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Impact of information technology on revenue management

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The phenomena of revenue management gained importance in recent years due to variable and discriminatory pricing schemes offered by various companies to their customers. Revenue management applies the orderly analytics that predict the behavior of the consumer at micro level and augment the prices and availability of products to the customers thus enhancing the overall revenue for the company. The aim of devising revenue management techniques is to deliver the fine product or service to the appropriate customer at the precise price. This system is based on analyzing the customer’s perception of the value that the product would provide and make straight the availability, placement and price according to that perception. This discipline became the need of every business rapidly. There could be many reasons for this. Even a kid whose is out for selling orange juice will have to analyze and predict the appropriate weather and time for selling his product. When we talk about giant businesses, the need for assessing customer demand and subsequently managing that demand is enormous and critical. A revenue management system is answer to the question of such demand. Information technology has gained rapid importance and improved itself in all aspects from the invention of first computer ENIAC till present. The cost of installing and communicating through IT based equipment has been reduced incredibly. This remarkable reduction made it possible to use information technology equipment in commercial businesses in addition to government and military. (Forester, 1985). As like other field, information technology has played a great role in improving the processes of revenue management. In this paper, we shall study the impacts that information technology has on the revenue management. This article is concerned with defining revenue management systems and their application. It will also explain that how well it can meet the consumer demand, how well it can be integrated with overall distribution channels and what role information technology is playing to enhance the overall progress of the revenue management systems. We will at the end, try to make some conclusions and recommendations about the development of decision support system of revenue management and how can it be helpful in maximizing the future profits of the company. Brief history of revenue management The concept of revenue management is not new to the business world. Every business that is selling some fragile product needs to flex the price of that commodity due to some uncertain environmental change or response to some competitor’s action or customer’s demand. Seats in airplanes, clothes (i.e. for summer and winter), rooms in hotels etc., all require revenue management strategies to be sold in a manner that maximize the overall wealth of the company. This field properly originated in US airline industry in start of 1970s. Bob Crandall of American Airline (AA) who put restrictions on discounted fairs. After that yield management came into practice which is the foundation of revenue management. American Airline, with the help of other airlines further extended the yield management system by offering low fares to the cost sensitive passengers and high priced fares to the time sensitive passengers, giving maximum value to both type of travelers. The impact of practicing yield management was come into knowledge by year 1985. American Airline reported about 48 percent profit growth. This huge success attracted other industries to develop into the field of yield management (Haley and Inge, 2004). Purpose and benefits of implementing revenue management We discussed above that yield management evolved into the revenue management. As it became the standardized practice for the companies, its definition progressed. Revenue management is defined as the field which is concerned with answering the demand questions related to consumer behavior and system and set of methodologies required to make them. Revenue can be compared with supply chain management because it aims at lowering the cost of producing and delivering the products hence increasing the profit, so as the goal of revenue management. There need to be certain business conditions that are essential to successfully implement a revenue management system. These conditions include customer heterogeneity, production inflexibility, variable and uncertain demand, management culture, infrastructure of data and information an so on. (Ryzin, 2005) employing a revenue management system benefits the company by unleashing the hidden demand which can lead to great revenue opportunity, helps understanding the customer’s choices between price and product characteristics, increases revenue, suggests discounts on the product when required to build up the market share and helps in developing a sales driven organization whose sole focus is profit maximization. (Cross, 1997) Jurisdictions of revenue management system There is wide range of options available to increase revenue through a revenue management system. Pricing strategy: pricing strategy is related to envisaging the customer’s perceptions about the value of the product and then setting prices to catch that value. Pricing strategy which a company adopts dictates its objectives i.e. what it wants to accomplish. Company then chooses pricing tactics that can respond to the customer’s expectations. Customer price sensitivity analysis, price ratios and price optimizations are example of such tactics. Carefully selected pricing strategy can increase the total revenue and ultimately profitability of the firm. Therefore, revenue management can redefine pricing strategy and can build enhanced pricing tactics (Nagle and Hogan, 2006) Distribution channels: a company can deliver its products with various channels like online or in shops. Different type of cost and revenue are linked with these channels. Customer of particular nature selects the specific channel for buying the product for example customers who opt for purchasing online are more price sensitive. Revenue management tools can help analyzing the channels and deciding appropriate discount offers to distributing and retailing channels then to consumers without losing the customers’ perception about the value of the product (Phillips, 2005). Marketing: revenue management tools can help determine the response rate of customers to a particular level of promotional activities. By efficiently promoting the products, a firm can increase its revenues and subsequently the profitability (Phillips, 2005). Process of Managing Revenues The revenue management process begins with collecting data on inventory, consumer perceptions and behaviors, product prices etc. The system employed collects and then store the information mentioned before and uses it to optimize prices and channel selection and amount of price promotional activities required. After collection of data, segmentation is done by the system to categorize consumers in to various groups (Cross, 1997). After segmentation, system forecasts the demand by implementation of quantitative analysis of data like time-series model and cross price elasticity (McGill and Ryzin, 1999). When the forecast phase is completed, revenue management system comes into the position of giving different options to the company about in how many different ways can it sell its product to what type of customers (Cross, 1997). Optimization provides answer to two questions. First of all it provide guidance to the company about which factor should be optimized like price or sales. Secondly it tells that what optimization technique is relevant and should be opted. For instance, regression analysis for finding out relationships between variables, discreet choice models for envisage customer behavior and linear programming techniques for setting optimum prices to maximize the total revenue (Phillips, 2005) . Information technology advancements and Revenue management Famous speaker and guest lecturer of Harvard Business School Don Burr regrets that fact that he failed to predict actual role of technology that it can play in successfully implementing a revenue management system. He confesses that “PeopleExpress” collapsed because it hadn’t installed the database management system for the purpose of collecting and storing information required for carrying revenue management processes. He says that my number one preference will be to make sure that my people have the best possible tools of information technology if I would have to start an airline. He says that in his opinion information technology is the only factor which draws the maximum revenues for airline industry as compared to any other factor Cross, 1997). The tools used to get, store, process and successively share information are included in information technology. As revenue management processes mentioned above require all these tools to manage information relevant to yield management, it is quite clear that using information technology can help boosting the RM system a lot (Reynolds, 2010) From studying the processes of revenue management we can conclude that revenue management uses Customer Relationship Management (CRM) data, supply chain management data, marketing and pricing data and consumer behavior data to forecast the future demand and customer responses. Information technology helps in making the data collection procedure faster and effective. Information technology provides easy data access tools with the help of graphical interfaces, provides communication, collaboration and networking technologies to obtain data from different systems easily. With the help of sharing feature of networking information among various systems like CRM, supply chain and marketing can be exchanged. RM system can access that information for forecasting purpose. Database management tools like normalization of data, storage of data, data modeling and categorization objective can be achieved effectively and within no time. Oracle DBMS systems are the best example of database management software. A firm can develop its own customize DBMS for this purpose (Lucas, 2001). Software applications have been developed to quantitative forecasting from the data. SPSS and Microsoft Office Excel are the examples but a firm can develop the application according to its own needs. These applications are able to analyze million of statistical data with in few minutes (Hail, 2011). Information technolgy can also be used for the optimization funtion of revenue management. For instance, if the system decides to optimize through linear programming, Excel solver, Model Frontier, Maple, FortMP, Inverse, CPLEX, FortSP, Mathmetica, NMATH, OptimJ, SNOPT and OpenOpt are the examples of optimization software (Wikipedia, 2011). Large fims like American Airline uses customized and speciall puprose applications. Optimization software can help sovling the second problem of optimization function and they are reilable as well as efficient. Fisrt problem of Optimization fucntion is to choose that which factor should be optimized to get the maximum profitability. Information technolgy aids this fucntion through its efficient decision support systems (DSS). For instance, P

University of Maryland Best Practices for Ensuring Data Privacy Discussion

University of Maryland Best Practices for Ensuring Data Privacy Discussion.

Coordinators of an upcoming conference, attended by federal government IT managers and staff, invited you to participate in a panel presentation about privacy. For this activity, prepare a 5 to 7 paragraph briefing statement which answers the following four questions. Use information from the weekly readings as your research material. Go to Content >> Course Resources >> Expanded Explanation for Discussion Question Responses to learn more about the format requirements for a “briefing statement.”When responding to this discussion, prepare a 5 to 7 paragraph briefing statement which answers the following four questions:1. What is privacy? Is it a right? An expectation? Discuss differing definitions, e.g. “the average person” definition vs. a legal definition, and how these differences impact risk assessments for privacy protections (or the lack thereof).2. What are some important best practices for protecting privacy for information collected, stored, used, and transferred by the US federal government? Identify and discuss three or more best practice recommendations for reducing risk by improving or ensuring the privacy of information processed by or stored in an organization’s IT systems and databases.3. Explain why federal government agencies and departments required to complete PIA’s. Should every federal IT system have a PIA? Why or why not?4. Name and briefly describe 3 benefits to citizens which result from the use of PIA’s. (Considering citizen’s needs for privacy and the protection of the privacy of individuals whose information is collected, processed, transmitted, and stored in federal government IT systems and databases.)Provide in-text citations and references for 3 or more authoritative sources. Put the reference list at the end of your posting.
University of Maryland Best Practices for Ensuring Data Privacy Discussion

Dissolution in chemistry.

essay help online free Dissolution in chemistry..

1- What is the pH of a solution saturated with CaCO3 closed to the atmosphere?2-What is the pH of a solution saturated with CaCO3 open to the atmosphere?3- For a solution saturated with calcite (CaCO3), how does the solubility of Ca+2 change as a function of pH from 0 to 14 in open and closed systems?4- Show how the solubility of Fe+2 changes as a function of pH from 0 to 14 given the following recipe [Fe-II] = 10-4 M and a total carbonate conc. (CT) = 10-3 M? Assume closed system.5-Calculate the composition of a groundwater in equilibrium with PCO2 = 10-1.5 atm, calcite and kaolinite. Disregard all other potential solids.6-Assuming an open system at equilibrium, only the carbonate system being important, an alkalinity of 1E-3 M and a pH of 9, would calcite precipitate (would solid calcite be present) if the calcium concentration were 1E-3 M?7-A water contains 135 mg/L Ca+2 and 50 mg/L Mg+2. After the water is softened, the pH = 11 and the carbonate concentration [CO3-2] = 2.6E-5 M. Assume calcium precipitates as CaCO3 (pKs =8.40) Assume magnesium precipitates as Mg(OH)2 (pKs =10.6)a) Calculate the total hardness (mg CaCO3 mg/L) in the water before softening.b) Calculate the theoretical total hardness remaining in the water after softening based on the solubility of CaCO3 (s) and Mg(OH)2 (s).8- A metal plating factor produces a waste containing soluble zinc with a flow of 100 L/min for 8 hours per day. The waste is collected in a large tank. At the end of each day, the pH of the waste is raised to precipitate out the zinc. The sludge is removed and the pH of the supernatants is lower to pH 6 so that is can be discharged to the local sewer system.a)Consider the removal of zinc from this waste by precipitation as zinc hydroxide (Zn(OH)2, pKs = 16.7). The initial concentration of zinc is 0.01 M. Calculate the pH that the wastewater should be raised in order to reduce the soluble zinc concentrations tob)One day the operator forgets to remove the sludge before the pH is lowered to 6. He notices that all the sludge disappeared when the pH was lowered to 6. He proudly tells his supervisor that he discovered a method to eliminate the need to dispose of their metal sludge in an expensive landfill. Qualitatively, explain the operator’s amazing discovery. 0.05 mg/L (the EPA limit).
Dissolution in chemistry.

Three Generations of Human Rights Development Essay

Three Generations of Human Rights Development Essay. Introduction The evolution of human rights can be traced back to the 18th century activism in which the gaps in the legal recognition and definite consciousness of human rights were narrowed. History indicates that human rights are not granted by the state rather, human rights are attained through struggle and challenge to the existing authority. The current legal recognition of human rights attainment originated from various declarations and the most pronounced included the Magna Carta declaration in the thirteenth century that curtailed the royal powers, the American declaration of independence in 1776 and the French declaration of the rights of man and citizens in 1789 (Adedeji par 3). The stated declarations were some of the major revolutionary achievements towards attaining the current legal recognition of the universal human rights. However, the current meaning of universal human rights is derived from the typologies of rights that were established after the formation of the UN following the Second World War. The UN convention of 1948 established the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which fundamentally defined the central ideas applicable to all human rights (Adedeji par 4). While the current the UDHR is a declaration rather than a formal treaty, it forms the foundation of human rights. In fact, the rights of an individual and the limits of the state are fundamentally based on the declaration. Following the negotiations on the importance of economic rights and civil and political rights, the UN general assembly in 1966 came up with a treaty that legally bound all the human rights into two aspects. The first aspect is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the second aspect is the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The 1966 treaty produced the legal binding declarations that basically formed the foundation of the current human rights structure (Adedeji par 4). Besides, the rights that were internationally agreed upon and put into legally binding treaty were largely borrowed from the UDHR. As indicated, the UDHR is not a binding legal document. However, it is universally applied such that it attained the status of customary law that is binding. Together with the 1966 international treaty on human rights, the rights contained in the documents can be categorized into three groups namely the three generations of human rights. Civil and political rights (first generation rights) The first generation rights contain both individual rights and the limitations of the state on these rights. Most of these rights relate to liberty and includes the fundamental right to life (Sehmer 3). All the individual rights related to self-determination including freedom from discrimination, slavery, torture and political participation (Adedeji par 5). Also included is the freedom of conscience, opinion, expression, thought and assembly (Adedeji par 5). Even though these rights and freedoms have been granted through universal suffrage, they remain in theory rather than practice. Most states do not grant the freedoms fully as contained within the legal treaties. Economic and social rights (second generation rights) The second generation rights are related to economic, social and cultural security of individuals. Basically, the rights relate directly to individual and are seen as supplements to the basic human rights. The state has to provide the necessary incentives in order to ensure that the rights are protected and enjoyed by the individuals (Sehmer 3). All the rights relate to social and economic wellbeing of individuals such as the right to education, healthcare and social amenities. Environmental, cultural and developmental rights (third generation rights) The third generation rights relate to environmental concerns, political and socio-economic developments. Under these rights an individual is obligated to stay in a protected and clean environment as well as the freedom to individual cultural, political and economic endeavors (Adedeji par 5). The role of the state is to ensure that the living conditions of the citizens are within the precincts of the rights and the social, political and economic developments are geared towards improving the livelihoods of the individuals. The evolution of the rights and freedoms The categorization of the human rights into first, second and third generations follow the traditional method of grouping the fundamental rights depending on their chronological evolution (Adedeji par 7). The first generation rights emerged from the 18th and 19th century struggle for liberation from the oppressed totalitarian rules that characterized the state authority. The first generation rights such as freedom of conscience, speech and political participation emerged during this period. Industrialization gave rise to increased inequalities and against the backdrop of the view of the states’ roles given the free political space, the need for social and economic equality was articulated (Sehmer 5). In fact, the socio-economic rights emerged during the industrialization periods when the majority struggled to attain economic and social equality as well as against the oppressing labor regulations (Adedeji par 8). With increased globalization and responsiveness of environmental and socio-economic concerns such as extreme poverty in some places, the third generation rights were formulated. The third generation rights such as the right to self-determination have been adopted as a result of the challenges the world is facing currently including environmental concerns, extreme poverty and lack of appropriate healthcare facilities (Sehmer 5). The third generation rights were formulated as a solution to most of these challenges. Works Cited Adedeji, Lanre. n.d. A Review of the Three Generations of Human Rights. n.d. Sehmer, Carolin 2007, Report of the Parallel Event “Third Generation” Human Rights – Reflections on the Collective Dimension of Human Rights. PDF file. Three Generations of Human Rights Development Essay

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You are encouraged to choose one article that interests you related to international marketing in the recent news and business press (for example, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Business Week, Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, The Economist, Time, Newsweek, Harvard Business Review, or Advertising Age). It is not required that your current event relate to the chapter that is currently being discussed.In the brief, summarize the article and identify the marketing outcome (for example, the success or failure of a new venture). You should also indicate how the underlying issue relates to international marketing (for example, what international marketing concepts explain the outcome) and include your own opinion on the issue (for example, what might the company have done differently). A complete citation for the article should be included. If you choose to cite sources other than the textbook and the primary article (though not required), you should cite them properly as well. textbook International Marketing 18e (Cateora, Gilly, Graham, and Money)should be between 2 – 3 pages (no longer), double-spaced, 12-pt font, normal margins.
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