The Safavid Empire of Persia

The Safavid Empire, based in Persia (Iran), ruled over much of southwestern Asia from 1501 to 1736. Members of the Safavid Dynasty likely were of Kurdish Persian descent and belonged to a unique order of Sufi -infused Shia Islam called Safaviyya. In fact, it was the founder of the Safavid Empire, Shah Ismail I, who forcibly converted Iran from Sunni to Shia Islam and established Shiism as the state religion. Its Massive Reach At its height, the Safavid Dynasty controlled not only the entirety of what is now Iran, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, but also most of Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, and the Caucasus, and parts of Turkey, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan. As one of the powerful gunpowder empires of the age, the Safavids re-established Persias place as a key player in economics and geopolitics at the intersection of the eastern and western worlds. It ruled over the western reaches of the late Silk Road, although the overland trade routes were quickly being supplanted by ocean-going trading vessels. Sovereignty The greatest Safavid ruler was Shah Abbas I (r. 1587 - 1629), who modernized the Persian military, adding musketeers and artillery-men; moved the capital city deeper into the Persian heartland; and established a policy of tolerance towards Christians in the empire. However, Shah Abbas was fearful to the point of paranoia about the assassination and executed or blinded all of his sons to prevent them from replacing him. As a result, the empire began a long, slow slide into obscurity after his death in 1629.

1984 and Nazism - 1401 Words

Nobody can disagree with the fact that George Orwell’s vision, in his book 1984, didn’t come true. Though many people worried that the world might actually come to what Orwell thought, the year 1984 came and went and the world that Orwell created was something people did not have to worry about anymore. Many people have wondered what was happening in Orwell’s life and in his time that would inspire him to create this politically motivated book. A totalitarian world where one person rules and declares what is a crime and what is not, is something many people would have been scared of a lot. The totalitarianism in 1984 is very similar to the Nazism that was occurring in Germany with Hitler. This could have been the key thing that motivated†¦show more content†¦An example from 1984 would be Mr. Charrington, the shop owner of a secondhand store where Winston buys a diary and a glass paperweight. He is not what he seems when he captures Winston and Julia, Win stons lover, in the room above the shop, with a uniform of the Thought Police on. The Thought Police reminds me very much of Hitlers secret police, the Gestapo. They were a group chosen to investigate and combat all tendencies dangerous to the state (Bradley 1). Many people were scared of them because they would arrest people and make them guilty of a crime, and without a trial, they would go straight to a concentration camp or some other place. Many people, like churchmen, had to be cautious because anything they wrote or said would be noted by the Gestapo (Bradley 1). Orwell couldn’t have thought of everything involving the Thought Police by himself, which is why the Gestapo is a great inspiration to create something like the Thought Police. Living the life of a member of the Outer Party is not easy, just like it was not easy being a Jew in Nazi Germany. The concentrations camps and the many race laws made it difficult for many people. The Jews could not do things like take a pre-college exam, be in a Nazi youth group, or be in the work service because of the race laws (Crane 53). This is kind of like the proles, where there were things that they could not have and do that The Party could. Just like in 1984, whereShow MoreRelatedControl Of Senses And Its Fallacy1510 Words   |  7 Pagesthere is a force that can restrain and control the sensory functions of the human race, that force will be able to control the humans to achieve anything. In George Orwell’s 1984, the control of human sensible qualities in order to achieve power is shown through the act of the Party. However, inferred from the Appendix of 1984, Oceania eventually falls. In a perfect system where the Party strictly controls the sense of people of Oceania, it seems quite odd that the system has failed, going againstRead MoreArticle Abstracts: Concept of Nazism1283 Words   |  5 PagesAbstracts 2. Wikipedia. (2012). Nazism. Accessed 3 May 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism This encyclopedia-like article aims to describe the concept of Nazism from an historical perspective, educating the general public on what the general sentiments, feelings, and politics of the Nazis and the overall perspective of Nazism truly were, and of how the attitudes, values, and beliefs of Nazism came about and were able to spread in Germany and beyond. A purely descriptive methodology is usedRead MoreThe Themes Of 1984 And George Orwells 19841237 Words   |  5 Pagestopics in his book, 1984. In 1984, George Orwell illustrates what a totalitarian society would be like. At the time that he wrote this book, many citizens of England were afraid of their government having too much power over them. Orwell wrote 1984 to warn the public of what a powerful government can lead to. Even currently, 1984 can be related to different places or events in our world. The purpose of this paper will be to show how the past and present connect to George Orwell’s 1984. The misuse of power Read More1984 Discussion1069 Words   |  5 Pages1984 Discussion Questions 1. The world within which Winston lives is replete with contradictions. For example a, major tenet of the Partys philosophy is that War is Peace. Similarly, the Ministry of Love serves as, what we would consider, a department of war. What role do these contradictions serve on a grand scale? Discuss other contradictions inherent in the Partys philosophy. What role does contradiction serve within the framework of Doublethink? How does Doublethink satisfy the needs of TheRead MoreAnalysis Of 1984 s 1984 1317 Words   |  6 PagesLiterature and Composition Summer Project 1984 Ms. Shaw 1. 1984 The title 1984 is significant to the some of the themes throughout the novel which are developing technology, propaganda, and the ability to manipulate the truth. Developing technology is shown throughout the novel when telescreens and bombs become commonly used within society; these are examples of the technology modernizing throughout this time period. A second theme significant to the novel 1984 is propaganda led by using an exampleRead MoreCritical Analysis and Evaluation of 1984, by George Orwell.1487 Words   |  6 PagesGeorge Orwell 1984 The New American Library Copyright 1961 George Orwell George Orwell, whose real name was Eric Blair, was born in Bengal, India, in 1903. When he was eight years old, as it was customary, his mother brought him back to England to be educated. He was sent to a boarding school on the south coast, a school whose students were sons of the upper class. He was allowed in with lower tuition and not being from a wealthy background, he was subject to snobbery of the others at the schoolRead MoreThe Literary Impact Of George Orwell . George Orwell, Born1375 Words   |  6 Pagesthe most important science fiction writers of modern time (Elkins). George Orwell, due to his early life experiences, inspired millions to challenge and think independently about their government by writing two of the greatest novels of all times, 1984, and Animal Farm. George Orwell was born June 25, 1903 in Motihari, Bihar in India. This was at the time that India was part of the British Empire. His father was a British civil servant, who worked for the Opium Department. His mother was theRead MoreThe Reasons For The Weimar Republic s Collapse1284 Words   |  6 Pagesintolerance, intense nationalism and fervid militarism, an ineffectual but belligerent left, and a splintered, indignant, insecure right† (Allen 1984, 146). The division within the communities worsened to such a degree that the only way people settled disagreements were by fighting. By 1933 there were no â€Å"fewer than thirty-seven political fights† (Allen 1984, 146). The multifaceted parties split between the communities, which prevented the kind of stable groundwork necessary for a democracy to formRead MoreAnalysis Of The Film The Lives Of Others 1472 Words   |  6 PagesThe film The Lives of Others takes place in 1984 East Germany, Stasi officer Hauptmann Ge rd Wiesler is assigned to spy on playwright Georg Dreyman.Wiesler soon learns the real reason behind the surveillance: Minister of Culture Bruno Hempf covets Dreymans girlfriend, actress Christa-Maria Sieland, and is trying to eliminate his rival. Through his surveillance, Wiesler knows Dreyman and Sieland are in love. Wiesler, resuming his role as Stasi interrogator, forces Sieland to tell him where the typewriterRead MorePropaganda Purposes in the Olympic Games Essay663 Words   |  3 Pagesused in the past I will firstly mention the 1936- Berlin games, as these have been the greatest example of the games being used for propaganda purposes since the re-birth of the Olympics in 1896. Despite IOC concerns of the rise of Nazism in Germany at the time they were unable to move the games. German IOC members had given assurances that rules would be abided by and so the games were to be held in Berlin. The belief that no Nazi policies would interfere with the

Mahoney and Millman Free Essays

The Photocopier should be of deluxe version which must have capacity to produce minimum 3000 copies per month and about 25 copies at a time. The photocopier must have a collator and use regular paper. Warranty: The Photocopier shall be under warranty for a minimum period of one year. We will write a custom essay sample on Mahoney and Millman or any similar topic only for you Order Now    Terms and conditions: Service support for repair has to be provided after expiry of warranty period. Photocopier is to be installed in our office on fifth floor of the building. Price: Price quoted must be inclusive of all taxes. Delivery Period: Photocopier is to be delivered with in month time from the date of issue of purchase order. You are requested to submit your lowest quote with in a week from receipt of this letter for all the models available in the range. Thanking you. Yours truly, For Mahoney and Millman, Inc (Signature) William Wilson Office Manager Reference: 1) David Diringer; Frederick A, Praeger; Writing History; 1962 How to cite Mahoney and Millman, Papers

Inappropriate Behavior of Adler-.com

Question: What was the inappropriate behaviour displayed by Adler as an officer of HIH and other Companies he managed and controlled? Answer: Introduction: In case, ASIC v Adler [2002] allegation related to contravention of Corporation Act 2001 was made against the four defendants that was Mr. Adler, Mr. Williams, Mr. Fodera and Adler Corporation Pty Ltd. This case was filed by Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC), and ASIC stated that defendants conduct nine transactions which contravene the provisions of Corporation Act 2001. These transactions are conducted for the purpose of misleading the shareholders of HIH. This case mainly focuses on the duties of the directors and other officers of the company operating within Australia. Inappropriate behavior of Adler: Nine transactions was highlighted by ASIC which were conducted by defendants, and especially by Mr. Adler and Adler Corporation Pty Ltd. It must be noted that Adler Corporation Pty Ltd was owned by Mr. Adler. First transaction was related to the advance payment of $ 10 million which was requested by Mr. Adler, and made by HIHC (subsidiary of HIH) to the Pacific Eagle Equity Pty Ltd. (PEE). Mr. Williams and Mr. Fodera were accused for the purpose of making this payment on behalf of the HIH. PEE was established by Mr. Adler for the purpose of making investment for HIHC. Mr. Adler purchased shares of HIH through PEE for $ 3,991,856.21 for stabilizing the share price of HIH, so that he can maintain the value of his shares in HIH by making the impression that shares of the HIH get support from the market. Later, Mr. Adler sold the shares through AEUT at the loss of $2,121,261.11. AEUT was incorporated through trust deed in which PEE was the trustee. These transactions are performed from the payment of $10 million made by HIH to PEE. These transactions were considered as offense because in these transactions duty of director was breached by Adler, and ASIC can claim against Mr. Adler and Adler Corporation. Mr. Adler fails to compile with their duties as director in both the organization that was HIH and AEUT. There were some other transactions also which includes issues related to unsecured loans by AEUT that cost almost $2,084,345 to the organization. While conducting these transactions, Mr. Adler enables the AEUT to give unsecured loans to: Morehuman Pty Ltd - $160,000. Intagrowth Fund No 1 - $500,000. Pacific capital partners - $200,000. PCP Ensor No. 2 Pty Ltd - $1, 2754755. Therefore, above stated transactions were considered as breach of directors duty by Mr. Adler. Conflict with Australian law: Above stated transactions contravenes various laws such as: Section 208 of the Corporation Act 2001 was contravened which states that before assigning any financial benefit to any specific member of corporate, requires approval from other members also. No evidences were present which states that approval has been taken by the defendants from board of directors (Corporation Act, 2001). Mr. William contravenes section 182 of the Corporation Act 2001. As per this section directors of the company must not use their power for the purpose of generating profit for themselves or any other person (Corporation Act, 2001). Failure on part of Mr. Adler in ensuring the interest of HIH and AEUT, made him liable under section 181(2) and 182(2). As per these sections, directors or other officers of the company need to exercise their power for proper reason and in the interest of the corporation. This section further prevents the director for using their power in inappropriate way. However, section 183 of the Corporations Act 2001 was breached by Mr. Adler and Adler Corporation, because Mr. Adler uses the confidential information of the company for the purpose of generating profits (Corporation Act, 2001). Mr. Adler also contravenes his directors duties under section 108 of the corporation act 2001. As per this section it is the duty of directors and other officers of the company to exercise their power and discharge their duties with reasonable care and skills. Therefore, Court stated that Mr. Adler fails to consider the benefits of the corporation such as HIH and AEUT, which make him liable for the breach of this section under Corporation Act 2001 (Corporation Act, 2001). ASIC further stated that defendants also breach section 180 and 181 of Corporations Act 2001. As per Section 180, director and other officers of the company must perform their duties in such manner which any reasonable person would do so. Mr. Adler and other defendants clearly breach their duties in above stated transactions. Section 181 states that decision made by director must be in the best interest of the corporation, and Mr. Adler and other officers breach this section by failing to ensure the best interest of the organization while making financial decisions. Punishment suffered by Adler: Mr. Adler suffered three punishments which include disqualification of Mr. Adler for the 20 years from managing the responsibilities of corporation under section 206C and 206E. ASIC also seeks for compensation under section 1317H and pecuniary penalty order under section 1317G. According to Section 1317H, court can order against the individual to pay compensation to the company in case any action of the individual cause damage to that company. Therefore, Court considers Mr. Adler and other defendants liable to pay compensation under this section and also make order to pay pecuniary amount of $200,000 (Corporation Act, 2001). Lesson learned from this case: After evaluating the facts of this case, it is clear that duties of directors and actions conducted by them must be put under direct scrutiny of the corporate law, and organizations must incorporate proper procedure in their management for the purpose of avoiding such misconduct in future. Facts of this case also state the important of decisions taken by director, and state that directors must exercise their power and perform their duties on with due care and in good faith for the purpose of ensuring continuous growth and success of the organization (Law Teacher, n.d.). Observations related to this case: After determining the consequences faced by Adler because of his actions, and ratification of other three directors of the company, clearly state the difference between the prior approval of board and ratification. According to Section 208 of the Corporation act 2001, it is necessary to get approval of the directors before availing any kind of profit to the particular member of the board. Therefore, approval is necessary in this situation because it nullify the validity of rectification. Conclusion: After completing this report, numbers of provisions related to corporation Act 201 are clear in mind, and this report also provides the detailed understanding of various sections and duties of directors. However, it also states the importance of corporate law in Australia and duties of directors defined by this law. Actions of Mr. Adler not only highlight the contravention of directors duties but it also states the understanding of responsibility associated with directors of the organization which make them more liable towards the company and stakeholders. It is the duty of directors and other officers of the company to exercise their power and discharge their duties with reasonable care and skills. Because of the actions conducted by Mr. Adler, there are number of punishments which he suffered such as disqualification for the period of 20 years for managing the responsibility of directors, compensation of $450,000 for own-self and similar compensation for the Adler Corporation which states the severity related to the actions in the view of the court. References: ASIC v Adler [2002] NSWSC 171. Corporation Act 2001- Section 208. Corporation Act 2001- Section 182. Corporation Act 2001- Section 181. Corporation Act 2001- Section 108. Corporation Act 2001- Section 206. Corporation Act 2001- Section 1317G. Corporation Act 2001- Section 1317H. Law Teacher. Case Summary ASIC V Adler. Retrieved on 20th August 2017 from: https://www.lawteacher.net/free-law-essays/company-law/case-summary-asic-v-adler-law-essays.php.

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol free essay sample

Network directories on the other hand are specialized databases that store information about devices, applications, people and other aspects of a computer network. It is an Internet protocol that e mail and other programs use to look up information from a server. It is not limited to contact information or information about people. It is appropriate for any kind of directory like information where fast look-ups and less frequent updates exist. It was created in 1995 as an academic university project, and then commercialized by Netscape in the late 1990’s. t is finding much acceptance because of its status as an Internet standard. It can also be customized to store any type of text or binary data. It is important to note that it is not a directory but a protocol. However, it organizes information in a hierarchical manner using directories. And these directories can store a variety of information and can even be used like a Network Information Service (NIS). We will write a custom essay sample on Lightweight Directory Access Protocol or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Hence, enabling anyone to access their account from any machine on the LDAP enabled network. In many cases, it is used as a virtual phone directory, allowing users to easily access contact information of other users. But it is more flexible than a phone directory. This is because it is capable of referring a query to other LDAP servers throughout the world. Thus, providing an ad-hoc global repository of information. It is hoped that at the end of this discourse on LDAP even a layman would have a simple yet clear understanding of what LDAP is. To give its advantage over X500. To reveal the purpose, and use of LDAP generally. Protocol is it is pertinent to understand what a directory and protocol is. A directory is an organized set of records: e. g. , a telephone directory which is an alphabetical list of persons and organizations with an address and phone number in each record. A directory is also a way in which complex information is organized, making it easy to find. Directories list resources—for example, people, books in a library, or merchandise in a department store—and give details about each one. They can be either offline—for example, a telephone book or a department store catalog—or online. The word protocol is from the Greek word â€Å"protocollon† which was a leaf of paper glued to a manuscript volume, describing its contents. A protocol can be said to be a description of a set of procedures to be followed when communicating. Protocols are to communication what programming languages are to computations. They can also be used to describe what grammar is to language. In information technology, it is a set of rules that end points in a telecommunication connection use when they communicate. Protocols exist at various levels in a telecommunication connection. For example, there are protocols for the interchange of data at the hard ware devise level as well as at the application program level. In the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI), there are one or more protocols at each layer in the telecommunication exchange that both ends of the exchange must recognize and observe. On the internet, we have the TCP/IP protocols which comprise of: * Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which is a set of rules to exchange messages with other internet points at the information packet level * Internet Protocol (IP), which makes use of a set of rules to send and receive messages at the Internet address level. * Other protocols that include the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and File Transfer Protocol (FTP), each being defined set of rules to use with corresponding programs elsewhere on the internet. With this in view we can now say in this context that a Light Weight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is a set of rules that enables us to read and edit organized set of records, resources or information. This is to put it in the simplest of terms for easy understanding. According to Donelly (2008) Strictly speaking, though, LDAP isn’t a database at all , but a protocol used to access information stored in an information directory (also known as an LDAP directory). A more precise formulation might look something like this: Using LDAP, data will be retrieved from (or stored in) the correct location within an information directory. LDAP is a standard, extensible Directory Access Protocol. It is a common language that LDAP clients and servers use to communicate. It requires a minimal amount of networking software on the client side, which makes it particularly attractive for Internet-based, thin client applications. LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is a simplified ver sion of the DAP (Directory Access Protocol) protocol, which is used to gain access to X. 500 directories. LDAP was designed at the University of Michigan to adapt a complex enterprise directory system (called X. 500) to the modern Internet. Unknown (2004). At this point you may be wondering what the X500 is. X. 500 Directory Service is a standard way to develop an electronic directory of people in an organization so that it can be part of a global directory available to anyone in the world with Internet access. X. 500 is an overall model for Directory Services in the OSI world. Such a directory is sometimes called a global White Pages directory. The idea is to be able to look up people in a user-friendly way by name, department, or organization. Many enterprises and institution have created an X500 directory. Because these directories are organized as part of a single global directory, you can search for hundreds of thousands of people from a single place on the World Wide Web. X. 500 is an international standard for directories and full-featured, but it is also complex, requiring a lot of computing resources and the full OSI stack. Thus making it difficult to run easily on a PC and over TCP/IP. The X500 is too heavy to support on desktops and over the internet, hence the need for a lightweight protocol. A lightweight protocol is any of a class of protocols designed for use on high speed inter-networks, e. g. LDAP is an open protocol, and applications are independent of the server platform hosting the directory. However, LDAP is like X500 in the sense that it is both an information model and a protocol for querying and manipulating it. LDAP’s data and name space model is essentially that of X500. The major difference is that the LDAP protocol is designed to run directly over the TCP/IP stack. The main thing about the X500 is that it defines a global directory structure. This means that anyone with an X500 or LDAP client may peruse the global directory just as they can use a web browser to peruse the global web. As a protocol, LDAP does not define how programs work on either the client or server side. It defines the language used for client programs to talk to servers (and servers to servers, too). It can be used to access a standalone directory service or a directory service that is back ended by X500. The LDAP protocol is both cross-platform and standards-based, so applications neednt worry about the type of server hosting the directory. In fact, LDAP is finding much wider industry acceptance because of its status as an Internet standard. Under them in the hierarchy might be entries for smaller organization and so on down. The hierarchy might end with people or resources. Each entry is identified by a Distinguished Name (DN). A Distinguished Name consists of a name that uniquely identifies the entry at that hierarchical level (e. g. Peter and Paul and Mary are different user ID’s that identify different entries at the same level) and a path of names that trace the entry back to the root of the tree. Where o represents the organization, and is the root of the tree ou refers to the organizational unit which is a unit within the organization uid refers to user ID of the entry. WHY USE LDAP? The main benefit of using LDAP is that information for an entire organization can be consolidated into a central repository. That is LDAP can be used as a central directory that is accessible from anywhere on the network. LDAP makes for ease of access across platforms. To buttress this, (Donelly, 2008) says â€Å"Perhaps the biggest plus for LDAP is that your company can access the LDAP directory from almost any computing platform, from any one of the increasing number of readily available, LDAP-aware applications. Its also easy to customize your companys internal applications to add LDAP support†. LDAP also supports a number of back-end databases in which to store directories. This allows administrators the flexibility to deploy the database best suited for the type of information the server is to disseminate. Hence, it has the ability to distribute servers to where they are needed. LDAP allows you locate organizations, individuals, and other resources such as files and devices in a network, whether on the Internet or on a corporate intranet, and whether or not you know the domain name, IP address, or geographic whereabouts. (Donelly, 2008).

Caroline Chisholm essays

Caroline Chisholm essays Her nickname: The immigrants friend Died: In her hometown of England in March 1877 Married: To Archibald Chisholm in 1832 Fame: She was the first person to set up, and employ the first set of women workers in a womens home in Australia. Rewards: Her picture was printed on a 5-dollar bill for more than 20 years, until being replaced by the queen of England Caroline Jones was brought up by a caring family in England, whose door was open to anyone who needed help, or a place to stay, no matter how rich or poor they were. In 1832, (When she was 22) she married a British army officer, Archibald Chisholm. Archibald was always 100% behind Caroline. Early on in their marriage they decided to move to Australia, to start up a family. When they arrived in Sydney, Caroline was repulsed with all of the used and abused women who were homeless and begging on the streets. After seeing this, Caroline mind was set to making a difference, and after a lot of persuading, Governor Gipps finally allowed her to use the old, disused immigration barracks as a womens home. This was established in 1835. The immigration was run down, dirty and in desperate need of repair. Archibald helped her repair it. Within 2 years of setting up the womens home Caroline had found jobs for 1000 women. Over the time she ran the womens home, she housed and found decent jobs for 11000 migrants of who were mainly women. A few years later Caroline got pregnant and gave birth to a beautiful son, witch was said to resemble her husband Archibald. Caroline Chisholm was the first person to set up a counseling service for the young girls and women, who came to Australia with high hopes for a better life, but their dreams was shattered when they ended up, begging on the streets for money. ...

China vs India Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

China vs India - Essay Example Although, China has long been into modernized security strategy, actually nuclear forces are not their priority, in order to protect the country from external forces.3 In addition, China’s transitional shift towards modern and professional military equipped with high-technology weaponry marked a better security strategy. Part II. US-China Relations According to De Castro, China has been the most like America’s major competitor for geostrategic dominance in the Asia Pacific.4 China in its sphere has developed their economy since early years--very rapid economic growth. It is a large and populous country; a communist and capitalist, reforming and resisting change, strong and weak. However, it is quite hard to understand China, because it’s complicated--the fact that it is changing rapidly.5 U.S is undeniably prominent because of its booming economy and large political dimension. China has risen and will â€Å"bring the United States unipolar moment to an end.†6 This is not to say that there would be a literal violent struggle, or overthrowing of the Western system.

American Constitution of 1787 and pluralism Essay

American Constitution of 1787 and pluralism - Essay Example The constitution took effect on March 4, 1789. The delegation intended to amend the Article of Confederation and set up a new scheme of government. Through intensive debates, the delegation came up with a brilliant federal organization that had a complicated system of checks and balances. They came up with a bicameral legislature that had equal representation in the upper house as well as a relative representation in the lower house. Thus, the main outcome of the convention was a federal government that worked through a constitution that ensured that freedom equality and order prevailed in the country. The American constitution of 1787 promotes the application of pluralism in the USA thus giving the citizen power to govern their nation. Pre constitution America In the 1970s USA did not exist but there were just thirteen colonies under the Great Britain. In the 1970s, not everyone in the United States of America had the same opportunities. Blacks, women, Native Americans, and poor men had no voting rights and could not hold any elective posts. The British colonies in North America adopted their form of governance even after independence. The early leaders of Americas believed that everyone had basic rights that they referred to as natural rights. The natural rights included the right to liberty, life, and property. The founding fathers believed that the only way to ensure that everyone got their basic rights was to form a government that operates under certain laws. The founding fathers studied governments in the history. Most of their interest was in the Roman Republic, a government that existed about 2000 years before the USA was founded. This must have really influenced the drafting of the American constitution of 1787 states (Guide and Reader for American Government and Politics in the New Millennium 187). Rights and freedoms The fact that the authors of the 1787 constitution valued freedom in regards to the pursuit of freedom to own property and contentment , represented 12 of 13 states, and knew the importance of order is an indication that they would create a pluralist democracy. All fifty-five states delegates who went to Philadelphia to make the constitution believed that the people had to have economic and religious freedom in which they can express their opinions to make the USA a better place to live. Moreover, they had the understanding that ownership of property was an individual right and neither the state government nor the federal governments could deny the people such rights. â€Å"Their vision was that individuals would be to define their interests in terms of the national government and strengthen it† (American Government and Politics in the New Millennium 56). The authors of the constitution â€Å"realized that without a strong national government, the U.S. would implode because of the failure of the state governments to cooperate and look beyond their parochial interests† (states Guide and Reader for Amer ican Government and Politics in the New Millennium 54) Branches of the government Federalism advocates that the constitution made a pluralist democracy by creating separate levels of government so that the laws made by the officials would represent many interests from diverse states. Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances create a pluralist democracy through purposely making four institutions of government that are chosen in a staggered selection so that they would not be loyal not only within themselves but certainly not to others. The constitution purposely separated the national government into three parts- executive, judicial, legislative- and provided them with shared powers. Madison realized that â€Å"Besides separating the government into t

Should abortion be allowed or not Research Paper

Should abortion be allowed or not - Research Paper Example Abortions are medical processes that actually improve the lives of the women who request for them; due to the brutal nature of this process, it is easy to understand that women who are not in desperate straits will not seek to procure an abortion. The reality is that, for a long time, women were seen as possessions of the men they were related to. The men had the right to do with their women as they wished; and this included denying them medical procedures for flippant reasons (Joachim 21). This standard still remains in many Middle Eastern nations. Refusing to legalize abortion basically amounts to preserving the outdated cultural practice of controlling the bodies of women on a massive scale. It is a fact that the majority of women who seek abortions are those with no financial security. Their partners, if involved in their lives in more ways than one, refuse to use birth control methods such as condoms but still demand sexual intimacy. The women may even be subjected to physical violence if they refuse to cooperate with their partners. For women in such circumstances, having an abortion is the only way they can prevent them from further sinking into poverty due to an extra mouth to feed. There are numerous cases that have been documented in media channels where expectant mothers died because hospitals either refused completely refused to terminate their pregnancies to save their lives or their spouses refused to give permission for the lives of their girlfriends and wives to be saved at the expense of the pregnancy (Flavin 18). The reality is that legalizing abortion is something that will consign such occurrences to the past; as the expectant mother is given the sole right to determine whether or not she wishes to keep the baby growing within her. Abortion, in many cases, actually saves the lives of the women who have it done in more ways than one. It saves them from having to contend with extreme financial

Customer Relationship Management in Banking

Customer Relationship Management in Banking ABSTRACT Today the world is globalized and customers are well educated and well informed. This has increased the competition among the firms and organisations. The competition elevates the customer bargaining power and switching power to choose the best product and service. Therefore customer relationship has become a focus of importance to all the companies in order to retain the customer as well as maximize revenues. Today marketing is no more developing, delivering and selling of goods and services, it is moving towards developing and maintaining long term relationship with customers. Therefore relationship marketing has making its important in all the business sectors so as in financial services. Customers Relationship Management creates the opportunity through which the banks can benefit by developing good relationships with their customers. The aim of the project is to gain a better understanding how the CRM has benefited both the bank as well as its customers. This research also aims to identify how critically CRM has been practiced in Lloyds Banking Group, analysis the data mining process of Lloyds Banking Group, to find out the customer segmentation procedure of the bank to analysis the customer retaining strategy of the bank, to find out how does the bank measure customer life time value and to verify the relationship between the customers and the Lloyds Banking Group. To validate the purpose of the project has addressed to set of questionnaires, one is for Lloyds Banking Groups employees and other is for customers of the bank. The literature review has also help to understand the answer for the research questions. Both the quantitative as well as qualitative data collection techniques have been adopted namely, survey questionnaire and semi-structure interviews. Some data has also collected through interview of Lloy ds employee and a group of their customers. Lloyds use CRM as an effective business strategy to classify the most profitable customers for bank. And accordingly bank gives priorities those customers through individualized marketing, reprising, flexible conclusion building and modify service-all delivered through a variety of sales channels that the bank use. Researcher has found that Lloyds is conducting a campaign management by using data mining task. This campaign helps to make crucial business decisions by exacting suitable, beforehand strange and ultimately logical and actionable awareness from huge databases. Researcher also has suggested suitable recommendations to the bank to improve the CRM practice in Lloyds Banking Group. 1.0 INTRODUCTION This chapter provides the brief introduction of research. Furthermore, it also discusses the aims, objectives of the research questions and scope of the study. 1.1 TOPIC OF THE RESEARCH Customer Relationship Management of Lloyds Banking Group PLC; A Critical Evaluation 1.2 INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH Peter Drucker said, â€Å"The purpose of a business is to create customers†. Customer Relationship Management can be the single strongest weapon we have as manage to ensure that customers become and remain loyal. Customer Relationship Management (CRM), is an vital division of modern business organization. CRM concern the relation between the organisations along with its consumers. Consumers are the means of support of any business in a universal business with thousands of workforce and a multi-billion earnings, or a single broker with a handful of standard consumers. CRM is the same in principle for both examples. Globalization and technology improvements have pushed companies into hard competition. In this new era organisations are targeting on managing customer relationships, mainly customer satisfaction, in order to maximize revenues (Constantinos 2003). Today, marketing is not just developing, delivering and selling; it is shifting towards developing and maintaining equally long term relationships with customers (Buttle, 1996). This new business values is called relationship marketing (RM), which has involved significant interest both from marketing academics and practitioners (Gronroos, 1994). The Greek philosopher, Epictetus said that â€Å"what concern me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are† (Szwarch, 2005, p.3). The concepts of consumer satisfaction were depending on the thinking of consumer. Research suggests that customer satisfaction, basic concept of relationship marketing, is important in achieving and retaining competitive advantage. Research studies have discovered that retaining current customers is much less expensive than attracting new customers (Desatnick, 1988; Stone et al., 1996; Bitran and Mondschein, 1997; Chattopadhyay, 2001; Massey et al., 2001). The best way to retain customers is to keep them satisfied, a number of studies have shown that customer satisfaction can guide to brand loyalty, repurchases intention and repeat sales (Day, 1984; Swan and Oliver, 1989; Oliver, 1999). Customer retention, in turn, seems to be related to profitability (Oliver, 1999). Relationship marketing is becoming significant in financial services (Zineldin, 1995). If a bank develops and sustains a solid relationship with its customers, its competitors cannot easily replace them and so this relationship provides for a continued competitive advantage (Gilbert, 2003). Moriarty et al. (1983) has suggested relationship concept in the banking sector which states that banks can increase their profits by maximising the profitability of the total customer relationship over time, instead of looking for to get more profit from any single transaction. Perrien et al. (1992) observed severe competitive pressures that forces financial institution to restructure their marketing strategies by developing into long-term relationship with customers. And banking industry purely related to financial services, which needs to create the trust among the people. This research is exploratory in nature and design. The data which is collected is going to be mostly primary data collected from the relevant persons within the bank. The data has gathered from the face to face interviews with the help of structured and semi-structured questionnaire with those persons. The above describe interviews has last 40 (fourty) to 45 (fourty five) minutes (approx). On the other hand the researcher has decided to collect primary data from random interviews of Lloyds Banking Groups customers. Sample size is around 200 customers and of structured questionnaire. But of course this research paper has relied on reviewing the various secondary data available from various researches such as books, magazines, website, previous research and publication etc. The collected data has been analysed by graphs, table and pi chart drawn from Microsoft excel. 1.3 AIM OF THE RESEARCH The aim of the research is to study why CRM is important in bank, how the CRM works in banks and also the effectiveness of Lloyds Banking Group in obtaining long term customer relationship, customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction by the use of CRM. And also suggest feasible recommendations to Lloyds Banking Group to increase the customer satisfaction and market share by the effective use of CRM. 1.4 OBJECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH The followings are the objectives of this research; To study how critically practised in Lloyds Banking Group Analysis the data mining process of Lloyds Banking Group To find out how the bank segments their customers To analysis how the bank retaining their customers To find out how does the bank measure customer Life Time Value To verify the relationship between the customers and the Lloyds Banking Group 1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY The scope of the study and research work has limited to Lloyds Banking Group only. This chosen level of aspects has stayed at large in the study so that it can be studied well and analyzed thoroughly to get a deeper understanding. Trying to cover too much ground may lead to a very superficial and confused analysis and may involve long time duration to complete the project work or report. Therefore a specified and narrow down approach with Lloyds Banking Group and an evaluation of its success has comprised with the researchers scope of the study to avoid confused analysis and a weaker report. 1.6 OUTLINE OF THE SUBSEQUENT CHAPTERS Chapter 1; INTODUCTION This chapter provides the brief introduction of the research. Furthermore, it also discusses the aims, objectives of the research questions and scope of the learning. CHAPTER 2; LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter determines the theoretical issues relating to CRM which is relevant to the research. CHAPTER 3; METHODOLOGY This episode discusses about primary and secondary methods of research used by the researcher. CHAPTER 4; CONTEXT Chapter 4 deals with the information about Lloyds Banking Group. CHAPTER 5; FINDINGS This chapter deals with the result of primary data. CHAPTER 6; ANALYSIS Analysis part deals with findings in the context of literature review in chapter 2. CHAPTER 7; CONCLUSION This chapter includes the overall conclusion of the research. This chapter produce the conclusion compared and contrasted with the finding of the research and the literature review. It summarises the aims and key findings and acknowledges the limitation of the works. CHAPTER 8; RECOMMENDATIONS This chapter is the last chapter of the research. This chapter provide the recommendation for the managerial implication in the Lloyds Banking Group. At the end, chapter provide recommendation for the future research. CHAPTER 9; REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY This chapter includes a systematic list of books, web site and other works such as journal, magazine etc which have been used as secondary data or as reference in this research. CHAPTER 10; APPENDICES This chapter contain all questionnaires and some graphs, chart and tables which have been made on the basis of customer survey. 2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter contains a review of literature relevant to the research. This literature review deals with, about CRM, the history and goals of an integrated banking CRM, the technological factor of CRM, the process cycle in banks, data warehouse technology, data mining process, how to analysis the data, customer segmentation process, communication strategies of bank to the customers etc. 2.1 CUSTOMER RELATIONSIP MANAGEMENT Existing research states that ‘relationships are the base to the successful development and edition of new business viewpoint, though business have taken care of relationships with their customers for many centuries (Gronroos, 1994). Sheth and Parvathiyar, (1995) said that relationships demand much more than mere transactions. Rather, they symbolize strategic and tactical issues based on a new philosophical move that geared in the direction of long-term organisation survival. According to Storbacka, (1994) relationship marketing got popular in 1990s but it has a long history under different names. In its starting, one-to-one marketing appeared in the mid 1990s, which transformed into Customer Relationship Management. Parvatiyar and Sheth gave a static definition of CRM. â€Å"Customer Relationship Management is widespread tactic and process of acquire, retaining and partnering with careful consumers to create better-quality value for the business and the consumer† (Parvatiyar and Sheth 2000, p.6) 2.2 THE HISTORY AND GOALS OF AN INTEGRATED BANKING CRM According to Puccinelli (1999) the financial services industry as entering a new era where personal attention is decreasing because the institutions are using technology to replace human contact in many application areas. Sherif, 2002 advocated that, now global changes brought new trends, directions and new ways of doing business, which also brought new challenges and opportunities to financial institutions. In order to complete with newly increasing competitive pressures, financial institutions must recognize the need of balancing their performance by achieving their strategic goals and meeting continues volatile customer needs requirements. Different ways must be analyzed to meet customer needs. Foss said that banks are highly focusing on CRM for the last five years that is expected to continue. According to Peter (1998) and Chablo (1999) the main goals of an effective integrated CRM solution in the banking sector are to enable financial institutes to; Widen customer relationship through acquiring new customers, identifying and targeting new segments and expanding in new markets. Lengthen the existing relationship developing longer term relationships, increasing perceived value of products and introducing new products and Deepen the relationship with customers initiating the cross selling and up selling opportunities, understanding the propensity of different customer segments to purchase and increase sales. The implementation if CRM system in a bank helps the business organisation to obtain a complete picture of their existing customers, design both customer-oriented and market-driven financial products and services, as well as implement extensive and reliable financial marketing research and efficient campaigns, to achieve and enhance customer loyalty and profitability. The above goals can be achieved through the seamless integration of information technology solutions and business objectives at every process of the bank business that affects the customer. 2.3 THE PHASES OF CRM The main phases of CRM are as follows; Customer selection or Segmentation According to Dave Chaffey (2009), customer selection is defining the types of customers that a company will market to. It means identifying different groups of customers for which to develop offerings and to target during acquisition, retention and extension. Different ways of segmenting customers by value and by their detailed lifecycle with the customer are reviewed. Many companies are now only proactively marketing to favoured customers. Seth Godin (1999), says â€Å"Focus on share of customer, not market share fire 70 per cent customers and watch your profits go up!† According to Efraim Turban (2008), the most sophisticated segmentation and targeting schemes for extension of customers are often used by banks, which have full customer information and acquire history data as they search for to boost Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) through encouraging increased use of products overtime. The segmentation approach used by banks is based on five main basics which in result are covered on top of each other. The amount of options used, and therefore the complexity of approach, will depend on resources obtainable, opportunities, capabilities and technology afforded by catalog. i. Identify customer lifecycle groups When guests use online services then they basically pass those seven or more stages. The organisations have clear these segments and establish the CRM infrastructure to categories customers in this manner; then they deliver focused messages, whichever by modified web messaging or by e-mails that are triggered routinely because of various rules. First-time guests recognized by a cookie placed on their PC. When guests registered, they are tracked through the residual stages. The customers who have purchased one or more products are one particular important group. The key challenge is for a company to encourage a customer to shift from the first product to the second and then go on. Explicit offers can be try to push customer for further products. In the same way, when customers turn into an inactive then the customer required follow-up. ii. Identify customer profit characteristics This is a conventional segmentation which is based on the nature of customer. For Business 2 Business Companies it includes sex, age and geography. It includes volume of the organisation and the type of sector or application, the organisation operates in. iii. Identify behaviour in response and purchase As shown in figure 2.2 through analysis of data base when customer progress through the lifecycle, company is capable to build up a detail reaction and buy history which judges the details of frequency, recency, group of product buy and monetary value. This approach is known as ‘RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary value) analysis. iv. Identify multi-channel behaviour In spite of of the eagerness of the company for online channels, various customers are chosen for using online channels and others customers are chosen conventional channels. This is an degree, be indicated by RFM and rejoinder examination since customers with a preference for an online channel is more reactive and make more use online. Customer who likes online channels is focused mostly by online communications such as e-mail, but when customer like conventional channels is focused by conventional communications such as direct mail or phone. This is known as ‘right-channelling. v. Tone and style preference In a same way to channel liking, customers are respond in their own way to various types of message. Some customers like rational application, in that time a detailed e-mail may work best. On the other hand some customers are preferred an emotional appeal. Companies are test for this in customers or conclude it using profit description and response performance and then expand various inventive treatments consequently. 2. Customer acquisition Processes used to add new customer. According to Turban (2008), customer acquisition refers to marketing activities intended to form relationship with new customers while reducing acquisition cost and targeting high-value customers. Service value and selecting the right path for various customers are essential at this stage and during the lifecycle. The conventional manner to customer acquisition include a marketing manager developing a blend of mass marketing (billboards, magazine advertisements etc.) and direct marketing (mail, telephone, etc.) campaigns based on their knowledge of the particular customer base that was being focussed. Marketing campaign trying to pressure new customers to buy a particular type of diapers, the mass marketing ads might be determined in parenting magazines. The advertisements could also be positioned in more conventional publications whose readership demographics were alike to those of new parents. Customer acquisition is comparatively similar to mass marketing. A marketing manager selects the demographics that they are involved in and after that works with a data vendor to obtain lists of buyers who meet those features. The data vendors have large database holding millions of eventual customers that can be segment based on explicit demographic criteria. The idea of â€Å"similar demographics† has conventionally been an art rather than a science. Usually there are not hard-and-fast systems about whether two groups of buyers share the similar features. Most of the segmentation that took place in conventional direct marketing involves hunches on the division of the marketing professional. 3. Customer retention Dafe Chaffey 2009 said that customer retention refers to the marketing actions taken by a company to keep its current customers. Identifying applicable offerings based on their personal needs and complete position in the customer lifecycle (e.g. purchase value or number) is key. Customer retention strategy aims to keep a high percentage of valuable customers and a customer development strategy aims to boost the value of those retained customer to the organisation. Customer retention is based on customer loyalty. And customer loyalty is the point to which a customer will continue with a specific brand or vendor. Customer acquisition to retain and extend create long-term customer relationship. We need to calculate customer satisfaction, as satisfaction drives loyalty and loyalty drives profitability. This relationship is exposed below; The marketers aim is to push customers up the curve towards the affection zone. But the majority are not in that zone. Marketers must understand to achieve retention,why customers defers or are indifferent. 4. Customer extension This technique is encouraging customers to increase their involvement with a company. According to Turban 2008, customer extension is increasing the range of products that a customer buys from an organisation. Sometime it is referred ‘customer development. Increasing the lifetime value (CLV) of a customer is the main objective of customer extension by encouraging cross-sell. For example a customer of Egg credit card may be offered the loan or a deposit account. There are many of customer extension technique for CRM as follows; Re-sell: same type of products to existing customers-particular vital in some Business 2 Business background as re-buys or modified re-buys. Cross-sell: sell extra products which may be closely related to the original buy. Up-sell: this is mean, selling more expensive products. Reactivation: Customers who have purchased for some time or have lapsed can be encouraged to buy again. Referrals: generating sells from recommendation from existing customers. 2.4 CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUE MODELLING Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is also an important theory and practise of CRM. But the calculation of CLV is not straightforward. There are so many company, they do not calculate it. According to Dave Chaffey (2009) â€Å"Lifetime value is the total net benefits that a customer or group of customers will provide a company over their total relationship with the company†. CLV is based on estimating the income and costs related with each customer over a phase of time and then calculating the net present value in present monetary terms using a discount rate value applied over the stage. Efraim Turban (2006) said there is various scale of complexity in calculating LTC. Those are exposed in figure 2.6. Option 1 is a realistic way or estimated proxy for future LTV, but the true LTV is the future value of the customer at individual level. CLV modelling at a segment level 4 is crucial within marketing since it answers the question; How much can I afford to invest in acquiring a new customer? Lifetime value analysis helps marketers to: Create the true value of a companys customer base Recognize and compare crucial target segment Calculate the effectiveness of another customer retention strategy Plan and calculate investment in customer acquisition programmes Make decisions about product and offers Figure 2.7 gives an example of how LTV can be used to develop a CRM strategy for different customer groups. There are 4 (four) main types of customers are indicated by their present and future value as bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Separate customers groupings (circles) are recognized according to their current value (as indicated by current profitability) and future value as indicated by CLV calculation. Every group will have a customer segmentation based on their demographics. Therefore this is used for customer selection. Within the four main value groupings, there are various strategies are developed for various customer groups. Few bronze customers such as group A and B practically do not have development potential and are usually unprofitable, therefore the objective is to reduce costs in communications and if they do not stay as customers this is acceptable. Some bronze customers like group C may have potential for growth; therefore for group C the strategy is to extend their purchases. Silver customers are focused with customer extension offer and gold customers are extended. Platinum customers are the best customers; therefore the communication is very important with these customers. 2.5 THE TECHNOLOGICAL FACTORS OF CRM According to Davenport and Short, (1990); Porter, (1987) ‘information technology is an enabler to thoroughly redesign business process to achieve improvements in organisational performance. ‘Information Technology help helps a business process by facilitating changes to job practices and establishing new techniques to link a customer with organisations, suppliers and stakeholders (Hammer and Champy, 1993). Eckerson and Watson (2000) advocated that ‘CRM take full advantage of technology to collect and analyze data on customer patters, expand predictive models, interpret customer behaviour, proper respond with communications, and deliver product and service to individual customers. By using technology a business can generate a 360 degree view of consumers to find out from past interactions to optimize future ones. Peppard (2000) said that ‘the leading factors in CRM development are improvement in set of connections communications, client/server compute, and business cleverness application. CRM collect, store, maintain and distribute customer knowledge all over the organisation. The effectual management of information has a vital role to play in CRM. In the case of scheming customer duration importance, consolidated view, product tailoring and facility improvement, the information is essential. Along with data warehouses, enterprise resource planning (ERP) organization and the internet are the vital infrastructures to CRM application. Fickel (1999) said ‘CRM application links front office (e.g. marketing, sales and customer service) and back office (e.g. financial, logistics, operations and human resources) functions with the businesses customer contact point. A companys touch point is â€Å"all of the communication, human and physical interactions your customers experience during their relationship lifecycle with your organisation. Whether an commercial, Web-site, sales individual, store or office, finger points are vital because customers from perceptions of your organisation and brand based on their cumulative experiences† (Source; http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/4508.imc at 16/10/2009 on 15:25) According to Eckerson and Watson (2000), ‘CRM integrated touch points is something like a common view of the customer. A separate information systems controlled these touch points. Figure 2.8 demonstrates the correlation between customer touch point with back and front office operations Peppers and Rogres, (1999) said ‘In many companies, CRM is just a technology solution that extends divide databases and sales force automation tools to link sales and marketing functions in order to develop targeting efforts. On the other hand some organisations consider CRM as a tool that is exclusively designed for one-to-one relationship. According to Goldenberg (2000) ‘CRM is not just a tools application for sales, marketing and service, but when CRM completely and successfully implemented, customer-driven, a cross-functional, technology-integrated commerce process management scheme that improves relationships and encompasses the whole organisation. 2.6 DATA WAREHOUSE TECHNOLOGY According to Watson (2000) ‘data warehouse is a tools of information technology management that helps business decision makers to instant access of information of customer data throughout the organisation by combining all database and operational systems like sales and transaction, human resource, inventory, purchasing, financial and marketing system. Data warehouse pull out, clean, convert and manage large volumes of data from various systems and creating a historical record of all customer. Data warehousing technology is the most crucial part of CRM because it makes CRM possible. Shepard et al. (1998) said ‘a better understanding of customer behaviour is possible because data warehousing technology consolidates correlates and convert customer data into customer intelligence. Thoughts of customers and their buying pattern can improve information relating to customer service interactions, bill and account status, back orders, product returns, product delivery, and internal operating cost. The capacity of a data storehouse to store hundreds and thousands of gigabytes of data compose an analysis feasible as well as immediate. Organisational benefits with a data warehouse are as follows; exact and faster access of information bad and duplicate data eliminate by quality data and filtering customer profiling and retention modelling it compute total present importance and approximate future value of every customer it gives detail report 2.7 DATA MINING TECHNOLOGY Peppers and Rogres, (1999) said that ‘the first analytical step of data mining is to describe the data. Data mining summarize its statistical attributes like standard deviations and means, visually review it by use of charts and graphs and distributes the value of the field in our data. But alone data description can not provide an action plan. We have to build a analytical model based on pattern determined from known output and after that we have to test the model on result outside the original sample. An ideal model must never be puzzled with reality, but it is useful guide to understanding our businesses. According to Eckerson and Watson (2000) ‘we can use data mining for both classification and regression problems. In first problem we can predict what type something will fall into. In second problems we are predicting a number like prospect that a person will react to an recommend. In CRM process, data mining is often used to allocate a score to a particular customer. Data mining is also often using to recognize a set of characteristics, which is called profile. Data mining segments customers in to groups with similar behaviour like purchasing a particular product. 2.8 THE CRM PROCESS CYCLE IN BANKS Pound (2000) said that exploration and alteration process should be done by the banks on basis of customer information captured; this shows the full value of CRM initiatives. Banks set up a closed CRM cycle with the help of an integrated CRM solution, which composed of a set of continuous iterative process. It manages the whole customer related process for bank, analysing customer profile, customer data and life time value, which is helping to making marketing decision and optimizing the execution of marketing campaigns, customer service strategies and sales strategies across various channels during the bank. According to Professor Constantin Zopounidis (2002) CRM process cycle is based on a generic business view. It presents a continuous improvement of value between customers and banks across touch points. Pound 2000 said that ‘recent banking data sources are extremely heterogeneous. Geographic information is dispersed due to continual acquisitions, mergers and reorganizations. For example a bank might use web site, ATMs, e-mail, sales, call centres and marketing automation applications that must be integrated in a unified environment of CRM banking. An effective multi-channels customer interface will not be possible without a centrally integrated warehouse driving the entire CRM process cycle. This should be update real time. The historical data should be recorded by it, which is used to create propensity models and customer life time value models to recognize past behaviour and action in order to take future marketing strategy. 2.9 CUSTOMER DATA COLLECTION Kristin Anderson Carol Kerr (2002), said that in banki Customer Relationship Management in Banking Customer Relationship Management in Banking ABSTRACT Today the world is globalized and customers are well educated and well informed. This has increased the competition among the firms and organisations. The competition elevates the customer bargaining power and switching power to choose the best product and service. Therefore customer relationship has become a focus of importance to all the companies in order to retain the customer as well as maximize revenues. Today marketing is no more developing, delivering and selling of goods and services, it is moving towards developing and maintaining long term relationship with customers. Therefore relationship marketing has making its important in all the business sectors so as in financial services. Customers Relationship Management creates the opportunity through which the banks can benefit by developing good relationships with their customers. The aim of the project is to gain a better understanding how the CRM has benefited both the bank as well as its customers. This research also aims to identify how critically CRM has been practiced in Lloyds Banking Group, analysis the data mining process of Lloyds Banking Group, to find out the customer segmentation procedure of the bank to analysis the customer retaining strategy of the bank, to find out how does the bank measure customer life time value and to verify the relationship between the customers and the Lloyds Banking Group. To validate the purpose of the project has addressed to set of questionnaires, one is for Lloyds Banking Groups employees and other is for customers of the bank. The literature review has also help to understand the answer for the research questions. Both the quantitative as well as qualitative data collection techniques have been adopted namely, survey questionnaire and semi-structure interviews. Some data has also collected through interview of Lloy ds employee and a group of their customers. Lloyds use CRM as an effective business strategy to classify the most profitable customers for bank. And accordingly bank gives priorities those customers through individualized marketing, reprising, flexible conclusion building and modify service-all delivered through a variety of sales channels that the bank use. Researcher has found that Lloyds is conducting a campaign management by using data mining task. This campaign helps to make crucial business decisions by exacting suitable, beforehand strange and ultimately logical and actionable awareness from huge databases. Researcher also has suggested suitable recommendations to the bank to improve the CRM practice in Lloyds Banking Group. 1.0 INTRODUCTION This chapter provides the brief introduction of research. Furthermore, it also discusses the aims, objectives of the research questions and scope of the study. 1.1 TOPIC OF THE RESEARCH Customer Relationship Management of Lloyds Banking Group PLC; A Critical Evaluation 1.2 INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH Peter Drucker said, â€Å"The purpose of a business is to create customers†. Customer Relationship Management can be the single strongest weapon we have as manage to ensure that customers become and remain loyal. Customer Relationship Management (CRM), is an vital division of modern business organization. CRM concern the relation between the organisations along with its consumers. Consumers are the means of support of any business in a universal business with thousands of workforce and a multi-billion earnings, or a single broker with a handful of standard consumers. CRM is the same in principle for both examples. Globalization and technology improvements have pushed companies into hard competition. In this new era organisations are targeting on managing customer relationships, mainly customer satisfaction, in order to maximize revenues (Constantinos 2003). Today, marketing is not just developing, delivering and selling; it is shifting towards developing and maintaining equally long term relationships with customers (Buttle, 1996). This new business values is called relationship marketing (RM), which has involved significant interest both from marketing academics and practitioners (Gronroos, 1994). The Greek philosopher, Epictetus said that â€Å"what concern me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are† (Szwarch, 2005, p.3). The concepts of consumer satisfaction were depending on the thinking of consumer. Research suggests that customer satisfaction, basic concept of relationship marketing, is important in achieving and retaining competitive advantage. Research studies have discovered that retaining current customers is much less expensive than attracting new customers (Desatnick, 1988; Stone et al., 1996; Bitran and Mondschein, 1997; Chattopadhyay, 2001; Massey et al., 2001). The best way to retain customers is to keep them satisfied, a number of studies have shown that customer satisfaction can guide to brand loyalty, repurchases intention and repeat sales (Day, 1984; Swan and Oliver, 1989; Oliver, 1999). Customer retention, in turn, seems to be related to profitability (Oliver, 1999). Relationship marketing is becoming significant in financial services (Zineldin, 1995). If a bank develops and sustains a solid relationship with its customers, its competitors cannot easily replace them and so this relationship provides for a continued competitive advantage (Gilbert, 2003). Moriarty et al. (1983) has suggested relationship concept in the banking sector which states that banks can increase their profits by maximising the profitability of the total customer relationship over time, instead of looking for to get more profit from any single transaction. Perrien et al. (1992) observed severe competitive pressures that forces financial institution to restructure their marketing strategies by developing into long-term relationship with customers. And banking industry purely related to financial services, which needs to create the trust among the people. This research is exploratory in nature and design. The data which is collected is going to be mostly primary data collected from the relevant persons within the bank. The data has gathered from the face to face interviews with the help of structured and semi-structured questionnaire with those persons. The above describe interviews has last 40 (fourty) to 45 (fourty five) minutes (approx). On the other hand the researcher has decided to collect primary data from random interviews of Lloyds Banking Groups customers. Sample size is around 200 customers and of structured questionnaire. But of course this research paper has relied on reviewing the various secondary data available from various researches such as books, magazines, website, previous research and publication etc. The collected data has been analysed by graphs, table and pi chart drawn from Microsoft excel. 1.3 AIM OF THE RESEARCH The aim of the research is to study why CRM is important in bank, how the CRM works in banks and also the effectiveness of Lloyds Banking Group in obtaining long term customer relationship, customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction by the use of CRM. And also suggest feasible recommendations to Lloyds Banking Group to increase the customer satisfaction and market share by the effective use of CRM. 1.4 OBJECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH The followings are the objectives of this research; To study how critically practised in Lloyds Banking Group Analysis the data mining process of Lloyds Banking Group To find out how the bank segments their customers To analysis how the bank retaining their customers To find out how does the bank measure customer Life Time Value To verify the relationship between the customers and the Lloyds Banking Group 1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY The scope of the study and research work has limited to Lloyds Banking Group only. This chosen level of aspects has stayed at large in the study so that it can be studied well and analyzed thoroughly to get a deeper understanding. Trying to cover too much ground may lead to a very superficial and confused analysis and may involve long time duration to complete the project work or report. Therefore a specified and narrow down approach with Lloyds Banking Group and an evaluation of its success has comprised with the researchers scope of the study to avoid confused analysis and a weaker report. 1.6 OUTLINE OF THE SUBSEQUENT CHAPTERS Chapter 1; INTODUCTION This chapter provides the brief introduction of the research. Furthermore, it also discusses the aims, objectives of the research questions and scope of the learning. CHAPTER 2; LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter determines the theoretical issues relating to CRM which is relevant to the research. CHAPTER 3; METHODOLOGY This episode discusses about primary and secondary methods of research used by the researcher. CHAPTER 4; CONTEXT Chapter 4 deals with the information about Lloyds Banking Group. CHAPTER 5; FINDINGS This chapter deals with the result of primary data. CHAPTER 6; ANALYSIS Analysis part deals with findings in the context of literature review in chapter 2. CHAPTER 7; CONCLUSION This chapter includes the overall conclusion of the research. This chapter produce the conclusion compared and contrasted with the finding of the research and the literature review. It summarises the aims and key findings and acknowledges the limitation of the works. CHAPTER 8; RECOMMENDATIONS This chapter is the last chapter of the research. This chapter provide the recommendation for the managerial implication in the Lloyds Banking Group. At the end, chapter provide recommendation for the future research. CHAPTER 9; REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY This chapter includes a systematic list of books, web site and other works such as journal, magazine etc which have been used as secondary data or as reference in this research. CHAPTER 10; APPENDICES This chapter contain all questionnaires and some graphs, chart and tables which have been made on the basis of customer survey. 2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter contains a review of literature relevant to the research. This literature review deals with, about CRM, the history and goals of an integrated banking CRM, the technological factor of CRM, the process cycle in banks, data warehouse technology, data mining process, how to analysis the data, customer segmentation process, communication strategies of bank to the customers etc. 2.1 CUSTOMER RELATIONSIP MANAGEMENT Existing research states that ‘relationships are the base to the successful development and edition of new business viewpoint, though business have taken care of relationships with their customers for many centuries (Gronroos, 1994). Sheth and Parvathiyar, (1995) said that relationships demand much more than mere transactions. Rather, they symbolize strategic and tactical issues based on a new philosophical move that geared in the direction of long-term organisation survival. According to Storbacka, (1994) relationship marketing got popular in 1990s but it has a long history under different names. In its starting, one-to-one marketing appeared in the mid 1990s, which transformed into Customer Relationship Management. Parvatiyar and Sheth gave a static definition of CRM. â€Å"Customer Relationship Management is widespread tactic and process of acquire, retaining and partnering with careful consumers to create better-quality value for the business and the consumer† (Parvatiyar and Sheth 2000, p.6) 2.2 THE HISTORY AND GOALS OF AN INTEGRATED BANKING CRM According to Puccinelli (1999) the financial services industry as entering a new era where personal attention is decreasing because the institutions are using technology to replace human contact in many application areas. Sherif, 2002 advocated that, now global changes brought new trends, directions and new ways of doing business, which also brought new challenges and opportunities to financial institutions. In order to complete with newly increasing competitive pressures, financial institutions must recognize the need of balancing their performance by achieving their strategic goals and meeting continues volatile customer needs requirements. Different ways must be analyzed to meet customer needs. Foss said that banks are highly focusing on CRM for the last five years that is expected to continue. According to Peter (1998) and Chablo (1999) the main goals of an effective integrated CRM solution in the banking sector are to enable financial institutes to; Widen customer relationship through acquiring new customers, identifying and targeting new segments and expanding in new markets. Lengthen the existing relationship developing longer term relationships, increasing perceived value of products and introducing new products and Deepen the relationship with customers initiating the cross selling and up selling opportunities, understanding the propensity of different customer segments to purchase and increase sales. The implementation if CRM system in a bank helps the business organisation to obtain a complete picture of their existing customers, design both customer-oriented and market-driven financial products and services, as well as implement extensive and reliable financial marketing research and efficient campaigns, to achieve and enhance customer loyalty and profitability. The above goals can be achieved through the seamless integration of information technology solutions and business objectives at every process of the bank business that affects the customer. 2.3 THE PHASES OF CRM The main phases of CRM are as follows; Customer selection or Segmentation According to Dave Chaffey (2009), customer selection is defining the types of customers that a company will market to. It means identifying different groups of customers for which to develop offerings and to target during acquisition, retention and extension. Different ways of segmenting customers by value and by their detailed lifecycle with the customer are reviewed. Many companies are now only proactively marketing to favoured customers. Seth Godin (1999), says â€Å"Focus on share of customer, not market share fire 70 per cent customers and watch your profits go up!† According to Efraim Turban (2008), the most sophisticated segmentation and targeting schemes for extension of customers are often used by banks, which have full customer information and acquire history data as they search for to boost Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) through encouraging increased use of products overtime. The segmentation approach used by banks is based on five main basics which in result are covered on top of each other. The amount of options used, and therefore the complexity of approach, will depend on resources obtainable, opportunities, capabilities and technology afforded by catalog. i. Identify customer lifecycle groups When guests use online services then they basically pass those seven or more stages. The organisations have clear these segments and establish the CRM infrastructure to categories customers in this manner; then they deliver focused messages, whichever by modified web messaging or by e-mails that are triggered routinely because of various rules. First-time guests recognized by a cookie placed on their PC. When guests registered, they are tracked through the residual stages. The customers who have purchased one or more products are one particular important group. The key challenge is for a company to encourage a customer to shift from the first product to the second and then go on. Explicit offers can be try to push customer for further products. In the same way, when customers turn into an inactive then the customer required follow-up. ii. Identify customer profit characteristics This is a conventional segmentation which is based on the nature of customer. For Business 2 Business Companies it includes sex, age and geography. It includes volume of the organisation and the type of sector or application, the organisation operates in. iii. Identify behaviour in response and purchase As shown in figure 2.2 through analysis of data base when customer progress through the lifecycle, company is capable to build up a detail reaction and buy history which judges the details of frequency, recency, group of product buy and monetary value. This approach is known as ‘RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary value) analysis. iv. Identify multi-channel behaviour In spite of of the eagerness of the company for online channels, various customers are chosen for using online channels and others customers are chosen conventional channels. This is an degree, be indicated by RFM and rejoinder examination since customers with a preference for an online channel is more reactive and make more use online. Customer who likes online channels is focused mostly by online communications such as e-mail, but when customer like conventional channels is focused by conventional communications such as direct mail or phone. This is known as ‘right-channelling. v. Tone and style preference In a same way to channel liking, customers are respond in their own way to various types of message. Some customers like rational application, in that time a detailed e-mail may work best. On the other hand some customers are preferred an emotional appeal. Companies are test for this in customers or conclude it using profit description and response performance and then expand various inventive treatments consequently. 2. Customer acquisition Processes used to add new customer. According to Turban (2008), customer acquisition refers to marketing activities intended to form relationship with new customers while reducing acquisition cost and targeting high-value customers. Service value and selecting the right path for various customers are essential at this stage and during the lifecycle. The conventional manner to customer acquisition include a marketing manager developing a blend of mass marketing (billboards, magazine advertisements etc.) and direct marketing (mail, telephone, etc.) campaigns based on their knowledge of the particular customer base that was being focussed. Marketing campaign trying to pressure new customers to buy a particular type of diapers, the mass marketing ads might be determined in parenting magazines. The advertisements could also be positioned in more conventional publications whose readership demographics were alike to those of new parents. Customer acquisition is comparatively similar to mass marketing. A marketing manager selects the demographics that they are involved in and after that works with a data vendor to obtain lists of buyers who meet those features. The data vendors have large database holding millions of eventual customers that can be segment based on explicit demographic criteria. The idea of â€Å"similar demographics† has conventionally been an art rather than a science. Usually there are not hard-and-fast systems about whether two groups of buyers share the similar features. Most of the segmentation that took place in conventional direct marketing involves hunches on the division of the marketing professional. 3. Customer retention Dafe Chaffey 2009 said that customer retention refers to the marketing actions taken by a company to keep its current customers. Identifying applicable offerings based on their personal needs and complete position in the customer lifecycle (e.g. purchase value or number) is key. Customer retention strategy aims to keep a high percentage of valuable customers and a customer development strategy aims to boost the value of those retained customer to the organisation. Customer retention is based on customer loyalty. And customer loyalty is the point to which a customer will continue with a specific brand or vendor. Customer acquisition to retain and extend create long-term customer relationship. We need to calculate customer satisfaction, as satisfaction drives loyalty and loyalty drives profitability. This relationship is exposed below; The marketers aim is to push customers up the curve towards the affection zone. But the majority are not in that zone. Marketers must understand to achieve retention,why customers defers or are indifferent. 4. Customer extension This technique is encouraging customers to increase their involvement with a company. According to Turban 2008, customer extension is increasing the range of products that a customer buys from an organisation. Sometime it is referred ‘customer development. Increasing the lifetime value (CLV) of a customer is the main objective of customer extension by encouraging cross-sell. For example a customer of Egg credit card may be offered the loan or a deposit account. There are many of customer extension technique for CRM as follows; Re-sell: same type of products to existing customers-particular vital in some Business 2 Business background as re-buys or modified re-buys. Cross-sell: sell extra products which may be closely related to the original buy. Up-sell: this is mean, selling more expensive products. Reactivation: Customers who have purchased for some time or have lapsed can be encouraged to buy again. Referrals: generating sells from recommendation from existing customers. 2.4 CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUE MODELLING Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is also an important theory and practise of CRM. But the calculation of CLV is not straightforward. There are so many company, they do not calculate it. According to Dave Chaffey (2009) â€Å"Lifetime value is the total net benefits that a customer or group of customers will provide a company over their total relationship with the company†. CLV is based on estimating the income and costs related with each customer over a phase of time and then calculating the net present value in present monetary terms using a discount rate value applied over the stage. Efraim Turban (2006) said there is various scale of complexity in calculating LTC. Those are exposed in figure 2.6. Option 1 is a realistic way or estimated proxy for future LTV, but the true LTV is the future value of the customer at individual level. CLV modelling at a segment level 4 is crucial within marketing since it answers the question; How much can I afford to invest in acquiring a new customer? Lifetime value analysis helps marketers to: Create the true value of a companys customer base Recognize and compare crucial target segment Calculate the effectiveness of another customer retention strategy Plan and calculate investment in customer acquisition programmes Make decisions about product and offers Figure 2.7 gives an example of how LTV can be used to develop a CRM strategy for different customer groups. There are 4 (four) main types of customers are indicated by their present and future value as bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Separate customers groupings (circles) are recognized according to their current value (as indicated by current profitability) and future value as indicated by CLV calculation. Every group will have a customer segmentation based on their demographics. Therefore this is used for customer selection. Within the four main value groupings, there are various strategies are developed for various customer groups. Few bronze customers such as group A and B practically do not have development potential and are usually unprofitable, therefore the objective is to reduce costs in communications and if they do not stay as customers this is acceptable. Some bronze customers like group C may have potential for growth; therefore for group C the strategy is to extend their purchases. Silver customers are focused with customer extension offer and gold customers are extended. Platinum customers are the best customers; therefore the communication is very important with these customers. 2.5 THE TECHNOLOGICAL FACTORS OF CRM According to Davenport and Short, (1990); Porter, (1987) ‘information technology is an enabler to thoroughly redesign business process to achieve improvements in organisational performance. ‘Information Technology help helps a business process by facilitating changes to job practices and establishing new techniques to link a customer with organisations, suppliers and stakeholders (Hammer and Champy, 1993). Eckerson and Watson (2000) advocated that ‘CRM take full advantage of technology to collect and analyze data on customer patters, expand predictive models, interpret customer behaviour, proper respond with communications, and deliver product and service to individual customers. By using technology a business can generate a 360 degree view of consumers to find out from past interactions to optimize future ones. Peppard (2000) said that ‘the leading factors in CRM development are improvement in set of connections communications, client/server compute, and business cleverness application. CRM collect, store, maintain and distribute customer knowledge all over the organisation. The effectual management of information has a vital role to play in CRM. In the case of scheming customer duration importance, consolidated view, product tailoring and facility improvement, the information is essential. Along with data warehouses, enterprise resource planning (ERP) organization and the internet are the vital infrastructures to CRM application. Fickel (1999) said ‘CRM application links front office (e.g. marketing, sales and customer service) and back office (e.g. financial, logistics, operations and human resources) functions with the businesses customer contact point. A companys touch point is â€Å"all of the communication, human and physical interactions your customers experience during their relationship lifecycle with your organisation. Whether an commercial, Web-site, sales individual, store or office, finger points are vital because customers from perceptions of your organisation and brand based on their cumulative experiences† (Source; http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/4508.imc at 16/10/2009 on 15:25) According to Eckerson and Watson (2000), ‘CRM integrated touch points is something like a common view of the customer. A separate information systems controlled these touch points. Figure 2.8 demonstrates the correlation between customer touch point with back and front office operations Peppers and Rogres, (1999) said ‘In many companies, CRM is just a technology solution that extends divide databases and sales force automation tools to link sales and marketing functions in order to develop targeting efforts. On the other hand some organisations consider CRM as a tool that is exclusively designed for one-to-one relationship. According to Goldenberg (2000) ‘CRM is not just a tools application for sales, marketing and service, but when CRM completely and successfully implemented, customer-driven, a cross-functional, technology-integrated commerce process management scheme that improves relationships and encompasses the whole organisation. 2.6 DATA WAREHOUSE TECHNOLOGY According to Watson (2000) ‘data warehouse is a tools of information technology management that helps business decision makers to instant access of information of customer data throughout the organisation by combining all database and operational systems like sales and transaction, human resource, inventory, purchasing, financial and marketing system. Data warehouse pull out, clean, convert and manage large volumes of data from various systems and creating a historical record of all customer. Data warehousing technology is the most crucial part of CRM because it makes CRM possible. Shepard et al. (1998) said ‘a better understanding of customer behaviour is possible because data warehousing technology consolidates correlates and convert customer data into customer intelligence. Thoughts of customers and their buying pattern can improve information relating to customer service interactions, bill and account status, back orders, product returns, product delivery, and internal operating cost. The capacity of a data storehouse to store hundreds and thousands of gigabytes of data compose an analysis feasible as well as immediate. Organisational benefits with a data warehouse are as follows; exact and faster access of information bad and duplicate data eliminate by quality data and filtering customer profiling and retention modelling it compute total present importance and approximate future value of every customer it gives detail report 2.7 DATA MINING TECHNOLOGY Peppers and Rogres, (1999) said that ‘the first analytical step of data mining is to describe the data. Data mining summarize its statistical attributes like standard deviations and means, visually review it by use of charts and graphs and distributes the value of the field in our data. But alone data description can not provide an action plan. We have to build a analytical model based on pattern determined from known output and after that we have to test the model on result outside the original sample. An ideal model must never be puzzled with reality, but it is useful guide to understanding our businesses. According to Eckerson and Watson (2000) ‘we can use data mining for both classification and regression problems. In first problem we can predict what type something will fall into. In second problems we are predicting a number like prospect that a person will react to an recommend. In CRM process, data mining is often used to allocate a score to a particular customer. Data mining is also often using to recognize a set of characteristics, which is called profile. Data mining segments customers in to groups with similar behaviour like purchasing a particular product. 2.8 THE CRM PROCESS CYCLE IN BANKS Pound (2000) said that exploration and alteration process should be done by the banks on basis of customer information captured; this shows the full value of CRM initiatives. Banks set up a closed CRM cycle with the help of an integrated CRM solution, which composed of a set of continuous iterative process. It manages the whole customer related process for bank, analysing customer profile, customer data and life time value, which is helping to making marketing decision and optimizing the execution of marketing campaigns, customer service strategies and sales strategies across various channels during the bank. According to Professor Constantin Zopounidis (2002) CRM process cycle is based on a generic business view. It presents a continuous improvement of value between customers and banks across touch points. Pound 2000 said that ‘recent banking data sources are extremely heterogeneous. Geographic information is dispersed due to continual acquisitions, mergers and reorganizations. For example a bank might use web site, ATMs, e-mail, sales, call centres and marketing automation applications that must be integrated in a unified environment of CRM banking. An effective multi-channels customer interface will not be possible without a centrally integrated warehouse driving the entire CRM process cycle. This should be update real time. The historical data should be recorded by it, which is used to create propensity models and customer life time value models to recognize past behaviour and action in order to take future marketing strategy. 2.9 CUSTOMER DATA COLLECTION Kristin Anderson Carol Kerr (2002), said that in banki