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Posts Tagged ‘Process’

Two upgrade approaches are acquirable for upgrading from Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 which are (i) In-place upgrade and (ii) Database attach upgrade. In-place upgrade lets you move all the Microsoft SharePoint sites on the same hardware but the database approach lets you move your content to a new farm or a desperate hardware. In addition, you might reduce downtime by merging up the In-place and database-attach upgrade.

In place upgrade enables you to install SharePoint Server 2010 on the same hardware, preserves your farm settings and makes customizations acquirable after the upgrade. During the In-place upgrade, websites are acquirable after the upgrade process whereas, in database attach upgrade, you will be granted to upgrade content on a separate farm but you will not be healthy to upgrade any of the farm settings. You might upgrade multiple databases at the same time or upgrade them in any order that you want. This approach lets you combine several farms into a single farm. The database-attach approach is beneficial if you want to change your hardware or need to reconfigure your existing server farm topology during the upgrade process. With this approach, you detach the databases in your old farm and while you attach them to a new farm, the upgrade process runs and upgrades the entire database. This process is performed manually in a separate environment.

Plan your Upgrade Process

·         In-place upgrade

The in-place upgrade is performed on the same hardware as your previous version installation. With this upgrade approach, you will be healthy to upgrade the complete installation in the following order.

·         Run the Setup

As soon as the in-place upgrade process begins, the server administrator carries out the pre-upgrade checks, runs Setup for SharePoint Server 2010 on the server which runs the SharePoint Central Administration Website. As, the previous version has already been installed, the system selects the in-place upgrade automatically. After running the Setup on the server which hosts the Central Administration Web Site, the Server administrator can run the Setup on the Web servers and application servers in the farm.

·         Run the SharePoint Configuration Wizard

SharePoint Configuration wizard is run on the server that hosts the Central Administration website. This upgrade approach grants the server, configuration database, services and the content databases to be upgraded sequentially. As soon as the configuration wizard finishes, the Central Administration Website opens. For the upgrade process to run for apiece site collection, it is allocated a particular timer job which is scheduled. Each site collection is upgraded with the upgrade process timer job and upgrades all the sites until the upgrade process completes.

·         Run the Configuration Wizard on all the Server farms

Server administrator ensures and runs the configuration wizard on all the servers in the farm and confirms whether the upgrade has been performed successfully. Respective site owner or administrator can preview sites in the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 look in case of Visual Upgrade, or when the site owner is ready, he/she can finish the change to the SharePoint Server 2010 look.

Database attach Upgrade

You can move to a new farm or hardware with database attach approach. You will detach all content databases from a current farm and attach them to a new server farm installation. While attaching the databases to a new farm, your upgrade process runs to upgrade the data in-place.

·         Set Up and Configure a new Server Farm

With database attach upgrade, the server administrator sets up and makes up a new SharePoint Server 2010 farm and transfers all customizations to the new farm. The new environment is also tested by the server administrator. With this approach, you will be upgrading the content of your environment but not the configuration settings.

·         Detach the old content databases from the old farm and attach them to the new farm

Server administrator can detach the content databases from the old Office SharePoint Server 2007 farm and turns all the services and components on apiece server personal in the farm. The old farm is prefabricated offline by changing the load balancer or IIS Web applications to refrain service requests. Content databases are attached to the new farm and content is upgraded by the server administrator. Once the server administrator authenticates the completion of upgrade, then he/she resumes by configuring the new farm to begin serving the request to the new URL.

Hybrid Approach 1 for Read-only Databases

You can wage a read only access for the data to the users while you are attempting the upgrade process. Actually, the content databases in the original farm are set to read-only mode. Replicas of databases are also upgraded on the new farm.

·         Configure a new SharePoint Server 2010 farm

Server administrator sets up your new SharePoint Server 2010 farm and transfers all customizations to the new farm while testing the environment.

·         Change the content database to Read only

After changing the content databases to read-only, the administrator makes use of SQL Server to back up the content databases residing on the Office SharePoint Server 2007 farm and restore them to the new farm.

·         Attach new content databases to the new farm

New duplicates of content databases are attached and the upgrade process is executed by the server administrators which simultaneously upgrades the content. Once the upgrade process is complete, it is verified by the server administrators. New farm is configured by the server administrator so that it would begin serving the requests at the new URL. The original farm is also taken offline.

Hybrid approach 2 for detach databases

Speed up your upgrade process by detaching and attaching databases to upgrade several databases at once with Hybrid approach 2. Although, it is an in place upgrade as you are upgrading the original farm but you can also use the other farm to carry out the upgrade and then attach the upgraded databases to the original farm. The original farm will not be healthy to serve requests during upgrade.

·         Take the original farm offline

During the in-place upgrade with detached databases, the server administrator will take the original farm offline to stop service requests.

·         Detach content database and run an in-place upgrade on the original farm

Server administrator will detach the content databases from the original farm and runs an in-place upgrade on the original farm servers, services and configuration database. After, this process, the content databases are attached to the original farm and the content is upgraded.

·         Using a temporary small farm to run the upgrade

If you are using a small and different temporary farm for carrying out the upgrade process then you need to attach the upgraded databases to the original farm.

During an in-place upgrade with detached databases, the server administrator sets up a temporary and small farm which is currently running the new version. He/she takes the original farm offline and detaches the content database from the original farm. Once these are done, an in-place upgrade is run-on the original farm in order to upgrade the server, services along with configuration database. Afterwards, content databases are attached to the temporary farm and a parallel upgrade is performed. Content databases are reattached to the original farm and upgrade is confirmed by the administrator. The server administrator previews the sites in the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 look, if Visual upgrade is used and completes the change to the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 look.

Summary:

Carrying out your upgrade with in place or database attach approach can be both beneficial but all depending upon your business requirements. In-place approach can be beneficial as it preserves all your farm settings with the SharePoint Server 2010 installation. You don’t have to configure the farm settings manually. Your content databases will be upgraded sequentially. With database attach approach; you need to set up a new environment to host your SharePoint 2010 Server. Once your new setup is up and running, the old environment will be prefabricated offline and all content databases will be moved to newer locations and upgraded at the same time. With database attach upgrade approach; you will be successful in minimizing the down time as you will be upgrading several databases at once. Hybrid approaches including in-place upgrade with detached databases or database attach upgrade with read only databases help in decreasing the downtime of your environment and the end users will not experience prolonged time of interruption of services.

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The Process Structure is the first part of the Technology Rollout System. It provides the “bird’s eye view” of the relationship and communication flow from beginning (customer) to the end (local field technicians). It also:

Defines the facilitation of the management of multi-site nationwide and international projects
Determines interaction between customer and technology rollout company as well as between technology rollout company and field resources
Is used to punt the technology rollout company for delivering the concurred to process structure for apiece site and to maintain consistency and calibre in execution  

Not All Process Structures are Created Equal!
To fully comprehend how the Process Structure works, you must know what the various options are. Our White Paper explains the primary structures used for nationwide & international, multi-site technology rollouts. These include the:

Centralized Single-Tier
The customer uses a technology rollout company that directly manages field technicians through a direct partnership.
Centralized Multi-Tier
The customer uses a technology rollout company that hires subcontractors in a tiered hierarchy to manage field technicians.
Rent-a-Tech
The customer or technology rollout company uses a Rent-a-Tech company in a shared management effort of field technicians.
Internal Employee
The customer or technology rollout company uses internal employees for project management and field technicians. In Internal Employee Process Structures, additional external local field technicians are likely to be required due to the number of sites and costs associated with employing adequate internal field technicians to handle nationwide or global rollouts.
Additional Structures: Hybrid
A number of variations of the four basic structures might exist as a hybrid structure. They will have associated advantages and disadvantages on an individual structure basis.

Evaluating the Process Structure
It’s important to look at the key differences between these Process Structures and the Rollout Category of the project you are deploying. How important is communication speed and accuracy? What about defined areas or responsibility or project tracking capabilities? What is the impact if a site does not deliver as expected? How do you mitigate your risk? In order to truly comprehend what you want, you have to know what you need and communicate it in a defined process structure for your rollout at any time.

White Papers
Concert Technologies’ white paper series, A Guide to Selecting the Right Technology Rollout Company for Your Project, will help you evaluate all of the parts of the Technology Rollout System of methodologies in order to get the most efficient nationwide, multi-site rollout services policy. Download your complimentary duplicates today

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The steps of marketing process are described as below.

Understanding the market place and customer needs, wants, and demands:Understanding customers needs, wants, and demand is the most basic tusk of marketing. Business spends million of dollars to comprehend what customers want. To develop this step marketing specialists have established the techniques of marketing research. Business obtains market information and customer data to well furnish this tusk.

Concepts:

Needs: Human needs are says of felt deprivation. It includes the basic physical needs for food, clothing, warmth, and safety;social needs for belonging, love and affection; and individual needs for knowledge etc.

Wants: When human needs are shaped by the culture then they are called wants. For instance, Americans need food but want hem burger, French fries and soft drink.

Demands: When wants are backed by the buying power then become demands.

Market Offerings: It is the combination of products, services, information, and experiences offered to the market.

Marketing Myopia: When the marketers make mistakes of giving attention to a specific product, rather the benefits and experiences produced.

Customers Value: Values are the benefits that customers get using the products. Actually, values answer the question “why do customers purchase the product?”

Designing a customer driven marketing strategy:

After understanding marketplace and customer’s needs, wants, and demands marketers go for formulating marketing strategy. It involves the overall marketing management, designing a value proposition, selecting the customers to serve etc.

Concepts:

Market Segmentation: Dividing the customers into segments or parts.

Target Market: Selecting one or more customers segments to serve.

Value Proposition: Set of values or benefits that a company promises to deliver to its customers.

Marketing Management: The art and science of choosing target market and building profitable relationships with them.

Production Concepts: This concept holds that customers favor the products which are highly acquirable and inexpensive to the customers.

Product Concepts: Holds that customers favor products that offer most quality, performance, and innovative features. This concept faces the threat of marketing myopia.

Selling Concepts: The companies follow the selling concept believe that customers will not purchase enough of its product unless large-scale selling and promotional efforts.

Marketing Concepts: Marketing concept holds that achieving organizational goals depends on knowing the needs and wants of target market and delivering the desired satisfactions better than competitors do. Instead of product centered “make and sell” philosophy marketing concept focuses on sense and response philosophy.

Societal Marketing Concepts: This concept focuses on both consumers’ short run wants and customers’ long run well fare. This concept holds that marketing strategy should deliver value to customers in a way that maintains and improves both the customers and the society’s well being.

Preparing an integrated marketing plan and programs:

In this step marketers make the overall plan and program to implement the marketing strategy. Marketing programs build strong customers relationships by transferring the marketing strategy into action. It includes the company’s marketing mix and the set of marketing tools used to implement the marketing strategy. Marketers maintain different level of relationships with different customers.

Building customer relationships:

This is the fourth step of marketing process, and most important. Business tries to maintain good customer relationships in order to obtain the customer’s life time value and make the customers’ profitable.

Concepts:

Customer Relationship Management(CRM): The overall process of building and maintaining profitable customer relationship by delivering better customer value and satisfaction.

Customer Lifetime Value: The value of the entire stream of buys that a customer would make over a lifetime of patronage.

Customer’s Perceived Value: The benefits that a customer perceives in a product comparing the cost of obtaining the product.

Customer Satisfaction: The differences between the customer’s expectation and the actual benefits perceived by the customers using the product.

Capturing value from customers:

In the fifth step of marketing process business capture the value from the customers in return in the form of current and future sales, market share, and profit. By providing better value to the customers and maintaining strong customers relationships business try to satisfy the customers and increase the number of satisfied, delight and loyal customers, and capture their life time values. Business wants to retain its profitable customers and sometime do de marketing to refrain less profitable customers.

Customer Equity: The total combined customers’ lifetime values of all of the company’s customers.

Share of customer: The portion of the customers purchasing that a company gets in its product quality.

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Quilting has changed over the years, thanks mostly to the development of various quilting gadgets. Rotary cutters simplified artifact slicing and make it more accurate than scissors. In addition to assist and accuracy, the rotary cutter eliminated the blisters scissors can create on the thumb and finger! Something so easy has proven to be a revolutionary quilting gadget.

Speaking of revolutionary, today’s quilting has really benefited from computers. Computerized sewing machines are a huge change for today’s quilter. The ¼ inch presser foot and a travel foot have become standard quilting gadgets on many sewing machines.

Once upon a time, organisation quilting as reserved for use at an industrial level. While it’s a much larger “quilting gadget,” home quilting machines are another useful and attainable tool for quilters.

The World wide web might be the biggest quilting gadget. Today, quilters have a world of threads, fabrics and other supplies at their fingertips. The World wide web also is a great search tool, great at helping professionals and hobbyists find one-of-a-kind and helpful quilting gadgets.

Quilters can also find a wide array of free quilting patterns online. The World wide web offers quilters the chance to perform a general search for quilt patterns or search for a specific pattern.

The World wide web is also helpful because it affords quilters the opportunity to join quilting forums, subscribe to quilting newsletters, and to learn from frequently asked question pages. Quilters might use the World wide web to join online chats with other quilters. Quilters might utilize other websites, like YouTube, to view instructional videos about quilting and special problems quilters might encounter.

The World wide web is also a great place to shop for fabrics. Many quilters do not live near traditional brick and mortar artifact shops and some larger retail chains are discontinuing their artifact departments. The World wide web fills that gap for quilters.

Fabric has come a long way over the years, too. With improvements in artifact manufacturing, today’s cloth could conceivably last hundreds of years. Fabric manufacturers, in addition to giving quilters superior quality, are also delivering more variety. Available styles and colors have diversified. If you like Asian artifact and your local shop doesn’t carry any, look online for sources. You will see how different, yet how similar, fabrics from another culture are to your own.

The World wide web is a useful quilting gadget for quilters who want to sell their works. Many quilters sell their quilts or quilting services online through World wide web auctions such as eBay or through their own websites and advertising on other quilting websites.

With your favorite quilting gadgets, artifact and a design in mind, you are ready to start your quilting project. But, if you want to truly customize your design, there are several quilting gadgets that will help. Custom cut acrylic templates can help cut even the most challenging patches. Fabric pencils and colored chalks wage quilters the supplies needed to temporarily mark fabrics.

The eventual quilting gadget is personal software that helps you custom design your own quilt and quilt blocks. A tiny personal literacy is all that’s required. Such software will let you take a traditional quilt pattern that is pre-loaded into the program, and modify lines to create your very own creation.

Each quilter has his or her own favorite quilting gadget. Maybe your favorite is a light weight quilt frame, your old rotary cutter, or something as easy and standard as a seam ripper. No matter what your choice, there’s no denying that the world is full of useful and inexpensive quilting gadgets that make quilting more enjoyable.

Introduction

The strategic management process is a series of six steps designed to help organizations adapt their decisions based on the organization’s goals and its environments.  The key points one should know about strategic management are included in this overview.  Also included, are some of the several important factors to think about that could either enhance or inhibit the overall effectiveness of this process. There is a description of the steps and the significant affects on the organization if properly followed. 

The Idea in a Nutshell

Strategic management is focused on the long-term performance of an organization.  This process is a strategy managers use to ensure the decisions they are making line up with the goals that have been set for the entity.  In business there is always going to be a target to be reached and the first step of the strategic management process is to refer that mission.  After identifying the goals of the company an external analysis and internal analysis need be conducted in order to distinguish the company’s standing.  The fourth step is to formulate strategies to propel the enterprise in the intended direction and then management would implement the strategies developed. The final task is to evaluate the results reached by conducting this process because it’s vital to know how effective the chosen strategies were on the organizations performance.  If any adjustments would be needed then that could be determined after a thorough evaluation.

The Top Ten Things You Need to Know About the Strategic Management Process

There are apparent benefits of following the strategic management process which include the enhancement of long-run performance of an organization.  It serves as a means to adapt the operations of an entity to the changes in the market and the economy.  Integrating the separate functional segments of a business is more easily reached when strategy is implemented.

Like most models this six-step process is designed for more stable environments, so it doesn’t wage for major unexpected events therefore, the effectiveness of this as a forecasting device might be more ambiguous for organizations in highly dynamic markets. This is one of many approaches that can be used and might not be successful for all enterprises.

The need for this process to be carried out will not end. Even if implementing strategies developed grants management to reach their target outcomes, the context in which the company operates is constantly evolving and there will inevitably be a need to alter strategies, alter programs, or other restructuring.

A mission identifies the reasons for the company to operate, so it reflects to the employees and customers the company’s image. This is the first thing that needs to be done because you have to know where you want to go in order to get there. Some of the main things a mission statement needs to address are the key market in which it is doing business in, what it will be contributing to the market, and what sets it apart from its competitors.

The second and third steps of the strategic management process are external and internal analysis. These two steps combined make up what is known as SWOT analysis, which identifies the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the organization. This is important information to have when formulating the strategies for the entity.

Managing by objectives can be very useful for strategy making, considering the strategy is for long-term success.   Management by objectives is a way for managers and non-managerial employees to concur on the objectives of the organization and this leads to a superior understanding of what the organization is trying to accomplish. Setting concurred upon objectives to be reached can wage an avenue to have the mission be performed more accurately by employees and managers alike.

Implementation is the expression of the strategy through the organization’s activities and it involves making environmental factors a priority to the organization’s structure. Implantation is carried out through policies being made, technologies being adapted to match competitors, changing the incentive structure of the company, budgets, or many other things, but it involves changing things from how they are to how they need to be.

There are many different types of organizational strategies that are all based on the goals to be achieved.  Some are targeted to expand the company or increases the stability of its operations others are focused on combining operations or offsetting the weaknesses of the organization. The main thing about strategic management is how well it advances over its current competitors or potential competitors.

Evaluating the strategic management process is necessary to determine whether the changes prefabricated were effective enough in terms of the mission, it helps to see where you are. Evaluations need to be performed continuously to keep up with the changes in the environments and usually they are done quarterly or yearly. Managers might have to change things to make progress toward their goals or their findings might reveal that they have developed an effective strategy and their only concern would be to maintain the execution of it.

It’s a drawback to the process that the business setting is constantly changing and adjustments always have to be made. Depending on the dynamics of the surroundings one change can lead to a change in the entire strategy.

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My Take

I think that it is relevant for companies to develop strategies with regards to their environments, strengths, threats, and other factors because of the way things change so rapidly.  This process affects each member of an organization and in turn is affected by each member of the organization. It all boils down to implementation of the strategy because no matter how wonderful the plans for change might be, without proper execution there would be no valid indication of how well it worked.  Managers need to grant for supervision or incentives for employees and hire individuals based on their capacity to achieve organizational goals. Robert Kaplan and David P. Norton asked “Why is there such a continual gap between ambition and performance?” and their answer to that question is “The gap arises, we believe, from a disconnect in most companies between strategy formulation and strategy execution…”

You can draw a map to get you to where you want to go but unless you follow it you won’t get there, but if you do oppose the route you need to take you’ll surely meet your destination.

References

(2002). The strategic management process. Retrieved from http://www.netmba.com/site/about/.

Coulter, Mary, and Stephen P. Robbins. Management. 10th. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson, 2009.

Lagace, Martha.  (2006). The office of strategy management. Retrieved from Harvard Business School Working Knowledge Web site:  http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5269.html.

Contact Information

To contact the author, please email Megan Remy Megan.Remy@selu.edu.

BIOGRAPHY

David C. Wyld (dwyld.kwu@gmail.com) is the Robert Maurin Professor of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. He is a management consultant, researcher/writer, and executive educator. His blog, Wyld About Business, can be viewed at http://wyld-business.blogspot.com/. He also serves as the Director of the Reverse Auction Research Center (http://reverseauctionresearch.blogspot.com/), a hub of research and news in the expanding world of competitive bidding. Dr. Wyld also maintains compilations of his student’s publications regarding management concepts (http://toptenmanagement.blogspot.com/), book reviews (http://wyld-about-books.blogspot.com/) and international foods (http://wyld-about-food.blogspot.com/).   

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