It All Began With Radio

Broadcasting was originally developed as a means for companies to sell radios. But once commercial entities realized that many households were listening to their radios a significant amount of time every day, they started to explore this medium as a way to get their message across to the masses. If one has to choose a single event that began the era of radio broadcasting, it would probably be the radio program broadcast by station WEAF in New York City on August 28, 1922 This was a ten-minute advertisement for suburban apartment housing. By Christmas of that year, several major New York department stores joined the fray and were running advertisements for their stores.

By the late 20’s radio advertising had advanced in a dramatic way. It was now dominated by advertising agencies who took control of the schedules by buying the available air time and selling it to their customers. They also handled the creative aspects of the commercials and programs and in fact even created entire series that were designed to sell one product or another. These efforts paved the way for the genesis of television advertising that would begin in a few more decades.

The Era of the Single Sponsor

Full time telecasting didn’t really take hold until 1948 as it took that long for the United States to recover from the Depression and World War II. At that time, the number of television sets reached the critical mass necessary to be considered a medium that could reach the masses. As television was a totally new phenomenon – i.e. offering both sound and moving pictures, the advertising industry moved into this arena cautiously as they were not sure what methods would work best to promote their clients products on television. In other words, should it still be treated as radio advertising but with pictures thrown in or would an entirely new approach need to be taken to reach the television audiences in a meaningful and effective manner?

After study and many surveys, the advertising agencies determined that the most effective way to reach consumers with a strong message would be by creating shows that featured a single product or a line of products from a single company. From this concept arose the typical television shows of the 1950’s including such titles as Kraft Television Theater, Colgate Comedy Hour, and Coke Time. As with radio, these television programs were produced by advertising agencies for their clients rather than the studios as is common practice currently.

This practice worked really well for the clients for a while. But as the television gained more popularity and there were more people watching it, the television networks were raising the costs of doing business (i.e. more eyeballs = more total dollars spent to reach them all) and this upward pressure on the cost of delivering a production over the television (plus the ever increasing costs of creating new content) forced a massive change in the relationship of all …

Accounting is usually seen as having two distinct strands, Management and Financial accounting. Management accounting, which seeks to meet the needs of managers and Financial accounting, which seeks to meet the accounting needs of all of the other users. The differences between the two types of accounting reflect the different user groups that they address. Briefly, the major differences are as follows:

• Nature of the reports produced. Financial accounting reports tend to be general purpose. That is, they contain financial information that will be useful for a broad range of users and decisions rather than being specifically designed for the needs of a particular group or set of decisions. Management accounting reports, on the other hand, are often for a specific purpose. They are designed either with a particular decision in mind or for a particular manager.
• Level of detail. Financial reports provide users with a broad overview of the performance and position of the business for a period. As a result, information is aggregated and detail is often lost. Management accounting reports, however, often provide managers with considerable detail to help them with a particular operational decision.
• Regulations. Financial reports, for many businesses, are subject to accounting regulations that try to ensure they are produced with standard content and in a standard format. Law and accounting rule setters impose these regulations. Since management accounting reports are for internal use only, there are no regulations from external sources concerning the form and content of the reports. They can be designed to meet the needs of particular managers.
• Reporting interval. For most businesses, financial accounting reports are produced on an annual basis, though many large businesses produce half-yearly reports and a few produce quarterly ones. Management accounting reports may be produced as frequently as required by managers. In many businesses, managers are provided with certain reports on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis, which allows them to check progress frequently. In addition, special-purpose reports will be prepared when required (for example, to evaluate a proposal to purchase a piece of machinery).
• Time horizon. Financial reports reflect the performance and position of the business for the past period. In essence, they are backward looking. Management accounting reports, on the other hand, often provide information concerning future performance as well as past performance. It is an oversimplification, however, to suggest that financial accounting reports never incorporate expectations concerning the future. Occasionally, businesses will release projected information to other users in an attempt to raise capital or to fight off unwanted takeover bids.
• Range and quality of information. Financial accounting reports concentrate on information that can be quantified in monetary terms. Management accounting also produces such reports, but is also more likely to produce reports that contain information of a non-financial nature such as measures of physical quantities of inventories (stocks) and output. Financial accounting places greater emphasis on the use of objective, verifiable evidence when preparing reports. Management accounting reports may use information that is less objective and verifiable, but they provide

As much as economists try to avoid this situation, it seems that the economic downfall of a country or domain affects the surrounding nations and market fields, as well. Initially, it was believed that a separation of each economic field would prevent financial recessions from happening as the crisis within one domain would not affect the rest of the domains. In 2008, however, a series of events came to shatter this belief down by proving that a disease in the bank industry can weak all the other industrial branches.

The instability of the two largest currencies in the world, the dollar and the euro, has had powerful effects over the other nations that used to make business with companies in the West. Everyone expected the Japan and Chinese companies to gain popularity during the years of the economic recession and the Asian continent to become one of the main players on the market. However, it appears that American companies were their main buyers; Thus, the low buying power of the American customers has produced significant losses in the income of the Asian companies.

Europe, as we very well know it, is affected by the downfall registered in the stock market as most of the countries import oil. Currencies in Europe are connected to the Federal currency as the price of the oil is given by the US dollar. If the value of the American currency lowers, the price of gas increases and thus, the entire Europe will be affected by these growing rates. As a consequence, the increased price of the gas will determine a growth in the costs of numerous other products that are transported and delivered in stores with the help of trucks, cars and other means of transportation.

Third world countries have always had financial and economic problems and their issues seem to aggravate in the years to come. Since many of the local or multinational countries have been forced to close some of their headquarters, the rate of unemployment in third world country has gone sky-high. Consequently, many more protests are expected to take place in the following five years all over the world, especially in these underdeveloped countries.

People have the power it takes to overcome this difficult period; All they have to do is to reduce the amount of unnecessary expenditures and become aware consumers of products. Adopting an optimistic attitude will turn out to be very helpful as we can use the current economic downfall to invest in tangible products, such as, gold coins that will later on, improve our income. …

Introduction

Before we can say what business process modeling is we need to know what a Business Process is! This may seem like striking the obvious, this is one of the most widely misused and misunderstood terms in business and in business modeling! Analysts and managers alike often use the term when what they are really talking about is a Business Function or a Business Procedure. No wonder there is confusion !!

Definitions

Business Function: " A coherent, discrete activity that a business must perform in order to meet its business objectives and continue in existence."

Business Process: "Describes the order in which Business Functions need to be carried out in order to achieve a specified objective."

So, in short, Functions describe what a business needs to do in order to continue in existence and Processes describe the order in which this needs to be done.

From this we can also see that it is not possible to do effective Business Modeling before we have modeled the Functions !!

The Building Blocks of a Process

The essential elements are:

• Objective
• Trigger
• Functions
• Precedence
• Outcome

Objective:

Every Business Process must have a clearly defined objective that answers the question "what is this process mean to achieve?". If the business does not have a clearly defined (written) view of what is meant to achieve then there is very little chance of it achieving it.

It will not be possible to work out what functions need to be carried out and in what order in order to arrive at the preferred Outcome.

In fact, without having defined objective, the business might not be able to define what the preferred exit actually is. This statement may seem simplistic but it is the primary reason why so many Business Processes are inefficient or fail altogether.

Triggers:

These are events that occur because require the business to respond in some way – they "trigger" a response in the business. Every Process must begin with at least one Trigger.

Outcomes:

Other events occur as the result of activities carried out by the business itself and these are called "Outcomes". In every Process the business gets from the Trigger to the Outcome by carrying out Functions in the correct sequence.

Precedence:

Precedence is not, as many analysts mistakenly believe, a definition of how the steps within a process are triggered. A more effective definition is to say that it is a very specific way of clearing what functions must have been completed before others can begin.

The succeeding functions can then begin at any time convenient to the business, in accordance with existing business rules. This definition is especially useful as it makes the business ask the question, "before we begin step X what other steps must have been completed?"

More on Outcomes

There are two types of output that can occur in a Business Process: Preferred and Non-preferred.

A Preferred Outcome is the result that the business would like to achieve as the result of successfully carrying …