E-CRM in SMEs: an exploratory study in Sangammer region of Maharashtra in India

Although there are many definitions of SME's there is no globally accepted definition of a small or medium-sized enterprise. Small Medium Enterprises (SME) the catalyst in economic growth & development of the country, are facing tough competition in market place and in establishing themselves as credible supplier of quality product and services. In India they are producing more than 8000 different products. The common perception is that small to medium businesses have very little options in terms of CRM solutions. This is clearly not the case. SME's now have a lot of options and can exercise same. Businesses are shifting from product centric to customer centric. Long before the advent of technology, businesses have always recognized that the customer is the soul of every business. Businesses try to have personal relationship with their customers. Moving towards customer centric approach is a multi prolonged efforts that requires transformation of process, culture and strategy from top level to every individual employee. Technology has a crucial role in providing tools and infrastructure to support this. CRM supports SMEs in their business customer loyalty.

A Recommendation Framework Based on the Analytic Network Process and its Application in the Semantic Technology Domain

When users face a certain problem needing a product, service, or action to solve it, selecting the best alternative among them can be a dicult task due to the uncertainty of their quality. This is especially the case in the domains where users do not have an expertise, like for example in Software Engineering. Multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) methods are methods that help making better decisions when facing the complex problem of selecting the best solution among a group of alternatives that can be compared according to different conflicting criteria. In MCDM problems, alternatives represent concrete products, services or actions that will help in achieving a goal, while criteria represent the characteristics of these alternatives that are important for making a decision.

Facing the climate change challenges in the mining and mineral industry as providers of a sustainable manufacturing process

A sustainable manufacturing process must rely on an also sustainable raw materials and energy supply. This paper is intended to show the results of the studies developed on sustainable business models for the minerals industry as a fundamental previous part of a sustainable manufacturing process. As it has happened in other economic activities, the mining and minerals industry has come under tremendous pressure to improve its social, developmental, and environmental performance. Mining, refining, and the use and disposal of minerals have in some instances led to significant local environmental and social damage. Nowadays, like in other parts of the corporate world, companies are more routinely expected to perform to ever higher standards of behavior, going well beyond achieving the best rate of return for shareholders. They are also increasingly being asked to be more transparent and subject to third-party audit or review, especially in environmental aspects. In terms of environment, there are three inter-related areas where innovation and new business models can make the biggest difference: carbon, water and biodiversity. The focus in these three areas is for two reasons. First, the industrial and energetic minerals industry has significant footprints in each of these areas. Second, these three areas are where the potential environmental impacts go beyond local stakeholders and communities, and can even have global impacts, like in the case of carbon. So prioritizing efforts in these areas will ultimately be a strategic differentiator as the industry businesses continues to grow. Over the next forty years, world?s population is predicted to rise from 6.300 million to 9.500 million people. This will mean a huge demand of natural resources. Indeed, consumption rates are such that current demand for raw materials will probably soon exceed the planet?s capacity. As awareness of the actual situation grows, the public is demanding goods and services that are even more environmentally sustainable. This means that massive efforts are required to reduce the amount of materials we use, including freshwater, minerals and oil, biodiversity, and marine resources. It?s clear that business as usual is no longer possible. Today, companies face not only the economic fallout of the financial crisis; they face the substantial challenge of transitioning to a low-carbon economy that is constrained by dwindling natural resources easily accessible. Innovative business models offer pioneering companies an early start toward the future. They can signal to consumers how to make sustainable choices and provide reward for both the consumer and the shareholder. Climate change and carbon remain major risk discontinuities that we need to better understand and deal with. In the absence of a global carbon solution, the principal objective of any individual country should be to reduce its global carbon emissions by encouraging conservation. The mineral industry internal response is to continue to focus on reducing the energy intensity of our existing operations through energy efficiency and the progressive introduction of new technology. Planning of the new projects must ensure that their energy footprint is minimal from the start. These actions will increase the long term resilience of the business to uncertain energy and carbon markets. This focus, combined with a strong demand for skills in this strategic area for the future requires an appropriate change in initial and continuing training of engineers and technicians and their awareness of the issue of eco-design. It will also need the development of measurement tools for consistent comparisons between companies and the assessments integration of the carbon footprint of mining equipments and services in a comprehensive impact study on the sustainable development of the Economy.

Facing informatics via three level complexity views

In informatics there is one kind of complexity that is perceived by everyone. It is the complexity of a concrete, isolated object, normally situated completely within one of the branches universally recognized by the scientific and technical community. Examples of this are the complexity of integrated electronic circuits, the complexity of lgorithms and the complexity of software. The first complexity deals with the number of circuit components, the second with computation time and the third with the number of necessary mental discriminations. In arder to illustrate my point, I will take up the last complexity, which, m o reo ver, is the least well-known.

Customer Relationship Management-PeopleSoft CRM

1 RESUMEN 1.1 Resumen (español) El intercambio y comercio tanto de bienes como servicios se remonta a tiempos inmemoriales dentro de la historia de la humanidad. Desde sus inicios tempranos con el intercambio o trueque de productos en el Neolítico hasta nuestra época híper globalizada, en la que existen clientes potenciales en el otro extremo del mundo, podemos decir que se ha recorrido un largo camino. Con el paso del tiempo y la evolución de la sociedad y la tecnología, así como la evolución empresarial, se ha visto necesario la implementación de estrategias para lograr la fidelización y satisfacción de los clientes. De esta forma entendimos que ya no valía simplemente con vender un producto a un cliente, si no que si queríamos establecer una relación continúa con el mismo, debíamos lograr su satisfacción y por tanto su fidelización. Como forma de extender la relación más allá de una simple venta, las empresas modernas empezaron a implementar diversas estrategias. De esta forma aparecieron los primeros centros de atención al cliente, las primeras aplicaciones hechas a medida para dar soporte a los clientes y por fin los sistemas CRM tal y como los concebimos hoy día. El presente proyecto fin de carrera da una explicación de dichos sistemas indicando cuáles son sus objetos fundamentales y cómo implementan la estrategia CRM y profundiza en uno de los sistemas CRM más utilizados: PeopleSoft CRM, dando una explicación detallada de dicho sistemas así como de los conceptos y lenguaje de programación de dicho sistema CRM. 1.2 SUMMARY (ENGLISH) The exchange and trade of goods as well and services goes back to ancient times in the history of mankind. Since its early beginning with the bartering of products in the Neolithic to our globalized hyper era, in which there are potential customers on the other side of the world, we can say that it has come a long way. After a certain length of time, the society and technology evolution, and also the enterprise development, has been necessary to implement strategies to achieve customer loyalty and satisfaction. We understood in this way that it no longer simply worth to sell a product to a customer, otherwise if we wanted to establish a relationship continues with the same, we should ensure their satisfaction and thus their loyalty. As a way to extend the relationship beyond a simple sale, modern enterprises began to implement several strategies. Therefore appeared the first customer service centers, the first applications tailored to support customers and finally the CRM systems as we know it today. This final project gives an explanation of such systems by indicating what the core objects are and how to implement the CRM strategy, deeping into one of the most widely used CRM systems: PeopleSoft CRM, and also giving a detailed explanation of this system and its programming language.