Michigan’s Lapsing Economy And Its Effect of Detroit Essay Example

Michigan’s Lapsing Economy And Its Effect of Detroit Essay â€Å"Michigan’s economy is in critical straits†, (Lyons, 2006) we gain from Karen Lyons, who works for the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities. She likewise educates us that, â€Å"Between 2000 and 2005, Michigan’s six percent decrease in work was the most minimal business development in the country and its own pay development was second least among the states. Advocates of the Stop Overspending (SOS) activity †a sacred alteration demonstrated after Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) †have looked to exploit residents’ worries about Michigan’s financial difficulties by advancing their proposition as a remedy for the economy. They contend that Colorado has encountered solid financial development since TABOR’s appropriation in 1992 and along these lines Michigan could be relied upon to have comparable development if it somehow happened to embrace SOS. This is a defective and deceiving argument.†Without some so rt of suggestion that will support Michigan’s economy, Detroit occupants will endure in their educational systems, yet their lodging, clinical and business rate will drop on the grounds that huge numbers of the current inhabitants are moving to increasingly profitable urban communities where they can secure better positions and live in a progressively prosperous and flourishing environment.This study assembles as of late discharged 1990 U.S. Evaluation Bureau information to quantify the monetary and financial strategy execution of Michigans eleven biggest urban communities †those with populaces of more than 75,000. Utilizing a list of monetary execution from 1980 to 1990 †in light of destitution rates, populace development, work development, and per capita salary †we locate that six of Michigans biggest urban areas experienced financial development during the 1980s, and five experienced financial decline.Sources The Mackinak Center clarify that, (The Mackinak C enter, 1993)â â€Å"The significant issue tended to in this investigation is the reason those five Michigan urban areas were in a condition of urban decrease during the 1980s. Clearly, the decrease of the automobile business hugy affected the monetary prosperity of Michigan urban communities. The change toward a help and innovation based economy additionally assumed a significant job in Michigans urban areas that have customarily had a huge assembling base. In any case, we find in this examination that a factor that has been ignored in clarifying the financial exhibition of Michigans urban communities is their differentiating monetary approaches. There are shockingly enormous contrasts between the burdening and spending strategies of Michigans development urban communities and Michigans declining cities.†We can without much of a stretch take in by perusing from these sources and recognizing that Detroit experiences been in genuine monetary difficulty for a long time. So as to advance a superior economy, it is us to strategy producers to sequentially make changes so as to help the economy for all Detroit, Michigan occupants, before its too late.We additionally observe that, â€Å"This cozy connection between high charges and spending and low monetary development isn't simply happenstance nor is it inferable from the presentation of only a couple of urban communities. Actually, all of the five declining urban areas was additionally positioned in the best five in duties and spending. Looking at the monetary exhibition of the six low assessment and go through Michigan urban communities with the presentation of the five high expense and spend cities.† We see that:1. Populace declined in the high expense/spend urban areas by a normal of 6 percent, versus no net populace deficit in the low assessment/burn through cities.2. Employment development was more than twice as fast in the low assessment/spend urban areas: 13 percent versus 6 percent.3. Needine ss developed by 58 percent in the high assessment/spend urban areas, versus just 21 percent in the low duty/burn through cities.4. Genuine per capita pay fell by 5 percent in the high/charge spend urban communities, however rose by 9 percent in the low expense/spend cities.David L. Littman clarifies that, (Littman, 2007) â€Å"Michigans state witticism makes this certain case: If you look for a wonderful landmass, look about you (Si Quaeris Peninsulam Amoenam, Circumspice). In fact, no other state in the association flaunts more beachfront property than the Wolverine State.†Detroit has a lot to offer, however the assets of the state must be used so as to help the economy for the state, so that Detroit’s discouraged economy circumstance will begin being productive.He likewise shares that, â€Å"More significant for a great part of the twentieth century, Michigan was a model of flourishing, a magnet for human capital drawing in and holding a minimum amount of widely acc laimed specialists and business people and appeared to be bound to be a financial motor for the country. Yet, at that point came the 1970s and the state has been faltering from that point forward. Today, a profound haze has settled over a once splendid business climate.The state was in every case especially defenseless against the good and bad times of automobile deals. In any case, Michigan was an authentic gold dig for riches building and wages until the 70s, when automakers started surrendering piece of the overall industry to contenders at a pace of just shy of 1% yearly. Instead of being armada footed, the Big Three overlooked difficulties, endured serious UAW strikes and suited uncompetitive remuneration bundles through 2006. This is a notable decay and fall.†We comprehend that the vehicle business has assumed a key job in the economy of Detroit.Conditions propose that its in excess of an issue with the car business. Most as of late the state has likewise experienced mis fortunes of home office and employments in budgetary and pharmaceutical areas, e.g., Comerica Bank and Pfizer. Indeed, even wood yards, inns and other low-profile managers are hurting.Underpinning this downturn are a couple of financial legends that must be scattered. Maybe the most malicious fantasy is that Michigan is trapped in a repeating recession.Detroit’s educational system will consistently keep on enduring until this circumstance is completely resolved.We get that, â€Å"There are inheritance costs and not simply autoworker pay bundles. Unfunded liabilities chaperon to open division worker annuities and human services remain at $35 billion in Michigan. These quickly increasing expenses are secrecy charges lying in wait.When will this change? State financial possibilities are hard to anticipate in light of the fact that sorted out work the government funded training campaign specifically now controls most expense and-spend strategy switches. Michigans instruction campaign compels the representative to pass higher deals expenses to be channeled into government funded schools: Pre-tutoring, K-12 and 15 state funded colleges. In any case, the idea that duty climbs will give us an increasingly taught work power, and in this way offer a serious salvation, is most likely the least demanding legend to disperse. Michigan training financial plans have encountered transient increments in the course of recent decades, however quality has not risen; nor has the plenty of subsidizing halted the surge of Michigans most proficient graduates.†Time Coalition offers, (Time Coalition, 2007) â€Å"Here are only a couple of the reasons why individuals from TIME accept that Michigan has a travel industry item deserving of national attention:nâ Michigans one of a kind topography gives guests a bigger number of miles of freshwater shoreline than any state in the country.nâ Michigan positions among the national heads in complete number of fairways and num ber of greens per capita.nâ Michigan holds its title as the main sailing state in the nation with more than 901,060 pontoons enlisted to private individuals.nâ With more than 40 downhill ski resorts, Ski magazine has named Michigan as the Midwests Top Ski Destination!nâ Michigan brags more than 5,800 miles snowmobile trails situated in State ; National Forests, and is one of just three expresses that offer a huge arrangement of interconnected and prepared snowmobile trails.â€Å"Regardless of the period, Michigan offers the absolute best in excursion and recreational open doors across the nation. Shockingly, not many individuals outside of the Great Lakes district know this incredible the travel industry item exists. The individuals from TIME expect to improve attention to Michigan the travel industry chances to help develop our states economy!†There is a lot of that should be possible to support the economy in the province of Michigan. Detroit’s schools can succ eed and develop if the travel industry gets pace in the state so Detroit can have the option to deliver income for the city.†The whole province of Michigan’s educational system is enduring in light of the fact that ofâ financial downturn in the territory of Michigan.â (Martin, 2002) â€Å"As a downturn and falling enlistment hammer some of Michigans wealthiest government funded schools, a few instructors and legislators express its chance to investigate how the state reserves education.The battling schools state changes that Michigan voters went in 1994 are taking steps to change the manner in which they teach kids.East Lansing could lay off an expected 45 educators one year from now. Okemos may slice financial plans for sports and support. Waverly and Mason are among the other mid-Michigan K-12 areas fixing spending openings they state were fundamentally passed up Proposal A the measure that exchanged the essential wellspring of school subsidizing from neighborhoo d property duties to the state deals tax.We additionally observe that â€Å"Proposal A has helped country, less well-off schools improve programs as they money in on a framework intended to find some kind of harmony among rich and poor regions. In any case, rich schools state theyve been crushed for a considerable length of time by generally little financing increments. Furthermore, teachers are concerned in light of the fact that the state should change its property charge assortment calendar to pay one years from now $200 per-student increment uncovering expected defects in the system.†We additionally gain from the Lansing Journal that When this became law, everybody said the genuine test would be the point at which the economy eases back, Michigan Education Association representative Margaret Trimer-Hartley said. Presently were confronting that test.Its developing as a key issue in the 2002 governors race. The competitors are thinking about plans to modify the framework

IT Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

10 Blogging Skills Bloggers Must Improve (Not Just Writing!)

10 Blogging Skills Bloggers Must Improve (Not Just Writing!) .elementor-19992 .elementor-element.elementor-element-19992{text-align:center}Last Updated on February 12, 2020Blogging isn’t just about laying down the cash for one of the best blog hosting sites and then logging into your website and brain-dumping your latest insight. It can be, but if you really want to become a successful blogger, there are certain blogging skills  needed that all weave together to produce the final, polished result of a successful blog.When going through the skills below, don’t breeze over them because you feel like you’re already adept in a particular skill. I might just have a tidbit of information that you could add to your skills. Disclosure As an independent review site, we get compensated if you purchase through the referral links or coupon codes on this page â€" at no additional cost to you. Dismiss alert If you’re looking for some recommended places to learn a particular blogging skill, I cover this, too â€" there are some seriously incredibly blogging tools out there that I highly recommend.Ready?Let’s get stuck in.Table of Contents Here are 10 blogging skills needed to be a great bloggerContent writing skillsNetworking skillsPhoto editing skillsSocial networking skillsCSS and HTML skillsSEO blogging skillsGoal setting and tracking for a bloggerTraffic conversion skillsMarketing skills for bloggersTime management skillsBlogging skills guide: where to learnEnhancing your marketing skills How and where to learn SEO blogging skillsImproving CSS and HTML SkillsWhere and how to improve blog writing skillsWhere to improve business networking skillsIdeas to improve image and photo editing skillsHow to develop social media networking skillsHow to improve goal-setting and tracking skillsLearning how bloggers convert trafficWhere to learn about time management skillsHow a blogger’s skills can be developed: key takeawaysHere are 10 blogging skills needed to be a great blogger Join the FREE TrainingDo You Want To Learn How To Bu ild 6 Figures Authority Sites?Join This Free Training To...Finally have a proven method to finding profitable nichesGet access to a foolproof keyword research methodLearn how to outsource quality contentLearn how to build white hat links to your site without headaches Want a starter for 10 to help you out?Just.Start.Writing.I mean it. Zero content is useless content, and remember how you learned languages, science and math at school? You practiced, over and over. The same applies to blog writing skills. The more you just start writing, the better you’ll get at content creation. While writing, though, keep in mind three things:People love to talk about themselves, so every blogger should go ahead and ask them how they are and show an interest in what they do; it doesn’t even have to be business-related.What’s their passion? I challenge you to come away from the next conversation you have with three pieces of information you didn’t know about them.How to do that? Ask them random questionsThis doesn’t even need to be at dinner parties or networking events, although they’re great environments to network in.Since you’re a blogger now â€" yes, you are! â€" reach out to another blogger and strike up a connection. Do you like their blog? Tell them! Don’t lie through your teeth just to get a guest post on their site and a backlink to your blog. They might even have a blog skill that you don’t â€" learn from them.By being a truthful and honest blogger, you build authority for your niche, as well as theirs. Network relationships should happen organically; sure, you can force them, but this lacks sincerity.Photo editing skillsA clear, crisp image can really make a blog post. We’re visually attracted to content much more than seeing a wall of text. I know I often look for a TL;DR snippet rather than wading through text.A blogger that enhances their photo editing skills can increase the on-page time of their traffic and followers. A good way to do t his is to combine an informational image with text, also known as an infographic.This powerful combination of words and pictures stimulates the brain into information overload â€" in a good way.Having said that, in my experience, you need a slight artistic streak in you to really make an image pop. I’m not talking about being the best in the world using Adobe Photoshop, but understanding the basics could really help.Once you have the basics down of cropping, resizing and layering, you could have an infographic-worthy result that complements your blog really well.Social networking skillsWordPress. It’s an extremely user-friendly all-in-one backend that allows you to use basic coding principles to make your blog look super shiny.I bet you’ve even used HTML coding before without knowing it. Making a word bold uses HTML just as you use Ctrl+B on your keyboard:bbold/bThere you go, you’ve just learned some free HTML coding!Developing your knowledge around CSS and HTML can be reall y helpful when you’re in a pinch and need to fix something on your site.It’s also useful when you’re just starting your blogging journey and have zero budget to outsource your content and blogging to an expert. This is exactly how I started my blogging journey, and there’s no reason why you begin blogging this way too.SEO blogging skillsDon’t leave a stone unturned. By covering all related topics to a post you’re writing, you’ll establish yourself as an authority.Don’t force it, though. The key is to blog about something you’re already interested in. Anything else will mean you lose interest quickly, and if you lose interest, so will your audience.In time, and as long as you provide value-added information, you’ll develop trust. You want your blog to be the #1 resource that people come to for the information they need. When they do so, they need to be able to trust that what you are blogging about is trustworthy.Here is where you can build on that trust by linkin g to another authority site on a related subject.When you make a factual statement or claim, don’t just leave it hanging. Point the reader to the original source, and make darn sure that the site is a recognized authority, too. I’m talking .gov and .edu sites rather than a random commercial site that’s just spouting made-up information.You could also include experts in the field you’re blogging about. For example, if you’re blogging about essay writing skills, did you know this kind of thing can be outsourced to EssayPro?By being honest and sincere, you’ll develop your following and the SEO will happen as you get to know your audience and understand what information they’re searching for.Goal setting and tracking for a bloggerI’ve been through the mill when it comes to goal setting. Many times I’ve sat down to do something and it’s fizzled out.Why is this?Simple â€" there was no end goal. I didn’t have a defined purpose.I knew what I wanted to do, but the inten tion wasn’t clear without a goal.Don’t let this be you. By expanding your goal-setting skills, you’ll become more productive when it actually comes down to work.Think about how nice it would be to wake up, do your morning routine and to just sit down at start work. No messing around working out what to do next, just work.This is possible because you already have a goal established â€" for 10 years, 5 years, 3 years, the current year, month, week and day. I find that writing down one goal for the next day pays back dividends in productivity.A knock-on effect of this is that I get more blogging work done, and I enjoy it more, too. Why? Because I know it’s taking me closer to my ultimate goal.It’s no use just having a goal, though. You need to track your performance as you go. So, if your goal this year is to have 100,000 views for 3 consecutive months, have a chart somewhere on your wall in your office space that tracks this.It needs to be visually accessible â€" don’t hav e a spreadsheet neatly filed away; actually have it on display at all times. This will drive you forward to help you reach your goal.Traffic conversion skillsIf you’re looking to monetize your blog in any form, whether through ad revenue, affiliate marketing, selling a physical product or en e-book, you need to know how to convert traffic.There are many ways to do this, and many a blogger takes this too far by bombarding the reader with upsells and sales jargon that, frankly, but viewers off.People like free stuff. So, give them something for free in exchange for their name and email address. This could be a free e-book or a top 10 list of something that’s related to your niche and blog. Not only will this satisfy their need for more relevant information, but you’re also satisfying an emotional trigger.Emotional triggers can be pivotal for your blog’s success, and this comes from knowing your audience and exactly what they’re looking for and then incorporating this into yo ur blogging. Google’s webmaster tools help with this, and you can see exactly which search terms your traffic is using to get to your pages.By building yourself as an authority by having content relative to these search terms, you’ll start to build trust â€" remember “EAT” from above?Know what your followers want and the fruits of your labor will eventually grow. Interact with your followers to enhance this. Ask them questions on your social media outlets and encourage viewers to leave a comment on a blog post.Ever heard of the phrase, the fortune is in the follow-up? It’s a major cliché, but it’s true. When a follower replies to your social media question or leaves a comment on your blog post, REPLY!Don’t leave them hanging without a response â€" this will come across as if you don’t care. Engage with your followers to convert traffic, and build that brand loyalty.Marketing skills for bloggersRemember that when you’re developing your blog, you’re marketing YOU. I love Simon Sinek’s quote: People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Simon Sinek Tweet This rings true in the blogging sphere something chronic. If someone trust’s your viewpoint on something, they’re more likely going to keep following you and make purchases based on your recommendations.But, when they make that purchasing decision, it’s not because of your sales pitch, it’s because of who you are as a person.So many of the skills I’ve already mentioned encompass marketing:Content creationSEOConverting trafficSocial networkingThey’re all marketing techniques, so whenever you’re doing any of these, remember that you’re establishing yourself as a brand through your blog.I know more than a   blogger or two like to have an alter-ego to stay out of the limelight, and that’s understandable. But, by combining social media marketing with blogging, massive results can happen.Think about reaching out to your contacts on social media, for example. Share th eir content, offer to guest post or do a collaboration. The worst that can happen is that you’ll get a no.Don’t be afraid to DM someone, no matter how big in the industry or niche they are. They do reply, and tomorrow, it could be you that they reply to.Every no that you get is one step closer to a yes. Just remember that all your public actions reflect on you and your brand; you’re always marketing yourself.Time management skillsStop being busy by being busy.I know you do it, don’t lie to yourself! Heck, I used to be really bad at it.We crazy humans seem to create work for the sake of it; and, in my experience, we do so to put off the things we find hard. I’ve done it writing this post!Even so, we know the serotonin-high that stems from achievement.A pivotal blogger skill to develop to increase achievement levels is time management, and a killer of time-management is to-do lists.They just shouldn’t exist. Ditch that to-do list immediately.Instead, have a notepad and pen next to your workspace or on you at all times. My challenge for you is to only have one thing on it to achieve the next day.Have your task for the next day written the night before, so when you get up the next day, you know exactly what you need to achieve.It’s only one thing, but it needs to be the most pivotal task that needs doing, no matter how hard or easy.I’ll give you a clue â€" that task should be tough since it’s those tough things that we put off. Sure, doing lots of easy tasks can build momentum, but they ruin your time management.To ensure those menial things get done, slice your day up into segments, and do not multitask. Sorry, ladies!Have a slot for doing the laundry, scrolling through social media, playing a video game and watching Netflix series, or whatever other delay tactic you use.Greg McKeown, in his book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, says: The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Greg McKeown Tweet Your only priority is that one thing you wrote down on your to-do list. Nothing else matters until that task is complete.No Netflix on at the same time, no Facebook or Instagram feed scrolling, just a single and relentless focus on that one priority.Doing this will greatly enhance your overall blogging skills.Blogging skills guide: where to learnIf you hadn’t noticed already, I’ve given you piles of free tips and information to enhance your blogging skills.But I’m not stopping there.Below, I’ve included a top-tier resource for each of the blogging skills I’ve listed above. If you’re fond of the likes of Robert Kiyosaki, Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy, you know that their business stance is that you should outsource anything that isn’t your expertise or worth your time.When deciding on whether to outsource, have an hourly rate in your head. For example, if you wouldn’t do any work for less than $30 an hour, and one of the hourly equivalents of the below is $20, it should be outsourced.Sure, some of the blogging skills tools I recommend might come across as expensive, but they’re high-quality experts in their chosen fields. Plus, you’re freeing up your time to spend on developing your blog and financial freedom.To me, that’s something money can’t buy.Enhancing your marketing skills Wealthy Affiliate is one of those incredible tools that holds your hand through the affiliate marketing journey from the very beginning.Its core focus is on how to use affiliate marketing to monetize your blog â€" something that millions of us aim to do, but too many fail at.You can utilize the WA resources no matter if you’re starting your blog from scratch or are already well along on the journey. Its features include:In-depth affiliate marketing trainingMentorship programsKeyword researchSearch engine optimizationCompetition analysisCustomizable websitesHosting J oin Wealthy Affiliate FREE here How and where to learn SEO blogging skillsSEO is hard for so many of us, especially with Google changing its algorithms as soon as we’ve all changed our sites based on the previous update.I think we can overthink SEO too much, though.If you’re new to blogging, I recommend you start by writing from the heart and mind and by understanding your niche, without optimizing for SEO.By doing this, your content will appear more natural. So many newbie blogs pay for SEO services without thinking about the content and end up overstuffing their posts with keywords, to the point where the content doesn’t read naturally.If you’re serious about your blogging journey and really want to outrank your competitors, Page Optimizer Pro  (use code STARTBLOG for free credits) is the place to do it. It’s the most insightful tool I’ve ever come across when it comes to SEO. You can specify the keywords you want to rank for, and it’ll give you detailed guidance on things like:Keyword densityHeadings to useOptimal word countPage structureEAT signals (mentioned earlier)And so much moreYou can also use it to enhance your own SEO knowledge as you go with its video tutorials and visual tool (which tracks the changes you make) and seeing how they change your ranking. The POP blog is also full of free knowledge on SEO â€" well worth a read, and you don’t need to break the bank with an on-page SEO course.With POP, you dont need all the answers, you just follow the recommendations! Try out POP FREE here Improving CSS and HTML SkillsUnless you’re already a coding expert, I’d definitely look to outsource your HTML blogging skills as soon as possible.The only caveat here is to learn the very basics yourself, first. Doing so will definitely help you visualize how you want your blog and articles to look. This extends into knowing how to use WordPress, as well as its themes and plug-ins. It can be tricky at first, but by taking baby steps, you cou ld find yourself with your own WordPress blog up and running within a week.Who knows, you may find a passion for coding, which is a skill that can take you down all kinds of avenues, especially with your blog. Team Treehouse has a free trial offer for 7 days, which can give you an insight into coding to see if it’s something for you. Try out Team Treehouse FREE here Where and how to improve blog writing skillsYou can improve your blog writing skills and content creation by using these basics:Write about something you’re passionate aboutDon’t overthink it â€" just start writing about somethingMake journaling a habitDon’t just copy what everyone else is doingTake 5 minutes and then reread through your workStick to a writing standard â€" Associated Press; Chicago Manual of Style, as examplesAlways proofread your workUse Grammarly as a back-up, not as an authorityGet a trusted friend to read your work before publishingIf you really lack blog writing skills, outsource the heck out of it. You dont have to be a good writer to get an article with great content on your site, but you do need to come up with the ideas behind them. The team over at Clever Touch Marketing are experts at this kind of thing. What you get is affordable and relevant content for your niche. There are different packages to choose from, depending on your budget.The awesome thing with Clever Touch Marketing is that you get to speak to an actual person to discuss your needs. From there, you can utilize their expertise to create content that:Increases trafficRanks you higher in Google’s SERPsIncreases on-page timeIs created by native English speakersIs grammatically correctWhere to improve business networking skillsNetworking events have become huge and are a great way to meet other bloggers, chat and discuss the industry or niche you’re in. You can also pick up free tips and advice from those who are already successful and have a lifestyle that you dream of.Even more importantly, net working can bring lifelong business and personal relationships that can greatly rich your life. Try to always take up the opportunity to network if you can.Networking can be hard for the introverted among us. Udemy offers a business networking course that’s pretty affordable, and it could be a good step to know how to get yourself out there.Ideas to improve image and photo editing skillsI first learned by playing around and learning for myself. Hands-on experience is such an awesome way to learn. The most popular image and photo editing software options are:Adobe PhotoshopGIMPThey both come with extensive help areas and tutorials on how things can be done. You can also check out YouTube tutorials on how some of the basic features work.You don’t have to enroll in a course to learn how to edit images or photos, but they’re definitely a good idea. PHLearn has a wide range of visual courses you can check out online, both paid and free. I know many who’ve signed up for its online subscription to get unlimited access to their professional image editing courses.There are also a ton of different options you can take a look at on our post about logo design software which range in prices (including free option).Lastly I would start browsing Pinterest to see what else is being shared in your niche so you have an idea of what works!How to develop social media networking skillsAs a blogger, investing in social media networking skills is one of the most prosperous investments you’ll make. One thing I always do is follow and mirror what others that are successful are doing.I’m not talking about copying their content or posts; in particular, what hashtags are they using and is there a style that I like?Consider hashtags as the SEO of social networking. They tell the platform and visitors what your posts are about, so individuals feeds can be tailored to their liking.Something I find super helpful with learning how to social network properly is by scheduling posts. I’ve wasted so much time on Facebook and Insta, it isn’t funny. But, by knowing exactly when I’m posting on social media, I free up so much more time to get on with my blogging and the rest of my life.Now I understand we dont all have time for this, particularly in the mid-stages of growing a blog or website. In these situations I recommend 99DollarSocial who will have your back. But if you prefer to do it in house then arguably the best social media scheduling platform out there is Hootsuite. By linking all your social media accounts to Hootsuite, you can manage them all in one place, without having to manually log in to each one.The best thing about Hootsuite, though, is that you can set up posts well in advance, again, freeing up your time to be more productive elsewhere. There’s always a 30-day free trial on offer, so you have nothing to lose.If you want to completely outsource your social media management, you should check out Kimberley Banner. Kim’s a social media g enius! The best way to get in touch with her is through her Instagram profile.How to improve goal-setting and tracking skillsMy number one resource for goal setting is Brian Tracy, who will change your mind about whether goal-setting is one of the required blogging skills or not.I’ve read so many books and listened to dozens of podcasts, and while they do all follow the same route, I haven’t gravitated to anyone as much as I have to Tracy.I particularly love his book Eat That Frog, which has sold millions of copies worldwide. The premise is that if the first thing you did each day was to eat a frog, the rest of the day would be easier/better than that. Obviously, you’re not going to go and eat a frog, but the idea is that you get the hardest task done first, which sets you up to have a much more productive day going forward.At the time of writing this post, Tracy has a simple-to-use and handy goal-setting guide that walks you through setting your goals and achieving them, for free. Even if you didn’t want to subscribe to their awesome mentoring program, this free tool is incredibly useful.Learning how bloggers convert trafficI could send you off to Neil Patel’s site to learn most of the top blogging skills needed. Patel really does know his stuff, and what better way to learn on how to convert your blog’s traffic than by checking out this post.One thing I love about his style is that it offers so much value for nothing. His site is teeming with value-added content that will greatly enhance your ability to convert traffic.Where to learn about time management skillsI love Coursera for its huge range of online flexible courses. It has one called Work Smarter, Not Harder that has received rave reviews, and you can complete it 100% online in your own time.There are thousands and thousands of self-development books on time management â€" too many to recommend, and I know many of my followers love to learn more visually. Such a course is a perfect way to do this, and will greatly increase your ability to be more productive with your blog and to improve your blogging skills.How a blogger’s skills can be developed: key takeawaysI’m sure many of you already have great aptitudes for many of the blogging skills I’ve talked about here. I really feel like there’s something here for anyone to take home, even if it’s a new book or a quick tip that you can take away and implement right away.Tools such as Page Optimizer Pro and affiliate marketing training such as the  Wealthy Affiliate  program are so in-depth that they offer huge amounts of value, and are well worth investing your time in if you want to develop the skills needed to succeed (and whats more you can get started for free!)If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the information and opportunities to grow your skills, pick one and focus on that alone. Once you feel you’ve nailed that one, move onto another of the skills needed for your progress.Massive and controlled act ion in the long-term game is a great way to achieve success.Are you using any of the tools I’ve mentioned? Come and tell me which ones and how you’ve found them. As always, leave a comment and I’ll get back to you â€" I love hearing from you guys! Best blogging books Blogging goals

Juvenile Justice And Juvenile Delinquency - 1675 Words

Juvenile Justice has been a work in progress from the beginning of the program because of the evolving mentality of the generations. The purpose of Juvenile Justice was to correct the behavior of the juvenile delinquents and rehabilitation through a probationary period monitored by an individual who paid for bail and periodically reported behavior changes to courts. (Mulligan 2009) We do justice to the youth offenders by understanding the history of Juvenile Justice restorative programs, the alternatives to incarceration, and how to help them amend their actions and behavior. The history of Juvenile Justice went from incarceration with adults to reform back to incarceration in separate facilities and similar rights as adult offenders.†¦show more content†¦Because of the efforts, juvenile court spread to 46 states by 1925. (Eskin, 1991) Constitutional rights were given to juvenile offenders in 1967, when the Juvenile Justice was under scrutiny for unfair treatment. A Supreme Court reviewed a case that sentenced a 15 year old Gerald Gault to detention until the age of 21 for making an obscene phone call. The Supreme Court case determined that juveniles are entitled to many of the same adult rights and have the right to know their charges, have legal representation, and the right not to testify against their own selves. (Eskin, 1991) It is beneficial for society to know and understand the Restorative programs and how juveniles can amend their actions and correct their behavior. (Hagan and King 1992) Juvenile Justice is often thought of as dealing with juveniles who commit theft or unruly. Society today has to face the reality that the current generation of juveniles are committing crimes such as murder, drug offenses, and sexual assaults. Restorative justice is known through objectives and in contrast to the former retributive and rehabilitative beliefs of punishment. (Mulligan 2009) Community-based juvenile justice programs focus on developing the competency development of the youth offender to ensure the youth successful completion of the programs in order to exit the juvenile justice system and become contributing law abiding members of the community. TheShow MoreRelatedJuvenile Delinquency And The Juvenile Justice System1299 Words   |  6 Pagesdedicated his life to troubled juveniles once said, â€Å"I believe that the kids who are labeled â€Å"good† are children who know how to solve their problems and manage their behavior and social life, and the kids who are labeled â€Å"bad† are kids who don’t know how to solve those problems.† Every day, kids are committing illegal acts of varying severity. Some are involved in petty robberies, others involved in murders and rape. These juveniles become the responsibility of the juvenile justice system which is taskedRead MoreJuvenile Delinquency And The Juvenile Justice System2169 Word s   |  9 Pagesthe factors that contribute to juvenile delinquency and the solutions to correct or prevent this delinquency. In the history of the construction and implementing federal laws, it has been imperative to take actions and make procedures in response to the increasing number of minors who violate the laws. The formation of a juvenile justice system that is made up of proper course and development was created. It is important to point out the reasons why these juveniles do offensive and criminal actsRead MoreJuvenile Delinquency And Juvenile Criminal Justice System1475 Words   |  6 PagesIntroduction: Juvenile delinquency is an ever growing issue in the United States, according to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, â€Å"In 2012, there were 3,941 arrests for every 100,000 youths ages 10 through 17 in the United States† (OJJDP, 2014). The way juveniles are treated in the criminal justice system is very different than the way adults are. In 1899, in Cook County, Illinois, the first juvenile justice system in the country was founded. This established an alternativeRead MoreJuvenile Justice System. The Federal Juvenile Delinquency1845 Words   |  8 PagesJUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM The Federal Juvenile Delinquency Act defines juvenile delinquency as, â€Å"any act that is otherwise a crime, but is committed by someone under 18 years of age (â€Å"Juvenile Justice, 2007†)†. This act sets forth rules in which state laws must comply with in regard to juvenile court procedures and punishments. A majority of states have a criminal culpability set at 18 years of age, however culpability age can differ depending on the state. Certain states base whether a juvenile’sRead MoreJuvenile Justice And Delinquency Prevention1598 Words   |  7 PagesJuvenile Delinquency According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), there are more than 70 million Americans, about 1 in 4 of those are younger than 18, which is the age group commonly referred to as juveniles (2014). A juvenile delinquent is created when one of these juveniles display disruptive behavior that is beyond parents control and or violates the law. The violations range from simple offenses like smoking or fighting to violent crimes like sexual assaultRead MoreJuvenile Justice And Delinquency Prevention2440 Words   |  10 Pagesincarcerated or confined (Census, n.d). According to the U.S Department of Justice’s office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency prevention, it was reported in 2011 that 1 in 13 of juvenile arrests was for murder, and about 1 in 5 arrests was for robbery, burglary, or larceny-theft; totaling in an estimated amount of 1,470,000 arrests for 2011(Puzzanchera, 2013). The most popular crime committed between juveniles is arson, wh ich makes up for 44% of all crimes committed by youths. Robbery and burglary bothRead MoreJuvenile Justice And Delinquency Prevention2506 Words   |  11 Pagesincarcerated or confined (Census, n.d). According to the U.S Department of Justice’s office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency prevention, it was reported in 2011 that 1 in 13 of juvenile arrests were for murder, and about 1 in 5 arrests were for robbery, burglary, or larceny-theft; totaling in an estimated amount of 1,470,000 arrests for 2011(Puzzanchera, 2013). The most popular crime committed between juveniles is Arson, which makes up for 44% of all crimes committed in youths. Robbery and burglaryRead MoreJuvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention1877 Words   |  8 PagesIntroduction Does exposure to deviant peers affect whether individuals participate in general delinquency? Peers have an influence on the developing individual where the individual shares definitions favorable to them (Snyder, Dishion, Patterson, 1982). Findings in literature suggest that delinquent youths are involved in a relationship between peers delinquent behavior and a respondent’s own delinquency (Warr, 1996). Shaw and McKay, in 1931, discovered that more than 80% of individuals had deviantRead MoreJuvenile Delinquency and the Criminal Justice System1423 Words   |  6 Pagescriminal justice system. Within the criminal justice system, juvenile delinquency is an issue that I find the most overlooked and it is a problem that is growing, particularly in the poorer areas. The term juvenile delinquency refers to the antisocial or criminal activity under the age of 18 which violates the law. Everyone is affected by juvenile crime, parents, teachers, families and neighbors. It is essenti al that programs are implemented to help with juvenile delinquents. Although delinquency ratesRead MoreFice Of Juvenile Justice And Delinquency Prevention1617 Words   |  7 PagesThe federal government even formed an office called the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention that operates under United States department of Justice to attempt â€Å"by supporting states, local communities, and tribal jurisdictions in their efforts to develop and implement effective programs for juveniles†. (Howell, J. C., Wilson, J. J., Reno, J., Marcus, D., Leary, M. L.) The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention established a policy that enables communities officials

How the Iraq Invasion of Kuwait Impacted Kuwaits Environment

Part A: Plan The Investigation The purpose of this investigation is to assess the extent of which the Iraq invasion of Kuwait impacted Kuwait’s environment. This will be done by assessing the pollution created during the fighting portion of the war as well as the beginning of the oil fires. Furthermore the pollution of the oil fires will be looked at in regards to terrestrial pollution as well as wildlife pollution. This investigation will include an evaluation of the origin, purpose, value and limitations of 2 sources, The Environmental Consequences of War: legal, economic and scientific perspectives by Jay E. Austin and Carl E. Bruch, as well as John Loretz’s article titled The Animal Victims of the Gulf War. Part B: Summary of†¦show more content†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¢ Last burning oil well was put out in November 1991.4 Terrestrial pollution from the oil fires: †¢ After the oil wells were set on fire the oil spewed out to the land surface.2 †¢ Hundreds of oil lakes had formed. †¢ Lakes penetrated and saturated 10-20% of the soil. †¢ 5,000 million gallons of seawater spray was used.10 †¢ Millions of land mines were planted around the oil wells. †¢ Residue from oil slowly seeped in to the ground, poisoning the desert. †¢ As the oil seeped it damaged the underground water supply and the soil.12 †¢ Miles of the Kuwaiti desert were decided to be inhabitable. Wildlife and Marine Pollution from the oil fires: †¢ Vast amounts of crude oil seeped into the Persian Gulf. †¢ The oil from the wells that was released into the Persian Gulf killed tens of thousands of birds and threatened numerous marine animals. †¢ Toxic smoke released from the fires killed migrating birds. †¢ Oil poured from the extinguished wells created huge petrochemical lakes.16 †¢ Petrochemical lakes drained in to the ocean and threatened marine life. 16 †¢ Tanks, trucks and other military vehicles destroyed wildlife habitats. 16 †¢ Oil that lured close to the water and threatened animals that were close to extinction. †¢ Various birds became trapped in the oil that was near the ocean as well as in the oils lakes. †¢ Many migratory birds died as a result of exposure to oil or polluted air. 17 Part C:Show MoreRelatedDubais Political and Economic Development: Essay38738 Words   |  155 PagesCulture, United Arab Emirates, UnitedArab Emirates Yearbook 2004 (London: Trident Press Ltd., 2004) 6 ; Personal interviews January 2005. 2 Ashfaq Ahmed, UAE Nationals in Private Sector Miniscule - Study, GulfNews (June 7,2004). Harrison; Nick Meo, How Dubai, the Playground of Businessmen and Warlords, Is Built by Asian Wage Slaves, The Independent (March 1,2005). Ahmed. 5 Meo. 6 Personal Interviews January 2005. ceilings, marble bathrooms outfitted with Jacuzzis, and personal butlers. In addition

Essay on The Globalization of Hip Hop Music - 1498 Words

According to Wikipedia, Hip-hop music, also called rap music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted. It developed as part of hip hop culture, a subculture defined by four key stylistic elements: MCing/rapping, DJing/scratching, breaking/dancing, and graffiti writing. Hip hop is also characterized by these other elements: sampling (or synthesis), and beatboxing. Hip hop music developed from party DJs mixing and remixing popular music that was already out. This music was usually from the funk, soul and disco genre. It began during the 1970s in the Bronx in New York City and very popular among African Americans. Spoken hip hop music is†¦show more content†¦According to a paper by David Galenson titled The Globalization of Advanced Art in the Twentieth Century, â€Å"Globalization involves not only the movement of goods, but also the movement of people and ideas. For advanced a rt, a central element of globalization has been the spread of important innovations – the geographic diffusion of new techniques and styles.† So, according to Galenson, the globalization of hip hop is not just about the music or the style being celebrated wirldwide, but also the sharing of new ideas and skills. One can simply tune in to the radio station TransRap to hear hip hop from167 different countries. On any given day one can listen to Hindi rap, Japanese rap or Cherokee rap. For instance, in Italy, hip hop music is performed in the local dialect and according to a New York Times article, Nearly 50 percent of all Italians still speak in dialect, at least within the family, and the musicality of most dialects adapted well to the rhyme and cadence of rap. Much of borrowed hip hop culture is infused with the local culture and regional styles. Although it is possible for globalization to create homogenization, in the case of hip hop music, it has done the opposite and instead created something more akin to cultural hybridization. According to Jan Nederveen Pieterse in his book Globalization and Culture: Global Melange he believes that globalization leads to more cultural diversity through cultural hybridization. According toShow MoreRelatedEssay on Hip hop2088 Words   |  9 Pages Music has been around since the beginning of civilization. Music was used to tell myths, religious stories, and warrior tales. Since the beginning of civilization music has greatly progressed. Music still tells a story, we know just have many genres to satisfy the cultural and social tastes of our modern society. Hip Hop is a genre of music that has significantly grown the last couple of decades. Its increased popularity has brought it to the forefront of globalization. Technological advancesRead MoreHip Hop2091 Words   |  9 PagesMusic has been around since the beginning of civilization. Music was used to tell myths, religious stories, and warrior tales. Since the beginning of civilization music has greatly progressed. Music still tells a story, we know just have many genres to satisfy the cultural and social tastes of our modern society. Hip Hop is a genre of music that has significantly grown the last couple of decades. Its increased popularity has brought it to the fore front of globalization. Technological advances hasRead MoreHip Hop, A And Creative Aspect Of Music928 Words   |  4 PagesBreaking through in the heart of the Bronx, Hip Hop was designed to empower and teach the youth, while providing them an outlet for creative expression. Developed on five essential pillars, all working towards: giving African Americans knowledge that they didn’t have access to, inspiring them to read and acquire true knowledge of self, and to understand the role that self has in America in relation to the actual worth of self. Since the inception of Hip Hop, the genre has evolved through the times whileRead MoreRap Music : Influence On Violent Behavior1379 Words   |  6 PagesRAP MUSIC’S INFLUENCE ON VIOLENT BEHAVIOR IN AFRICAN AMERICAN MALES: A REVIEW Kaland Farrow Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University  RAP MUSIC’S INFLUENCE ON VIOLENT BEHAVIOR IN AFRICAN AMERICAN MALES: A REVIEW Rap music is derived from Hip Hop culture which is deeply rooted in the African American community. The word, rap, has a Middle English origin. Originally, rap means to beat or strike. Beginning in the 1960s, African Americans gave the word another definition. In the black communityRead MoreEssay about Street Dreams and Hip Hop Barber Shops Critique1169 Words   |  5 Pagesresearch on popular culture, hanging out in barbershops and bus stands, seamstress tables and video halls, was carried out in the northern Tanzanian city of Arusha. In â€Å"Street Dreams and Hip Hop Barber Shops† Weiss does a great job observing the everyday life of the people in Arusha. He explores how globalization and neoliberalism affect the mindset of a community and shows the reader how gender role, media, and self-fashioning can play a big role in a person life. Weiss’s fieldwork and observationRead MoreGlobalization And Its Impact On The Western Culture3003 Words   |  13 Pagesachieve gl obal pop status on the opposite sides of the globe, and the newest release of a music video can be seen instantly with the help of video sharing websites. With the help of today’s technology, globalization allows us to communicate almost anywhere in the world. Globalization is an ongoing process where different societies, cultures, and regional communities integrate through a worldwide network. Globalization allowed for a speeding up of the flows of goods, people, images, and ideas across theRead MoreTaking a Look at Hip Hop1272 Words   |  5 Pagesdeparted† (NAS, Hip hop is dead), Since the 1920s, America has been the setting for a progressive Black Arts Movement. This African-American cultural movement has taken shape in various genres, gaining mass appeal, this cultural arts movement has stayed set upon its original purpose and direction, by aiding in cultural identity awareness. Hip Hop is a genre of music that has really grown the last couple of decades. Its incr eased popularity has brought it to the forefront of globalization. There hasRead MoreCultural Theory And Popular Culture1166 Words   |  5 Pagescritics and other feminists. Presented in cinema, music, magazines, and other media outlets, it has been well documented how â€Å"popular culture plays a role in patriarchal society and that theoretical analysis of this role warrants a major position in ongoing discussions† (Storey, pg. 136), and, in many cases, â€Å"the male viewer’s regard for the publicized female body is often objectified and sexualized† (Inquiry 2). With my knowledge and understanding of hip-hop, the misogyny and sexism that culture glorifiesRead MoreThe Culture And Culture Of The Country Essay1588 Words   |  7 Pages When it comes to globalization in Media, all media in some way teaches a lesson and gives the person who is watching the media a different aspect of the country. America has many movies that are shown and filmed in other countries. Television shows from America as well are dubbed for the viewing of people in other countries. Music can influences a country to come up with their own sound to spread around the world. All in all, media from different countries has the potential to affect every countryRead MoreEffects Of Pop Music745 Words   |  3 Pages one of the most popular being pop music. You’re so used of everything you’re heard. But have you ever wondered how much it has actually evolved? It’s important because this generation is mostly about trendy music and pop but it was way different back then. According to Digital Music And Audio, â€Å"overall, the emotional effect of our favorite music has tended right towards the â€Å"happy medium and sad vibe’ † so it seems to be more balanced. â€Å"In other words, music has gotten more mechanistic over the

System Documentation and Business Intelligence Samples fore Students

Question: Discuss About System Documentation And Business Intelligence? Answer: Introduction: The organisations operating in the present century look for efficient methods to improve their operating procedures for increasing competitive advantage in the global and regional markets. For raising the margins of revenue, the international industries aim to enhance their customer base by accumulating critical information regarding the customers. This is mainly intended to reach and attract them for the product consumption (Akhigbe, Amyot Richards, 2014). In addition, it is of crucial importance for an organisation in recording the information regarding the potential customers to reach them, whenever necessary. Thus, it has been observed that the mechanisms of evaluation and use of data software has created in the market to separate market information for obtaining an insight of the existing trends for changing their business strategies. Data analysis: The data analysis process deals with the assessment of data analytics and this is a method of cleaning, editing, modelling, examining and conversion of data accumulated from the customers. This is intended to gather useful data utilised for recommending and undertaking inferences along with assisting in the process of decision-making. Data mining: Data mining is a tool of data analysis, which enables in gauging the system of identifying the trends in big data sets through use of statistical tools, joints and different mechanisms of database. The intention of such type of system is to gather rightful information from the avialable data and develop the same into information, which the analysts could interpret easily. Such process takes into account data processing and inference model to ensure the accuracy and effectiveness of the accumulated data. Role of data mining and data analysis in contemporary organisations: The data analysis technique is the method of developing the outcome for data examined on the part of data pool sets. The processing system and innovative software help in undertaking this. The commercial organisations use these mechanisms and technologies related to data analytics (Alpar Schulz, 2016). Through these methods, the organisations are capable of enhancing the business activities and therefore, they could increase their profits, service quality to the customers and maximise their marketing policies. The system of data mining and data analytics enables the organisations to improve their business performance along with gaining competitive supremacy over the competitors. The use of the equipments of data analytics enables the corporate staffs, the management with necessary pointers of performance, information regarding the customers and the business activities (El-Gayar Timsina, 2014). The firms have done great number of usages and thus, it is observed that many organisations extend their support relating to the utilisation of data analytics. The industries engaged in e-commerce and the companies involved in online marketing realise the customers visiting their websites via software, which is termed as the evaluation of click stream (Foshay Kuziemsky, 2014). Such assessment techniques assist the industries engaged in providing services to realise the patterns pertaining to the page view and the options of the customers in buying any specific service or product through dependence on the routing of website. Conversely, data mining is a group of equipment related to analytics of data. An organisation possesses the authority of using the data associated with its assets as well as customers through exploitation of the mechanism of data analytics. The procedure of data analytics has attained eminence currently and the various business firms are now considering the same. The mechanisms of data analytics are important for the firms to remain active in the market, gain an insight of the transforming market, environmental situation and transforming requirements of the tastes and preferences of the customers (Larson Chang, 2016). It is crucial for the management of the organisations to gain an insight of the vast volume of data before they undertake the decision-making process. The management business intelligence and the other related parties associated with decision-making are critical, as it assists in implementing the most effective decision within the organisation (Popovi? et al., 2014). By enhancing the quality of data, sales mobility, ease of access and business intellects, the organisation are able to enhance their revenues at the time of rising amount of return. Useful information is provided to the management for executing effective procedure of decision-making. For accomplishing this, various sources are exploited to filter and obtain information by using the different data analysis tools. The utilisation of effective and correct tools for data analysis helps in obtaining knowledge about the buying behaviour of the customers, expansion opportunities, needs of the customers and increase in competitive edge (Rajnoha et al., 2014). Various equipments of data analysis are present in the market and it assists in the report construction through exploitation of the functional characteristic of data evaluation. Thus, it assists in communicating with the data available within the report. Data mining is an identical procedure, since it assists an organisation to obtain closer insight into the pattern of the organisation and the consumer trend. It is necessary for the firms to gain knowledge about the data analysis function associated with the decision-making mechanism by relying on the development of opportunities for the organisations. The data mining process uses different outlooks to assess the necessary information. It takes into account the synopsis of data utilised on the part of the organisations for reducing the related costs and increasing the profits for the organisations. The users of data mining and data analytics possess the capability of investigating the information from different degrees through diversification and construction of the synopsis of relationships, which have been realised (Selene Xia Gong, 2014). A large level of databases and numerous formats is gathered on the part of the organisations in the current era to analyse the process of data analysis. The associations have been realised coupled with relations and trends, which are useful for the development of data that are usable in nature. For instance, the products expected to be sold and the accurate selling time is projected through analysis of the information available from the information of transaction from the point sale perspectiv e. The associations between the different internal factors like positioning of product, price, staffs skills and the external factors such as demography, economic indicators and market competition could be recognised through data mining. Hence, the organisations are able to recognise the effect of revenue, sales and consumer satisfaction. The information of transactions, which is particular, has been observed with the synopsis of information through drilling of the results (Sherman, 2014). Identification of ethical implication of accumulating and storing customer information: The ethical responsibilities of an organisation are necessary for maintaining and controlling the consumer database. Such accountabilities affect the customers in trusting an organisation (Trumpy et al., 2015). The construction of ethical responsibilities is made, since it aids in investigating the databases of the customers from three different outlooks falling under the liabilities, which are distributed among the consumers and the staffs of an organisation (Vuki?, Bach Popovi?, 2013). This is even observed that the organisations are functioning in the economy in protecting and assuring the database of the customers of being distributed to the other sources, in which this information could be utilised ineffectively. The constituent of support from the customers even declines under the ethical accountability. This is the duty of the customers in managing their databases in handling their databases by reviewing the service or product purchases and returning such services or products provided on the part of the organisations. The staffs of the firms are hurdled in an ethical manner to avoid disclosure of the customer information until it is essential for the concerned organisation or the consumers (Yeoh Popovi?, 2016). Thus, it is the duty of the organisations to avoid disclosure of the private information of the customers to the other parties and they need to offer accurate and precise data, as required on the part of the customers. The employees even view the same that there is accessibility of general information and concealment of personal information from exploitation. This is one of the primary liabilities of the staffs. It is not possible to curb the initiation of any innovative, new ideas and mechanisms into organisations. However, this does not restrict the revision and transformation of the privacy policies. As a result, it might have effect on the association among the organisations and the customers at the inference, which is not beneficial. The degree related to transparency minimises with the initiation of difficult and complex products; however, transparency could be maintained, in case; the policies are converted frequently. Henceforth, it helps in maintaining the faith and trust of the customers and the controlling and maintenance of associations. Thus, it is essential that the ethical application is made at the time of collecting customer data. Conclusion: This paper depicts the data mining process and the tools of data analytics, which are necessary for the collection and preservation of customer-related information. The report identifies the lucidity, which plays a significant role and thus, it is the firms responsibility of informing the customers about the portion of information really utilised. This is mainly intended to minimise the monetary expense and time and therefore, it increases the satisfaction level of the customers. References: Akhigbe, O., Amyot, D., Richards, G. (2014, October). A framework for a business intelligence-enabled adaptive enterprise architecture. InInternational Conference on Conceptual Modeling(pp. 393-406). Springer International Publishing. Alpar, P., Schulz, M. (2016). Self-Service Business Intelligence.Business Information Systems Engineering,58(2), 151-155. El-Gayar, O., Timsina, P. (2014, January). Opportunities for business intelligence and Big Data Analytics in evidence based medicine. InSystem Sciences (HICSS), 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on(pp. 749-757). IEEE. Foshay, N., Kuziemsky, C. (2014). Towards an implementation framework for business intelligence in healthcare.International Journal of Information Management,34(1), 20-27. Larson, D., Chang, V. (2016). A review and future direction of agile, business intelligence, analytics and data science.International Journal of Information Management,36(5), 700-710. Popovi?, A., Hackney, R., Coelho, P. S., Jakli?, J. (2014). How information-sharing values influence the use of information systems: An investigation in the business intelligence systems context.The Journal of Strategic Information Systems,23(4), 270-283. Rajnoha, R., Kdrov, J., Sujov, A., Kdr, G. (2014). Business information systems: research study and methodological proposals for ERP implementation process improvement.Procedia-social and behavioral sciences,109, 165-170. Selene Xia, B., Gong, P. (2014). Review of business intelligence through data analysis.Benchmarking: An International Journal,21(2), 300-311. Sherman, R. (2014).Business intelligence guidebook: From data integration to analytics. Newnes. Trumpy, E., Bertani, R., Manzella, A., Sander, M. (2015). The web-oriented framework of the world geothermal production database: a business intelligence platform for wide data distribution and analysis.Renewable Energy,74, 379-389. Vuki?, V. B., Bach, M. P., Popovi?, A. (2013). Supporting performance management with business process management and business intelligence: A case analysis of integration and orchestration.International journal of information management,33(4), 613-619. Yeoh, W., Popovi?, A. (2016). Extending the understanding of critical success factors for implementing business intelligence systems.Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology,67(1), 134-147.

Child Labour in India Essay Example

Child Labour in India Essay Case on Child Labour Gap Admits Possible Child Labor Problem Journalist Videotapes Conditions at Subcontractor Plant; Gap Official Tells ABC News, This Is Completely Unacceptable By HILARY BROWN, LONDON, Oct. 28, 2007 The multi-billion dollar global fashion company Gap has admitted that it may have unknowingly used child labor in the production of a line of childrens clothing in India. This followed allegations by an investigative reporter based in Delhi, whose story was splashed across two pages of the British paper The Observer on Sunday. ABC News obtained some of the video material he used to substantiate his story. It shows children who appeared to be between the ages of 10 and 13, stitching embroidered shirts in a crowded, dimly lit work-room. The video clearly shows a Gap label on the back of each garment. The reporter, Dan McDougall, said the children were working without pay as virtual slaves in filthy conditions, with a single, backed-up latrine and bowls of rice covered with flies. They slept on the roof, he said. Gap Inc. was quick to order a full investigation into the allegations and to re-iterate its policy never to use child labor in the production of its clothes. This is completely unacceptable and we do not ever, ever condone any child laborer making our garments, said the president of Gap North America, Martha Hansen, on ABC News Good Morning America Weekend Edition on Sunday morning. We act swiftly, Hansen went on. And quite honestly, Im very grateful that this was brought to our attention. McDougall said the children seen working on the Gap clothing all came from the poor Indian state of Bihar, a favourite hunting ground for traffickers looking for cheap underage labor. We will write a custom essay sample on Child Labour in India specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Child Labour in India specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Child Labour in India specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Impoverished parents are tricked into selling their children for a few dollars with the empty promise that they will be well cared for and will send back their wages. They had been trafficked by train, he said. Its nickname is the child labor express. At any time, you can see 80 children on this huge train. Most are trafficked to work in the garment industry, which is huge in New Delhi. Like many international companies, Gap Inc farms out huge production orders to subcontractors in the developing world, where child labor is virtually endemic. The company takes pride in its record of ethical out-sourcing and has almost 100 inspectors monitoring 2,700 factories worldwide, it says. But in India one of its suppliers evidently broke the rules. Child sweatshop shame threatens Gaps ethical image Dan McDougall ,The Observer, Sunday 28 October 2007 An Observer investigation into children making clothes has shocked the retail giant and may cause it to withdraw apparel ordered for Christmas Amitosh concentrates as he pulls the loops of thread through tiny plastic beads and sequins on the toddlers blouse he is making. Dripping with sweat, his hair is thinly coated in dust. In Hindi his name means happiness. The hand-embroidered garment on which his tiny needle is working bears the distinctive logo of international fashion chain Gap. Amitosh is 10. The hardships that blight his young life, exposed by an undercover Observer investigation in the back streets of New Delhi, reveal a tragic consequence of the Wests demand for cheap clothing. It exposes how, despite Gaps rigorous social audit systems launched in 2004 to weed out child labour in its production processes, the system is being abused by unscrupulous subcontractors. The result is that children, in this case working in conditions close to slavery, appear to still be making some of its clothes. Gaps own policy is that if it discovers children being used by contractors to make its clothes that contractor must remove the child from the workplace, provide it with access to schooling and a wage, and guarantee the opportunity of work on reaching a legal working age. It is a policy to stop the abuse of children. And in Amitoshs case it appears not to have succeeded. Sold into bonded labour by his family this summer, Amitosh works 16 hours a day hand-sewing clothing. Beside him on a wooden stool are his only belongings: a tattered comic, a penknife, a plastic comb and a torn blanket with an elephant motif. I was bought from my parents village in [the northern state of] Bihar and taken to New Delhi by train, he says. The men came looking for us in July. They had loudspeakers in the back of a car and told my parents that, if they sent me to work in the city, they wont have to work in the farms. My father was paid a fee for me and I was brought down with 40 other children. The journey took 30 hours and we werent fed. Ive been told I have to work off the fee the owner paid for me so I can go home, but I am working for free. I am a shaagird [a pupil]. The supervisor has told me because I am learning I dont get paid. It has been like this for four months. The derelict industrial unit in which Amitosh and half a dozen other children are working is smeared in filth, the corridors flowing with excrement from a flooded toilet. Behind the youngsters huge piles of garments labelled Gap complete with serial numbers for a new line that Gap concedes it has ordered for sale later in the year lie completed in polythene sacks, with official packaging labels, all for export to Europe and the United States in time for Christmas. Jivaj, who is from West Bengal and looks around 12, told The Observer that some of the boys in the sweatshop had been badly beaten. Our hours are hard and violence is used against us if we dont work hard enough. This is a big order for abroad, they keep telling s that. Last week, we spent four days working from dawn until about one oclock in the morning the following day. I was so tired I felt sick, he whispers, tears streaming down his face. If any of us cried we were hit with a rubber pipe. Some of the boys had oily cloths stuffed in our mouths as punishment. Manik, who is also working for free, claims unconvincingly to be 13. I want to work here. I have somewhere to sleep, he says lo oking furtively behind him. The boss tells me I am learning. It is my duty to stay here. Im learning to be a man and work. Eventually, I will make money and buy a house for my mother. The discovery of the sweatshop has the potential to cause major embarrassment for Gap. Last week, a spokesman admitted that children appeared to have been caught up in the production process and rather than risk selling garments made by children it vowed it would withdraw tens of thousands of items identified by The Observer. He said: At Gap, we firmly believe that under no circumstances is it acceptable for children to produce or work on garments. These allegations are deeply upsetting and we take this situation very seriously. All of our suppliers and their sub-contractors are required to guarantee that they will not use child labour to produce garments. It is clear that one of our vendors violated this agreement, and a full investigation is under way. After learning of this situation, we immediately took steps to stop this work order and to prevent the product from ever being sold in our stores. We are also convening a meeting of our suppliers where we will reinforce our prohibition on child labour. Gap Incorporated has a rigorous factory-monitoring programme in place and last year we revoked our approval of 23 factories for failing to comply with our standards. We are proud of this programme and we will continue to work with government, trade unions and other independent organisations to put an end to the use of child labour. In recent years Gap has made efforts to rebrand itself as a leader in ethical and socially responsible manufacturing, after previously being criticised for practices including the use of child labour. With annual revenues of more than ? 8bn and endorsements from Madonna and Sex and The City star Sarah Jessica Parker, Gap has arguably become the most successful brand in high-street fashion. The latest face of the firms advertising is the singer Joss Stone. Founded in San Francisco in 1969 by Donald Fisher, now one of Americas wealthiest businessmen, Gap operates more than 3,000 stores and franchises across the world. In Britain Gap, babyGap and GapKids are very successful, their own-brand jeans alone outselling their retail rivals lines by three to one. Last year, the company embarked on a huge advertising campaign surrounding Product Red, a charitable trust for Africa founded by the U2 singer Bono and backed by celebrities including Hollywood star Don Cheadle, singers Lenny Kravitz and Mary J Blige, Steven Spielberg and Penelope Cruz. As part of the fundraising endeavour, Gap launched a new, limited collection of clothing and accessories for men and women with Product Red branding, the profits from which are being channelled towards fighting Aids in the Third World. On its website the company states that all individuals who work in garment factories deserve to be treated with dignity and are entitled to safe and fair working conditions and not since 2000, when a BBC Panorama investigation exposed the firms working practices in Cambodia, have children been associated with the production of their brand. Gap has huge contracts in India, which boasts one of the worlds fastest-growing economies. But over the past decade, India has also become the world capital for child labour. According to the UN, child labour contributes an estimated 20 per cent of Indias gross national product with 55 million children aged from five to 14 employed across the business and domestic sectors. Gap may be one of the best-known fashion brands with a public commitment to social responsibility, but the employment [by subcontractors ultimately supplying ajor international retail chains] of bonded child slaves as young as 10 in Indias illegal sweatshops tells a different story, says Bhuwan Ribhu, a Delhi lawyer and activist for the Global March Against Child Labour. The reality is that most major retail firms are in the same game, cutting costs and not considering the consequences. They should know by now what outsourcing to India means. It is an impossible task to track down all of these terrible sweatshops, particularly in the garment industry when you need little more than a basement or an attic crammed with small children to make a healthy profit. Some owners even hide the children in sacks and in carefully concealed mezzanine floors designed to dodge such raids, he explains. Employing cheap labour without proper auditing and investigation of your contractor inevitably means children will be used somewhere along the chain. This may not be what they want to hear as they pull off fresh clothes from clean racks in stores but shoppers in the West should be thinking Why am I only paying ? 30 for a hand-embroidered top. Who made it for such little cost? Is this top stained with a childs sweat? Thats what they need to ask themselves. Seeking to combat its image as a sweatshop operation, the company detailed the findings in its first social responsibility report. The full 42-page document is available on the website, gapinc. com  · The investigation was carried out in partnership with WDR Germany. Gap admits to child labour violations in outsource factories David Teather in New York , The Guardian, Thursday 13 May 2004 03. 06 BST The Gap yesterday admitted to widespread problems from unsafe machinery to child labour violations in the thousands of factories it uses around the world to produce clothing for its retail chains. The Gap said it has a team of more than 90 compliance officers who conducted about 8,500 factory visits last year. The company produces garments in 3,000 factories located in 50 countries. The Gap said it cancelled supply deals with 136 plants last year because of various violations. Contracts were terminated with 42 plants in China, another 42 in south-east Asia, 31 on the Indian subcontinent and nine in Europe. In two factories at which contracts were terminated, The Gap identified under-age workers though in both cases hey were older than 14. The most frequent violations of The Gaps code of conduct included factories not complying with local laws on annual leave, failure to pay the minimum wage, working weeks in excess of 60 hours, inaccurate record keeping and machinery lacking safety devices. It said outright physical punishment and coercion was rare but that monitors had identified verbal harassment by supervisors and the use of physical labour as punishment. Few factories, if any, are in full compliance all the time, wrote compliance officer Anne Gust. If they were, we wouldnt need a code or the resources we devote to monitoring. When we find problems, we work with management to try to resolve them as quickly as possible. We will stay with a manufacturer as long as we believe it is committed to making ongoing improvements. The report was broadly welcomed by lobbyists for better working conditions in the developing world. Nikki Bas, of California-based Sweatshop Watch, said it was the kind of information we have been pushing them to provide for years. ___________________________________________________________ ____________ Gap pulls child labour clothing Fashion chain Gap has withdrawn from sale childrens clothing allegedly made using forced child labour in India. A 10-year-old boy was filmed making clothes for Gap shops in the US and Europe as part of an investigation by the UKs Observer newspaper. The boy told the Observer he had been sold to a factor y owner by his family. Gap, which has made commitments not to use child labour, said that only one item a girls smock blouse was involved. The boy said he had been working for four months without pay and would not be allowed to leave the job until the fee his family had received was repaid. Another boy of 12 said children were beaten if bosses thought they were not working hard enough, the paper reported. Dan Henkle, a spokesman for Gap, said: We were made aware earlier this week that a reporter had found an incident of children working in a factory that was producing for one of our brands, and this is completely unacceptable to us. We have a strict prohibition on child labour, and we are taking this very seriously. This is very upsetting and we intend to investigate thoroughly. Emergency meeting The spokesman said Gap monitors factories which make its clothing and in 2006 revoked approval for 23 factories which it said failed to comply with its standards. Mr Henkle also said the company was calling an emergency meeting with its suppliers in the region. The smock blouse will not be offered for sale in the companys 3,00 0 stores around the world, Gap said, and instead will be destroyed. Western clothing chains increasingly get their products made in Asia, taking advantage of cheaper labour. A 2006 report by the Child Welfare Committee found that 12 of 22 children from a village in the impoverished eastern state of Bihar were re-trafficked, mostly to different states, within a year after being rescued from a Delhi hand-embroidery sweatshop. They go back to the parents, but then what? asked Bharti Sharma, chairwoman of the Child Welfare Committee, a quasi-governmental body. Unless there is close supervision, the children will be going back to work. Rights groups estimate there are as many as 60 million children working in violation of the Child Labor Act, which prohibits children under 14 from working in 72 jobs, ranging from cutting diamonds and shelling cashews to blowing glass. New occupations are still being added, including domestic work and jobs in restaurants and hotels. There are myriad reasons children get sucked back into the labor cycle, activists say. Poor parents are ignorant of the law and seduced by promises that their child will master a trade while sending home ever-higher paychecks; illiterate child laborers lack the confidence to start school; government rehabilitation and monitoring programs are only now being implemented; and natural disasters. In fact, the parents of the children rescued in the Gap case told their attorney that severe floods destroyed their crops in their West Bengal villages, leaving them with no choice but to send their children to work in the capital. Many Indians believe children and their families would be worse off without such jobs. Seeing a child serve tea in restaurants, tea stalls, hotels and corporate offices should be shocking, said Shireen Miller of Save the Children India. But theres a kind of cultural tolerance toward it; there isnt outrage. Millers point was brought home early this month when two 10-year-old boys were seen on videotape plowing in Bihar state on fields owned by the minister for rural development. The high-profile rescue at the sweatshop making Gap clothes in October was followed by rescues of 103 boys from two other textile factories in New Delhi. The sweeps have jolted the Indian government and Gap. Government officials have since drawn up a child-labor eradication plan, promising regular audits in such labor-intensive export industries as textiles, carpets and jewelry. They have also pledged a large funding increase from $170 million to $1 billion for rehabilitation centers that offer informal education and vocational training to rescued minors. On its Web site, the Ministry of Labor acknowledges the challenge, calling child labor a â€Å"socioeconomic problem inextricably linked to poverty and illiteracy† that â€Å"requires concerted efforts from all sectors of the society to make a dent. A Gap spokesman says a New Delhi subcontractor sent the work to an illegal, makeshift facility without Gaps knowledge. Gap ordered the vendor, who they declined to name, to fire the subcontractor who had employed the children in violation of the companys policies. Gap has also placed the vendor on probation, reduced orders to his factory by 50 percent, and is organizing an industry f orum called Global March Against Child Labor early next year, according to Bill Chandler, Gaps vice president of corporate communications. † Gap Inc. elieves very strongly that under no circumstance should work on any of our garments be done by children, said Chandler. We require all of our vendors to comply with our strict code of conduct that includes an absolute ban on child labor. Gap says it will donate $200,000 to create community centers in India that will closely monitor the 200 garment factories that manufacture their products to ensure that no child is hired. Some of the boys who hand-stitched sequins onto Gap shirts were as young as 10 and worked up to 16 hours a day, rights activists say. Many had been packed into tiny rooms in a series of factories, working from 9 a. . until midnight with just a 30-minute lunch break, and were beaten with rods if they missed a stitch, activists say. All were reunited with their parents last week after spending six weeks in the cu stody of the nonprofit organization Save the Childhood Movement, while a New Delhi court reviewed their case. The court had initially refused to allow the parents custody of their children after learning that they had personally delivered them to the factory administrator, said attorney Ashok Agarwal. He said he agreed to represent the parents only after they promised to protect their children from future traffickers. On a recent afternoon at the Save the Childhood Movement shelter, the boys became reacquainted with their childhoods, climbing trees, playing cricket and watching television. They also practiced yoga, meditation, and attended counseling sessions conducted by former child laborers. The children have to learn how to be free, said shelter manager Manish Sharma. When the court finally ordered the boys home, it gave each family $500 to be used to generate income by purchasing items such as livestock, a motorized rickshaw or a cigarette vending cart. S. K. Das, the principal secretary of the West Bengal Labor Department, said local officials work with families to devise an income plan, which must be approved before payment. But childrens activists say there is little follow-up after most payments. The 2006 Child Welfare Committee report found that families exhausted all the money in a few days. Children have obviously not benefited at all. Activists said families typically use the money to for such items as ceiling fans, alcohol, weddings and unpaid debts. Bhuwan Ribhu, a lawyer for Save the Childhood Movement, says his group will visit every few months the boys who left the sweatshop manufacturing Gap clothes. But without an effective government rehabilitation system in place, he says it is impossible to insulate them from traffickers who are often residents of the same village. Individual states are responsible for enforcing child labor laws, creating a fragmented and disorganized system in which blame for inaction is traded back and forth between state and federal governments, rights advocates say. This summer, the Delhi High Court ordered local government to stop traffickers from bringing out-of-state children to the capital after the northern state of Jharkhand argued that New Delhi has done little to stop it. The Delhi Labor Department is woefully understaffed, with only 50 inspectors for a workforce of 8 million, said a department official who requested anonymity because he is not permitted to speak on the record. We are supposed to implement 26 labor laws with merely nine people, he said. And the inspectors are not qualified. Their nderstanding of the legal issues is poor. Most of the boys swept up in the raid on the sweatshop producing Gap clothes were under age 14 and earned less than $15 per month in a nation whose annual per capita income is $3,600. But when they arrived at the shelter, they recited phrases that their bosses had drilled into them that they were 14 (the legal working age) and earned decent money, said attorney Ribhu. Mohammed Nadim, 15, who was recent ly rescued after working two years in a garment sweatshop in New Delhi, smiled uncomfortably when asked why he had left home. I went with the man (trafficker) to earn money, he said. Reached by phone at his village in Bihar state, his father, Mohammed Tohid, contradicted his son, saying he found his own way to the factory. I know he is too young to work, he said. I know hes a child. But if he wants to work, he can. Kolkata : With 50,000 children working as domestic labourers in Kolkata alone, the ineffectiveness of the amended Child Labour Prevention Act (CLPRA) implemented in the state becomes conspicuous. At a workshop organised by Save the Children, an NGO working for children’s rights, speakers highlighted various issues detrimental to the implementation of CLPRA in West Bengal and across the country. â€Å"West Bengal is one of the largest contributors in child labour and trafficking. There is a greater need to define the responsibilities of the judiciary, police, state government and civil society in implementing the CLPRA. There is a need for public-private partnerships,† said Manabendra Nath Ray, state programme manager, Save the Children. The workshop focused on the role played by the state Labour Department and the Women and Child Development Department in implementing the CLPRA and stressed on the contribution of education, rehabilitation and awareness to eradicate child labour. â€Å"Our study has shown that most of the children exploited as domestic helps are brought to Kolkata or trafficked mainly from adjoining districts of North and South 24 Parganas and East Midnapore,† said Thomas Chandy, CEO, Save the Children (Bal Raksha, Bharat). The NGO claims that though census 2001 estimates over 12 million children aged between 5 and 14 continue to work in hazardous industries, the actual number of child labours is much higher, as nearly 20 million children are working in roadside eateries or are employed as domestic workers in the country. Experts also stressed on the need to cover the loopholes of the CLPRA which says that children under the age of 14 are banned from working as domestic helps, in dhabas, restaurants, hotels and other hospitality sectors. According to a study conducted by Save the Children, 74 per cent of the child domestic labourers are aged between 12 and 16, leaving a crucial gap in bringing a huge number of children aged between 17 and 18 under the Act. ‘Inspectors, who are responsible for implementing the CLPRA, face a lot of restrictions. We would like the civil society and NGOs to help us by providing information about the cases where children are being exploited,† said S Islam, Assistant Labour Commissioner. Questions for discussion: a. What are the primary and secondary causes of child labour in India. What are the challenges faced by governments, NGO’s, domestic international businesses when they try to eradicate child labour? b. Are you satisfied with the actions taken by Gap? What would you do in similar situation that can lead to a sustainable solution to this problem? c. What are the inadequacies of the various Regulatory Departments? Discuss a few actionable and practical suggestions to make them more efficient? d. Elaborate on the role played by the NGO’s in such a scenario as above? Would a multi stakeholder approach work better – give pros and cons of such an arrangement.

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Customer Relationship Management in Banking

Customer Relationship Management in Banking ABSTRACT Today the world is globalized and customers are well educated and well informed. This has increased the competition among the firms and organisations. The competition elevates the customer bargaining power and switching power to choose the best product and service. Therefore customer relationship has become a focus of importance to all the companies in order to retain the customer as well as maximize revenues. Today marketing is no more developing, delivering and selling of goods and services, it is moving towards developing and maintaining long term relationship with customers. Therefore relationship marketing has making its important in all the business sectors so as in financial services. Customers Relationship Management creates the opportunity through which the banks can benefit by developing good relationships with their customers. The aim of the project is to gain a better understanding how the CRM has benefited both the bank as well as its customers. This research also aims to identify how critically CRM has been practiced in Lloyds Banking Group, analysis the data mining process of Lloyds Banking Group, to find out the customer segmentation procedure of the bank to analysis the customer retaining strategy of the bank, to find out how does the bank measure customer life time value and to verify the relationship between the customers and the Lloyds Banking Group. To validate the purpose of the project has addressed to set of questionnaires, one is for Lloyds Banking Groups employees and other is for customers of the bank. The literature review has also help to understand the answer for the research questions. Both the quantitative as well as qualitative data collection techniques have been adopted namely, survey questionnaire and semi-structure interviews. Some data has also collected through interview of Lloy ds employee and a group of their customers. Lloyds use CRM as an effective business strategy to classify the most profitable customers for bank. And accordingly bank gives priorities those customers through individualized marketing, reprising, flexible conclusion building and modify service-all delivered through a variety of sales channels that the bank use. Researcher has found that Lloyds is conducting a campaign management by using data mining task. This campaign helps to make crucial business decisions by exacting suitable, beforehand strange and ultimately logical and actionable awareness from huge databases. Researcher also has suggested suitable recommendations to the bank to improve the CRM practice in Lloyds Banking Group. 1.0 INTRODUCTION This chapter provides the brief introduction of research. Furthermore, it also discusses the aims, objectives of the research questions and scope of the study. 1.1 TOPIC OF THE RESEARCH Customer Relationship Management of Lloyds Banking Group PLC; A Critical Evaluation 1.2 INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH Peter Drucker said, â€Å"The purpose of a business is to create customers†. Customer Relationship Management can be the single strongest weapon we have as manage to ensure that customers become and remain loyal. Customer Relationship Management (CRM), is an vital division of modern business organization. CRM concern the relation between the organisations along with its consumers. Consumers are the means of support of any business in a universal business with thousands of workforce and a multi-billion earnings, or a single broker with a handful of standard consumers. CRM is the same in principle for both examples. Globalization and technology improvements have pushed companies into hard competition. In this new era organisations are targeting on managing customer relationships, mainly customer satisfaction, in order to maximize revenues (Constantinos 2003). Today, marketing is not just developing, delivering and selling; it is shifting towards developing and maintaining equally long term relationships with customers (Buttle, 1996). This new business values is called relationship marketing (RM), which has involved significant interest both from marketing academics and practitioners (Gronroos, 1994). The Greek philosopher, Epictetus said that â€Å"what concern me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are† (Szwarch, 2005, p.3). The concepts of consumer satisfaction were depending on the thinking of consumer. Research suggests that customer satisfaction, basic concept of relationship marketing, is important in achieving and retaining competitive advantage. Research studies have discovered that retaining current customers is much less expensive than attracting new customers (Desatnick, 1988; Stone et al., 1996; Bitran and Mondschein, 1997; Chattopadhyay, 2001; Massey et al., 2001). The best way to retain customers is to keep them satisfied, a number of studies have shown that customer satisfaction can guide to brand loyalty, repurchases intention and repeat sales (Day, 1984; Swan and Oliver, 1989; Oliver, 1999). Customer retention, in turn, seems to be related to profitability (Oliver, 1999). Relationship marketing is becoming significant in financial services (Zineldin, 1995). If a bank develops and sustains a solid relationship with its customers, its competitors cannot easily replace them and so this relationship provides for a continued competitive advantage (Gilbert, 2003). Moriarty et al. (1983) has suggested relationship concept in the banking sector which states that banks can increase their profits by maximising the profitability of the total customer relationship over time, instead of looking for to get more profit from any single transaction. Perrien et al. (1992) observed severe competitive pressures that forces financial institution to restructure their marketing strategies by developing into long-term relationship with customers. And banking industry purely related to financial services, which needs to create the trust among the people. This research is exploratory in nature and design. The data which is collected is going to be mostly primary data collected from the relevant persons within the bank. The data has gathered from the face to face interviews with the help of structured and semi-structured questionnaire with those persons. The above describe interviews has last 40 (fourty) to 45 (fourty five) minutes (approx). On the other hand the researcher has decided to collect primary data from random interviews of Lloyds Banking Groups customers. Sample size is around 200 customers and of structured questionnaire. But of course this research paper has relied on reviewing the various secondary data available from various researches such as books, magazines, website, previous research and publication etc. The collected data has been analysed by graphs, table and pi chart drawn from Microsoft excel. 1.3 AIM OF THE RESEARCH The aim of the research is to study why CRM is important in bank, how the CRM works in banks and also the effectiveness of Lloyds Banking Group in obtaining long term customer relationship, customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction by the use of CRM. And also suggest feasible recommendations to Lloyds Banking Group to increase the customer satisfaction and market share by the effective use of CRM. 1.4 OBJECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH The followings are the objectives of this research; To study how critically practised in Lloyds Banking Group Analysis the data mining process of Lloyds Banking Group To find out how the bank segments their customers To analysis how the bank retaining their customers To find out how does the bank measure customer Life Time Value To verify the relationship between the customers and the Lloyds Banking Group 1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY The scope of the study and research work has limited to Lloyds Banking Group only. This chosen level of aspects has stayed at large in the study so that it can be studied well and analyzed thoroughly to get a deeper understanding. Trying to cover too much ground may lead to a very superficial and confused analysis and may involve long time duration to complete the project work or report. Therefore a specified and narrow down approach with Lloyds Banking Group and an evaluation of its success has comprised with the researchers scope of the study to avoid confused analysis and a weaker report. 1.6 OUTLINE OF THE SUBSEQUENT CHAPTERS Chapter 1; INTODUCTION This chapter provides the brief introduction of the research. Furthermore, it also discusses the aims, objectives of the research questions and scope of the learning. CHAPTER 2; LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter determines the theoretical issues relating to CRM which is relevant to the research. CHAPTER 3; METHODOLOGY This episode discusses about primary and secondary methods of research used by the researcher. CHAPTER 4; CONTEXT Chapter 4 deals with the information about Lloyds Banking Group. CHAPTER 5; FINDINGS This chapter deals with the result of primary data. CHAPTER 6; ANALYSIS Analysis part deals with findings in the context of literature review in chapter 2. CHAPTER 7; CONCLUSION This chapter includes the overall conclusion of the research. This chapter produce the conclusion compared and contrasted with the finding of the research and the literature review. It summarises the aims and key findings and acknowledges the limitation of the works. CHAPTER 8; RECOMMENDATIONS This chapter is the last chapter of the research. This chapter provide the recommendation for the managerial implication in the Lloyds Banking Group. At the end, chapter provide recommendation for the future research. CHAPTER 9; REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY This chapter includes a systematic list of books, web site and other works such as journal, magazine etc which have been used as secondary data or as reference in this research. CHAPTER 10; APPENDICES This chapter contain all questionnaires and some graphs, chart and tables which have been made on the basis of customer survey. 2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter contains a review of literature relevant to the research. This literature review deals with, about CRM, the history and goals of an integrated banking CRM, the technological factor of CRM, the process cycle in banks, data warehouse technology, data mining process, how to analysis the data, customer segmentation process, communication strategies of bank to the customers etc. 2.1 CUSTOMER RELATIONSIP MANAGEMENT Existing research states that ‘relationships are the base to the successful development and edition of new business viewpoint, though business have taken care of relationships with their customers for many centuries (Gronroos, 1994). Sheth and Parvathiyar, (1995) said that relationships demand much more than mere transactions. Rather, they symbolize strategic and tactical issues based on a new philosophical move that geared in the direction of long-term organisation survival. According to Storbacka, (1994) relationship marketing got popular in 1990s but it has a long history under different names. In its starting, one-to-one marketing appeared in the mid 1990s, which transformed into Customer Relationship Management. Parvatiyar and Sheth gave a static definition of CRM. â€Å"Customer Relationship Management is widespread tactic and process of acquire, retaining and partnering with careful consumers to create better-quality value for the business and the consumer† (Parvatiyar and Sheth 2000, p.6) 2.2 THE HISTORY AND GOALS OF AN INTEGRATED BANKING CRM According to Puccinelli (1999) the financial services industry as entering a new era where personal attention is decreasing because the institutions are using technology to replace human contact in many application areas. Sherif, 2002 advocated that, now global changes brought new trends, directions and new ways of doing business, which also brought new challenges and opportunities to financial institutions. In order to complete with newly increasing competitive pressures, financial institutions must recognize the need of balancing their performance by achieving their strategic goals and meeting continues volatile customer needs requirements. Different ways must be analyzed to meet customer needs. Foss said that banks are highly focusing on CRM for the last five years that is expected to continue. According to Peter (1998) and Chablo (1999) the main goals of an effective integrated CRM solution in the banking sector are to enable financial institutes to; Widen customer relationship through acquiring new customers, identifying and targeting new segments and expanding in new markets. Lengthen the existing relationship developing longer term relationships, increasing perceived value of products and introducing new products and Deepen the relationship with customers initiating the cross selling and up selling opportunities, understanding the propensity of different customer segments to purchase and increase sales. The implementation if CRM system in a bank helps the business organisation to obtain a complete picture of their existing customers, design both customer-oriented and market-driven financial products and services, as well as implement extensive and reliable financial marketing research and efficient campaigns, to achieve and enhance customer loyalty and profitability. The above goals can be achieved through the seamless integration of information technology solutions and business objectives at every process of the bank business that affects the customer. 2.3 THE PHASES OF CRM The main phases of CRM are as follows; Customer selection or Segmentation According to Dave Chaffey (2009), customer selection is defining the types of customers that a company will market to. It means identifying different groups of customers for which to develop offerings and to target during acquisition, retention and extension. Different ways of segmenting customers by value and by their detailed lifecycle with the customer are reviewed. Many companies are now only proactively marketing to favoured customers. Seth Godin (1999), says â€Å"Focus on share of customer, not market share fire 70 per cent customers and watch your profits go up!† According to Efraim Turban (2008), the most sophisticated segmentation and targeting schemes for extension of customers are often used by banks, which have full customer information and acquire history data as they search for to boost Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) through encouraging increased use of products overtime. The segmentation approach used by banks is based on five main basics which in result are covered on top of each other. The amount of options used, and therefore the complexity of approach, will depend on resources obtainable, opportunities, capabilities and technology afforded by catalog. i. Identify customer lifecycle groups When guests use online services then they basically pass those seven or more stages. The organisations have clear these segments and establish the CRM infrastructure to categories customers in this manner; then they deliver focused messages, whichever by modified web messaging or by e-mails that are triggered routinely because of various rules. First-time guests recognized by a cookie placed on their PC. When guests registered, they are tracked through the residual stages. The customers who have purchased one or more products are one particular important group. The key challenge is for a company to encourage a customer to shift from the first product to the second and then go on. Explicit offers can be try to push customer for further products. In the same way, when customers turn into an inactive then the customer required follow-up. ii. Identify customer profit characteristics This is a conventional segmentation which is based on the nature of customer. For Business 2 Business Companies it includes sex, age and geography. It includes volume of the organisation and the type of sector or application, the organisation operates in. iii. Identify behaviour in response and purchase As shown in figure 2.2 through analysis of data base when customer progress through the lifecycle, company is capable to build up a detail reaction and buy history which judges the details of frequency, recency, group of product buy and monetary value. This approach is known as ‘RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary value) analysis. iv. Identify multi-channel behaviour In spite of of the eagerness of the company for online channels, various customers are chosen for using online channels and others customers are chosen conventional channels. This is an degree, be indicated by RFM and rejoinder examination since customers with a preference for an online channel is more reactive and make more use online. Customer who likes online channels is focused mostly by online communications such as e-mail, but when customer like conventional channels is focused by conventional communications such as direct mail or phone. This is known as ‘right-channelling. v. Tone and style preference In a same way to channel liking, customers are respond in their own way to various types of message. Some customers like rational application, in that time a detailed e-mail may work best. On the other hand some customers are preferred an emotional appeal. Companies are test for this in customers or conclude it using profit description and response performance and then expand various inventive treatments consequently. 2. Customer acquisition Processes used to add new customer. According to Turban (2008), customer acquisition refers to marketing activities intended to form relationship with new customers while reducing acquisition cost and targeting high-value customers. Service value and selecting the right path for various customers are essential at this stage and during the lifecycle. The conventional manner to customer acquisition include a marketing manager developing a blend of mass marketing (billboards, magazine advertisements etc.) and direct marketing (mail, telephone, etc.) campaigns based on their knowledge of the particular customer base that was being focussed. Marketing campaign trying to pressure new customers to buy a particular type of diapers, the mass marketing ads might be determined in parenting magazines. The advertisements could also be positioned in more conventional publications whose readership demographics were alike to those of new parents. Customer acquisition is comparatively similar to mass marketing. A marketing manager selects the demographics that they are involved in and after that works with a data vendor to obtain lists of buyers who meet those features. The data vendors have large database holding millions of eventual customers that can be segment based on explicit demographic criteria. The idea of â€Å"similar demographics† has conventionally been an art rather than a science. Usually there are not hard-and-fast systems about whether two groups of buyers share the similar features. Most of the segmentation that took place in conventional direct marketing involves hunches on the division of the marketing professional. 3. Customer retention Dafe Chaffey 2009 said that customer retention refers to the marketing actions taken by a company to keep its current customers. Identifying applicable offerings based on their personal needs and complete position in the customer lifecycle (e.g. purchase value or number) is key. Customer retention strategy aims to keep a high percentage of valuable customers and a customer development strategy aims to boost the value of those retained customer to the organisation. Customer retention is based on customer loyalty. And customer loyalty is the point to which a customer will continue with a specific brand or vendor. Customer acquisition to retain and extend create long-term customer relationship. We need to calculate customer satisfaction, as satisfaction drives loyalty and loyalty drives profitability. This relationship is exposed below; The marketers aim is to push customers up the curve towards the affection zone. But the majority are not in that zone. Marketers must understand to achieve retention,why customers defers or are indifferent. 4. Customer extension This technique is encouraging customers to increase their involvement with a company. According to Turban 2008, customer extension is increasing the range of products that a customer buys from an organisation. Sometime it is referred ‘customer development. Increasing the lifetime value (CLV) of a customer is the main objective of customer extension by encouraging cross-sell. For example a customer of Egg credit card may be offered the loan or a deposit account. There are many of customer extension technique for CRM as follows; Re-sell: same type of products to existing customers-particular vital in some Business 2 Business background as re-buys or modified re-buys. Cross-sell: sell extra products which may be closely related to the original buy. Up-sell: this is mean, selling more expensive products. Reactivation: Customers who have purchased for some time or have lapsed can be encouraged to buy again. Referrals: generating sells from recommendation from existing customers. 2.4 CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUE MODELLING Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is also an important theory and practise of CRM. But the calculation of CLV is not straightforward. There are so many company, they do not calculate it. According to Dave Chaffey (2009) â€Å"Lifetime value is the total net benefits that a customer or group of customers will provide a company over their total relationship with the company†. CLV is based on estimating the income and costs related with each customer over a phase of time and then calculating the net present value in present monetary terms using a discount rate value applied over the stage. Efraim Turban (2006) said there is various scale of complexity in calculating LTC. Those are exposed in figure 2.6. Option 1 is a realistic way or estimated proxy for future LTV, but the true LTV is the future value of the customer at individual level. CLV modelling at a segment level 4 is crucial within marketing since it answers the question; How much can I afford to invest in acquiring a new customer? Lifetime value analysis helps marketers to: Create the true value of a companys customer base Recognize and compare crucial target segment Calculate the effectiveness of another customer retention strategy Plan and calculate investment in customer acquisition programmes Make decisions about product and offers Figure 2.7 gives an example of how LTV can be used to develop a CRM strategy for different customer groups. There are 4 (four) main types of customers are indicated by their present and future value as bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Separate customers groupings (circles) are recognized according to their current value (as indicated by current profitability) and future value as indicated by CLV calculation. Every group will have a customer segmentation based on their demographics. Therefore this is used for customer selection. Within the four main value groupings, there are various strategies are developed for various customer groups. Few bronze customers such as group A and B practically do not have development potential and are usually unprofitable, therefore the objective is to reduce costs in communications and if they do not stay as customers this is acceptable. Some bronze customers like group C may have potential for growth; therefore for group C the strategy is to extend their purchases. Silver customers are focused with customer extension offer and gold customers are extended. Platinum customers are the best customers; therefore the communication is very important with these customers. 2.5 THE TECHNOLOGICAL FACTORS OF CRM According to Davenport and Short, (1990); Porter, (1987) ‘information technology is an enabler to thoroughly redesign business process to achieve improvements in organisational performance. ‘Information Technology help helps a business process by facilitating changes to job practices and establishing new techniques to link a customer with organisations, suppliers and stakeholders (Hammer and Champy, 1993). Eckerson and Watson (2000) advocated that ‘CRM take full advantage of technology to collect and analyze data on customer patters, expand predictive models, interpret customer behaviour, proper respond with communications, and deliver product and service to individual customers. By using technology a business can generate a 360 degree view of consumers to find out from past interactions to optimize future ones. Peppard (2000) said that ‘the leading factors in CRM development are improvement in set of connections communications, client/server compute, and business cleverness application. CRM collect, store, maintain and distribute customer knowledge all over the organisation. The effectual management of information has a vital role to play in CRM. In the case of scheming customer duration importance, consolidated view, product tailoring and facility improvement, the information is essential. Along with data warehouses, enterprise resource planning (ERP) organization and the internet are the vital infrastructures to CRM application. Fickel (1999) said ‘CRM application links front office (e.g. marketing, sales and customer service) and back office (e.g. financial, logistics, operations and human resources) functions with the businesses customer contact point. A companys touch point is â€Å"all of the communication, human and physical interactions your customers experience during their relationship lifecycle with your organisation. Whether an commercial, Web-site, sales individual, store or office, finger points are vital because customers from perceptions of your organisation and brand based on their cumulative experiences† (Source; http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/4508.imc at 16/10/2009 on 15:25) According to Eckerson and Watson (2000), ‘CRM integrated touch points is something like a common view of the customer. A separate information systems controlled these touch points. Figure 2.8 demonstrates the correlation between customer touch point with back and front office operations Peppers and Rogres, (1999) said ‘In many companies, CRM is just a technology solution that extends divide databases and sales force automation tools to link sales and marketing functions in order to develop targeting efforts. On the other hand some organisations consider CRM as a tool that is exclusively designed for one-to-one relationship. According to Goldenberg (2000) ‘CRM is not just a tools application for sales, marketing and service, but when CRM completely and successfully implemented, customer-driven, a cross-functional, technology-integrated commerce process management scheme that improves relationships and encompasses the whole organisation. 2.6 DATA WAREHOUSE TECHNOLOGY According to Watson (2000) ‘data warehouse is a tools of information technology management that helps business decision makers to instant access of information of customer data throughout the organisation by combining all database and operational systems like sales and transaction, human resource, inventory, purchasing, financial and marketing system. Data warehouse pull out, clean, convert and manage large volumes of data from various systems and creating a historical record of all customer. Data warehousing technology is the most crucial part of CRM because it makes CRM possible. Shepard et al. (1998) said ‘a better understanding of customer behaviour is possible because data warehousing technology consolidates correlates and convert customer data into customer intelligence. Thoughts of customers and their buying pattern can improve information relating to customer service interactions, bill and account status, back orders, product returns, product delivery, and internal operating cost. The capacity of a data storehouse to store hundreds and thousands of gigabytes of data compose an analysis feasible as well as immediate. Organisational benefits with a data warehouse are as follows; exact and faster access of information bad and duplicate data eliminate by quality data and filtering customer profiling and retention modelling it compute total present importance and approximate future value of every customer it gives detail report 2.7 DATA MINING TECHNOLOGY Peppers and Rogres, (1999) said that ‘the first analytical step of data mining is to describe the data. Data mining summarize its statistical attributes like standard deviations and means, visually review it by use of charts and graphs and distributes the value of the field in our data. But alone data description can not provide an action plan. We have to build a analytical model based on pattern determined from known output and after that we have to test the model on result outside the original sample. An ideal model must never be puzzled with reality, but it is useful guide to understanding our businesses. According to Eckerson and Watson (2000) ‘we can use data mining for both classification and regression problems. In first problem we can predict what type something will fall into. In second problems we are predicting a number like prospect that a person will react to an recommend. In CRM process, data mining is often used to allocate a score to a particular customer. Data mining is also often using to recognize a set of characteristics, which is called profile. Data mining segments customers in to groups with similar behaviour like purchasing a particular product. 2.8 THE CRM PROCESS CYCLE IN BANKS Pound (2000) said that exploration and alteration process should be done by the banks on basis of customer information captured; this shows the full value of CRM initiatives. Banks set up a closed CRM cycle with the help of an integrated CRM solution, which composed of a set of continuous iterative process. It manages the whole customer related process for bank, analysing customer profile, customer data and life time value, which is helping to making marketing decision and optimizing the execution of marketing campaigns, customer service strategies and sales strategies across various channels during the bank. According to Professor Constantin Zopounidis (2002) CRM process cycle is based on a generic business view. It presents a continuous improvement of value between customers and banks across touch points. Pound 2000 said that ‘recent banking data sources are extremely heterogeneous. Geographic information is dispersed due to continual acquisitions, mergers and reorganizations. For example a bank might use web site, ATMs, e-mail, sales, call centres and marketing automation applications that must be integrated in a unified environment of CRM banking. An effective multi-channels customer interface will not be possible without a centrally integrated warehouse driving the entire CRM process cycle. This should be update real time. The historical data should be recorded by it, which is used to create propensity models and customer life time value models to recognize past behaviour and action in order to take future marketing strategy. 2.9 CUSTOMER DATA COLLECTION Kristin Anderson Carol Kerr (2002), said that in banki Customer Relationship Management in Banking Customer Relationship Management in Banking ABSTRACT Today the world is globalized and customers are well educated and well informed. This has increased the competition among the firms and organisations. The competition elevates the customer bargaining power and switching power to choose the best product and service. Therefore customer relationship has become a focus of importance to all the companies in order to retain the customer as well as maximize revenues. Today marketing is no more developing, delivering and selling of goods and services, it is moving towards developing and maintaining long term relationship with customers. Therefore relationship marketing has making its important in all the business sectors so as in financial services. Customers Relationship Management creates the opportunity through which the banks can benefit by developing good relationships with their customers. The aim of the project is to gain a better understanding how the CRM has benefited both the bank as well as its customers. This research also aims to identify how critically CRM has been practiced in Lloyds Banking Group, analysis the data mining process of Lloyds Banking Group, to find out the customer segmentation procedure of the bank to analysis the customer retaining strategy of the bank, to find out how does the bank measure customer life time value and to verify the relationship between the customers and the Lloyds Banking Group. To validate the purpose of the project has addressed to set of questionnaires, one is for Lloyds Banking Groups employees and other is for customers of the bank. The literature review has also help to understand the answer for the research questions. Both the quantitative as well as qualitative data collection techniques have been adopted namely, survey questionnaire and semi-structure interviews. Some data has also collected through interview of Lloy ds employee and a group of their customers. Lloyds use CRM as an effective business strategy to classify the most profitable customers for bank. And accordingly bank gives priorities those customers through individualized marketing, reprising, flexible conclusion building and modify service-all delivered through a variety of sales channels that the bank use. Researcher has found that Lloyds is conducting a campaign management by using data mining task. This campaign helps to make crucial business decisions by exacting suitable, beforehand strange and ultimately logical and actionable awareness from huge databases. Researcher also has suggested suitable recommendations to the bank to improve the CRM practice in Lloyds Banking Group. 1.0 INTRODUCTION This chapter provides the brief introduction of research. Furthermore, it also discusses the aims, objectives of the research questions and scope of the study. 1.1 TOPIC OF THE RESEARCH Customer Relationship Management of Lloyds Banking Group PLC; A Critical Evaluation 1.2 INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH Peter Drucker said, â€Å"The purpose of a business is to create customers†. Customer Relationship Management can be the single strongest weapon we have as manage to ensure that customers become and remain loyal. Customer Relationship Management (CRM), is an vital division of modern business organization. CRM concern the relation between the organisations along with its consumers. Consumers are the means of support of any business in a universal business with thousands of workforce and a multi-billion earnings, or a single broker with a handful of standard consumers. CRM is the same in principle for both examples. Globalization and technology improvements have pushed companies into hard competition. In this new era organisations are targeting on managing customer relationships, mainly customer satisfaction, in order to maximize revenues (Constantinos 2003). Today, marketing is not just developing, delivering and selling; it is shifting towards developing and maintaining equally long term relationships with customers (Buttle, 1996). This new business values is called relationship marketing (RM), which has involved significant interest both from marketing academics and practitioners (Gronroos, 1994). The Greek philosopher, Epictetus said that â€Å"what concern me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are† (Szwarch, 2005, p.3). The concepts of consumer satisfaction were depending on the thinking of consumer. Research suggests that customer satisfaction, basic concept of relationship marketing, is important in achieving and retaining competitive advantage. Research studies have discovered that retaining current customers is much less expensive than attracting new customers (Desatnick, 1988; Stone et al., 1996; Bitran and Mondschein, 1997; Chattopadhyay, 2001; Massey et al., 2001). The best way to retain customers is to keep them satisfied, a number of studies have shown that customer satisfaction can guide to brand loyalty, repurchases intention and repeat sales (Day, 1984; Swan and Oliver, 1989; Oliver, 1999). Customer retention, in turn, seems to be related to profitability (Oliver, 1999). Relationship marketing is becoming significant in financial services (Zineldin, 1995). If a bank develops and sustains a solid relationship with its customers, its competitors cannot easily replace them and so this relationship provides for a continued competitive advantage (Gilbert, 2003). Moriarty et al. (1983) has suggested relationship concept in the banking sector which states that banks can increase their profits by maximising the profitability of the total customer relationship over time, instead of looking for to get more profit from any single transaction. Perrien et al. (1992) observed severe competitive pressures that forces financial institution to restructure their marketing strategies by developing into long-term relationship with customers. And banking industry purely related to financial services, which needs to create the trust among the people. This research is exploratory in nature and design. The data which is collected is going to be mostly primary data collected from the relevant persons within the bank. The data has gathered from the face to face interviews with the help of structured and semi-structured questionnaire with those persons. The above describe interviews has last 40 (fourty) to 45 (fourty five) minutes (approx). On the other hand the researcher has decided to collect primary data from random interviews of Lloyds Banking Groups customers. Sample size is around 200 customers and of structured questionnaire. But of course this research paper has relied on reviewing the various secondary data available from various researches such as books, magazines, website, previous research and publication etc. The collected data has been analysed by graphs, table and pi chart drawn from Microsoft excel. 1.3 AIM OF THE RESEARCH The aim of the research is to study why CRM is important in bank, how the CRM works in banks and also the effectiveness of Lloyds Banking Group in obtaining long term customer relationship, customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction by the use of CRM. And also suggest feasible recommendations to Lloyds Banking Group to increase the customer satisfaction and market share by the effective use of CRM. 1.4 OBJECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH The followings are the objectives of this research; To study how critically practised in Lloyds Banking Group Analysis the data mining process of Lloyds Banking Group To find out how the bank segments their customers To analysis how the bank retaining their customers To find out how does the bank measure customer Life Time Value To verify the relationship between the customers and the Lloyds Banking Group 1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY The scope of the study and research work has limited to Lloyds Banking Group only. This chosen level of aspects has stayed at large in the study so that it can be studied well and analyzed thoroughly to get a deeper understanding. Trying to cover too much ground may lead to a very superficial and confused analysis and may involve long time duration to complete the project work or report. Therefore a specified and narrow down approach with Lloyds Banking Group and an evaluation of its success has comprised with the researchers scope of the study to avoid confused analysis and a weaker report. 1.6 OUTLINE OF THE SUBSEQUENT CHAPTERS Chapter 1; INTODUCTION This chapter provides the brief introduction of the research. Furthermore, it also discusses the aims, objectives of the research questions and scope of the learning. CHAPTER 2; LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter determines the theoretical issues relating to CRM which is relevant to the research. CHAPTER 3; METHODOLOGY This episode discusses about primary and secondary methods of research used by the researcher. CHAPTER 4; CONTEXT Chapter 4 deals with the information about Lloyds Banking Group. CHAPTER 5; FINDINGS This chapter deals with the result of primary data. CHAPTER 6; ANALYSIS Analysis part deals with findings in the context of literature review in chapter 2. CHAPTER 7; CONCLUSION This chapter includes the overall conclusion of the research. This chapter produce the conclusion compared and contrasted with the finding of the research and the literature review. It summarises the aims and key findings and acknowledges the limitation of the works. CHAPTER 8; RECOMMENDATIONS This chapter is the last chapter of the research. This chapter provide the recommendation for the managerial implication in the Lloyds Banking Group. At the end, chapter provide recommendation for the future research. CHAPTER 9; REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY This chapter includes a systematic list of books, web site and other works such as journal, magazine etc which have been used as secondary data or as reference in this research. CHAPTER 10; APPENDICES This chapter contain all questionnaires and some graphs, chart and tables which have been made on the basis of customer survey. 2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter contains a review of literature relevant to the research. This literature review deals with, about CRM, the history and goals of an integrated banking CRM, the technological factor of CRM, the process cycle in banks, data warehouse technology, data mining process, how to analysis the data, customer segmentation process, communication strategies of bank to the customers etc. 2.1 CUSTOMER RELATIONSIP MANAGEMENT Existing research states that ‘relationships are the base to the successful development and edition of new business viewpoint, though business have taken care of relationships with their customers for many centuries (Gronroos, 1994). Sheth and Parvathiyar, (1995) said that relationships demand much more than mere transactions. Rather, they symbolize strategic and tactical issues based on a new philosophical move that geared in the direction of long-term organisation survival. According to Storbacka, (1994) relationship marketing got popular in 1990s but it has a long history under different names. In its starting, one-to-one marketing appeared in the mid 1990s, which transformed into Customer Relationship Management. Parvatiyar and Sheth gave a static definition of CRM. â€Å"Customer Relationship Management is widespread tactic and process of acquire, retaining and partnering with careful consumers to create better-quality value for the business and the consumer† (Parvatiyar and Sheth 2000, p.6) 2.2 THE HISTORY AND GOALS OF AN INTEGRATED BANKING CRM According to Puccinelli (1999) the financial services industry as entering a new era where personal attention is decreasing because the institutions are using technology to replace human contact in many application areas. Sherif, 2002 advocated that, now global changes brought new trends, directions and new ways of doing business, which also brought new challenges and opportunities to financial institutions. In order to complete with newly increasing competitive pressures, financial institutions must recognize the need of balancing their performance by achieving their strategic goals and meeting continues volatile customer needs requirements. Different ways must be analyzed to meet customer needs. Foss said that banks are highly focusing on CRM for the last five years that is expected to continue. According to Peter (1998) and Chablo (1999) the main goals of an effective integrated CRM solution in the banking sector are to enable financial institutes to; Widen customer relationship through acquiring new customers, identifying and targeting new segments and expanding in new markets. Lengthen the existing relationship developing longer term relationships, increasing perceived value of products and introducing new products and Deepen the relationship with customers initiating the cross selling and up selling opportunities, understanding the propensity of different customer segments to purchase and increase sales. The implementation if CRM system in a bank helps the business organisation to obtain a complete picture of their existing customers, design both customer-oriented and market-driven financial products and services, as well as implement extensive and reliable financial marketing research and efficient campaigns, to achieve and enhance customer loyalty and profitability. The above goals can be achieved through the seamless integration of information technology solutions and business objectives at every process of the bank business that affects the customer. 2.3 THE PHASES OF CRM The main phases of CRM are as follows; Customer selection or Segmentation According to Dave Chaffey (2009), customer selection is defining the types of customers that a company will market to. It means identifying different groups of customers for which to develop offerings and to target during acquisition, retention and extension. Different ways of segmenting customers by value and by their detailed lifecycle with the customer are reviewed. Many companies are now only proactively marketing to favoured customers. Seth Godin (1999), says â€Å"Focus on share of customer, not market share fire 70 per cent customers and watch your profits go up!† According to Efraim Turban (2008), the most sophisticated segmentation and targeting schemes for extension of customers are often used by banks, which have full customer information and acquire history data as they search for to boost Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) through encouraging increased use of products overtime. The segmentation approach used by banks is based on five main basics which in result are covered on top of each other. The amount of options used, and therefore the complexity of approach, will depend on resources obtainable, opportunities, capabilities and technology afforded by catalog. i. Identify customer lifecycle groups When guests use online services then they basically pass those seven or more stages. The organisations have clear these segments and establish the CRM infrastructure to categories customers in this manner; then they deliver focused messages, whichever by modified web messaging or by e-mails that are triggered routinely because of various rules. First-time guests recognized by a cookie placed on their PC. When guests registered, they are tracked through the residual stages. The customers who have purchased one or more products are one particular important group. The key challenge is for a company to encourage a customer to shift from the first product to the second and then go on. Explicit offers can be try to push customer for further products. In the same way, when customers turn into an inactive then the customer required follow-up. ii. Identify customer profit characteristics This is a conventional segmentation which is based on the nature of customer. For Business 2 Business Companies it includes sex, age and geography. It includes volume of the organisation and the type of sector or application, the organisation operates in. iii. Identify behaviour in response and purchase As shown in figure 2.2 through analysis of data base when customer progress through the lifecycle, company is capable to build up a detail reaction and buy history which judges the details of frequency, recency, group of product buy and monetary value. This approach is known as ‘RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary value) analysis. iv. Identify multi-channel behaviour In spite of of the eagerness of the company for online channels, various customers are chosen for using online channels and others customers are chosen conventional channels. This is an degree, be indicated by RFM and rejoinder examination since customers with a preference for an online channel is more reactive and make more use online. Customer who likes online channels is focused mostly by online communications such as e-mail, but when customer like conventional channels is focused by conventional communications such as direct mail or phone. This is known as ‘right-channelling. v. Tone and style preference In a same way to channel liking, customers are respond in their own way to various types of message. Some customers like rational application, in that time a detailed e-mail may work best. On the other hand some customers are preferred an emotional appeal. Companies are test for this in customers or conclude it using profit description and response performance and then expand various inventive treatments consequently. 2. Customer acquisition Processes used to add new customer. According to Turban (2008), customer acquisition refers to marketing activities intended to form relationship with new customers while reducing acquisition cost and targeting high-value customers. Service value and selecting the right path for various customers are essential at this stage and during the lifecycle. The conventional manner to customer acquisition include a marketing manager developing a blend of mass marketing (billboards, magazine advertisements etc.) and direct marketing (mail, telephone, etc.) campaigns based on their knowledge of the particular customer base that was being focussed. Marketing campaign trying to pressure new customers to buy a particular type of diapers, the mass marketing ads might be determined in parenting magazines. The advertisements could also be positioned in more conventional publications whose readership demographics were alike to those of new parents. Customer acquisition is comparatively similar to mass marketing. A marketing manager selects the demographics that they are involved in and after that works with a data vendor to obtain lists of buyers who meet those features. The data vendors have large database holding millions of eventual customers that can be segment based on explicit demographic criteria. The idea of â€Å"similar demographics† has conventionally been an art rather than a science. Usually there are not hard-and-fast systems about whether two groups of buyers share the similar features. Most of the segmentation that took place in conventional direct marketing involves hunches on the division of the marketing professional. 3. Customer retention Dafe Chaffey 2009 said that customer retention refers to the marketing actions taken by a company to keep its current customers. Identifying applicable offerings based on their personal needs and complete position in the customer lifecycle (e.g. purchase value or number) is key. Customer retention strategy aims to keep a high percentage of valuable customers and a customer development strategy aims to boost the value of those retained customer to the organisation. Customer retention is based on customer loyalty. And customer loyalty is the point to which a customer will continue with a specific brand or vendor. Customer acquisition to retain and extend create long-term customer relationship. We need to calculate customer satisfaction, as satisfaction drives loyalty and loyalty drives profitability. This relationship is exposed below; The marketers aim is to push customers up the curve towards the affection zone. But the majority are not in that zone. Marketers must understand to achieve retention,why customers defers or are indifferent. 4. Customer extension This technique is encouraging customers to increase their involvement with a company. According to Turban 2008, customer extension is increasing the range of products that a customer buys from an organisation. Sometime it is referred ‘customer development. Increasing the lifetime value (CLV) of a customer is the main objective of customer extension by encouraging cross-sell. For example a customer of Egg credit card may be offered the loan or a deposit account. There are many of customer extension technique for CRM as follows; Re-sell: same type of products to existing customers-particular vital in some Business 2 Business background as re-buys or modified re-buys. Cross-sell: sell extra products which may be closely related to the original buy. Up-sell: this is mean, selling more expensive products. Reactivation: Customers who have purchased for some time or have lapsed can be encouraged to buy again. Referrals: generating sells from recommendation from existing customers. 2.4 CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUE MODELLING Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is also an important theory and practise of CRM. But the calculation of CLV is not straightforward. There are so many company, they do not calculate it. According to Dave Chaffey (2009) â€Å"Lifetime value is the total net benefits that a customer or group of customers will provide a company over their total relationship with the company†. CLV is based on estimating the income and costs related with each customer over a phase of time and then calculating the net present value in present monetary terms using a discount rate value applied over the stage. Efraim Turban (2006) said there is various scale of complexity in calculating LTC. Those are exposed in figure 2.6. Option 1 is a realistic way or estimated proxy for future LTV, but the true LTV is the future value of the customer at individual level. CLV modelling at a segment level 4 is crucial within marketing since it answers the question; How much can I afford to invest in acquiring a new customer? Lifetime value analysis helps marketers to: Create the true value of a companys customer base Recognize and compare crucial target segment Calculate the effectiveness of another customer retention strategy Plan and calculate investment in customer acquisition programmes Make decisions about product and offers Figure 2.7 gives an example of how LTV can be used to develop a CRM strategy for different customer groups. There are 4 (four) main types of customers are indicated by their present and future value as bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Separate customers groupings (circles) are recognized according to their current value (as indicated by current profitability) and future value as indicated by CLV calculation. Every group will have a customer segmentation based on their demographics. Therefore this is used for customer selection. Within the four main value groupings, there are various strategies are developed for various customer groups. Few bronze customers such as group A and B practically do not have development potential and are usually unprofitable, therefore the objective is to reduce costs in communications and if they do not stay as customers this is acceptable. Some bronze customers like group C may have potential for growth; therefore for group C the strategy is to extend their purchases. Silver customers are focused with customer extension offer and gold customers are extended. Platinum customers are the best customers; therefore the communication is very important with these customers. 2.5 THE TECHNOLOGICAL FACTORS OF CRM According to Davenport and Short, (1990); Porter, (1987) ‘information technology is an enabler to thoroughly redesign business process to achieve improvements in organisational performance. ‘Information Technology help helps a business process by facilitating changes to job practices and establishing new techniques to link a customer with organisations, suppliers and stakeholders (Hammer and Champy, 1993). Eckerson and Watson (2000) advocated that ‘CRM take full advantage of technology to collect and analyze data on customer patters, expand predictive models, interpret customer behaviour, proper respond with communications, and deliver product and service to individual customers. By using technology a business can generate a 360 degree view of consumers to find out from past interactions to optimize future ones. Peppard (2000) said that ‘the leading factors in CRM development are improvement in set of connections communications, client/server compute, and business cleverness application. CRM collect, store, maintain and distribute customer knowledge all over the organisation. The effectual management of information has a vital role to play in CRM. In the case of scheming customer duration importance, consolidated view, product tailoring and facility improvement, the information is essential. Along with data warehouses, enterprise resource planning (ERP) organization and the internet are the vital infrastructures to CRM application. Fickel (1999) said ‘CRM application links front office (e.g. marketing, sales and customer service) and back office (e.g. financial, logistics, operations and human resources) functions with the businesses customer contact point. A companys touch point is â€Å"all of the communication, human and physical interactions your customers experience during their relationship lifecycle with your organisation. Whether an commercial, Web-site, sales individual, store or office, finger points are vital because customers from perceptions of your organisation and brand based on their cumulative experiences† (Source; http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/4508.imc at 16/10/2009 on 15:25) According to Eckerson and Watson (2000), ‘CRM integrated touch points is something like a common view of the customer. A separate information systems controlled these touch points. Figure 2.8 demonstrates the correlation between customer touch point with back and front office operations Peppers and Rogres, (1999) said ‘In many companies, CRM is just a technology solution that extends divide databases and sales force automation tools to link sales and marketing functions in order to develop targeting efforts. On the other hand some organisations consider CRM as a tool that is exclusively designed for one-to-one relationship. According to Goldenberg (2000) ‘CRM is not just a tools application for sales, marketing and service, but when CRM completely and successfully implemented, customer-driven, a cross-functional, technology-integrated commerce process management scheme that improves relationships and encompasses the whole organisation. 2.6 DATA WAREHOUSE TECHNOLOGY According to Watson (2000) ‘data warehouse is a tools of information technology management that helps business decision makers to instant access of information of customer data throughout the organisation by combining all database and operational systems like sales and transaction, human resource, inventory, purchasing, financial and marketing system. Data warehouse pull out, clean, convert and manage large volumes of data from various systems and creating a historical record of all customer. Data warehousing technology is the most crucial part of CRM because it makes CRM possible. Shepard et al. (1998) said ‘a better understanding of customer behaviour is possible because data warehousing technology consolidates correlates and convert customer data into customer intelligence. Thoughts of customers and their buying pattern can improve information relating to customer service interactions, bill and account status, back orders, product returns, product delivery, and internal operating cost. The capacity of a data storehouse to store hundreds and thousands of gigabytes of data compose an analysis feasible as well as immediate. Organisational benefits with a data warehouse are as follows; exact and faster access of information bad and duplicate data eliminate by quality data and filtering customer profiling and retention modelling it compute total present importance and approximate future value of every customer it gives detail report 2.7 DATA MINING TECHNOLOGY Peppers and Rogres, (1999) said that ‘the first analytical step of data mining is to describe the data. Data mining summarize its statistical attributes like standard deviations and means, visually review it by use of charts and graphs and distributes the value of the field in our data. But alone data description can not provide an action plan. We have to build a analytical model based on pattern determined from known output and after that we have to test the model on result outside the original sample. An ideal model must never be puzzled with reality, but it is useful guide to understanding our businesses. According to Eckerson and Watson (2000) ‘we can use data mining for both classification and regression problems. In first problem we can predict what type something will fall into. In second problems we are predicting a number like prospect that a person will react to an recommend. In CRM process, data mining is often used to allocate a score to a particular customer. Data mining is also often using to recognize a set of characteristics, which is called profile. Data mining segments customers in to groups with similar behaviour like purchasing a particular product. 2.8 THE CRM PROCESS CYCLE IN BANKS Pound (2000) said that exploration and alteration process should be done by the banks on basis of customer information captured; this shows the full value of CRM initiatives. Banks set up a closed CRM cycle with the help of an integrated CRM solution, which composed of a set of continuous iterative process. It manages the whole customer related process for bank, analysing customer profile, customer data and life time value, which is helping to making marketing decision and optimizing the execution of marketing campaigns, customer service strategies and sales strategies across various channels during the bank. According to Professor Constantin Zopounidis (2002) CRM process cycle is based on a generic business view. It presents a continuous improvement of value between customers and banks across touch points. Pound 2000 said that ‘recent banking data sources are extremely heterogeneous. Geographic information is dispersed due to continual acquisitions, mergers and reorganizations. For example a bank might use web site, ATMs, e-mail, sales, call centres and marketing automation applications that must be integrated in a unified environment of CRM banking. An effective multi-channels customer interface will not be possible without a centrally integrated warehouse driving the entire CRM process cycle. This should be update real time. The historical data should be recorded by it, which is used to create propensity models and customer life time value models to recognize past behaviour and action in order to take future marketing strategy. 2.9 CUSTOMER DATA COLLECTION Kristin Anderson Carol Kerr (2002), said that in banki