Wednesday, December 18, 2019

The Adoption Process Within The United States - 1775 Words

Discussion/Introduction The adoption process involves many important individuals; the adoptive parents, adoption counselor, the child, and the birth parents. The population of birth mothers have changed over the years. According to Policy and Practice, there has been significant increase on foreign and domestic adoption over the years (Domestic, intercountry adoptions increase. 2007). Therefore, the population of birth mothers have increased. With that said, the ages of birth mothers can vary from very young to older women who are still able to conceive. However, most birth mothers are younger, under the age of twenty-one. The Adoption Board announced in 2004 that research in the United States proclaim that placing a child for adoption is†¦show more content†¦The problems faced by birth mothers could be endless. The adoption process involves many important individuals; the adoptive parents, adoption counselor, the child, and the birth parents. The population of birth mothers have changed over the y ears. According to Policy and Practice, there has been significant increase on foreign and domestic adoption over the years (Domestic, intercountry adoptions increase. 2007). Therefore, the population of birth mothers have increased. With that said, the ages of birth mothers can vary from very young to older women who are still able to conceive. However, most birth mothers are younger, under the age of twenty-one. The Adoption Board announced in 2004 that research in the United States proclaim that placing a child for adoption is infinitely more common especially if they lack resources and support necessary to care for a child (Child Adoption: Trends and Policies. (2009). Also, the majority of birth mothers are unmarried and poverty along with divorce are many factors resulting in a birth mother s’ decision to place their child up for adoption. Since the majority of the population of birth mothers are younger, that most likely means that their education level is low too. Some birth mothers’ education varies from no high school at all, some high school education, a high school diploma, or some college education. The birth mother s’ income level is most likely low as well. Lastly of course, the

Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Information Management Strategic Analysis

Question: Discuss about the Information Management for Strategic Analysis. Answer: 1: Competitive strategies implemented by Expedia back in 2001 and their evaluation Expedia.com is a leading online travel service in the United States, with localized versions in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany. The market in which Expedia operates is highly competitive. The company had to find competitive strategies in order to get competitive advantage in such competitive market. The company used online or web based travel agency that distributes and develops global travel services. Mentioned below are the competitive strategies utilized by expedia.com to lead in the market. Diversified travel services to attract individual travellers via web services Expedia has been focusing on online information distribution system to engage its customers; the information system at expedia.com doesnt need to handle customers individually. An automatic notification and information is sent to the users who have logged in to their portal. This service helps users to stay updated about the flights, hotels, car rental and any other information associated with their trip. Company has been able to handle wide range of individual customers with help of web services as there is no need to manage and handle an individual personally until there is no issue in the booking. Expedia.com has made it place in the market by directly serving its customers and connecting with service providers (Hotels, car rental companies and airlines). It works as an intermediate between service provider and customers by making the service easy to access and operate to customers along with rewards (Expedia, 2001). Effective and efficient use of technology to stay competitive in the market The information system of the expedia.com supports all digital devices to access the information such as desktop and cell phones or any other web-enabled device. The architecture works with internet and non-internet devices as well. Expedia uses Microsoft.Net passport (system development vendor) which made it first mover in the market. Expedia provides excellent value to its customers with help of technology. Customer Engagement and Marketing In addition to technology and unique services of Expedia.com, its marketing and customer engagement process has also been a key strategy of expedia.com to stay competitive in the market. Such as last minute deals and discounts where Expedia has list of hotels, vacation packages, and flights to travel in next two weeks. In addition to that user can sign up to get latest deals and discounts in their email address. All these things makes Expedia leader in the travel industry (Expedia, 2001). Strategic evaluation and analysis There are so many tools that can be used to evaluate and analyze the strategy of an organization such as PESTEL analysis, SWOT analysis and Porters five forces. These tools help to determine whether the strategy complies with internal and external factors of an organization or not. The evaluation has been done using porters five forces method. Source: (Zanoni, 2012). Threat of new entry Expedia has been able to make its position in travel industry with help of its unique services and technology investment. The company has been first mover in travel industry which supports web based information on internet and non-internet based devices. The easy accessibility of information on Expedia has made in attractive to its customers. The company has been leader in the market and continuously improving its services in the market. In this scenario, the competitors of the Expedia such as Lastminute.com and Priceline.com and traditional travel agencies such as Rosenbluth are working to get competitive advantage via information system but leader has all the trust and grip to market so threat to new entry in online travel service is low for the Expedia because its continuously making investments in technological growth (Expedia, 20013). Supplier power Supplier power is higher in case of Expedia.com as it is connected to best airlines, hotels and car rentals that can dominant the prices and customers have choice for such suppliers so suppler power is high in case of Expedia.com. The company has been able to lead in USA because of good relationship management with its service providers so Expedia strategy to stay in the market is efficient and effective as well. Buyer power Buyer power is low in case of Expedia as company provides unique set of services that no other company does. The features offered by Expedia makes buyer power low as they dont have options compared to Expedias services. Threat of substitution Threat of substitution is low for the Expedia because it is the age of online services and companies are moving to this age and Expedia has grown in this age only. So threat of substitution is less for Expedia. Competitive rivalry Expedia is been sensitive in any change associated with competition, supplier consolidation and business model. Therefore, competitive rivalry is high for Expedia but strategies of Expedia are effective to control this rivalry. 2: How current information technologies/information systems can help Expedia to achieve their goals Competitive strategies and intelligence on information system has been conducted by the Expedia.com I order to achieve the current opportunities of the market. After being top online travel company in USA, the next goal of the organization is to be leading company in all over the world. The company is looking for grabbing the opportunities of expansion in Asia and Europe. Expedia has expanded its presence in Asia-pacific region via strategic investments on technology, people and partnerships. Similarly, in Europe, Expedia has expanded to several countries (Wilczyński Furlong, 2010). The main goal of the Expedia is to engage individual customers and to acquire service providers so that their customers can directly book from Expedia. The company has been successful in achieving its goals because of the technology investment and being first mover in online travelling industry. In order to achieve its goal to be leader of the industry in World Wide Web the company needs to focus on CRM and resource planning. The organization can acquire service providers and can be leader of the market by engaging its customers. Information system and information technology has been playing a big role in success of Expedia and Expedia can acquires its new goals by integrating CRM and resource planning solutions provided by Microsoft. #1 Microsoft Dynamic CRM Online Worldwide customer engagement is not an easy job for organizations especially when goal is to satisfy individual customers. The CRM has to be adaptive to catch all information about a customer like who is the customer, what they want and what are they doing. Microsoft dynamic CRM has ability to enable customer trust, sales, insights, loyalty towards company. The advantages of Microsoft dynamic CRM online have been discussed below. Microsoft dynamic CRM Allows more time to spend on selling rather than administrative tasks by utilizing intelligent sales capabilities of Microsoft dynamic CRM business software along with embedded Microsoft office capabilities. Insightful and actionable information allows competitive intelligence. Microsoft dynamic CRM online provides intelligent lead management, streamlined goal management, comprehensive auditing and real time forecasts. It allows Connected marketing that is collaborative and integrated via automatic tracking opt out and in preferences that further uncovers new leads and helps to understand social trends via social connectors. Effective document management is another feature of Microsoft dynamic CRM that provides fast track creation of campaign and marketing plan. Seamless event management and mobile productivity to access marketing budget, campaign information via any web enabled device or even via offline capability (Factors Affecting Customer Linking Capabilities and Customer Satisfaction in CRM, 2012). #2 Microsoft ERP solutions Enterprise resource planning solution is an effective information system tool to redesign processes, make smarter decisions and for appropriate business growth. Microsoft dynamics AX supports hybrid cloud environment in order to meet requirement of organizations. The advantages of this information management solution have been listed below in consideration of Expedia. Future investment and technology: Expedia is looking for expanding in order to achieve global success and Microsoft dynamic ERP solution is customizable solution that can support the changing needs of the organization for future endeavors. An organization can gain competitive advantage in any location with help of effective resource planning and management as technology can be imitated but resource cannot be. Microsoft ERP solution provides dynamic functionality for resource planning at different locations with centralized solution. Centralized solution provides an effective way to manage globalized resources (Microsoft, 2016). Transforms business faster: ERP solution by Microsoft provides an effective IT tool that helps businesses to transform business faster in different locations such Expedia is looking for expansion which will need resource training and planning to understand existing business model and ERP solution helps to make this transform faster. No replacement cost: Expedia is already using Microsoft platform so there is no replacement cost for Microsoft dynamic solution. Microsoft dynamic integrates multiple international locations or sites to parent solution (Tomic and Jovanovic, 2016). Low deployment cost: Microsoft infrastructure provide efficient integration without any functionality issue which reduces the deployment cost. Reflection and Learning There are so many things that I have learnt while doing this assignment. I would like to divide my reflection in three parts: Problems, solution and Lesson learnt. I found several problems while doing this assignment but research and my analytical skills helped me to come out from these problems. Problems and solution Analytical problems: In task 1 the need was to discuss and evaluate three competitive strategies of Expedia. I had no issues in finding this competitive strategy but I had problem at time of evaluation. Evaluation is basically analysis to determine whether the strategy is according to Market condition or not. The performance of Expedia was clearing effectiveness of its strategies. But I was troubling to find a framework that can justify the assumption. After that I searched for strategy analysis framework and tools and got PESTEL, SWOT and Porters five forces analysis. I could perform all three of them but due to lack of word count I selected porters five forces to evaluate the strategies of Expedia. Research problems: In task 2, I need to identify two IT/IS solution that can help Expedia to achieve its current goals, the current goals of Expedia could be easily found and I got it easily. The next step was to identify solutions that can help Expedia to achieve its goals. I could not found until I didnt started searching specifically such as Microsoft products for effective customer engagement. Lesson Learnt Research needs to be done with specific keywords and you must not be diverted to the topic or research goal. Sometime you need to assume few things in a case study which is correct but you need to justify why it is correct in order to make your point of view correct. References Zanoni, A. (2012). Strategic analysis. New York: Routledge. Microsoft (2016). Microsoft Dynamics. Retrieved 5 July 2016, from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/erp-ax-overview.aspx Wilczyński, B. Furlong, E. (2010). Dynamic CRM occupancy reflects a temporal map of developmental progression. Mol Syst Biol, 6. https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/msb.2010.35 Expedia. (2013). IIC, 44(6), 740-740. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40319-013-0097-3 Factors Affecting Customer Linking Capabilities and Customer Satisfaction in CRM. (2012). International Journal Of Customer Relationship Marketing And Management, 3(4), 16-30. https://dx.doi.org/10.4018/jcrmm.2012100102 Tomic, Z. Jovanovic, M. (2016). ERP and CRM Data Integration. Managefon, 21(78), 63-72. https://dx.doi.org/10.7595/management.fon.2016.0008

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

The Most Embarrassing Incident in My Life free essay sample

Life is full of unexpected incidents. Some anticipated stories do not happen the way we have always wanted. Some days, nights, ways and fights keep repeating in our life. However, it can be pretty funny to look back to the past where many embarrassing moments occur in our days and nights, leaving an abiding memory that cannot be possibly forgotten. The same goes to me as I’m one of the creatures created by God. Scientists call me Homosapien but the world would rather address me as a human being. There are many embarrassing incidents in my life dictionary and most of them are still playing in my mind. Oh, what a memory. There was one day when I accidentally humiliated myself in front of my friends in class. It is not that I was doing something incredibly awesome or what, but I had made something that caused me to look stupid in front of others. We will write a custom essay sample on The Most Embarrassing Incident in My Life or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page I was in my dream; rowing my boat under a romantic blaze of light. There, sitting next to me was Tyra with her unquestionable beauty. She smiled at me and I automatically curved a smile back to her. Assuming that as a license, I began serenading her with my not-so-good songs, pretending the rower of the boat as a guitar. Suddenly, she moved closer to me, whispering to my ear something that I had always wanted to hear a long time ago. â€Å"I love you, Ben,† she said it smoothly, as smooth as the slightest breeze on that historical night. O. M. G. Those were the only letters appeared in my small brain, causing me to be in the seventh heaven! I released my ‘guitar’ and stood up on the boat. With my whole heart, I spread my arms, closed my eyes and expressed as loud as I could, â€Å"Oh, Tyra! I love you too, my darling! †. Suddenly, the background song in my dream stopped playing my love sensation. Things went into a deep silence. At last, I heard a voice†¦ Nope, my mistake! Not a voice, but a lot of voices! I opened my eyes, one by one, realizing I was not in my boat anymore. Guess what- I was in my class, standing in front of my turned-aback-teacher with my arms still spreading to everyone. My classmates? They were laughing, probably at me. Oh, no. Did they hear what I said in my dream just now? I turned around and looked at Tyra. She was sitting at the corner of the class, trying to hide her red embarrassed face. Oh yes, she must have heard my romantic expression. My other friends were still laughing meaning that they heard it too. How embarrassing. My teacher looked at me with a smile and then the smile also turned into laughter. Mrs Chin tried to calm everyone while she herself could not hold her emotion. That was it. Tyra’s face was really red, and I could not imagine how red my face compared to her. I sat back on my chair and pretended not to know anything. Even though everything turned quiet again after a few hours, I was still embarrassed with the incident. I thought that it would be the last time for me to be the butt of the joke in my class. However, my expectation was wrong. The next day, I found a letter under my desk. It was in a pink envelope. Judging from the look of the hand writing, I already knew that it was from Tyra. My heart beat faster unconsciously and my brain stopped functioning. I opened the letter and the last words from it caught my attention. It said: I Do Not Have Any Feelings Towards You, Ben. The words broke my heart into pieces. At that particular time, I was once again humiliated with one-sided-love. Yesterday, my embarrassment was filled with laughter but that day, it was accompanied with tears. I said to myself, â€Å"Oh God, I wish I never wake up†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Water crystals suddenly wetted my face. Well, that plot of my life is now available in my diary. Every time I spend my time reading it, I laugh at myself and at the end; I regret the opportunity that I have lost in order to tackle Tyras heart. I don’t even have a chance to confess my feelings to her and the chance of our eyes staring at each other. If I do have one, I will say, â€Å"Baby, look at your face through my eyes and you’ll find yourself the most beautiful person you have ever seen. † However, I’m fine now (Obviously lying to myself). Though it was the most embarrassing and painful moment in my life, yet it still makes my life more colourful. At least, I have something to learn from which is not to sleep in class and dream about Tyra again. The best part right now is that I will never go out with Tyra anymore and I can go anywhere in my dream with my boat, as I am the only one left in it.