Measuring CRM and SCM benefits : a preliminary measurement model

Organizations invest heavily in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems, and their related infrastructure, presumably expecting positive benefits to the organization. Assessing the benefits of such applications is an important aspect of managing such systems. Considering the salient differences between CRM and SCM applications with other intra-organizational applications, existing Information Systems benefits measurement models and frameworks are ill-suited to gauge benefits of inter-organizational systems. This paper reports the preliminary findings of a measurement model developed to assess benefits of CRM and SCM applications. The preliminary model, which reflects the characteristics of the Analytic Theory, is derived using a review of 55 academic studies and 44 papers from the practice. Six hundred and six identified benefits were then synthesized in to 74 non-overlapping benefits, arranged under six dimensions.

The managerial benefits of tax compliance: perception by small business taxpayers

Research undertaken in 2006 – 2007 investigated the perception of managerial benefits of tax compliance by small business taxpayers. Survey data from a sample of 300 small business taxpayers and responses to semi-structured interviews of owner managers were examined. The study found that a majority of small business taxpayers recognised that tax compliance activities led to better record keeping and to an improved knowledge of their financial affairs. However, there seemed to be a general reluctance by respondents to accept the idea that benefits could be derived as a result of complying with tax. The findings of this study are important as it is the first research that systematically investigated managerial benefits and their perception by small business taxpayers in Australia.

Sustainable housing implementation through mutual benefits to stakeholders : a decision making approach

Improved public awareness and strong sentiments towards environmental issues will continue to create increasing demand for sustainable housing (SH) in the coming years. Despite this potential, the up-take rate of sustainable housing in new build and through home renovation is not as high as expected within the housing industry. This is in contrast to the influx of emerging building technologies, new materials and innovative designs seen in exemplar homes built worldwide. How we should use the increasing awareness of SH and emerging technologies as an impetus to change the un-sustainable designs and practices of the building industry is high on the agenda of the government and majority of the stakeholders involved. This warrants the study of multifaceted strategies that meet the needs of multiple stakeholders and integrated seamlessly into housing development processes. Specifically, the different perceptions, roles and incentives of stakeholders, who inevitably need to ensure their benefits and commercial returns, should be highlighted and acted upon. ----- This paper discusses the preliminary findings of a research project that aims to promote SH implementation by identifying and materializing the mutual benefits among key stakeholders. The aim is to be achieved through questionnaire surveys, structural equation modelling, interviews and case studies with seven major stakeholders within the Australian housing industry. This research identifies the influence and relationship of relevant factors, investigates preferences, similarities and differences between stakeholders on perceived benefits and in turn explores the mutual-benefit strategy package that facilitates decision making towards sustainable housing development.

Benefits of collaborative ICT adoption for building project management

Purpose : Effective flow of data and communication at every stage of a construction project is essential for achieving required coordination and collaboration between the project participants, leading to successful management of the projects. In present scenario, when project participants are geographically separated, adoption of information communication technology (ICT) enables such effective communication. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to focus on ICT adoption for building project management.---------- Design/methodology/approach : It is difficult to quantitatively evaluate the benefits of ICT adoption in the multiple enterprise scenario of building project management. It requires qualitative analysis based on the perceptions of the construction professionals. The paper utilizes interpretive structural modeling (ISM) technique to assess importance of perceived benefits and their driving power and dependence on other benefits.---------- Findings : The developed ISM model shows that all the categories of benefits, i.e. benefits related to projects, team management, technology, and organization are inter-related and cannot be achieved in isolation. But, organization- and technology-related benefits have high-driving power and these are “strategic benefits” for the project team organizations. Thus, organizations are required to give more attention on strategically increasing these benefits from application of ICT. Originality/value – This analysis provides a road map to managers or project management organizations to decide that if they are planning ICT adoption for achieving certain benefits then which are the other driving benefits that should be achieved prior to that and also which are the dependent benefits that would be achieved by default.

Distribution of benefits of irrigation induced technological changes and commodity markets : new evidence

A plethora of literature exists on irrigation development. However, only a few studies analyse the distributional issues associated with irrigation induced technological changes (IITC) in the context of commodity markets. Furthermore, these studies deal with only the theoretical arguments and to date no proper investigation has been conducted to examine the long-term benefits of adopting modern irrigation technology. This study investigates the long-term benefit changes of irrigation induced technological changes using data from Sri Lanka with reference to rice farming. The results show that (1) adopting modern technology on irrigation increases the overall social welfare through consumption of a larger quantity at a lower cost (2) the magnitude, sensitivity and distributional gains depend on the price elasticity of demand and supply as well as the size of the marketable surplus (3) non-farm sector gains are larger than farm sector gains (4) the distribution of the benefits among different types of producers depend on the magnitude of the expansion of the irrigated areas as well as the competition faced by traditional farmers (5) selective technological adoption and subsidies have a detrimental effect on the welfare of other producers who do not enjoy the same benefits (6) the short-term distributional effects are more severe than the long-term effects among different groups of farmers.

Lateral-torsional buckling of cold-formed steel beams at ambient temperature

Cold-formed steel beams are increasingly used as floor joists and bearers in residential, industrial and commercial buildings. Their structural behaviour and moment capacities are influenced by lateral-torsional buckling and hence a research study was undertaken to investigate the lateral-torsional buckling behaviour of cold-formed steel lipped channel beams at ambient and elevated temperatures. For this purpose a finite element model of a simply supported cold-formed steel lipped channel beam under uniform bending was developed first and validated using available numberical and experimental results. It was then used in a detailed parametric study to simulate the lateral-torsional behaviour of cold-formed steel beams under varying conditions. The moment capacity results were then compared with the predictions from the current ambient temperature design rules in Australia, New Zealand, American and European codes for cold-formed steel structures. Some very interesting results have been obtained. European design rules are found to be conservative while Australian and American design rules are unsafe. This paper presents the results of finite element analyses for ambient temperature conditions, and the comparison with the current design rules.

On the data consumption benefits of accepting increased uncertainty

In the context of learning paradigms of identification in the limit, we address the question: why is uncertainty sometimes desirable? We use mind change bounds on the output hypotheses as a measure of uncertainty, and interpret ‘desirable’ as reduction in data memorization, also defined in terms of mind change bounds. The resulting model is closely related to iterative learning with bounded mind change complexity, but the dual use of mind change bounds — for hypotheses and for data — is a key distinctive feature of our approach. We show that situations exists where the more mind changes the learner is willing to accept, the lesser the amount of data it needs to remember in order to converge to the correct hypothesis. We also investigate relationships between our model and learning from good examples, set-driven, monotonic and strong-monotonic learners, as well as class-comprising versus class-preserving learnability.

Who benefits from marriage?

The phenomenon that married men earn higher average wages than unmarried men, the so-called marriage premium, is well known. However, the robustness of the marriage premium across the wage distribution and the underlying causes of the marriage premium deserve closer scrutiny. Focusing on the entire wage distribution and employing recently developed semi-nonparametric tests for quantile treatment effects, our findings cast doubt on the robustness of the premium. We find that the premium is explained by selection above the median, whereas a positive premium is obtained only at very low wages. We argue that the causal effect at low wages is probably attributable to employer discrimination.

Multiple indicators of ambient and personal ultraviolet radiation exposure and risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (United States)

Recent epidemiologic studies have suggested that ultraviolet radiation (UV) may protect against non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), but few, if any, have assessed multiple indicators of ambient and personal UV exposure. Using the US Radiologic Technologists study, we examined the association between NHL and self-reported time outdoors in summer, as well as average year-round and seasonal ambient exposures based on satellite estimates for different age periods, and sun susceptibility in participants who had responded to two questionnaires (1994–1998, 2003–2005) and who were cancer-free as of the earlier questionnaire. Using unconditional logistic regression, we estimated the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals for 64,103 participants with 137 NHL cases. Self-reported time outdoors in summer was unrelated to risk. Lower risk was somewhat related to higher average year-round and winter ambient exposure for the period closest in time, and prior to, diagnosis (ages 20–39). Relative to 1.0 for the lowest quartile of average year-round ambient UV, the estimated OR for successively higher quartiles was 0.68 (0.42–1.10); 0.82 (0.52–1.29); and 0.64 (0.40–1.03), p-trend = 0.06), for this age period. The lower NHL risk associated with higher year-round average and winter ambient UV provides modest additional support for a protective relationship between UV and NHL.

Corona ions from overhead transmission voltage powerlines : effect on DC e-field and ambient particle concentration levels

Along with their essential role in electricity transmission and distribution, some powerlines also generate large concentrations of corona ions. This study aimed at comprehensive investigation of corona ions, vertical dc e-field, ambient aerosol particle charge and particle number concentration levels in the proximity of some high/sub-transmission voltage powerlines. The influence of meteorology on the instantaneous value of these parameters, and the possible existence of links or associations between the parameters measured were also statistically investigated. The presence of positive and negative polarities of corona ions was associated with variation in the mean vertical dc e-field, ambient ion and particle charge concentration level. Though these variations increased with wind speed, their values also decreased with distance from the powerlines. Predominately positive polarities of ions were recorded up to a distance of 150 m (with the maximum values recorded 50 m downwind of the powerlines). At 200 m from the source, negative ions predominated. Particle number concentration levels however remained relatively constant (103 particle cm-3) irrespective of the sampling site and distance from the powerlines. Meteorological factors of temperature, humidity and wind direction showed no influence on the electrical parameters measured. The study also discovered that e-field measurements were not necessarily a true representation of the ground-level ambient ion/particle charge concentrations.