Comments on Classes and Article 9.

Hello. My interest in the previous lecture of The Supply Chain Systems was really great as in the past I was purchase manager and cooperated with a companies, operating such a systems. I can't say that I learned a lot of new things from this class, but I would like to leave some comments instead. The problem of such systems (from my personal experience) as that they are firm and can not be manipulated easily. Sometimes it is very hard for the employee to change the product price in the system or to add some additional comments, which should be seen on the freight documents. These systems do not include legislation differences and when country goes abroad it becomes a huge problem - the minor change in the shipment document required by the payer takes several days and if it is ignored it results in paying extra and pretty big amount during customs clearance. And the response you get from the supplier is - "Sorry. It's our system. We can't change anything".

Article 9. Supply Chain Integration Solutions
http://www.scmnews.com/scmnews-66-20061013SupplyChainIntegrationSolutions.html

It does not matter if you are a vendor, supplier, manufacturer, dealer, service supplier or customer, the cost of freight either impacts the amount you charge, the amount you are reimbursed or the price you pay. And this is the most important part of Supply Chain, which should be always carefully analyzed and improved.

The article above gives us short history overview of Supply Chain improvements and current situation. And it is very interesting to realize that the following development improved the performance of Supply Management Systems:

1) The famous Pony Express operating from April 1860 to November 1861.

2) Electromagnet, telegraph and telephone discovery.

3) Introduction of Consolidated Freight, Low Rates and Speed principle.

The historical development of them brought us to the modern Supply Chain Integration Systems, which are focused not on moving products more quickly, or choosing the most economical method of transportation, or the geography, but on the task for business to move items less. Next generation of Supply Chain Integration utilizes network connectivity with multiple vendors to reduce freight, transportation, geographical boundaries and in some cases ownership. IT development is focused on integrating partners in collective, secure and collaborative networks for shared visibility and planning. Data is moved more effectively and efficiently than products, parts or parcels. Ownership transfers when orders transmit, and inventory is managed in a manner that mitigates movement. Vendor Managed Inventory can be achieved simultaneously with multiple vendors and numerous customer partners through sophisticated impartial third party integrators. The exchange of products and purchases can be replaced by a data exchange, creating total cost reductions that benefit the bottom line.

The best example of the company, which implements such a Supply Chain Integration System is E-Bay, procuring supply in direct proportion to demand. I believe that this alternative approach has a profound base and should be used in future for all the companies. It allows not only to save resources for the exact company, but the whole society in general.

P.S. Sorry. I know that this post is very long, but I intentionally leave it like it is. I like this topic and would like to show you my opinion.

Individual Assignment 3.

Find and compare several internet telephony services.

I was very lucky to find one article describing all advantages and disadvantages of the problem above. That is why I’ll give a short summary, which will be my reply to the assignment. Also I would like to mention that I use internet phone service by myself and I am very satisfied with it. It’s a great opportunity. I use Skype and the only minus – the quality of connection depends on the Internet speed. So if speed is low it’s almost impossible to talk. It is not a problem for well-developed countries, but a serious one for others – such as Ukraine for example, where not all the people have access to high-speed internet.

Ok. So let’s talk about the internet telephone service.
An Internet phone is nothing more than an inconsequential-looking electronic adapter with blinking lights on the front and a few jacks in the back. Plug a normal telephone into its phone jack, then plug the adapter directly into your router, which is hooked up to a broadband Internet connection. Some Internet phone carriers also let you make calls through your computer; others, like Skype, require it. But the genius of most Internet phones is that your computer isn't involved at all.
Advantages: Increasing competition from tech upstarts like Vonage and anxious traditionalists like Verizon has led to insanely low prices for VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) service (as low as 20 per month). Competition has also led to a development of additional new Web features, many of which have spread to most carriers.
The downside of VoIP is that it's not real phone service. You may pay fewer taxes, but you don't automatically get, say, 911 service, and the thing won't work in a blackout. Reliability also is not always up to land-line snuff. Sometimes there's no dial tone, your outgoing calls don't go through, or the other party can't hear you.
To find out if VoIP is really mature enough to replace your land line, there is a rating below given, which is based on series of tests on seven internet phone services.
Factors included in the test: sound quality, reliability, international scale, portability, bells and whistles, number selection option.
Results:

Source: Smooth Operators. Which Internet phone service is best? By Sam Schechne, http://slate.com/id/2121742/r

Comments on Classes and Article 8.

Good afternoon. The Virtual Reality class was really great! I found out what the real status of this technology is for now and that, in fact, it is really far from imagined by me and other people (first new thing). I also got the idea of the reason why this technology is not so advanced in comparison with others. I understood that due to detailed explanation of our professor about huge number of data, which should be stored and used to get one simple move in the Virtual Reality (second new thing to know).

Article 8. Virtual Game Helps Children Escape Realities Of Burn Unit.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071009101818.htm

This article has really impressed me! I believe the example in it is the best humanity example, for which such an advanced technology may be used. And I'm really glad that it happens in our time with our children. The well known fact is that there is strong connection between anxiety and pain. So, in order to decrease pain we have to lower anxiety level to the minimum. The best way for it is to distract a person in a real pain from what he sees and expects. And really good idea in such a situation, as shown in the article, is Virtual Reality games. As we all know it really distracts you and takes into completely different world of feelings and emotions. For the children in pain in the real world it is a great relief as cleaning and treating procedures are long and very painful. As we can see from the article, even though the Program started in May of this year, it has already brought good results: "Burn nurses report several patients have noticeably improved in terms of their ability to tolerate dressing changes". And even a separate research was launched to compare the results of virtual reality pain distraction with traditional distraction techniques, such as watching television, listening to music, counting and deep breathing.

Comments on Classes and Article 7.

Hello. I would like to mention that this week classes were very interesting for me as they gave me some additional information about my individual assignments. The new things for me were: a) that mobile advertisers are ready to give you additional benefits for you to allow them to send advertising t your phone directly; b) I understood better how user generated content is working - before I had an experience with such an advertising online and wondered how advertisers do it now I know.

Article. ADwords: What Google is not Telling You.
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1298918851&Fmt=6&clientId=8851&RQT=309&VName=PQD

This article gives us more details about pour class conversation, namely how Google places advertiser' ads online. The article confirms that basic assmption "the higher the bid the higher your place online" is wrong. It also confirms our summary that Google is interested in ads quality and its profits. So it takes into consideration the following additional factors: search history; location; previous performance; match; number of ads to be shown, etc. In general the article gives to advertiser serious reasoning why he should be interested to improve quality of his job and how it will affect his profits in future. I believe it’s fair for all of us – Google, advertisers and consumers.

Comments on Classes and Article 6.

Good evening. This week 2 lectures on Databases and ERM programs were very interesting for me as the knowledge received can be easily applied in the real life. The new term for me was database warehouse - it was really interesting and useful to learn that these databases include kits of statistical programs, which are really necessary when you work with a huge amount of information. The second new term for me was ERM itself - but as I found out later I knew about existence of such programs and even wanted to learn one of them -SAP, as a lot of multinational companies use it and require their prospective employees to know basic features.

Article 6. Paradise By The Dashboard Light.
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/erp/article.php/3702781

The article above gives us advantages of an improved version of Act 2008 software, which is small business customer relationship management (CRM) and sales force automation software from Sage Software. The most important feature of this software, which previously was available only to enterprise-level products, is dashboard. This option allows a user to see "charts, graphs and tables that give at-a-glance information about current activities and sales opportunities". Sage has provided six customizable dashboard components, which are: my Schedule At-a-Glance; top 10 Opportunities; Activities by User; opportunities by User: closed Sales to Date. These dashboards may be customized as per user's requirements if needed. There are plenty of other useful options that are described in the article, but I would like only to summarize the most important feature with the following comparison: "Imagine trying to drive a car without dashboard displays. You’d never know how fast you were going, when you were running out of gas or if the car was overheating. " The same for the business - and especially for small business - as it is usually forgotten in the fight for big companies' profits. This software cares about the most important issues that help to improve user's business at a relatively low price (see the article) and this is the most important advantage of its performance.

Individual Assignment no. 2

Question:

Are the sponsored search ads on Google or Yahoo a type of informative or persuasive advertising or both? Give examples of ads that fall into each of these types and an ad that falls into both types. Why is it important to make a distinction between these two types?
Answer:
In order to identify what type of advertising are sponsored search ads on Google or Yahoo we must to define the categories informative or persuasive advertising of first. To do it we need to mention first that both of them belong to Product-Oriented Advertising, where most advertising spending is directed toward the promotion of a specific good, service or idea. In most cases the goal of product advertising is to clearly promote a specific product to a targeted audience. Marketers can accomplish this in several ways from a low-key approach that simply provides basic information about a product (informative advertising) to blatant appeals that try to convince customers to purchase a product (persuasive advertising) that may include direct comparisons between the marketer’s product and its competitor’s offerings (comparative advertising).
From the definition above we can clearly see that sponsored search ads on Google or Yahoo belong to informative type of advertising as they just give you the general information about the problem which interests the prospective customer in the given time (see example in the link – sponsored ads: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=The+Best+Diet+Pills+for+Sale&btnG=Search or the picture below as ads change all the time).

Sponsored search ads are limited to a number of key words and expressions on the screen and they can’t provide you enough persuasive information for making a choice at this point. But if the customer follows the advertised link to the advertiser’s web-site here he will be able to see persuasive type of advertising, located on the website (see example in the link – http://www.phenocerin.com/google/index.html?gclid=CMeOvKKt844CFQhtFQodpFuVEA).
I believe that it is not right to claim that sponsored search ads on Google or Yahoo can be of pure persuasive type, but they can have some elements of persuasive type as shown in the first link (the last sponsored ads, stating “25lbs in 30 Days- No Diet”. It tries to persuade the customer that its kind of product has superior features and the web-site itself gives more persuasive information later as shown in example 2. So we can assume that some Sponsored search ads fall under both categories simultaneously.
From my point of view the importance of distinction between above mentioned types of advertising is in way how they affect customers and how customers react on them. If informative advertising is not considered like advertising, but like a help for the customer looking for a specific product, then persuasive advertising is perceived like subjective and annoying ads until the customer specifically looks for it. As those types of advertising also have different purpose (to give information for attracting the customer (informative) and to persuade to buy (persuasive)) they can be regulated by different way both by government and company legislation. Different price strategies for allocation of such types of ads may apply too.