Harrahs Essay

Harrahs Essay Harrahs Essay The objective of the database marketing programs was to improve Harrah’s performance on each of the above-mentioned KPIs. The company hired Gary Loveman from HBS to bring quantitative muscle to its marketing strategy. What Loveman and his team did was development of quantitative models to accurately predict customer worth- the theoretical amount that the company expects to generate from a customer based on his past usage of Harrah’s properties. This was a transformational move for Harrah’s. From a historical model of operational CRM that focused on the customer’s past usage patterns, Loveman proposed an analytical CRM model that was predictive and therefore, radically different from how the company viewed profitable customers. Analytical CRM was implemented through the following programs: New Business Program: The New Business Program was designed to improve the effectiveness at converting new Total Gold members into loyal customers. The program used predicted customer worth (theoretical wins) to make more effective investment decisions at the customer level- thus allowing the particular offer to be more competitive with what the customer was currently receiving from their existing scenario of choice. Loyalty Program- Frequency Upside This program was designed to identify customers that, Harrah's predicted, were only giving Harrah's a small share of their total spending in a particular market. Harrah's capabilities enabled it to develop programs that offered incentives for these customers to visit Harrah's properties more frequently- i.e., switch a trip from a competitor to Harrah's. Harrah's calculated the profitability of these programs by comparing the incremental theoretical wins to the incremental cost of the program. Loyalty

Five things to remember when writing your first bidÂÂ

Five things to remember when writing your first bid   Five things to remember when writing your first bid OK, theres no getting away from it: successful bids take a bit of effort to create. And if you’ve never written one before, it could seem like a particularly daunting task. But keeping a few crucial principles in mind will put you in the strongest possible position when you have to write one for the first time. So here are five things to remember when that time comes. 1. A bid is not an info packet. Its a persuasion tool. If you start the bid-writing process from the wrong perspective, chances are high that your proposal wont do its job. The goal of a bid is to persuade someone to choose your company. Therefore, you must think of this process as an exercise in persuasive writing, not in providing an encyclopedic description of what your company is capable of. Taking a cue from sales, the best road to persuasion is understanding your customer, identifying their need, comprehending that need, showing your customer you understand it, and then showing that you (and only you) have the solution. By simply supplying your potential client with an exhaustive treatise on why your company is wonderful, youve not taken any of the necessary steps towards persuasion. If you dont show the relevance of these facets to your potential customer, you’ve failed from the start. Don’t assume this is self-evident: connect the dots for them. The next four pointers will set you on the right pathway for actually writing your first bid. Follow them and youll end up with an effective persuasion tool that gives you the edge above your competitors. (To learn how to apply them to your own bids, check out  our bid-writing courses for individuals  and for teams.) 2. A bid should be personalised for the client. Take the time to customise the proposal. Bid writing should not be a template-driven process or an exercise in copy and paste. Youll need to do your homework and create a bid thats completely tailored for the client. This means you need to put in some solid research before you can even write a word. Yes, its time-consuming and nearly impossible to farm out, but doing so will raise your chances of winning dramatically. Begin by approaching your bid writing from your client’s perspective. That means finding out who the key decision-makers and influencers will be and writing specifically for them. Finding out who the decision-makers are is only step one, however. Then the real detective work begins: your aim here is to work out the mindset of this person (or these people). The more you can get inside their heads, the more likely youll be to strike a chord with them and be selected for the job. How to do this? Again: research. This will mean you can take the perspective of your prospective client. Only then will you be able to see the ‘problem’ from their point of view. Exactly why is it a problem to them? Determine the decision-makers focus. Youll need to consider different approaches depending on what this is. For example, are they more concerned about customer service or cost savings? Are they operations-orientated or finance-focused? Write your bid in a way that speaks to that point of view and its needs. The more you can sync your bid to the clients way of thinking about the project, the more likely it will be that they’ll see your proposal as offering the right solution for them. Which brings us to the next point. 3. A bid should show that you clearly understand the job. Think of your bid as a customised solution to the clients unique problem. Just as you should tailor the bid to the decision-makers’ thought processes, you should also tailor your proposal to the job at hand. Bids that win are those which show clearly that you understand the job. It may seem obvious that your understanding of the project is inherent to your providing a solution. However, keep in mind that your bid is a sales tool. Therefore, youre taking the reader through a sales thought process. That process involves leading the client from step one all the way up to the conclusion that only your company can do the job. An essential part of that sales thought process is confirming that you ‘get it’: you understand the job as the client understands it. Once youve laid that groundwork (and reassured them), the next logical step is showing how youll provide a great solution. How can you show that you understand the job? At the risk of repeating myself: do your homework. Look at the client’s website; look at everything they’ve told you. Use their language. The more your bid lines up with the clients way of thinking about the problem, the easier it will be to present the right solution. 4. A bid should show how you will provide value. In the business environment, persuasion is all about adding value. If your bid isnt showing the client how your company will add value, then its not a good bid. Merely describing your companys capabilities isnt necessarily going to win you the job. Put teeth into your proposal by describing what results the client can expect. If youve ever worked in sales, think of the classic ‘features versus benefits’ approach and youll understand what needs to happen here. Clients want to see the benefits of choosing you. Make these explicit. Listing the features of your organisation does not equate with showing benefits: don’t expect your client to pick apart such a list and guess at how each thing will help them. Simply telling them youll put the best and the brightest to work on their project means nothing if they cant make the connection between expertise and added value for them. What really lights up decision-makers’ eyes are statements like ‘we project an increase in sales after three months’ or ‘you can expect a 10 per cent upturn in leads by the end of the month’. 5. The devil is in the detail. Dont forget logistics. Provide a timetable for delivery and explain how and where everything will happen. Include a timeline for development too, so the client will feel informed at every stage of the plan. And don’t forget Finally, everything we’ve covered could still come to no good if you submit a bid littered with obvious grammar problems and typos. It may not seem likely (or fair) that a stray apostrophe could bring the whole deal crashing down to earth, but it’s not worth taking that risk. Good writing reflects the quality of your companys abilities and attention to detail. If you clearly havent taken the time to proofread your bid for errors (or even hire an editor to clean it up for you, if that’s an option) it could make you look very bad. The last word Your bid is an indication of how well youre going to perform the job. If youre serious about creating a winning proposal, these five reminders will serve you well. Keep this as a guideline and follow these steps and youll be well-placed to put the competition to shame with your first bid – and every one after that. hbspt.cta.load(2645537, '7b23ded2-8092-4854-8dd9-62573d3f63b2', {}); Image credit: Sunny studio / Shutterstock

Metanoia Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Metanoia - Essay Example The notion â€Å"metanoia† literally means â€Å"change of mind† (Branch 55) and most widely is presented in the way that a person has a certain way of thinking and consideration of the phenomenon of the world and then something changes the way of thinking for good. This notion mostly concerns religious change of thinking. From the very beginning of a person’s religious path some acts can be called metanoic, for instance, it can be conversion into religion from atheistic point of view, or from another religion. The point is that metanoia requires a person to change one’s way of life according to the new understanding the person acquired from the act of metanoia (Clarkson 225). It is very important to divide different types of the notion â€Å"mind† considering metanoia. Dealing with spiritual realm we find that mind has certain gradation which is following. â€Å"Mind† as both intelligence and consciousness don’t really deal with metan oia in religious aspect. But â€Å"Mind† as spiritual intelligence (SQ) means the need of every human being to feel this life as something filled with meaning and spiritual power that rule everything (Powell n.pag.) and this kind of mind actually changes through the metanoic process. This means that metanoia works in changing of spirit which makes it totally existential even though some researches try to describe it as ethical process when a person realizes that one’s previous way of life was in some way unethical and decides to change it into a decent one (Friesen and Guhr 724). The difference between ethical and existential change (metanoic one) can be described through the famous biblical example from the Gospel of St. Mark, 10: 17-27. When a rich guy came to Jesus asking how he can reach the salvation, Jesus answered him that firstly he had to follow the God’s commandments and secondly he had to sell all his

The Therac-25 and Its Accident Investigation Case Study - 1

The Therac-25 and Its Accident Investigation - Case Study Example When u fix an old bug, it is highly likely that anew bug will develop. After fixing a bug, there is only a fifty per cent chance that the particular program will function over a similar length of time before failing, the same way it did before the bug was rectified. This means that the manufacturer’s claims that the machine’s safety was improved after it was fixed were totally unfounded. The manufacturer’s claim that the machine could never break down, even after getting and rectifying numerous problems was groundless. So long as the manufacturer had the conviction that the machine could never cause an overdose of radiation, they would not notice any deficiencies in their machine. As much as many people would love to point fingers at the manufacturer as the cause of the Therac-25 accidents, the technicians and operators who operated the machine also made some mistakes which caused the accident. For instance, it was somehow strange that the operators of the machin e got comfortable running the machine despite the regular error notices it issued. The machine normally issued forty error notices in a single day. This was bad since the cost of the Therac-25’s failure may possibly be death and it was the operator’s responsibility to insist for a properly functioning machine without faults. They could also have demanded a clear documentation that showed the machine’s errors and their possible causes. They also over relied on the safety statistics of the machine which were inflated as stated by the manufacturer. This made them not to investigate any overdoses possible hence putting the lives of the patients in danger. The federal government had a fair share of blame in the accidents because they knew that the manufacturer’s engineering practices were poor but still allowed the use of Therac-25. They seemingly had too much faith in the safety statistics that were posted by the manufacturer and therefore never took a keen i nterest in the safety precautions. The accidents were caused by institutional and engineering mistakes which could have led to even bigger disasters had the machine’s operation not been suspended. The manufacturer never had an independent review on the software code and therefore had not followed the right procedure. They never considered the software’s design when assessing the machine’s ability to produce the expected results and if there were any failure modes in its operation. The machine never explained any error codes so the operators just overrode the warning signs since they could not tell if there was an error or just a false alarm. The manufacturer never believed any complaints since there were overconfident that the machine would never fail, to make it worse, the hardware and software combination was never tested until after its assembly at the hospital. On the engineering side, the machine failed only when a non standard keystroke was entered on term inal VT-100. This machine never had hardware interlocks which could prevent the beam from running in high energy mode when the target was not in position. The programming engineer used software from an old model. The old models used hardware to cover their faults but could not report the faults hence leaving the machine to operate with the

Gender Roles in the Media Essay -- Socialization Female Male Differenc

From the moment they are born and wrapped in a pink or blue blanket, a child's gender is unmistakable. From this point on, they will continuously be bombarded with the socialization into their gender by many sources. One of the main sources of this socialization is media, more specifically television. The purpose of this paper is to describe gender roles and stereotypes, and to take a closer look at how the media's representation and portrayal of males and females affects children. Gender differences are the "sets of attributes socially and culturally constructed on the basis of birth assignment as male or female" (Creedon, 1993, p.5). When a baby is born and wrapped in a colored blanket based on their gender, one of the first things many parents think about his how perfect their little boy or girl is; How strong and handsome their son will be with his dad's strong hands; How beautiful their daughter is because of her "big blue eyes." The last question on the minds of the parents however, is how, by choosing that blanket for their child and thinking these thoughts, they have commenced the idealistic gendering process. Many parents fail to think twice about setting guidelines for their children from birth on what it means to be either male or female, because doing so has become so natural to our society. "We live in a culture built on a particular set of gender assumptions and structured to amplify if not produce gender asymmetries and inequalities, and we come to view these differences as part of the natural world" (Creedon, 1993, p.5). In the media, the roles of males and females differ immensely. "Women, especially young women, are primarily depicted as sex objects and men as success objects. In both cases, the ... ...isual stereotypes in american mass media. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Kundanis, R. (2003). Children, teens, families, and mass media: the millennial generation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers. Pollack, W. (1998). Real boys: rescuing our sons from the myths of boyhood. New York, NY: Holt. Spangler, L. (2003). Television women From lucy to friends: fifty years of sitcoms and feminism. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. Strasburger, V.; Wilson, B. (2002). Children, adolescents, and the media. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Wartella, E. (1979). Children communicating: media and development of thought, speech, understanding. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Woods, J. (1994). Who cares: women, care, and culture. Carbondale, Ill: Southern Illinois University Press.

Advanced Flight Deck Technology for Safety

Over the years and through technology and the requirements of safety and comfort new deck flight plans have been devised and implemented. With this forward movement of a more integrated flight deck and commercial aircraft overall, this has led to a wider safety margin, a more economical cost of operations which in turn will help lower the consumers price of flights as well as their comfort and safety margin. The new flight deck of the Boeing 787 has taken into consideration many factors of the human element of not only pilots but passengers as well. Boeing has spent many years with engineers as well as the astronauts from Nasa to incorporate and implement a flight deck design that in its overall abilities will prove to be a much safer, a more reliable â€Å"tool† of flight ensuring the safety of all on board their commercial plane as well as ensuring specific ergonomic factors of the pilots, all of which in turn will help for a smoother flight and mitigate many more chances of potential accidents. At the same time there have also been the ongoing efforts to revolutionize the passenger decks for comfort, security and convenience. Before the new design process for the Boeing 787 flight deck was actually implemented there were several factors that were considered. The old style flight deck instrument control panel itself had many more individual panels to read and watch, their design somewhat sporadic in comparison with what a pilot needed to view and when. There was a limited streamline for functionality. Furthermore, certain controls were either in the way or out of the way making for increased eye, hand and body movement to make a simple adjustment. Pilot seats were more stationary, lacking the ability to swivel completely or to recline or even for basic lumbar support. The windshield has a lesser visibility radius than the new flight deck. The human factors of designing the new flight deck took into account certain specifics of ergonomics. This was to try and reduce strain on the lower back due to prolonged sitting, strain and wear on hands by operating simple hand controls and functions and less strain on eye movements or basic visibility. These were the more important factors to help alleviate potential health issues that pilots, overtime, would experience, furthermore the flight deck design has less capability of causing carpal tunnel, eye strain, dealing with glare functions and in general less tiredness of the pilots which the end result would mean a safer flight for all involved and a more rejuvenated pilot after the flight. The new design of this deck for the pilots has incorporated many changes. The controls, instead of all being joystick like are now more operational by the touch of a button which reduces carpal tunnel stress by having less rigidity that is common with all joystick controls. The windshield is now more anti glare and has the added function, in conjunction with the new panel, to allow for low visibility takeoffs and landings. The instrument panel has a much greater streamlined effect and fewer panels to view as well. The readouts are bigger and more detailed so that a pilot may not have to look as long or as hard to determine what they must do, this allows for quicker reaction time under all circumstances. The data entry devices have been moved more out of the way to an off side positioning instead of an underneath or above positioning of the readout panels. This helps eliminate accidental data entry as the main point of any flight panel is centered. This has helped in wing control specifically. The rudder and indicators of the rudders, landing gear, fuel and other various indicators necessary has been moved to the main control panel that now rests in front of the pilot versus the traditional placement of above the pilot. This way the pilot does not have to continually look up to check the indicators of a safe flight thus reducing body strain. One big change in the flight deck panel is the room for technological growth. Our technology is ever changing and the room left for this growth will help to ensure a placement of future technology without having to completely redesign the entire panel time and again. This has just become a more economy efficient plane. One thing that most people don’t realize, especially on longer flights is the need for paper to make notes on when flight plans need to be changed, when there needs to be an additional and yet unexpected change and this new implementation also helps with keeping a logbook more accurate and that is the built in, electronic scratch pad. Pilots can make notes about shifting winds, potential or unexpected weather pattern changes, a new noise that might be heard and for the mechanic or engineer to check out upon landing, whatever the case may be. Considering the scratch pad is built in and computer controlled, should there be a failing or an accident, this along with the traditional black box may help solve many questions as to why much quicker. Airport layouts are all different and each pilot must know the layout of the airport to help alleviate getting in the way or creating a ground accident before and after take off. The way this was dealt with is by programming an airport map function, for each airport, into a menu driven control panel. Pilots are able to look at these maps and determine their point of entry or take off in conjunction with the tower’s instructions. It gives them a much needed and yet basic heads up for comfortability in knowledge. This same programming also will record flight plans which in turn will tell you if you are off course and by how far. Additionally it will also give options to view other flight routes should an emergency or other type of landing need to be instituted. Lastly, in correlation is the gps like ability of marking waypoints. Many would not think there could be waypoints when in the air but the lay of the land, different mountain ranges and bodies of water can be considered waypoints. With these new implementations this allows both pilots, at the same time, to have and maintain the same operational ability instead of one pilot having control aspects over a part of the plane, and the co-pilot sequestered into a different set of controls altogether. This becomes more of the teamwork atmosphere that is need for the lives of those on board. There is a design for error tolerance where there wasn’t before, meaning that should a pilot make an error in the flight path, the programming will take over to correct the situation. This error tolerance is only 1% but if you keep off course by that 1% then you will be far from your intended destination. This allows for a human to machine interface and more safety factors. Instead of wondering what the plane is doing, a pilot will know what the plane is doing. There is obviously suggested training, especially with those who do not have flight management experience. Boeing has done what they can at this time to insure that their safety guidelines are not only met for human risk but that these guidelines are above what is required and to the scope of guideline by other facilities and engineering specs. Now with this new integrated, streamlined flight deck, the passenger cabins have also been upgraded to include better air quality, more natural lighting via larger windows, larger overhead bins which make it easier to get in and out of when retrieving personal items. The seats are wider as is the aisles and for those who are taller, there is a substantial more amount of headroom. There are current plans for future ATM’s to be located on this plane. So with all of this in mind, taking in normal human strengths and weaknesses which vary from person to person, this new flight deck allows for more safety, especially with fewer parts being used, less failing and quicker ability for response time, and potentially less fuel which in turn creates a savings that can be put off, in part, to the consumer when they purchase a ticket to fly on the commercial Boeing 787. The psychological effects not only on the pilots but on the customers, when they obtain this knowledge helps ease tension, behooves a less stressful environment for pilots and when all these functions are in place and all feel secure a flight goes much smoother. Small aircraft pilots would benefit greatly from this design as the majority of small plains are still archaic in their designs. Even though this is true, the safety factor needs are still the same. In some respects, with the technology into the Boeing flight deck, this actually makes the larger plane much safer than the smaller planes of personal pleasure. (CL Tapken 2008).

The Pbs Frontline Interview, Digital Demands, By Sherry...

Two people walk down the street side by side, each looking down into his hands attentively. Both occasionally sneak glances upwards, so as not to run into anyone. They walk in silence until it is time for them to go their separate ways; they then mutter hasty goodbyes, and turn to face their pixelated companions once more. A seemingly morbid depiction, perhaps, but one that is increasingly more representative of our modern reality. In the PBS Frontline interview Digital Demands, Sherry Turkle, MIT professor and researcher, examines this new trend. Her sage advice to youth: tread carefully on the Data Highway, for its overages are far costlier than estimated. Turkle s thesis: a lack of precise deliberation in the use of technology†¦show more content†¦Erikson s theories were formulated, in part, on the back of his own adolescent experiences; growing up in fascist Germany as the child of a German father and Jewish mother, he agonized over his own cultural label in the face o f the Third Reich. At the age of 37, he voiced his self-affirmation by renaming himself Erik Homburger Erikson. Literally, he redefined himself as his son; metaphorically, he redesigned himself as the culmination of the experiences of the first four decades of his life. Torn between his own unsteady conscience and the strident, crippling strains of Nazi propaganda, Erikson struggled to identify with his own notion of himself. This same dichotomy - the notion of a struggle between the inner self that one conceives, and the self-thrust upon us by the world - is the very fight that Turkle argues is necessary for the emergence of a purposeful, mature self. Today s adolescents, she says, bombarded by the beeps, hums, and whirs of technology, have become co-dependent with the piece of metal of their choosing, unable to complete even the most basic human functions of prioritization, organization, and independent thought. Instead of enabling, technology effectively becomes a crutch -- an un witting maneuver to postpone, conceal, and disingenuously morph. The price of quick-and-easy, Turkle contends, has been a debilitating mental servitude. Creating technology is in the hands of the people, and