The Most Ignored Fact Regarding Ielts Essay Samples 2017 Exposed

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Interview Qs and As Free- Sample for Students-Myassignmenthelp.com

Questions: 1.Why do you Choose to Pursue your undergraduate study in the United States? How do you like this Country?2.Tell me More about St. Louis, Missouri? How do you like it?3.Why do you Choose Beijing to work at after Graduation?4.Why do you like Beijing?5.Books Recently read? Movies recently watched?6.Tell Me more about Qingming Festival and Dragon Boat Festival.7.Why do you Choose England for Graduate Study?8.Recent plans? Answers: Interview Qs And As 1.I have chosen to pursue my undergraduate study in the United States since its one of the worlds most reputed countries. Moreover, you see, the US has such an advanced knowledge of economics and finance with an extensive platform to gain international exposure, I will be able to learn and explore much more in the field of finance. Being one of the most developed countries, I will also have an opportunity to interact with people with diverse backgrounds which even makes it more extensive to actually learn. I have chosen this country because of one more reason- the United States in itself is a very comprehensive country, being a case study in itself for financial economical decisions. Sir, also I can say, the timeline of this country extensively describes how this country has made itself what it is now and students from each and every part of the world come here to study. I like this country way too much because of its quality of the academic education and dedicated human resource whi ch they provide. Even the environment for students is so friendly and free, for them to be the masters of their destiny and carve their futures here. 2.Sir what I have read and understood after hearing about this city is that St. Louis is one of the most charitable cities in here, I love the way they respect art and have given full right to people to access it. 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I felt the same when I was there. 5.To Live: A Novel by Yu Hua is a very amazing book which tells how you can actually lead a life with peace. No matter what you are born with, you always need to respect it. The story of this rich spoilt boy turns into a nice peasant and the transformation has been depicted beautifully which made me learn all the good things about life and many life lessons. The movie I recently watched was Milk. A 2008 American biographical film based on the life of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk is a great record of how all the protests have happened and how finally rights were given. 6.The Tomb-Sweeping Day is one of the most important Chinese festivals which is celebrated on the first day of the fifth solar term of the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar. This is mostly always the 15th day after the Spring Equinox. Thus 4th or 5th April in a given year it is celebrated. Cleaning the tomb is one of the most important part and then paying respect to the dead person. The weeds are cleared around it and then the favorite food and wine is taken off as a respect to them. This is burnt in hope that that person doesnt have lack of any of them. The Dragon Boat Festival is on the summer solstice. It is also known as Zhongxiao Festival which is actually for commemorating fealty and filial piety. The festival occurs on the 5th day of the 5th month as per the traditional Chinese calendar. Thus it is also called the Double Fifth Festival. 7.Since England has a good reputation in education. There are many world-class universities in England. Also London is one of the most important financial centers in the world, so I think studying in London will give me incomparable opportunities to learn from top global organizations during my graduate studies. Also being curious and inquisitive, I have never been to England before, so Im very curious about this country and its processes, places, people etc. Also England have one of the best places to offer and there culture speaks for themselves which makes me even more interested to have me studying here and explore their horizons. 8.Im planning to take several trips with my family. We havent made a decision yet. But were considering Thailand or Australia. We went to Phuket Island in Thailand before, and we had a really good time there. The food there is really delicious and a must try. The things in Thailand are very cheap and most with good quality. This time we want to go to other cities like Bangkok and Chiangmai. We are even thinking of going to Australia because we have never been to the southern hemisphere as this will give chance to us to see new cultures and different people.

Enrollment System Essay Example

Enrollment System Essay 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY Information System refers to the interaction of people, data, process and technology. It is used by the society or by an organization for the support in their operations, management and decision-making to make transaction more simple and easy. The activities of an IS are devoted to provide data and information to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of different operation of a business in an organization. One classification of an Information System is Transaction Process System that handles or records day to day transaction of a business. Example of this is an Enrollment System, a computer generated process which can support the operation and management of a school. This is designed for recording, verifying and processing student’s information who registers on a particular institution. Despite of helpful services provided by an enrollment system, there are still many institutions that use manual procedures like Munting Ilog National High School Silang West Annex. In their school, they manually do the encoding of students information and listing and checking of students’ requirements. This esulted in lot of difficulties that they encounter in handling their transactions leading to more serious problems like unreliable records of the students and data losses. The manual procedure also takes so much time and effort thus bringing lots of wasted time and more workload for the personnel in charge and for the students enrolling. To address the above problems, the developers developed a computerized enrollment s ystem. This system is capable of providing a 2 fast-paced enrollment processes resulting to a better enrollment transaction not only for the part of staff but also for the students. We will write a custom essay sample on Enrollment System specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Enrollment System specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Enrollment System specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer It minimized if not completely remove all the drawbacks of the manual enrollment to provide a better service and a high quality process outcome. OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY GENERAL OBJECTIVE The general objective of the study is to develop the Munting Ilog National High School Silang West Annex Enrollment System. SPECIFIC OBJECTIVE This study specifically aims to: 1. To design a system that will replace the manual enrollment resulting to speed up transaction, reliable and accurate students’ information, and fast access to students’ record. 2. To develop a systematic and user-friendly environment that will minimize uman error and avoid data losses. 3. To evaluate performance of the proposed system. 3 SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS The system is an information system exclusively designed for Munting Ilog National High School Silang West Annex. The Munting Ilog National High School Silang West Annex Enrollment System is proficient of gathering students’ and teachers’ infor mation and summarizing it to produce accurate and reliable records. It is capable of generating automatically the section of the students. It also allows the teachers to view their information and print their updated schedules. This system is implemented on LAN to provide a faster service. It has three direct users with different level of access including of one (1) admin, three registrars (3) and all the teachers in the said school. All these users are allowed to update their accounts providing that their new user name is unique and available. In case they forgot their password they can still access the system by answering the security questions that they provide while creating their account. The system was developed using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate as the front end which serves as the Users Interface and MySQL (Structured Query Language) as the back end which handles the database. ODBCAD 32 was used to connect the system to its back end (MySQL). It was created for about 3 months with the incorporation of these application software committed to ensure the efficient and fast processing of records. This system does not automatically generate schedules for the students. The admin is in charge in encoding manually the schedules of each section before the enrollment starts. Another drawback of the system is, if there are instances that a user forgot his/her username, they cannot access their account anymore. There is no security questions provided for unrecognizable username so what they need to do is to create a new account. The system is a network based application but does not work online. In case of power failure, it is not capable of saving any unsaved data or transaction. Only the current unsaved transaction will not be saved, all the other entries will remain in the database. 4 OPERATIONAL DEFINITION OF TERMS Munting Ilog National High School Silang West Annex Enrollment System. The title of the study. Information System. It is the combination of people, hardware, software, ommunication devices, network and data resources that processes data and information providing a business to operate its daily works more accurate and easier. Transaction Process System. It is a type of information system that collects, stores, modifies and retrieves the data transactions of an enterprise. Computerized Enrollment System. The solution of the developers which replaced the manual enrollment of the school. User-friendly Environment. Interface of the system that is easy to use and understand. Local Area Network (LAN). It is a single location connection of devices or peripherals/ computers. Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. It is an application software that the developers used to create the system’s user interface. Front-end. Refers to the graphical interface of the system where all data are entered; application development. MySQL. Application software that the developers used to handle the storing of data in the system. Structured Query Language. The database language which the developers used for managing the data in the system 5 Back- end. Refers to the database management system (DBMS); the storehouse for the data. Database. Collection of student’s data which composed his/her record. ODBCAD 32. Application software that the developers used for the system to connect in MySQL. 6 CONCEPTUAL MODEL OF THE SYSTEM INPUT PROCESS OUTPUT > SSS Figure 1. Conceptual Model of System Figure 1, presents the conceptual model of study of Munting Ilog National High School Silang West Annex Enrollment System. It is composed of four †¢System Analysis -Requirement Analysis -Requirement Definition †¢System Design -Contex Flow Diagram †¢System Development -System Developmen t Life Cycle †¢System Testing -Alpha -Beta Munting Ilog National High School West Annex Enrollment System . Knowledge Requirements a. Enrollment System b. Munting Ilog National High School West Annex Enrollment System c. Programming d. Local Area Network e. Database Management System f. System Analysis and Design 2. Software Requirements a. MS Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 b. MySQL c. ODBCAD 32 d. Operating System e. Adobe Photoshop CS4 3. Hardware Requirements a. Networking Cables b. Switch Server Requirements a. At least Pentium IV processor. b. Must have at least 128MB of RAM or higher Client Requirements EVALUATION 7 important blocks, the input requirements, process involved, output result and the evaluation. The first block which is the input requirements consists of Knowledge Requirements, Software Requirements and Hardware Requirements. The system requires the knowledge about the enrollment system, programming, LAN, database management system and system analysis and design. Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 for programming language, MySQL for the database, ODBCAD 32 as the connector, Operating System and Adobe Photoshop CS4 composed the Software Requirements. For the hardware requirements, RAM with at least 128MB, Pentium IV processor, networking cables and router switch re needed. For the system to be more sufficient, a lot of major processes were done such as planning, analyzing, designing, developing, testing, implementing and maintaining. The process for the system analysis contains the requirement analysis and requirement definition. For the design and development of the system, it includes context flow diagram and system development life cycle. Through these processes, all th e system requirements and objectives were met. For the evaluation, the user used alpha-beta testing to measure the system performance. It served as the gathering tool for feedbacks, comments and suggestions through the use of evaluation forms. The system was improved in presence of some errors and the output and module design was tested. 8 CHAPTER II RESEARCH METHODOLOGY In this chapter, all the processes that the developers underwent to achieve the objective of the study is shown. This includes the project design, project development, operational and testing procedure, and evaluation of the study. PROJECT DESIGN To be able to come up with an organized project, there should be a design on how the project should function. This design served as the developer’s guide n attaining the project objectives. Figure 2. System Context Flow Diagrams Registra tion Form 9 Figure 2, illustrates that Admin, being the administrator should log in first his password and username. If he is a valid user, he has all the privileged to use all the features of the system such as encoding students’ and teachers’ informat ion and updating it. The system will generate this information thus returning report to the admin. This report comprises the students section and schedules producing the registration form which will be given to them. The registrars should have a valid account to use the system. If they are authorized user, they can now encode information of the enrollees and search and update students’ records if necessary. The system would generate reports containing students’ information and schedule producing their registration form. In part of the teachers, they should also log in first an authorized account. If they are valid user, they can access minimal features of the system. This includes viewing their profile and schedule of their advisory class. The system will return reports that consist of their schedules which can be printed. PROJECT DEVELOPMENT The developers used the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) for the development of Munting Ilog National High School West Annex Enrollment System. The diagram shown below illustrates the different phases of SDLC model that show the sequence of the activities that the developers needed to undergo for the project development. 10 Analysis and Planning Phase. In this stage, the system was defined based from the interviews, researches, investigations and business requirements of the client. All the needed informations and materials for the development of the ystem were collected and the time bound was set. Design Phase. During this stage, layouts and diagrams were created based from the gathered materials and informations, considering also the business rules and specifications given by the client. The actual interface of the system and the database that supported it were also designed. Figure 3. System Development Life Cycle 11 12 Figure 4 shows the Data Flow Diagram for Admin Scenario. The admin should first input a username and password. If it is a valid account, he has now the privilege to access all the features of the system. First, he could encode schedule for a section to be stored in the sec_sched. Generating and updating recorded schedules are also obtainable. These schedules could be printed and the report will be given to the admin. Second, the admin could create section that would be stored in the section table. Afterwards, he can add subjects to this section to be stored in subject table. Generating section is also available. Viewing section would allow the admin to view all the students’ and their profile within that selected section. Tables that would be source of data that allow this process were he student table for student information, and section table for the information of the section. Third, the admin could encode teachers’ information to be stored in teacher table. This would produce a teachers’ record that could be viewed, updated and printed together with their schedules. Sec_sched for teachers’ schedule and teacher table for their information would be the s ource of data. The printed schedule would be given to teachers and the schedule report to the admin Fourth, encoding students’ information could also be done by the admin. These recorded students’ records would store in the student table. Viewing, updating and printing students’ registration forms that contained their schedule and some information from the sec_sched and student tables are allowed. These registration forms would be given to the students and a report would be given to the admin. Lastly, the admin is allowed to update his password and username. The updated username and password would be saved in the password table and report will be issued upon updating the account. 13 14 Figure 5 shows how data were processed in the system for the registrar cenario. The registrar should log-in first his/her username and password in order to access the system. After the verification, he/she could the encode enrollees’ information to be stored in the student table. The registrar could also search and update student’s record. Registration form containing the student’s information and its schedule will be printed and given to the enrolled student. Report will be issued to the registrar after the registration form was printed. On the other hand, the registrar can also update his/her account providing his/her username and password. The updated username and password would be saved in the password table and report will be issued upon updating the account. 15 16 Figure 6 shows the data flow diagram for the Teachers Scenario. To be able to use the system, the teacher should log in first his username and password. If he is a valid user, he can now successfully access the system. He can view the schedule of his advisory class that would be given by the sec_sched table. He could also view his profile and schedule from the teacher and sec_sched tables by encoding his identification. A teacher report could be rinted comprising some of his information and schedule which would be given to him. Another capability of teacher’s account is that, the teacher is allowed to view all the students and their profiles of a particular section providing that he is the registered adviser of them. Updating username and password is also allowed within this account. The updated username and password would be saved in the password t able and report will be issued upon updating the account. 17 DATABASE DESIGN Table 1. stud_personal Table Field Name Data Type Description std_code VARCHAR Student code std_type VARCHAR Student type std_level VARCHAR Student level td_school_year VARCHAR Student school year grade VARCHAR Grade std_firstname VARCHAR Student first name std_middlename VARCHAR Student middle name std_lastname VARCHAR Student last name std_address VARCHAR Student address std_dob VARCHAR Student date of birth std_pob VARCHAR Student place of birth std_age VARCHAR Student age std_gender VARCHAR Student gender std_citizenship VARCHAR Student citizenship std_religion VARCHAR Student religion std_contact VARCHAR Student contact number Table 2. stud_family Table Field Name Data Type Description std_father VARCHAR Student father std_father_occ VARCHAR Student father’s occupation td_mother VARCHAR Student mother std_mother_occ VARCHAR Student mother’s occupation std_guardian VARCHAR Student guardian Table1, the Student’s Personal Information Table, is used for storing the personal information of the student. 18 std_guardian_occ VARCHAR Student guardian’s occupation std_guardian_add VARCHAR Student guardian’s address std_guardian_relation VARCHAR Student guardian’s relation std_guardian_contact VARCHAR Student guardian’s contact number Field Name Data Type Description std_elem VARCHAR Student elementary school std_elem_add VARCHAR Student elementary school address std_elem_year VARCHAR Student elementary school year td_hs VARCHAR Student high school std_hs_add VARCHAR Student high school address std_hs_year VARCHAR Student high school year std_lsa VARCHAR Student last school attended std_lsa_add VARCHAR Student last school attended address std_lsa_year VARCHAR Student last school attended year Field Name Data Type Description std_req_nso VARCHAR Student nso requirement std_req_tor VARCHAR Student tor requirement std_req_form138 VARCHAR Student form138 requirement std_picture VARCHAR Student picture std_section VARCHAR Student section std_nonPK VARCHAR Student non Primary Key section_flag VARCHAR Section flag section_flag2 VARCHAR Section flag2 Table 4. tores the requirement’s information of the enrollee and stores the flag that holds the number of users of the system. Table 2. stores the family background information of the student. Table 3. stud_educ Table Table 3. stores the educational background information of the student. Table 4. req_flag Table 19 Table 5. password table Field Name Data Type Description ID VARCHAR Username pass VARCHAR password cpass VARCHAR Confirm Password q1 VARCHAR Question1 a1 VARCHAR Answer1 q2 VARCHAR Question2 a2 VARCHAR Answer2 tch_code VARCHAR Teacher code user_type VARCHAR User type Table 5, the passwords table, is used for storing the user’s account. Table 6. sec_sched table Field Name Data Type Description day VARCHAR Day time VARCHAR Time room VARCHAR Room Item_number VARCHAR Item Number flag VARCHAR Flag tch_name VARCHAR Teacher Name tch_code VARCHAR Teacher Code subj_code VARCHAR Subject Code sec_name VARCHAR Section Name Table 6, the sec_sched table, is used for storing schedule in each section. Table 7. section table Field Name Data Type Description sec_name VARCHAR Section Name item_number VARCHAR Item Number 20 year VARCHAR Year tch_code VARCHAR Teacher Code Table 8. subject table Table 8, the subject table, is used for storing the subject Table 9. teacher table Field Name Data type Description tch_code VARCHAR Teacher Code tch_type VARCHAR Teacher Type tch_ name VARCHAR Teacher Name tch_add VARCHAR Teacher Address tch_ dob VARCHAR Teacher Date of Birth tch_age VARCHAR Teacher Age tch_gender VARCHAR Teacher Gender tch_degree VARCHAR Teacher Degree tch_subj VARCHAR Teacher Subject tch_dos VARCHAR Teacher Date of Service tch_tin VARCHAR Teacher Tax Identification number tch_prc VARCHAR Teacher Id Number tch_pic VARCHAR Teacher Picture Table 7, the section table, is used for storing the section. Field Name Data Type Description subj_code VARCHAR Subject Code subj_name VARCHAR Subject Name or_year VARCHAR Current School Year teacher_nme VARCHAR Teacher Name tch_code VARCHAR Teacher Code 21 Table 9, the teacher table, is used for storing the information of the teacher. Table 10. tch_sched table Field Name Data Type Description tch_code VARCHAR Teacher Code tch_name VARCHAR Teacher Name day VARCHAR Day time VARCHAR Time subject VARCHAR Subject roo m VARCHAR Room itm_no VARCHAR Item Number flag VARCHAR Flag sec_name VARCHAR Section Name subj_code VARCHAR Subject Code Table 10, the tch_ched table, is used for storing the section of teachers. Table 11. flags table Field Name Data Type Description name VARCHAR User Name alue VARCHAR Number Of User and Student `Table 11, the flags table, is used for counting the numbers of users and students in every year. Table 12. sy_flag table Field Name Data Type Description name VARCHAR value VARCHAR std_code VARCHAR 22 Table 12, the sy_flag table, is used for storing the school year DATABASE RELATIONAL DIAGRAM (DRD) 23 Figure 7. Database Relational Diagram Figure 7, shows the relationship among tables NETWORK DIAGRAM 24 Figure 8 Network Diagram Figure 8 presents the network diagram of the system. It shows that the developed system is implemented in a Local Area Network where in the onnections and designs are made using the Star Topology. It is composed of one server and three workstations pl ugged into a switch which provides the connection. The server which is intended for the system’s admin stored the database and served as a workstation. It should have at least Pentium IV processor and 128MB of RAM or higher. On the other hand, the workstations are intended for the registrars purely used for enrollment purposes only. Development Phase. For the development of the system, the developers used the Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 for coding and designing, and MySql or the database management. ODBCAD32 is also used to connect the system to MySQL. Testing and Evaluation Phase. The developers used alpha and beta testing for the entire system. For the alpha testing, the developers tested the system. For the beta testing, they invited 10 faculty staff and discussed to them all the 25 information they have to know to properly use the system. To evaluate the system performance, the respondents were given the evaluation instrument known as FURPS. Implementation Phase . After the completion of the sytem, it will be implemented n Munting Ilog National High School Silang West Annex. The acting registrar which is the administrator, and the teachers of the said school will be trained to be familiar in using the sytem for them to experience all its features. Maintenance Phase. The developers in this stage have the task of maintaining the reliability of the system. Developing additional features to support and improve the system will also be created. OPERATIONAL AND TESTING PROCEDURES The following procedures were conducted in order to operate and test the system. 1. The software requirements (Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 and MySQL) were installed to the computers of Munting Ilog National High School Silang West Annex. 2. Upon installation of the software, users explored the system with the guidance of the developers. 3. Alpha and Beta testing were used in testing the entire system’s performance. 26 4. 10 faculty and staffs including the direct user of the system tested and evaluated the system for 2 days. EVALUATION PROCEDURE In evaluating the system, the following procedures were used: Preliminary Evaluation The system was evaluated in accordance to the system developers’ and users’ requirements and specifications. The following questions were used to evaluate the system: 1. Is the system capable of recording and storing information? 2. Does the system produce reliable and accurate records? 3. Does the system automatically generate section of students? Final Evaluation The system was evaluated in the span of 2 days. Alpha and Beta testing were used to evaluate the performance of the entire system. 10 faculty members including the administrator of the system tested and evaluated the system. FURPS was used as the evaluation instrument. The system modifications and enhancements were based on the result of he evaluation. Comments and suggestion were taken into consideration for the improvement of the system. Evaluation Instrument 27 The evaluation instrument used was the FURPS model. This served as the basis in the terms of functionality, usability, reliability, performance and scalability of the system. Functionality. This criterion is for the evaluation of the features, security and capabilities of the system. Usability. This criterion considers the consistency and documentation of the system. Reliability. This is a criterion in evaluating the frequency of errors, the ccuracy of the output and the ability to recover failures. Performance. This criterion is made to test the speed of processing, response time and the efficiency of the system. Scalability. This criterion is the basis on how easy to understand and maintain the good performance of the system. Table 13. Scoring System NUMERICAL SCALE INTERPRETATION 5 Excellent 4 Very Good 3 Good 2 Fair 1 Poor 28 Table 13 shows the scoring system used in rating the performance of the system. Each criterion of the evaluation has a scale of 1 to 5; 5 being the highest and 1 as the lowest. Statistical Treatment of Data Table 14. Range of Mean Value RANGE OF MEAN VALUE INTERPRETATION 4. 51-5. 0 Excellent 3. 51-4. 50 Very Good 2. 51-3. 50 Good 1. 51-2. 50 Fair 1. 0-1. 50 Poor Table 14 shows the range mean value and its equivalent interpretation. This table was used to determine the mean value of all the data gathered, tabulated and computed in the evaluation. CHAPTER III RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS This chapter is composed of Project Description, Project Structure, Screen Layouts and Project Evaluation. PROJECT DESCRIPTION 29 The developed system, Munting Ilog National High School Silang West Annex Enrollment System, is an information system, specifically a transaction system that is designed to provide a better enrollment services and to produce a high quality process outcome. It is capable of minimizing human error and avoiding data losses by providing a more reliable and speed up transaction. It also ensures precision and fast access to the students and teachers recorded information. The system consists of features committed to lessen the workload of the user such as generating automatically the sections of the students. The overture of a computerized enrollment system to Munting Ilog National High School Silang West Annex would bring about ease and convenience to its staff and students by replacing the manual procedures of a hassle free transactions preventing them to undergo the very long and time consuming manual enrollment processes done by preparing and setting a more organize enrollment procedures. PROJECT STRUCTURE 30 Figure 9. System’s Project Structure Figure 9 shows the different functions and processes of Munting Ilog National High School Silang West Annex Enrollment System. For the Enrollment enu, the user can encode new student record, search student record, generate sections and change school year. Accessing the previous school year is also allowed but updating the records is no longer available. Teachers menu enables the users to encode new teachers’ records and search old records of them. Schedules menu allows encoding and searching of schedules for the teachers. Lastly, the Sections and Subjects menu is intended for creating sections and encoding and adding their schedules and subjects. Munting Ilog National High High School Silang West Annex Enrollment System 31 Figure 10. User’s Login Form (Select User) Figure 10, the User’s Login Form, provides the security to the system. It shows that the user should select a type of account before he/she can log in. This is to identify the type of access that the user can acquire. Figure 11. User’s Login (Menu) Figure 11 shows the User’s Login (Menu). This allows the user to choose whether to create an account or to retrieve a forgotten password. 32 Figure 12. User’s Login (Create Account) Figure 12, User’s Login (Create Account), provides the type of account that the user can create. This can be a registrar, adviser or teacher account. Figure 13. Create User Account Figure 13, Create User Account shows the form that the user should sign up to have access to the system. To create an account, the user needs to provide a valid teacher’s code and unique username. Figure 14. Lost Password 33 Figure 14, Lost Password shows the form where the user can retrieve his/her password. In order to retrieve password, the user need to provide a valid teacher’s code and User ID, if these requirements match, the security questions provided while creating the account will appear. Providing the right answers to these questions, the forgotten user’s password will be shown. Figure 15. Admin Menu (Main Menu) Figure 15, Admin Menu (Main Menu) shows the main form for the admin account. The user has the options whether to work on enrollment, teachers, schedules or sections and subjects. Figure 16. Admin Menu (Enrollment) Figure 16, Admin Menu (Enrollment), provides the options when the user chose to work on enrollment. This includes the encoding of new record, searching records and changing the year every end of the school year. 34 Figure 17. New Student Record Figure 17, New Student Record, shows the form for encoding new record of a student. All the information and requirements needed by the school to a student before e/she can enroll are completely provided in this form. Figure 18. Input Grade Figure 18, Input Grade, shows the form that will be shown after clicking the grade textbox. Gen. Average and Entrance Examination grade are needed to calculate the grade in order to generate sections. 35 Figure 19. Search Record Figure 19, Search Record, show the form where the admin can search for the student’s record. The Administrator can search by name, student’s number, section or year level. The admin can also search for the records of the past school years by selecting a specific year. Updating record and printing registration form are also available in this form. Figure 20. Change Search Year Figure 20, Change Search Year, shows the form where the admin can change the school year for searching student’s record from the previous school year. 36 Figure 21. Update Student’s Record Figure 21, Update Student’s Record, shows the form where the user can update student’s record in case of some changes. For the part of the old students, there is no need to encode again the student’s information. Figure 22. Registration Form Figure 22, Registration Form, shows the registration form of the students that can e printed. This form contains the schedule of the student and may served as the proof of enrollment. 37 Figure 23. Admin Menu (Teachers) Figure 23, Admin Menu (Teachers), shows the options when the button teacher was clicked. These include encoding new teacher’s record and searching for old records. Figure 24. New Teacher’s Record Figure 24, New Teacher’s Record, shows the form for encoding new record of a teacher. All the important information of the teacher and selecting the teacher’s type which are needed to be filled up are shown in this form. 38 Figure 25. Search Teacher’s Record Figure 25, Search Teacher’s Record, provides searching of teacher’s record by name or teacher’s number. This also allows updating of teacher’s record and clicking teacher’s advisory class. Figure 26. Teacher’s Advisory Class Figure 26, Teacher’s Advisory Class, shows the form that will appear upon clicking the teacher’s advisory class. This form contains all the names of the students within that section that can be clicked to view their profile. 39 Figure 27. View Student’s Profile Figure 27, View Student’s Profile, shows the profile of the student upon clicking his/her name. Figure 28. Update Teacher’s Record Figure 28, Update Teacher’s Record, shows the form for updating the teacher’s profile. 40 Figure 29. Admin Menu (Schedules) Figure 29, Admin Menu Schedule, shows the option upon clicking the button schedules. Figure 30. Input Schedule Figure 30, Input Schedule. In this form, the administrator can input schedule for a certain section. 41 Figure 31. Admin Menu (Sections and Subjects) Figure 31, Admin Menu (Sections and Subjects), shows the options upon clicking the Sections and Subjects button. In this menu, the admin can create section, search for sections and add subjects. Figure 32. Create Sections Figure 32, Create Sections, shows the form where the admin can create sections. In order to create a section, the admin should fill up the following textboxes. 42 Figure 33. Search Section Figure 33, Search Section, shows the form for searching section. The admin needs to select the name of the section in the combo box and the names of the students enrolled in that section will appear in the flexgrid. Figure 34. Add Subjects Figure 34, Add Subjects, shows the form for adding subjects. In adding subjects, the admin should fill up the required information needed for adding a subject. 43 Figure 35. Registrar’s Menu Figure 35, Registrar’s Menu, shows the main form for the Registrar. The Registrar can only add new student’s record and search for old student’s record. Figure 36. Teacher’s Menu Figure 36, Teacher’s Menu, shows the teacher main form. The teacher can view his/her profile and schedules which can be printed. 44 Project Evaluation Table 15. Evaluation Result Table 12 shows the evaluation result evaluated by the 10 faculty staff of Munting Ilog National High School Silang West Annex. They rated the system based on its Functionality, Usability, Reliability, Performance and Scalability. In order to prove that the system is functional, the features set should be implemented, the functions’ accuracy and capabilities were also measured, and it also provide substantial security. With all the requisite system as the basis of the INDICATORS MEAN DESCRIPTIVE RATING A. Functionality 4. 5 Excellent Functions required for the system are implemented Functional accuracy is provided Functions meet specifications Ease of connecting with other systems is provided B. Usability 4. 6 Excellent Easy to operate Easy to remember Allows easy operation management C. Reliability 4. 2 Very Good Conformance to desired output Absence of failure Accuracy in performance D. Performance 4. 3 Very GoodSpeed Efficiency E. Supportability 4. 5 Excellent Ease of isolating and transferring significant components Serviceability 45 evaluators, half of them gave a rating of 5; and the other half gave 4. Given these sub-criteria, the system over all functionality got an average score of 4. 5, which means that the system is â€Å"Excellent†. The system’s usability is concerned with characteristics such as aesthetics and consistency in the user interface. It garnered a score of 5 from the 6 evaluators; a score of 4 from remaining 4 evaluators. After summing all the scores given, the system got an average rating of 4. 6 which means â€Å"Excellent† for the system’s over all usability. In this case, the quality requirements are established on the basis of the Performance characteristic. The ability of a system to perform its required functions under stated conditions for a specified period of time or the resistance to a failure of a system should be evaluated. 1 of the evaluators rated the system in the score of 3; 3 of them gave 5; and the remaining 6 of them gave a score of 4. These resulted to an average of 4. 2, with a verbal interpretation of â€Å"Very Good†. The system’s performance, is concerned if the system is easy to install, provide a flexible environment, and it allow easy replacement with other software. 3 of the evaluators rated 5 for the performance of the system and 7 of them gave a score of 4. These resulted to an average of 4. 3 that has an equivalent of â€Å"Very Good†. For the system’s supportability; ease of isolating and transferring significant components, testability, adaptability, maintainability and compatibility of the system were evaluated. With all these requisite of the system, 6 of the evaluators gave a score of 5 and 4 of them gave 4. This resulted with an average of 4. 5, with a verbal interpretation of â€Å"Excellent. † The system got an overall mean of 4. 42 which is equivalent to â€Å"Very Good. † According to the system evaluation, the evaluators found the system functional, usable, reliable, performing well in terms of speed, and manageable. 46 CHAPTER IV SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS This chapter presents the summary, conclusions, and recommendations. 47 SUMMARY Munting Ilog National High School Silang West Annex Enrollment System was developed exclusively for Munting Ilog National High School Silang West Annex to aid the difficulties and problems which they encountered when using the manual process. It is designed specifically to provide a fast-paced computerized enrollment system while producing a more reliable and dependable information for both students and teachers, done by lessening human errors and avoiding data losses. This system is implemented in a network environment. It has three direct users which have different level of accessibility. It can automatically generate sections but cannot generate schedules automatically. For the development of the system, the developers made and followed he context flow diagram, data flow diagram, and database design as guides. They used the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) to meet the general and specific objectives of the study. For the evaluation, the system underwent two procedures which were the preliminary and final procedures. The developers and their system’s adviser tested the system for the preliminary testing. And for t he final testing, they invited 10 staff of Munting Ilog National High School Silang West Annex to test and evaluate the system using the FURPS model. For the evaluation result, the system got an overall mean of 4. 42 ith the descriptive rating of â€Å"very good†. This proves that the system is acceptable based on the gathered data and summarize evaluation showing that evaluators found the system functional and usable. CONCLUSIONS Based from the result of the evaluation and objectives, major conclusions are made: 1. The developers have successfully developed a computerized enrollment system that provides a speed up transactions while ensuring to the users 48 that the process outcome is in high quality, accurate, dependable and reliable. 2. The system is easy to learn, understand and operate because of it’s being ser-friendly. 3. The system created is usable, maintainable and expandable. RECOMMENDATIONS Based from the comments, suggestions, and recommendations gathered from the final evaluation of the system, the developers recommend the following to the future researchers: 1) Future researchers may develop an enrollment system that automatically generates schedules for the students. 2) Future researchers may incorporate the use of internet while working in the network of the system. 3) Future researchers may enhance the data retrieval process of the system in case of power failure.

Concept Paper

Concept Paper Concept Paper Concept Paper: Protect Your Project! What is a concept paper? What purposes does writing of this kind of paper have? Looking for answers for these questions? This article will help you make this issue clear for you! A concept paper as a kind of the academic writing A concept paper acts as a proposal for a project. Sometimes the notions concept paper and proposal are even used as synonyms. So, why should you write a concept paper? This kind of paper is called to present a preliminary summary of your project. The success of your project will depend on the success of your concept paper. Other words, you should convince the committee that your project is worth doing, it will have the theoretical value and the practical application. So, what kind of information should a concept paper contain? When writing a concept paper you should state the following:The purpose of your investigation. Why did you decide to investigate this issue? What will be the use of the results of this invest igation? The subject of your research. What questions will you consider? The methodology. In what way will you conduct your research? The literature review. What works will your project be based on? Concept paper writing tipsThink over the title of your concept paper. It should be a good illustration of the main idea of your project. The title should be made clearly and correctly. Do not forget that it will be the first thing that your audience will read. If you are going to persuade this audience that your project will be VERY GOOD, nothing may cause any doubt about that! You should state what period of time it will take you to complete your project pointing out the main stages of the writing process. One should mention that this is the characteristic of concept papers. Your audience should know not only what you are going to write about but also how long you will do. When writing your concept paper use different examples, statistical data or results of some obs ervations. That will help you complete 2 tasks. Firstly, the usage of such elements will help catch the interest of your readers. Secondly, your concept paper will sound more convincing when containing such information. Keep in mind this information when writing your concept paper. Remember: the more clearly and convincing you will write it, the more chances you will have in getting high points for your project.

FORCES IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

FORCES IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS - Case Study Example Religion and language are also important cultural factors that influence international business. Natural resources forces explain the significance of natural geography, topography, natural endowments, climate and sustainability of energy resources use on international business. The political system in the country reflects the will of the country in determining its course of economic growth. Political stability in the country is essential for long term prospects of business. Many countries now are more open to privatization of business. A country's economic health will determine demand for goods and services and availability of infrastructure and other resources for doing business. Maturity of legal system in a country will determine the risk of doing business in the country and is essential for fair transactions. The country's financial position in terms of balance of payments, exchange rate, inflation etc will help multinational companies to draw up strategies on investment, managem ent of finances etc. Availability of labour and labor market trends will be important in determining setting up operations in a country. The Case of Coca Cola operations in India indicates how these seven forces influenced the company in its operations and how it reacted. The company had to face ethical dilemma of operating its plant in remote locations and face accusations of making profits at the cost of depriving locals of natural resource. Socio-Cultural forces Culture affects all business functions. Hofstede's cultural dimension model will be a useful starting parting to understand how culture influences business ((Hofstede, 2001).The power distance factor could indicate how bureaucracy operates in the country. If it is high it will mean a highly centralized decision making structure and very little delegation of powers to local authorities. This knowledge will help a company in doing negotiations. Very often this also defines the relationship between consumer and seller. This will also have an important bearing on organizational design. For example an organisation which tries to bring in its organizational value of empowered decentralized decision making to its employees from a cultural background of high power distance, will face difficulties in implementation (Meade 2005, p 95). Uncertainty avoidance may influence attitudes to entrepreneurship in society and inclination to take risks in financial institutions. Individualism vs. collecti vism dimension will indicate the level of influence of unions and labors attitude to collective bargaining. This will also determine the predominance of task or relationship in interpersonal management. Religion has a strong influence on commerce. Religion is responsible for many beliefs and attitude affecting behaviour, which is brought into business and organizations by people (Ball et al 2008). Attitude to work, accumulation of material wealth

Information Management and the Digital Firm Essay

Information Management and the Digital Firm - Essay Example Cloud computing comes in different forms, and example includes; SECaas, which refers to security as a service, IaaS, which deals with infrastructure and DBaas which mainly deals with databases. (Wang,, 2012). Cloud computing has five essential characteristics, and they are (Smoot and Tan, 2012), 1. Capability of pooling resource. Cloud computing can pool the resources of the providers computer in order to serve a high number of customers, through the use of a multi-tenant model. This model has different virtual and physical resources which are dynamically assigned according to the requirements of the customer. 2. It has a broad network access. The cloud computing system has a variety of capabilities which are available over the host network, and accessed through devices that promote the use of heterogeneous thick and thin platforms such as laptops, work stations and mobile phones. 3. It has an on-demand self-service system: The system allows the customer to control its capabilities s uch as server time, network storage system, and other application, and it does not need the human intervention of the system producer/ provider.The system allows customers to configure, deploy and obtain cloud computing services by their own initiative through guidance from the cloud computing catalogues. On this note therefore, developers of cloud computing technology have templates which contain configurations that the customer can use in setting up the system. These templates contain information on the cloud computing infrastructure, and information concerning servers contained in the system. These servers can perform specialized work like hosting of websites and databases (Hwang and Fox, 2012). 4. It has a measured service system. The system allows customers to monitor, control, report and provide a feedback concerning the use of the technology. The system also automatically controls and optimizes the use of the computing resources by creating a lever on the metering capability of the system. The creation of the lever on the metering capability of the system is dependent on the type of service the clouding system provides. These services might include provision of a system that allows customers to create active online accounts with the organization, storage or processing services (Hwang and Fox, 2012). 5. Its elasticity is rapid. The cloud computing system has capabilities that are provisioned elastically, and in some instances, its capabilities are automatically provisioned. Cloud computing provisions that are available for provisioning are unlimited, and it is possible to appropriate them in whichever quantity, and time is not an issue. In my own opinion, there are only some specific elements of the cloud computing system that are used in a digitally enabled business environment. The type of cloud computing system that is applicable in a business set up is the software as a service system (SaaS). In this system, it is possible to enable customers an acce ss to the databases and applications of the software. In this system, the role of the providers is to manage the platform, and infrastructure upon which the software is installed on. This system allows a business organization to reduce the costs associated with its information

Market and situational analysis: Starbucks Coffee

Market and situational analysis: Starbucks Coffee Executive Summary Starbucks is a long history company in specialty coffee industry, established in 1971 Seattle Washington USA and traded in NASDAQ stock market since 1985 under the symbol SBUX, provided beverages e.g. high quality coffee, tea and light food items through company-owned and licensed stores in domestic market and international market all over the world with strongly focus in differentiate and innovation known by Starbucks experience together with Global Responsibility strategy; commitment to communities and employee satisfaction policy complemented in its business strategy (Starbucks, 2009). Starbucks is a fast growing company and played a major role as the leader in specialty coffee industry until in 2006 to 2007, the company growth was starting to declined and turned to negative growth since 2008. While the company was in the bad situation with the global economic crisis and forced by the strong competitors McDonalds and Dunkin Donut, Howard Schultz had return as CEO (MSNBC, 2008) a nd tried to transform Starbucks from the struggling period return to innovative and growth again (Howard, 2009). In this following report provides analysis of company mission, business strategy with Porters Generic Strategies (Michael, 1980), using Michael Porters five forces (Michael, 1979) to analyze specialty coffee industry, situation analysis with SWOT, Starbucks core competencies (C.K. Gary, 1990) and competitive advantage (Michael, 1996) examine by C.K. Prahalad Gary Hamel method and Michael Porter competitive advantage model. The report includes strategy recommendation by using TOWS matrix in conjunction with SWOT analysis and competitive advantage, and ending with Potential fallout. Company Mission To inspire and nurture the human spirit one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time. (Starbucks, 2009) as Starbuckss recently mission statement. The company has the principles and concerns all stakeholders including their suppliers, employees which recognized as partners, customers, communities, shareholders and even environment. Starting from its products themselves (coffee bean, tea, cocoa), theyre passionate to find the finest sources, finest process of products with improving the quality of life of the farmers. With the feeling of partners, all employees treat with respect and pride, also the engagement with customers and sense of human connections by the friendly and warming stores atmosphere to earn their royalty and trust, responsibilities and contribution to communities and social, together with one of the important missions is environmental friendly these make them Starbucks as a leader for changes and new standards. (Starbucks, 2009) Business strategy According to Starbucks mission, their business strategy used is mainly on differentiation focus strategy (Michael, 1980), not the cost leadership strategy, which try to make the different, to be the leader and innovate new standard with their unique products and services that customer could perceived and valued better than others competitors which not easy to be copied or time needed (for some particular periods), as their named it Starbucks experience and with quite focus on particular target and market; customers whom share the same valued, required premium-level coffee, have spending ability; young urban professionals, teenage and trendy (Wikinvest, 2010) but not the pricing competition. Source: Generic Strategies Michael Porter (1980), http://www.marketingteacher.com Starbucks business strategy (differentiation focus) has been used in all processes and all stakeholders; starting from suppliers and farmers that Starbucks made the different in the way of finding the source of materials (e.g. coffee bean) at the origin places not from the secondary sources and the most significant is tried to improve farmers quality of life in the same time also got the good quality of coffee beans. Secondly, they treat the employees differently from the others whom they called partners that hope to make the different in the way of service-minded and relations. Another most important and differentiate point is the global/environment/community responsibilities as their shared value as mention by Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO, said You dont do these things for recognition, you do these things because they are the right thing to do (Nancy, Marya, Katherine, 2008). Industry Structure As a different industry has different nature of business, competition or level of profitability (productivity and efficiency). So for better understanding in this coffee specialty industry, it could use a framework of Michael Porter, which influenced by the five forces (Michael, 1979). First, the industry competitors or rivalry among existing firms in the current situation is very high. There are a lot of coffee specially brands and stores offers in the market including independent, local or small-chain coffee house. They are also choose the variety of competition including lower pricing, products differentiate improvement (e.g. taste, technique or quality of services Caribou coffee) (Nancy et al., 2008), innovative channel or new distribution (e.g. through fast-food chain McDonalds, Dunkin Donut, digital media, social network Facebook). There are many factors that influenced the rivalry intensity of the industries such as increasing the numbers of specialty coffee stores, declined of market growth so the firms have to fight for market share or expand the market (Starbucks is also faced this factors) with the same demand or fewer buyer and crowding with new entrances (Pascal, 2009). Next, Threat of Substitutes; the substitute of the products from other industry that can cause by the economic situation or even some new concern issue, for example, health concern (Starbucks, 2009). In economic recession period, the spending and value of customers might be an important concern and with more alternatives they may choose to consume instant coffee at home instead of costly premium-quality coffee from the stores. Also with healthy concern, customer might switch to drink healthier beverage juice, milk or less/no caffeine drink such as tea, herbal tea. Third force, Bargaining power of buyer (Buyer power), in this specialty coffee industry customers are powerful because there a lot of alternative choice of stores or others type of beverages to choose with limited scope of market, as not everyone like to drink coffee. It is easy for customer to change from one product to another without difficulty so its also low switching cost; one may pass by McCafe nearby their working place and get a coffee with meal instead of walk a long way to Starbucks. Another is Bargaining power of supplier (Supplier power), that most of industry needs raw material, component, others supplies. In this case the most significant supplier for specialty coffeehouse is Coffee bean that is the main cost of the productions following by milk (Starbucks, 2009). And the premium or high-quality coffee bean usually from the specific places or proper agriculture areas so supplier power plays important role and has power in this industry so the one who understand and take these into account also can gain the advantage from the others competitor like Starbucks currently does. At last, new entrance (Barriers to entry) is the barrier or threat to enter to this specialty coffee market. When there are opportunities or increasing in the profit of an industry, we can expect to have new comer to take or those benefit. With the not too (quite low compare to some advance technical expert required industry) expensive start-up cost, it can be seen that this specialty coffee industry is easy to entry or low barrier to entry so for the ones existing in this industry have to concern and find a proper strategy to gain the advantage or create barrier for the new comer. Starbucks Situations and SWOT Analysis From the specialty coffee industry, it can be seen that this industry has high competition with low barrier for new entrants and customer switching cost to others brand or substitute product is low. So during the previous year Starbucks faced the struggling situation to growth that will explain in the following paragraph. From the study from Pascal (2009) found that the situation in which Starbucks revenue was rose slowly in 2008 and net profit fell significantly. The growth rate began to be negative the first time in 2008 since 1997. One of the reasons may come from the economy recession that reduced customer spending but in the same period some company such as McDonalds sale increased which can be assumed that customer finding for most value for the spending from the less income. Secondly, Starbuck strategy of fast store expanding especially in U.S. markets that almost every a corner in the big city had Starbuck store has to find more customer to keep up with new opened store. So in 2008 and Jan 2009, Starbuck had closed around 800 stores in U.S. and 100 stores internationally. Third, another reason was from increased rival in coffee-house business and new competitor from fast food chain restaurant; McDonald and Dunkins Donuts that have large number of stores and existing customers provided with var ieties value or economy meals and beverages. Even Starbucks tried to provide hot breakfast but finally had to stop by the customers complaint of smell detraction from coffee house environment. According to those situations, it could be use SWOT analysis to study the detail of Starbucks situation, challenges and opportunity to overcome those situations. At first, the Strengths, it can be seen that Starbucks has a strong brand name and good brand reputation (Nancy et al., 2008), Strong visionary leadership of currently CEO, Mr. Howard Schultz with experienced management team (Starbucks, 2009), Expertise and know-how in coffee house business, Well-training systems and engagement from partners (employees) and large number of distribution stores. Especially they have their own exclusive sources of coffee beans with experienced and expert team to prove the quality of materials in conjunction with researchers to improve the quality of coffee bean. In addition Starbucks has strong financial situation as can be seen from the cash flow and the increasing of dividend which will be paid in August this year (2010) (The New York Times, 2010). Secondly, the Weaknesses, Starbucks branded itself as a premium coffee for premium customers, trendy, young and teenage that limits the scope of the markets or loses the new potential customers (Wikinvest, 2010). Because of Starbucks has experienced management and has long term relation with the company, the loss of high level management can affect the current operation and strategy plan (Starbucks, 2009). Another point is that Starbucks is a fast-growing and successful company in the past decade so this make Starbucks complacent (Howard, 2009) making the company not creating new innovations in coffee business. Next weak point is that currently, there are higher turnover rate of partners (employees) that some caused by company restructuring and others by the heavier load in the stores, less connection or relation between managements and partners also causing by the fast expansion and the large number of partners (Nancy et al., 2008). Additional, Starbucks has high cost of productions especially for the coffee bean that normally 15% higher than the market price (Nancy et al., 2008) to maintain the business strategy which aim to improve quality of farmers or workers life- fair wages and research and development for the best quality of coffee beans. Furthermore, there is not too nimble to make decision and execution together with struggling in the business strategy so there are lacks of new distribution channels, partners and networks. Third, Opportunities: There is the growth trend of specialty coffee as the demand of more people drinking coffee and the trend of flavor to have a coffee at coffee house (Vending market watch, 2008). There are International market gap that still available to fulfill the demand of coffee drinking, especially in the emerging country like Russia, India and China (The Seattle Time, 2010). Another good sign is that the economic recession seems to be at the lowest point and starting to recovered (Jeremy, 2010). And with the new technology arrival, Starbucks can improve IT system from back-end processes that can provide faster and prà ©cising information helping management to react or make immediate decision to the market situations and competitors including using IT to improve the supply chain management, factory/warehouse automation or even the operation processes at the stores to improvement customer ordering process such as billing and information gathering to expand customers network and distribute information through digital media and social network like Facebook or iPhone Apple online store (Starbucks, 2009). Additional condition of the global warming and climate change situation has bring the social concern and that can make more reputations to the Starbucks as the leader in environment friendly which is one of their mission and business strategy. Forth, Threats: The economic crisis and recession change the way of consuming and spending of customers (Pascal, 2009) and also high rivalry in the coffee house industries in which the competitors can provide similar products and services with difference values and strategies like fast-food chain restaurant such as McDonalds and Dunkin Donut in addition with new entrances which have expertise of coffee brew or experienced barista in the local brand stores. Another threat is the new technology of automatic coffee machine that can provide similar quality or taste with cost competitive and convenience as the coffee house provided. One of the most important threat is the Demographic changes which the reduce of the growth rate in number of young and teenage compare the baby boomer ages that become more and more (Wikinvest, 2010) that are not Starbucks target market and not match with their strategy. The last threat may include the concern of the health of the people to drink coffee that h as caffeine, lots of sugar and fat and this issue can become the significant threat of customers switching to the substitute more healthy products. Core competencies and competitive advantage As the core competencies are the source of competitive advantage and they are lead to the development of products and services (C.K. Garry, 1990). Source: The Core Competence of the Corporation by C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel Starbuckss Core Competencies: From the diagram above, Starbucks uses one of its competency (e.g. expert and passionate to find the finest source of raw material) to build their core product (Coffee bean) that did not sale directly to the customers but they use it to create a large numbers of end products. It can be explored more detail of Starbucks core competencies such as: From Nancy et al. found, it can be seen that, Starbucks develop their own competency on the expertise of coffee bean selection that difficult for the competitor to copied by use their passion to find out the source of great coffee bean also with the mind of differentiate and innovation, they keep researching and developing the process to improve the way of agriculture and transfer the knowledge to the contracted farmers or worker with long-term relationship using the principle of fair wages and improving the quality of their life together with community engagement. Also with the knowledge and research development in roasting technology in their factory make them expertise in coffee bean roasting process as another competency, these make Starbucks own unique premium quality coffee beans as their first core product. From this point, Starbuck distribute this core product to different business to create varies end products; one of the business unit is Global Consumer Product Group (CPG) that responsible for the different products type of packaged coffee. Another business unit, foodservice, will distribute the coffee bean to Starbucks stores to make many type of coffee beverage drink; Cappuccino, Late, etc. (Starbucks, 2009) Additional competency that we can extract from Starbucks is their expertise in management and leadership with ethical to transfer and make all stakeholders shared the same values which include partner (employees), supplier, communities or public and customers. Some of the values are global responsibility, fair trade certified, environment friendly, engagement of partners with customer in personal level and engagement of the firm to communities. From this competency they got Starbucks brand itself as another core products. These core competency can be distribute to different business units and provide others the end products such as Starbucks coffee machine, Souvenir-Mug, Cup, Cap, T-shirt, etc. or even CDs, music and books in the name of Starbucks selections. And it can be seen that these kinds of the products also generate good revenues to the company. Starbucks competitive advantage These can be used Michael Porter Competitive advantage (Michael, 1996) to analyze Starbucks competitive advantage that he categorized into two type; Cost advantage and Differentiation. It can be seen that Starbucks position itself in differential advantage and use it as their business strategy to create competitive advantages. The detail explanation will be shown in following paragraph. Source: Competitive Advantage, Strategic Management from http://www.quickmba.com As diagram above, in order to develop competitive advantage the firm must to have resource and capabilities know to utilize the resource in efficiency way, in this case Starbucks has superior resources than others competitors as mentioned in their core competency, they have strong brand and firm reputation, knowledge or expertise in specialty coffee process and business including royalty and good networking in the value chain suppliers, licensed stores and customers that not easy or very few competitor and gain similar resources. With the capabilities to utilize or bring their products and services to the market faster than competitors, those make them has the distinctive competencies (QuickMBA, n.d.). Compare to a competitor like Caribou Coffee which has fewer resources fewer stores network (less than 5% of Starbucks) (Wikinvest, 2010) and less capabilities (slower expansion stores growth rate) to bring products or innovation to the market. While compared to the potential competitor such as McDonald that has good similar resources, brand reputation in food-services and with more stores networks than Starbucks but there still some resources (know-how of coffee brew and coffee bean) Starbucks has more superior than McDonald. Even McDonald has almost the same capabilities to use those resources but they choose to use cost advantage as their strategy that opposite with Starbucks. Combining with the value that Starbucks created in the value chain system (upstream value created with suppliers, social and downstream to customer) that perceived by the customer has overall more value and differentiate than McDonald. Strategy recommendations Currently, most of Starbucks strategy are tried to create differentiate and tried to use Blue Ocean Strategy with pursuit differentiation and cost advantage (low-cost) in the same time (W. Chan Renee, 2004). So from the SWOT (TOWS) analysis in section 5 above, strategy recommendation might be developed using TOWS Matrix (Heinz, n.d.) as Source: The TOWS Matrix A tool for Situation Analysis, Heinz Weihrich, University of San Francisco First, as the opportunities in the growth of coffee drinking markets, Starbucks could use their strength in Brand reputation to build more brand awareness to new potential customers by using various type of medias include digital media especially in social network that might increase stronger network and royalty, in which Starbucks currently does it (Willis, 2010) but these would cover only the target which customers involving in the social network such as teenage and young adult so they should expand more target market to ones who still use the traditional way of media including TV, Magazines or Sport or communities activities. Also create more social responsibility activities and interaction between customers and the company. Another opportunities is to fulfill in international market that compare to the current ratio of domestic stores in U.S. (11,128) and international stores (5,507) that only a half compare inly in U.S market (Starbucks, 2009). As their strength in knowledge and experience in Specialty Coffee industry, strong management training procedure and financial situation, they should focus more in international expansion, finding local experienced partner that understanding and knowledgeable in customers in that local market. Additional strategy recommended is using Maxi-Mini which utilize strengths to minimize threats is that, as they are strong in Brand, knowledge to find the own sources of coffee bean and strong financial position by using cost advantage strategy in this economic recession, Starbucks may create additional second brand which they are started to have another brand named Seattles Best Coffee (Starbucks, 2010) distribute to different channel such their new fast food chain partner, Burger King, to compete and try to get additional market share in this sectors also create a barrier for the new local coffee brew to entrance to this industry too. And as their strength in quality coffee bean, Starbucks may create more varieties products to serves new target market to minimize the change of demographic situation that more senior citizen or baby boomer ages that have different value and life style these products may include premium quality coffee bean packages and Starbucks automatic brew coffee machine which they can make their own high quality at home and new distribution channel (not only sell in Starbucks stores) such as discount stores to supply instant soluble coffee and packaged coffees bean, even Starbucks already had this kind of products such as VIA, TAZO (Starbuck, 2010) but in the target market and focus still so strong to aim at this population changed as were not easily see those products in currently situation. One more strategies to minimize the weakness by take advantage of the opportunities that are: first, even Starbucks has faced the drop in revenue growth during economic recession but there are opportunities for them to improve their business to be more productivity using new opportunities in new IT system technology that can help them to improve customer satisfaction in the process of the stores, ordering, billing and customer feedback also provide fast and precise information for manager to make decision such as additional partners (employees) in peak period or in crowded stores by those technology include semi-automatic coffee brew machine to reduce overload task of employee that can improve partners satisfaction and reduce turnover rate. Also free WIFI-internet available (Rick, 2010) for customer while waiting and crate new attraction for customers to spend frequently time at Starbucks. Another strategy recommends minimizing weakness and avoiding threat, which Starbucks has experienced and good management team as their strength also its the weakness of them if they are lost good management team, so to minimize this effect of management turnover, they have to make sure that they have prepared successors or executive trainees to be ready to take in charge. To minimize partners (employees) turn over caused by over loaded task at store, they have to improve employees satisfaction, proper workload, improved skilled by provide well-training course, valued creation and attractive benefits. In the same time, avoiding some threats such as customers health concerned by provide more choice in healthy options like Low-sugar, Sugar-free, low-fat, decaffeinate on beverages and snacks/meals. An another important threat is the changed in demographic of Higher number of seniors and reduced number of teenage or adults that can overcome by prepared additional or wider range of product s and services to match with their life style such as more healthy drinks- fruit juice, high-calcium milk product beverages and warm friendly (not too trendy) classical with senior facilities-easy accessible comfortable chair/table at stores. Potential fallout According to the suggestions and solutions in which some of them are using different business strategy and competitive strategy (Michael P., 1980); Differentiate and Cost advantage, in the same time and same industry may create conflict each other or create others issue (Constantinosc Daniel, 2010) or even bring the company to get stuck in the middle (Michael P., 1996) so Starbucks has to concern some of this consequence that could go wrong and make problems in the future such as: As the recommended strategy they might have more distribution channels (Stores, discount/convenience store, second brand Seattles best and fast-food chain restaurants), variety of products (In-store, Ready-to-Drink, Soluble, packaged bean and meals) and different type of international expansion (Starbucks own stores, Licensing and franchising). One issue that may occur is the Channel conflict which cause by the new way of provided products and services or over productions or product substitutions such as less consume at store increasing soluble and packaged coffee bean make at home might that may drop the demand of in the store and rising the coffee sale in discount store that harm some of channels. Increasing sale through fast-food chain restaurant such as Burger King and Subway (Carol, 2010) but reduce revenue from the Starbuckss own stores or even decreasing the partner (licensed/Franchise) relationship. More than that the recommendation strategy to make new innovation, differentiation by create more Social/global responsibility, research and development, suppliers and partner satisfaction and used of new technology as customer satisfaction are more costly to the production and with the concern of cost advantage for simultaneous use of differentiation and low cost (W.Chan Renee, 2004) to create more value to customer, efficiency and stretch all the resources are important and some of them may lose from this process that may damage brand reputation or even lost the value or culture of the company (Constantinos Daniel, 2010). At last, as the current situation in August, 2010 of Starbucks leading by Mr. Howard Schultz, it seems that Starbucks has got back into the track which has the positive growth in both sales and profits (The New York Times, 2010) and will have new innovation products and services launched in sooner days.