalls? Will this work as I'm hoping? anim.h #ifndef ANIM_H #define ANIM_H #define ANIM_MAX_FRAMES 10 #define MAX_TEXTURES 50 struct texture { bool active; ALLEGRO_BITMAP *bmp; }; struct texture textureManager[MAX_TEXTURES]; typedef struct tAnim { ALLEGRO_BITMAP **sprite; int w, h; int curFrame, numFrames, frameCount; float delay; } anim; void setupTextureManager(void); int addTexture(char *filename); int createAnimation(anim *a, char *filename, int w, int h); void playAnimation(anim *a, float delay); void updateAnimation(anim *a); #endif anim.c void setupTextureManager() { int i = 0; for(i = 0; i < MAX_TEXTURES; i++) { textureManager[i].active = false; } } int addTextureToManager(char *filename) { int i = 0; for(i = 0; i < MAX_TEXTURES; i++) { if(!textureManager[i].active) { textureManager[i].bmp = al_load_bitmap(filename); textureManager[i].active = true; if(!textureManager[i].bmp) { printf("Error loading texture: %s", filename); return -1; } return i; } } return -1; } int createAnimation(anim *a, char *filename, int w, int h) { int textureId = addTextureToManager(filename); if(textureId > -1) { a->sprite = textureManager[textureId].bmp; a->w = w; a->h = h; a->numFrames = al_get_bitmap_width(a->sprite) / w; printf("Animation loaded with %i frames, given resource id: %i\n", a->numFrames, textureId); } else { printf("Texture manager full\n"); return 1; } return 0; } void playAnimation(anim *a, float delay) { a->curFrame = 0; a->frameCount = 0; a->delay = delay; } void updateAnimation(anim *a) { a->frameCount ++; if(a->frameCount >= a->delay) { a->frameCount = 0; a->curFrame ++; if(a->curFrame >= a->numFrames) { a->curFrame = 0; } } }

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  • Need help with a memory management problem in my game model

    - by user309030
    Hi, I'm a beginner level programmer trying to make a game app for the iphone and I've encountered a possible issue with the memory management (exc_bad_access) of my program so far. I've searched and read dozens of articles regarding memory management (including apple's docs) but I still can't figure out what exactly is wrong with my codes. So I would really appreciate it if someone can help clear up the mess I made for myself. //in the .h file @property(nonatomic,retain) NSMutableArray *fencePoleArray; @property(nonatomic,retain) NSMutableArray *fencePoleImageArray; @property(nonatomic,retain) NSMutableArray *fenceImageArray; //in the .m file - (void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; self.gameState = gameStatePaused; fencePoleArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; fencePoleImageArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; fenceImageArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; mainField = CGRectMake(10, 35, 310, 340); .......... [NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:0.05 target:self selector:@selector(gameLoop) userInfo:nil repeats:YES]; } So basically, the player touches the screen to set up the fences/poles -(void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { if(.......) { ....... } else { UITouch *touch = [[event allTouches] anyObject]; currentTapLoc = [touch locationInView:touch.view]; NSLog(@"%i, %i", (int)currentTapLoc.x, (int)currentTapLoc.y); if(CGRectContainsPoint(mainField, currentTapLoc)) { if([self checkFence]) { onFencePole++; //this 3 set functions adds their respective objects into the 3 NSMutableArrays using addObject: [self setFencePole]; [self setFenceImage]; [self setFencePoleImage]; ....... } } else { ....... } } } } The setFence function (setFenceImage and setFencePoleImage is similar to this) -(void)setFencePole { Fence *fencePole; if (!elecFence) { fencePole = [[Fence alloc] initFence:onFencePole fenceType:1 fencePos:currentTapLoc]; } else { fencePole = [[Fence alloc] initFence:onFencePole fenceType:2 fencePos:currentTapLoc]; } [fencePoleArray addObject:fencePole]; [fencePole release]; and whenever I press a button in the game, endOpenState is called to clear away all the extra images(fence/poles) on the screen and also to remove all existing objects in the 3 NSMutableArray. Point is to remove all the objects in the NSMutableArrays but keep the array itself so it can be reused later. -(void)endOpenState { ........ int xMax = [fencePoleArray count]; int yMax = [fenceImageArray count]; for (int x = 0; x < xMax; x++) { [[fencePoleImageArray objectAtIndex:x] removeFromSuperview]; } for (int y = 0; y < yMax; y++) { [[fenceImageArray objectAtIndex:y] removeFromSuperview]; } [fencePoleArray removeAllObjects]; [fencePoleImageArray removeAllObjects]; [fenceImageArray removeAllObjects]; ........ } The crash happens here at the checkFence function. -(BOOL)checkFence { if (onFencePole == 0) { return YES; } else if (onFencePole >= 1 && onFencePole < currentMaxFencePole - 1) { CGPoint tempPoint1 = currentTapLoc; CGPoint tempPoint2 = [[fencePoleArray objectAtIndex:onFencePole-1] returnPos]; // the crash happens at this line if ([self checkDistance:tempPoint1 point2:tempPoint2]) { return YES; } else { return NO; } } else if (onFencePole == currentMaxFencePole - 1) { ...... } else { return NO; } } So the problem here is, everything works fine until checkFence is called the 2nd time after endOpenState is called. So its like tap_screen - tap_screen - press_button_to_call_endOpenState - tap screen - tap_screen - crash What I'm thinking of is that fencePoleArray got messed up when I used [fencePoleArray removeAllObjects] because it doesn't crash when I comment it out. It would really be great if someone can explain to me what went wrong. And thanks in advance.

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  • Management Reporter Installation – Lessons Learned Part II - Dynamics GP

    - by Ryan McBee
    After feeling pretty good about my deployment skills of Management Reporter for Dynamics GP a few weeks ago, I ran into two additional lessons learned that I wanted to share. First, on another new deployment, I got the error shown below which says “An error occurred while creating the database.  View the installation log for additional information.”  This problem initially pointed me to KB 2406948 which did not provide resolution. After several hours of troubleshooting, I found there is an issue if the defaults database locations in SQL Server are set to the root of a drive. You will want to set the default to something like the following to get it installed; C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA.  My default database locations for the data and log files were indeed sitting on the H:\ and I:\ drives. To change this property in your SQL Server Instance you need to open SQL Server Management Studio, right click on the server, and choose properties and then database settings. When I initially got the error, I briefly considered creating the ManagementReporter database by hand, but experience tells me that would have created more headaches down the road. The second problem I ran into with this particular deployment of Management Reporter happened when I started the FRx conversion utility.  The errors reads “The ‘Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0’ provider is not registered on the local machine. I had a suspicion that this error was related to the fact FRx uses outdated technology and I happened to be on a new install of Server 2008 R2.  A knowledge base search quickly pointed me to KB 2102486. The resolution for this Management Reporter issue was to install the Microsoft Access Database Engine Redistributable, by following the site below. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C06B8369-60DD-4B64-A44B-84B371EDE16D&displaylang=en

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  • agile as our first project management methodology [closed]

    - by Hasan Khan
    we are a small web development company that has till now been working on client projects. we employed little to no project management and that has cost us a lot. we've used only the barest of tools (wireframing, prototyping etc) but no formal project management process has been put into place. we've learnt from our mistakes and want to prevent them from happening in the future. also, we are looking to develop our own products and we understand that putting in a proper project management paradigm will help. after a lot of research, we've sort of settled on agile for a few reasons: agile seems to scale well with team size. our team is small right now and we hope to grow and agile seems to be a process that we can put in place now and grow with. agile will help us with customers who just can't seem to make up their minds and keep changing requirements. we'd appreciate the community's thoughts on this. is this a correct way to think? will agile be a good system to put into place, where there has been none till now? are there any resources that may help us in our position? pretty much all of the resources that we've found start by comparing agile to x (where x = any management methodology) and why its better than x and how agile can be implemented in place of x. we're looking for resources that can help us out in our particular situation. thanks for all your help!

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  • Podcast Show Notes: Redefining Information Management Architecture

    - by Bob Rhubart-Oracle
    Nothing in IT stands still, and this is certainly true of business intelligence and information management. Big Data has certainly had an impact, as have Hadoop and other technologies. That evolution was the catalyst for the collaborative effort behind a new Information Management Reference Architecture. The latest OTN ArchBeat series features a conversation with Andrew Bond, Stewart Bryson, and Mark Rittman, key players in that collaboration. These three gentlemen know each other quite well, which comes across in a conversation that is as lively and entertaining as it is informative. But don't take my work for it. Listen for yourself! The Panelists(Listed alphabetically) Andrew Bond, head of Enterprise Architecture at Oracle Oracle ACE Director Stewart Bryson, owner and Co-Founder of Red Pill Analytics Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman, CIO and Co-Founder of Rittman Mead The Conversation Listen to Part 1: The panel discusses how new thinking and new technologies were the catalyst for a new approach to business intelligence projects. Listen to Part 2: Why taking an "API" approach is important in building an agile data factory. Listen to Part 3: Shadow IT, "sandboxing," and how organizational changes are driving the evolution in information management architecture. Additional Resources The Reference Architecture that is the focus of this conversation is described in detail in these blog posts by Mark Rittman: Introducing the Updated Oracle / Rittman Mead Information Management Reference Architecture Part 1: Information Architecture and the Data Factory Part 2: Delivering the Data Factory Be a Guest Producer for an ArchBeat Podcast Want to be a guest producer for an OTN ArchBeat podcast? Click here to learn how to make it happen.

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  • SSIS Denali as part of “Enterprise Information Management”

    - by jorg
    When watching the SQL PASS session “What’s Coming Next in SSIS?” of Steve Swartz, the Group Program Manager for the SSIS team, an interesting question came up: Why is SSIS thought of to be BI, when we use it so frequently for other sorts of data problems? The answer of Steve was that he breaks the world of data work into three parts: Process of inputs BI   Enterprise Information Management All the work you have to do when you have a lot of data to make it useful and clean and get it to the right place. This covers master data management, data quality work, data integration and lineage analysis to keep track of where the data came from. All of these are part of Enterprise Information Management. Next, Steve told Microsoft is developing SSIS as part of a large push in all of these areas in the next release of SQL. So SSIS will be, next to a BI tool, part of Enterprise Information Management in the next release of SQL Server. I'm interested in the different ways people use SSIS, I've basically used it for ETL, data migrations and processing inputs. In which ways did you use SSIS?

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  • Reference Data Management

    - by rahulkamath
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} table.MsoTableColorfulListAccent2 {mso-style-name:"Colorful List - Accent 2"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:1; mso-tstyle-colband-size:1; mso-style-priority:72; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-tstyle-shading:#F8EDED; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:25; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:black; mso-themecolor:text1;} table.MsoTableColorfulListAccent2FirstRow {mso-style-name:"Colorful List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:first-row; mso-style-priority:72; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#9E3A38; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-shading-themeshade:204; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.5pt solid white; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:background1; color:white; mso-themecolor:background1; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableColorfulListAccent2LastRow {mso-style-name:"Colorful List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:last-row; mso-style-priority:72; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:white; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:background1; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.5pt solid black; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:text1; color:#9E3A38; mso-themecolor:accent2; mso-themeshade:204; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableColorfulListAccent2FirstCol {mso-style-name:"Colorful List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:first-column; mso-style-priority:72; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableColorfulListAccent2LastCol {mso-style-name:"Colorful List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:last-column; mso-style-priority:72; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableColorfulListAccent2OddColumn {mso-style-name:"Colorful List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:odd-column; mso-style-priority:72; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#EFD3D2; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:63; mso-tstyle-border-top:cell-none; mso-tstyle-border-left:cell-none; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:cell-none; mso-tstyle-border-right:cell-none; mso-tstyle-border-insideh:cell-none; mso-tstyle-border-insidev:cell-none;} table.MsoTableColorfulListAccent2OddRow {mso-style-name:"Colorful List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:odd-row; mso-style-priority:72; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#F2DBDB; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:51;} Reference Data Management Oracle Data Relationship Management (DRM) has always been extremely powerful as an Enterprise MDM solution that can help manage changes to master data in a way that influences enterprise structure, whether it be mastering chart of accounts to enable financial transformation, or revamping organization structures to drive business transformation and operational efficiencies, or mastering sales territories in light of rapid fire acquisitions that require frequent sales territory refinement, equitable distribution of leads and accounts to salespersons, and alignment of budget/forecast with results to optimize sales coverage. Increasingly, DRM is also being utilized by Oracle customers for reference data management, an emerging solution space that deserves some explanation. What is reference data? Reference data is a close cousin of master data. While master data may be more rapidly changing, requires consensus building across stakeholders and lends structure to business transactions, reference data is simpler, more slowly changing, but has semantic content that is used to categorize or group other information assets – including master data – and give them contextual value. The following table contains an illustrative list of examples of reference data by type. Reference data types may include types and codes, business taxonomies, complex relationships & cross-domain mappings or standards. Types & Codes Taxonomies Relationships / Mappings Standards Transaction Codes Industry Classification Categories and Codes, e.g., North America Industry Classification System (NAICS) Product / Segment; Product / Geo Calendars (e.g., Gregorian, Fiscal, Manufacturing, Retail, ISO8601) Lookup Tables (e.g., Gender, Marital Status, etc.) Product Categories City à State à Postal Codes Currency Codes (e.g., ISO) Status Codes Sales Territories (e.g., Geo, Industry Verticals, Named Accounts, Federal/State/Local/Defense) Customer / Market Segment; Business Unit / Channel Country Codes (e.g., ISO 3166, UN) Role Codes Market Segments Country Codes / Currency Codes / Financial Accounts Date/Time, Time Zones (e.g., ISO 8601) Domain Values Universal Standard Products and Services Classification (UNSPSC), eCl@ss International Classification of Diseases (ICD) e.g., ICD9 à IC10 mappings Tax Rates Why manage reference data? Reference data carries contextual value and meaning and therefore its use can drive business logic that helps execute a business process, create a desired application behavior or provide meaningful segmentation to analyze transaction data. Further, mapping reference data often requires human judgment. Sample Use Cases of Reference Data Management Healthcare: Diagnostic Codes The reference data challenges in the healthcare industry offer a case in point. Part of being HIPAA compliant requires medical practitioners to transition diagnosis codes from ICD-9 to ICD-10, a medical coding scheme used to classify diseases, signs and symptoms, causes, etc. The transition to ICD-10 has a significant impact on business processes, procedures, contracts, and IT systems. Since both code sets ICD-9 and ICD-10 offer diagnosis codes of very different levels of granularity, human judgment is required to map ICD-9 codes to ICD-10. The process requires collaboration and consensus building among stakeholders much in the same way as does master data management. Moreover, to build reports to understand utilization, frequency and quality of diagnoses, medical practitioners may need to “cross-walk” mappings -- either forward to ICD-10 or backwards to ICD-9 depending upon the reporting time horizon. Spend Management: Product, Service & Supplier Codes Similarly, as an enterprise looks to rationalize suppliers and leverage their spend, conforming supplier codes, as well as product and service codes requires supporting multiple classification schemes that may include industry standards (e.g., UNSPSC, eCl@ss) or enterprise taxonomies. Aberdeen Group estimates that 90% of companies rely on spreadsheets and manual reviews to aggregate, classify and analyze spend data, and that data management activities account for 12-15% of the sourcing cycle and consume 30-50% of a commodity manager’s time. Creating a common map across the extended enterprise to rationalize codes across procurement, accounts payable, general ledger, credit card, procurement card (P-card) as well as ACH and bank systems can cut sourcing costs, improve compliance, lower inventory stock, and free up talent to focus on value added tasks. Specialty Finance: Point of Sales Transaction Codes and Product Codes In the specialty finance industry, enterprises are confronted with usury laws – governed at the state and local level – that regulate financial product innovation as it relates to consumer loans, check cashing and pawn lending. To comply, it is important to demonstrate that transactions booked at the point of sale are posted against valid product codes that were on offer at the time of booking the sale. Since new products are being released at a steady stream, it is important to ensure timely and accurate mapping of point-of-sale transaction codes with the appropriate product and GL codes to comply with the changing regulations. Multi-National Companies: Industry Classification Schemes As companies grow and expand across geographies, a typical challenge they encounter with reference data represents reconciling various versions of industry classification schemes in use across nations. While the United States, Mexico and Canada conform to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) standard, European Union countries choose different variants of the NACE industry classification scheme. Multi-national companies must manage the individual national NACE schemes and reconcile the differences across countries. Enterprises must invest in a reference data change management application to address the challenge of distributing reference data changes to downstream applications and assess which applications were impacted by a given change.

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  • Leading Analyst Firm Positions Oracle in Leaders Quadrant for Web Content Management

    - by Christie Flanagan
    Gartner, Inc. has named Oracle a Leader in its latest “Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management.” Gartner’s Magic Quadrants position vendors within a particular quadrant based on their completeness of vision and their ability to execute on that vision. According to Gartner, “WCM plays an increasingly important role in business performance. It has become the central point of coordination for initiatives involving the enterprise's online presence, and these initiatives have become more sophisticated and more important to enterprises' business strategies. Thus, WCM is key for organizations wishing to execute a strategy of OCO (online channel optimization) that embraces areas such as customer experience management, e-commerce, digital marketing, multichannel marketing and website consolidation.” Gartner continued, “Leaders should drive market transformation. Leaders have the highest combined scores for Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. They are doing well and are prepared for the future with a clear vision and a thorough appreciation of the broader context of OCO. They have strong channel partners, a presence in multiple regions, consistent financial performance, broad platform support and good customer support. In addition, they dominate in one or more technologies or vertical markets. Leaders are aware of the ecosystem in which their offerings need to fit. Leaders can: demonstrate enterprise deployments’ offer integration with other business applications and content repositories; provide a vertical-process or horizontal-solution focus.” Oracle WebCenter, the engagement platform powering exceptional experiences for customers, employees and partners, connects people and information by bringing together the most complete portfolio of portal, Web experience management, content, social, and collaboration technologies into a single integrated product suite. Oracle WebCenter also provides the foundation for Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Fusion Applications to deliver a next-generation user experience.  To see the latest reports, webcasts and demonstrations about Oracle's web experience management solution, Oracle WebCenter Sites, please visit our Connected Customer Experience Resource Center.

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  • Understanding the value of Customer Experience & Loyalty for the Telecommunications Industry

    - by raul.goycoolea
    Worried by economic woes and market forces, especially in mature markets, communications service providers (CSPs) increasingly focus on improving customer experience. In fact, it seems difficult to find a major message by a C-level executive in the developed world that does not include something on "meeting and exceeding customers' needs". Frequently in customer satisfaction studies by prominent firms, CSPs fall short of the leadership demonstrated by other industries that take customer-centric approaches to their bottom-line strategies. Consider the following:Despite the continued impact of global economic crisis, in July 2010, Apple Computer posted record revenue and net quarterly profit. Those who attribute the results primarily to the iPhone 4 launch should note that Apple also shipped around 30% more Macintosh computers than the same period the previous year. Even sales of the iPod line increased by 8% in a highly commoditized, shrinking media player market. Finally, Apple began selling iPads during the quarter, with total sales of more than 3 million units. What does Apple have that the others lack? Well, some great products (and services) to be sure, but it also excels at customer service and support, marketing, and distribution, and has one of the strongest brands globally. Its products are useful, simple to use, easy to acquire and augment, high quality, and considered very cool. They also evoke such an emotional response from many of Apple's customers, which they turn up their noses at competitive products.In other words, Apple appears to have mastered virtually every aspect of customer experience and the resultant loyalty of its customer base - even in difficult financial times. Through that unwavering customer focus, Apple continues to drive its revenues and profits to new heights. Other customer loyalty leaders like Wal-Mart, Google, Toyota and Honda are also doing well by focusing on customer experience as an essential driver of profitability. Service providers should note this performance and ask themselves how they might leverage the same principles to increase their own profitability. After all, that is what customer experience and loyalty are all about: profitability.To successfully manage all the critical touch points of customer experience, CSPs must shun the one-size-fits-all approach. They can no longer afford to view customer service fundamentally as an act of altruism - which mentality dates back to the industry's civil service days, when CSPs were typically government organizations that were critical to economic development and public safety.As regulators and public officials have pushed, and continue to push, service providers to new heights of reliability - using incentives and punishments - most CSPs already have some of the fundamental building blocks of customer service in place. Yet despite that history and experience, service providers still lag other industries in providing what is seen as good customer service.As we observed in the TMF's 2009 Insights Research report, Customer Experience Management: Driving Loyalty & Profitability there has been resurgence in interest by CSPs. More and more of them have stated ambitions to catch up other industries, and they are realizing that good customer service is a powerful strategy for increasing business performance and profitability, not an act of good will.CSPs are recognizing the connection between customer experience and profitability, as demonstrated in many studies. For example, according to research by Bain & Company, a 5 percent improvement in customer retention rates can yield as much as a 75 percent increase in profits for companies across a range of industries.After decades of customer experience strategy formulation, Bain partner and business author, Frederick Reichheld, considers "would you recommend us to a friend?" as the ultimate question for a customer. How many times have you or your friends recommended an iPod, iPhone or a Mac? What do your children recommend to their peers? Their peers to them?There are certain steps service providers have to take to create more personalized relationships with their customers, as well as reduce churn and increase profitability, all while becoming leaner and more agile. First, they have to define customer experience, we define it as the result of the sum of observations, perceptions, thoughts and feelings arising from interactions and relationships between customers and their service provider(s). Virtually every customer touch point - whether directly or indirectly linked to service providers and their partners - contributes to customer perception, satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately profitability. Gaining leadership in customer experience and satisfaction will not be a simple task, as it is affected by virtually every customer-facing aspect of the service provider, and in turn impacts the service provider deeply - especially on the all-important bottom line. The scope of issues affecting customer experience is complex and dynamic.With new services, devices and applications extending the basis of customer experience to domains beyond the direct control of the service provider, it is likely to increase in complexity and dynamism.Customer loyalty = increased profitsAs stated earlier, customer experience programs are not fundamentally altruistic exercises, but a strategic means of improving competitiveness and profitability in the short and long term. Loyalty is essential to deriving long term profits from customers.Some of the earliest loyalty programs date back to the 1930s, when packaged goods companies offered embedded coupons for rewards to buyers, and eventually retail chains began offering reward programs to frequent shoppers. These programs continued for decades but were leapfrogged in the 1980s by more aggressive programs from the airlines.This movement was led by American Airlines, which launched the first full-scale loyalty marketing program of the modern era with the AAdvantage frequent flyer scheme. It was the first to reward frequent fliers with notional air miles that could be accumulated and later redeemed for free travel. Figure 1: Opportunities example of Customer loyalty driven profitOther airlines and travel providers were quick to grasp the incredible value of providing customers with an incentive to use their company exclusively. Within a few years, dozens of travel industry companies launched similar initiatives and now loyalty programs are achieving near-ubiquity in many service industries, especially those in which it is difficult to differentiate offerings by product attributes.The belief is that increased profitability will result from customer retention efforts because:•    The cost of acquisition occurs only at the beginning of a relationship: the longer the relationship, the lower the amortized cost;•    Account maintenance costs decline as a percentage of total costs, or as a percentage of revenue, over the lifetime of the relationship;•    Long term customers tend to be less inclined to switch and less price sensitive which can result in stable unit sales volume and increases in dollar-sales volume;•    Long term customers may initiate word-of-mouth promotions and referrals, which cost the company nothing and arguably are the most effective form of advertising;•    Long-term customers are more likely to buy ancillary products and higher margin supplemental products;•    Long term customers tend to be satisfied with their relationship with the company and are less likely to switch to competitors, making market entry or competitors gaining market share difficult;•    Regular customers tend to be less expensive to service, as they are familiar with the processes involved, require less 'education', and are consistent in their order placement;•    Increased customer retention and loyalty makes the employees' jobs easier and more satisfying. In turn, happy employees feed back into higher customer satisfaction in a virtuous circle. Figure 2: The virtuous circle of customer loyaltyFigure 2 represents a high-level example of a virtuous cycle driven by customer satisfaction and loyalty, depicting how superiority in product and service offerings, as well as strong customer support by competent employees, lead to higher sales and ultimately profitability. As stated above, this is not a new concept, but succeeding with it is difficult. It has eluded many a company driven to achieve profitability goals. Of course, for this circle to be virtuous, the customer relationship(s) must be profitable.Trying to maintain the loyalty of unprofitable customers is not a viable business strategy. It is, therefore, important that marketers can assess the profitability of each customer (or customer segment), and either improve or terminate relationships that are not profitable. This means each customer's 'relationship costs' must be understood and compared to their 'relationship revenue'. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the most commonly used metric here, as it is generally accepted as a representation of exactly how much each customer is worth in monetary terms, and therefore a determinant of exactly how much a service provider should be willing to spend to acquire or retain that customer.CLV models make several simplifying assumptions and often involve the following inputs:•    Churn rate represents the percentage of customers who end their relationship with a company in a given period;•    Retention rate is calculated by subtracting the churn rate percentage from 100;•    Period/horizon equates to the units of time into which a customer relationship can be divided for analysis. A year is the most commonly used period for this purpose. Customer lifetime value is a multi-period calculation, often projecting three to seven years into the future. In practice, analysis beyond this point is viewed as too speculative to be reliable. The model horizon is the number of periods used in the calculation;•    Periodic revenue is the amount of revenue collected from a customer in a given period (though this is often extended across multiple periods into the future to understand lifetime value), such as usage revenue, revenues anticipated from cross and upselling, and often some weighting for referrals by a loyal customer to others; •    Retention cost describes the amount of money the service provider must spend, in a given period, to retain an existing customer. Again, this is often forecast across multiple periods. Retention costs include customer support, billing, promotional incentives and so on;•    Discount rate means the cost of capital used to discount future revenue from a customer. Discounting is an advanced method used in more sophisticated CLV calculations;•    Profit margin is the projected profit as a percentage of revenue for the period. This may be reflected as a percentage of gross or net profit. Again, this is generally projected across the model horizon to understand lifetime value.A strong focus on managing these inputs can help service providers realize stronger customer relationships and profits, but there are some obstacles to overcome in achieving accurate calculations of CLV, such as the complexity of allocating costs across the customer base. There are many costs that serve all customers which must be properly allocated across the base, and often a simple proportional allocation across the whole base or a segment may not accurately reflect the true cost of serving that customer;  This is made worse by the fragmentation of customer information, which is likely to be across a variety of product or operations groups, and may be difficult to aggregate due to different representations.In addition, there is the complexity of account relationships and structures to take into consideration. Complex account structures may not be understood or properly represented. For example, a profitable customer may have a separate account for a second home or another family member, which may appear to be unprofitable. If the service provider cannot relate the two accounts, CLV is not properly represented and any resultant cancellation of the apparently unprofitable account may result in the customer churning from the profitable one.In summary, if service providers are to realize strong customer relationships and their attendant profits, there must be a very strong focus on data management. This needs to be coupled with analytics that help business managers and those who work in customer-facing functions offer highly personalized solutions to customers, while maintaining profitability for the service provider. It's clear that acquiring new customers is expensive. Advertising costs, campaign management expenses, promotional service pricing and discounting, and equipment subsidies make a serious dent in a new customer's profitability. That is especially true given the rising subsidies for Smartphone users, which service providers hope will result in greater profits from profits from data services profitability in future.  The situation is made worse by falling prices and greater competition in mature markets.Customer acquisition through industry consolidation isn't cheap either. A North American service provider spent about $2,000 per subscriber in its acquisition of a smaller company earlier this year. While this has allowed it to leapfrog to become the largest mobile service provider in the country, it required a total investment of more than $28 billion (including assumption of the acquiree's debt).While many operating cost synergies clearly made this deal more attractive to the acquiring company, this is certainly an expensive way to acquire customers: the cost per subscriber in this case is not out of line with the prices others have paid for acquisitions.While growth by acquisition certainly increases overall revenues, it often creates tremendous challenges for profitability. Organic growth through increased customer loyalty and retention is a more effective driver of profit, as well as a stronger predictor of future profitability. Service providers, especially those in mature markets, are increasingly recognizing this and taking steps toward a creating a more personalized, flexible and satisfying experience for their customers.In summary, the clearest path to profitability for companies in virtually all industries is through customer retention and maximization of lifetime value. Service providers would do well to recognize this and focus attention on profitable customer relationships.

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  • What CI server and Configuration Management tools I should use

    - by Bera
    Hi ! What CI server and Configuration Management tools I should use together for a truly development and deploy maintenance. There isn't the de facto rails sustainable environment, is there? Some assumptions: • code control version ok - git (de facto tool) • test framework ok - whatever (rspec is my choice) • code coverage and analysis ok - whatever (metric-fu, for example) • server stack ok - (Passenger for example) • issue tracker (RedMine) • etc, ... I'm want to play if integrity and moonshine projects, for me it's a good for beginning, isn't it? What do you think about this? Thanks, Bruno

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  • 3rd Party Document Management Service

    - by Element
    I am developing an asp.net application that requires users to upload/view various documents. Rather then reinvent the wheel I was thinking about using a 3rd party service like Scribd to handle these documents and integrate it into my app via their API; I really like their ipaper viewer too. My concern is some of these documents will be sensitive data. Even though Scribd's FAQ says they are equipped to handle sensitive information, I am a little hesitant to trust an unpaid service that lacks an SLA. Has anyone used Scribd successfully for a similar task? Or can anyone recommend a better document management service?

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  • SQL Server 2008 Management Studio doesn't recognize new Schema

    - by Lieven Cardoen
    I have created a new Schema in a database called Contexts. Now when I want to write a query, Management Studio doesn't recognize the tables that belong to the new Schema. It says: 'Invalid object name Contexts.ContextLibraries'... Transact-SQL: INSERT INTO [Contexts].[ContextLibraries] (ChannelId, [IsSystem]) VALUES (@ChannelId, 1) When I try the same thing on my local database, it does work... Any ideas? I did try to change the Default schema for the user from dbo to Contexts but this doesn't work. Also checked Contexts in Schemas owned by this user without success. Update: Apparently the sql query does work but the editor gives a fault saying the object is invalid.

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  • Event based PROJECT MANAGEMENT

    - by andreas
    Hey fellas! Where i am working we have a number of contractor programmers. We handle the requirements and the project management of our products. I have been trying using various project timing and estimations techniques but cant get the hang of it yet. I have read Joel's evidence based scheduling and i was wondering if there's anything out there that can help me apply that theory? not looking for complex software but perhaps something in excel? Any help will be appreciated Andreas

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  • UIWebView memory management

    - by wolfrevo
    Hello, I have a problem with memory management. I am developing an application that makes heavy use of UIWebView. This app generates dynamically lots of UIWebViews while loading content from my server. Some of these UIWebViews are quite large and have a lot of pictures. If I use instruments to detect leaks, I do not detect any. However, lots of objects are allocated and I suspect that has to do with the UIWebViews. When the webviews release because no longer needed, it appears that not all memory is released. I mean, after a request to my server the app creates an UITableView and many webviews (instruments say about 8Mb). When user tap back, all of them are released but memory usage only decrements about 2-3 Mb, and after 5-10 minutes using the app it crashes. Am I missing something? Anyone know what could be happening? Thank you!

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  • Looking for Light Time Management Software Suggestions (for Mac)

    - by tmo256
    I'm looking for a simple project management app that performs task scheduling, along the line of Merlin or MS Project, but no where near as robustly. I don't need to deal with other (human) resources, but I work on anything from 3 to 6 different projects at a time. What I'd like is to be able to input deadlines and tasks, and have a schedule suggested to complete them. I do technical work, but I don't think I need anything specifically for software development, especially considering I do plenty of other kinds of things, like graphic design and social media PR. I'd really like this to be dead simple, as simple as possible. Suggestions? OmniPlan, something web-based? Definitely cannot afford anything too extravagant, really looking for something under $200. Thanks for your input!

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  • Group SQL tables in SQL Server Management Studio object explorer

    - by MainMa
    I have a table which has approximately sixty tables, and other tables are added constantly. Each table is a part of a schema. A such quantity of tables makes it difficult to use Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 2008. For example, I must scroll up in object explorer to access database related functions, or scroll down each time I need to access Views or Security features. Is it possible to group several tables to be able to expand or collapse them in Object Explorer? Maybe a folder may be displayed for each schema, letting collapse the folders I don't need to use?

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