Explain the Different Layers of Osi Reference Model Essay Example for Free

Explain the Different Layers of Osi Reference Model Essay 1)Physical Layer: The physical layer is at the bottom of this model. It deals with crude data that is in the form of electrical signals. The data bits are sent as 0s and 1s. 0s correspond to low voltage signals and 1s correspond to high voltage signals. The mechanical aspects of communication, such as wires or connectors come under this layer. The physical layer also deals with how these wires, connectors, and voltage electrical signals work. Also, the process that is required for these physical aspects are taken into account in this layer itself. 2)The Data Link Layer: The transmission of the data over the communication medium is the responsibility of this layer. The 0s and 1s that are used in the communication are grouped into logical encapsulation. This encapsulation is called frames. The data is transported in frames. The responsibility of these frames is that of the data link layer. 3) Network Layer: All over the world, there are many different types of Ethernet. These networks are connected to each other through various media. When a data packet wants to reach a particular destination, it has to traverse through these networks. Essentially, there are a lot of operations that are taking place between the connected networks. Also, the packet data which is traversing has to choose an optimum route, and the addressing of these packets has to be proper. The various operations between the networks, packet data issues, addressing and routing, are handled by this network layer. 4)Transport Layer: The transport layer ensures quality and reliability of the communication. The data packet switching is entirely handled by the transport layer. There are basically two types of packet switching. They are connectionless packet switching and connection oriented packet switching. In connectionless packet switching, the packet data is allowed to choose the route in which it is going to reach the destination. Obviously, the packet in itself cant do this. Physical devices like routers are mainly responsible for the behavior of packets, but the packets formed from the same datum can reach their destination in different ways. Whereas, in connection oriented packet switching, once the route is decided, then all the packets have to follow the same route. An example of connectionless packet switching is text messages in mobile phones, and the example of connection oriented switching is a direct voice call. 5)The Sessions Layer: The session’s layer is mainly responsible for creating, maintaining and destroying the communication link. PDU (Protocol Data Unit), in which various protocols are defined that have to be followed during communication, are the responsibility of the sessions layer. The applications that use RPCs (remote procedure calls) are taken care of by the sessions layer. 6)Presentation Layer: There are various techniques of data compression which are used to send and receive the optimized data. For example, if certain data is repeating itself a number of times, then it is logical to send the data only once, and specify the number of times it is repeated. This bundling of the repeated data is one of the techniques of compressions. The compression and decompression of the data is handled by the presentation layer. Also, encryption and decryption techniques used to thwart malicious attacks on data are handled by the presentation layer. 7)Application Layer: This layer comes into picture when there is a process to process communication. Whenever a user invokes any application, all the associated processes are run. Many times, when an application wants to communicate with another application, then there has to be communication between these associated processes. The application layer is responsible for this inter-process communication.

AIDS :: AIDS Essays

AIDS Unprotected sex, dirty needles,pills!! Now that I have your attention, today I’ll be talking to you about the causes and effects on how you can contract this deadly virus. But first let me start by explaining what Aids/HIV really is and what it does to you once you have contracted the Aids virus. Aids/Aids lowers your immune systems ability to produce the white blood cells and antibodies that protect you from colds, infections, etc. Lowered immunity makes a person vulnerable to attacks from different types of viruses. Such as simple colds, fungi, bacteria may lead to infectious diseases and tumors. Eventually these illnesses may cause death. A simple cold can become deadly to a person who’s infected with the Aids virus. There are many ways you can contract this deadly virus. One is by drug use and the second is having unprotected sex. You can contract Aids by using someone else’s contaminated needle during drug use. If the needle your using is a dirty needle that someone else used and had Aids you easily contract Aids from them. Due to the blood that’s left in the needle or on the needle from the other person. The second way you can contract the Aids virus is by having unprotected sex or through oral sex. Infection of the virus can occur through anal or vaginal intercourse or oral genital sex with an infected partner. The virus is present in semen and vaginal secretions of an infected person. It enters your body through small tears that can develop in vaginal or rectal tissues during sexual activity. Unsafe sex not only pertains to adults but also to kids and teenagers of all ages. Its doesn’t matter how old or young you are, you can contract Aids at any age. There are many effects of this deadly virus. Aids causes sickness weakness of the body and in most cases death. The body gets weaker and isn’t be able to function properly because there aren’t enough white blood cells to fight the virus due to the Aids virus. Department of Health and Human Services report that over 1 million people between the ages of 20-39 will be infected wit Aids by the year 2000. The number of ages will drastically increase with deaths in all age groups reaching 70,000 per year. By the year 2005, 350 people a day will die from the virus. Many people believe that the medicines we have today can cure the Aids virus or stop it from spreading.

Difference between Issues and Problems

Some business managers mistakenly use the term â€Å"issue† and â€Å"problem† interchangeably; however, doing so may complicate the daily decision making processes by lumping all issues and problems together and possibly make a bad situation worse. Separating issues from problems helps to prevent smaller issues from becoming problems. This business practice is so important that there is an entire management discipline predictably called, â€Å"issue management† (IM). The Dow Jones says that â€Å"successful issue management depends on addressing concerns before they become full blown problems. 1Therefore, it is deduced that issues are smaller, less threatening and require minimal effort to find resolution – but left unchecked could expose the organization to greater risk. There is an analogy to help put this concept into proper perspective – â€Å"forgetting your lunch is an issue, but losing your job is a problem. 2 Therefore, the difference between an Issue and a problem can be explained this way, â€Å"Problems are solved. Issues need to be resolved†¦. To solve is to explain and to resolve is to separate a thing into its component parts or elements, then determine a course of action. †

Effective Customer Relationship Management System - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 8 Words: 2252 Downloads: 7 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Management Essay Type Essay any type Did you like this example? This assignment explores the need for customer relationship management systems. It begins by explaining how the organisational environment has changed and the pace of change is accelerating. It then considers how a better understanding the customer contributes to organisational success. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Effective Customer Relationship Management System" essay for you Create order Following this, it defines what is understood by CRM or customer relationship management, and finally it considers the importance of using technology effectively when designing a CRM system. The emergence of CRM is a response to a changing global environment, as Court (2004:4) observed twenty years ago, large companies used one of very few television channels to reach 80% of the US population, but the media explosion would require them to advertise across 20 channels to reach the same. Furthermore, brand loyalty is in decline, and product life cycles are shortening: customers are becoming more indifferent to marketing messages since customers, whether consumers or businesses, do not want more choices. They want exactly what they want, when, where and how they want it and technology now makes it possible for companies to give it to them (Pine et al, 1995:104). This belief forms the very basis of the purpose of CRM that customers have hidden or overt preferences that marketers can reveal by building a learning relationship (Mukerjee, 2007). Thus, it involves not only attempting to interpret the needs of customers based on their buying behaviour but predicting their future needs. However, there remains no universal definition of CRM some distinguish between customer relationship management and others argue the M refers to marketing (Gamble et al, 1999) and as a result, different approaches to CRM have been identified. A strategic approach is a core customer-centric business strategy which aims to win and keep profitable customers whereas an Operational approach focuses on the automation of customer-facing processes such as selling, marketing and customer service. A third approach is analytical in nature: focusing on the intelligent mining of customer-related data for strategic or tactical purposes and finally, a collaborative approach applies technology across organisational boundaries with a view to optimizing company, partner and customer value (Butt le, 2009). These different approaches when combined, however, do enable firms to explore their relationship with the customer in a more holistic way. Thus CRM is not merely a matter of database marketing, nor just a marketing process of segmenting the market and acquiring customers or any single IT initiative or loyalty scheme (Buttle, 2009). Firms must be driven by a desire to be more customer-centric if they want to compete effectively and thus, CRM can be thought of as a core business strategy that integrates internal processes and functions, and external networks, to create and deliver value to targeted customers at a profit. It is grounded on high quality customer-related data and enabled by information technology (ibid, 2009: Loc 852). A strategy is the long-term direction of an organisation and operates on three main levels. Firstly, it is concerned with the overall scope of an organisation and how to add value to the organisational as a whole, or the corporate-level. S econdly, at a business level: how the business should compete in their particular market. And thirdly, how the components of an organisation deliver effectively the corporate-level strategies in terms of resources, processes and people (Johnson et al, 2014:7). Therefore, a CRM approach must devise clear objectives to be achieved and which are measureable. Clearly one of those objectives is profit but clearly linked to this is sustainability. Mukerjee (2007) argues that this requires a firm to have four capabilities. The firm must have the technological capabilities to enable the desired functionality for the CRM practice. Secondly, its people must have the skills, abilities and attitudes responsible to generate CRM and implement initiatives. Thirdly, it must focus on the processes that the company has identified to enable the CRM initiatives to be fulfilled, including its transactional interactions with customers, and finally the firm must identify the right approaches to acquire the knowledge and insight into enhancing the customer value by developing stronger and deeper customer relationships with the right set of customers. Thus finding the right set of customers is the starting point for CRM. The IDIC model devised by Peppers and Rogers (1996) suggest firms must first identify who its customers are and build a deep understanding of them. Then, the firm must identify which customers have the most value now and which will offer the most for the future. Following this, the firm must interact will customers to ensure an understanding of customer expectations and their relationship with other suppliers or brands, and finally the firm must customise the offer and communications to ensure the expectations are met. The next step is building a relationship with the customer. Buttle (2009: Loc 1082) defines a relationship as distinct from a transaction: The latter is a one off, but the former is a more enduring social construct, but emphasises trust and com mitment. Thus a CRM system must continually strive for improved customer retention as well as recruiting new customers who have future profit potential. A useful tool for exploring this is customer portfolio management. A portfolio segments customers into mutually exclusive customer groups which are clustered on the basis of one or more strategically important variables. This allows for different groups to manage in different ways as it recognises differing needs, preferences, expectations, but also enables analysis of revenue and cost profiles. Clusters can by consumer type, e.g. other businesses (B2B) or ultimate consumer (B2C). And each sub-group can be further categorised, e.g. business type, or through psychological, geographical, demographical and behavioural clusters (Jackson, 2015). Then it is to appraise the value of such groups. It is a mistake to value according to revenue or volume since they take no account of the costs to win and keep the customer, it must be rel ated to profit (Ambler et al, 2004). Such comparisons can then be modelled on a bivariate grid, and then combined again, for example, attractiveness, or kept separate, and adding a third dimension (trivariate grid approach) for example, assessing against the company and network fit: the operational, marketing, technological, people and other competencies and liquidity a company has, or can develop, to exploit the segment (Buttle, 2009). Thus the portfolio approach provides a sense of focused decision-making that can take into account a number of variables and classifications and assist with forming the strategy of the organisation from a corporate prospective. It provide the vision of the organisation. It follows, then, that the business and operational CRM strategies can then focus on the how to implement CRM systems. This starts with determining priorities to determine the goals and objectives. Chan (2005) believes that in order to successfully build a customer-centric organ isation, all the organisational interactions with the target customers must be tracked whether it is at a primary stage, e.g. marketing, during the interaction, or following the interaction. One approach to this is Value Chain analysis. Porters (1985) Value Chain identifies nine ways that company create value, and classifies them as primary or secondary, as the diagram below demonstrates: Value is created by companies managing each component more efficiently and effectively, and in particular improving the co-ordination of these activities across the business. The competitive position is strengthened by understanding which of these are especially significant to customers, how rare and difficult to mimic these core competencies are, as well as any other factors which support the organisation in achieving its goals (Johnson et al, 2014). These other factors include understanding the role that the organisational stakeholders, including suppliers, customers, owners, partner s and employees contribute (Buttle 2009). He (ibid: Loc 9638) argues that the relationship between suppliers is particularly critical. The organisation, therefore, acts as a link between the suppliers and customers, and for the customer-centric organisation that relationship between the suppliers and customer must de-emphasise the short-term, opportunistic behaviours to maximise immediate profit but rather stress the long-term mutually beneficial gains. Furthermore, companies need to keep adding value to retain customers in order to sustain competitiveness, and potentially leap-frog rivals. There are several approaches that organisations can enhance customer value, for example, product and service innovation, finding complete solutions, lowering costs, using more efficient technology and removing pain points simplifying or removing those activities which a customer must endure to get the value (Mukerjee, 2007). Shaw and Ivens (2002) believe that it is the latter issue that is th e main focus for CRM: understanding the customer experience rather than just the customer. Firms can make use of a number of methods for investigating customer experience, including mystery shopping and experience mapping, a process to chart and improve what happens at every point the customer interacts with the organisation; process mapping (Buttle, 2009). Another approach is to study the customer activity cycle, which involves breaking down the process into basic elements and collecting data at each point in the cycle (Vandermerwe, 1993). Thus, CRM systems make use of sophisticated analytical tools, and these must be supported by CRM technologies. CRM technology must be able to meet a wide-range of functions, not just to capture data, but assist with assimilating that data into databases, which must be robust, scalable and secure (Mukerjee, 2007). Furthermore, such technologies must be accessible to all stakeholders, meaning they cannot be difficult to navigate or configure. They must also be able to operate across any communication channel and integrate with other systems to contribute to a single view of, and for, the customer (Buttle, 2009) who lists many well-known CRM solution providers, for example Oracle, SAP, salesforce. Com, Microsoft and E.piphany (ibid: Loc 8026). Therefore, when designing a CRM systems a thorough understanding of the interconnectivity of the customer, the suppliers, the technology, analytical tools and the firms strategy is required and needs to be constantly monitored, as the model below demonstrates: Adapted from: Buttle (2009: Loc 2863) Earlier in this assignment, finding the right set of customers was suggested as the starting point for CRM system design, and thus it is appropriate to return to this in order to stress the importance of the cyclical and interconnectedness of CRM when designing a system. The activity of finding the right set of customers means right now and in the future in order to devise an appropriate strategy, and do so profitably. This process is known as data mining. Buttle (2009) defines data mining as the application of descriptive and predictive analysis to support the marketing, sales and service functions. Data mining provides answers to questions that are at the heart of CRM and therefore when designing a system, it is important to understand that CRM is a holistic approach. Another key consideration when designing a CRM system is that it should assist the organisation in its quest to keep abreast of and prepare for changes in current trends. Traditional marketing methods have been challenged in recent years by changing social trends, the reduction of governmental controls, rising income levels, threats from rivals, an increasingly sophisticated customer who has greater access to information (Mukerjee, 2007). All of this, has contributed to the shortening product life cycle, which as substantially increased the pressure on firms to not just acquire custom ers but retain them. Any system that is designed must also be implemented. Narver et al (1998) state that customer orientation is a type of organisational culture, therefore before embarking in CRM, the organisational culture must be ready and able to fulfil the CRM objectives. The organisation, or rather the people within it, must be able to respond quickly, and the company able to support, train and hire people with the necessary attitude, skills and abilities in order for them to contribute to CRM. Furthermore, the company may have to radically reconstruction its entire systems, particularly the structural design of the organisation in order to change the culture from resistant to embracing change. This assignment has explored the notion that CRM is a holistic approach which assists the organisation in not just responding to its environment but to also compete against rivals. Customer relationship management cannot deliver its promised benefits without appropriate customer- related data, which in turn must be analysed using a wide-range of tools in order to meet the strategic, operational, analytical and collaborative CRM purposes. To design a CRM system means putting the customer at the heart of the organisation and adapting and sustainably exploiting all the resources available in order to meet their needs. References Ambler, T., Kokkinaki, F. and Puntoni, S (2004) Assessing marketing performance: reason for metrics selection, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 20, p 475 98. Buttle, F. (2009) Customer Relationship Management, Abdingdon:Routledge. Chan, J.O. (2005) Toward a unified view of customer relationship management, Journal of American Academy of Business, Vol 6 (1), p 32 38. Court, D.C (2004) A New Model of Marketing, McKinsey Quarterly, Vol 4, pages 4 6 Gamble, P, Stone, M, and Woodcock, N (1999) Customer Relationship Marketing: up close and personal, London: Kogan Page. Jackson, J. (2015) Marketing, E-bookPartnership. Johnson, G., Whittington, R., Scholes, K., Angwin, D. Regner, P. (2014) Exploring Strategy, Harlow: Pearson Education. Mukerjee, K (2007) Customer Relationship Management, New Delhi: PHI Learning. Narver, J, Slater, S and Tietje, B (1998) Creating a Market Orientation, Journal of Market Focused Management, Vol 2, p 241 255 Peppers, D and Rogers, M (2004) Managing Customer Relationships: a strategic framework, London: Piatkus. Pine, B, Joseph, I.I, Peppers, D and Rogers, M (1995) Do you want to keep your customers forever? Harvard Business Review, Vol 73 (2) p 103 114. Porter, M (1985) Competitive Advantage: creating and sustaining superior performance, New York: Free Press. Shaw, C and Ivens, J (2002) Building great customer experiences, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Vandermerwe, S (1993) Jumping into the customer activity cycle: a new role for customer services in the 1990s, Columbia Journal of World Business, Vol 28 (2), p 28 66.