Operational and Organizational Issues Facing Corporate Real Estate Executives and Managers

This article examines three major categories of issues facing corporate real estate executives in the future, as determined by a Delphi process survey conducted by the authors. We present areas of agreement and disagreement among the corporate executives surveyed, and distill the results of the Delphi survey and other major studies on the future of corporate real estate into a research agenda for further inquiry.

Energy Information Systems: From the Basement to the Boardroom

A significant buildings energy reduction opportunity exists in the office sector, given that this market segment typically is an early adopter of new technology. There is a rising trend towards smart and connected offices through the internet of things (IoT) that provides new opportunities for operational efficiency and environmental sustainability practices. Leading commercial real estate companies have begun to shift from individual building automation systems (BAS) to partially integrated and automated systems such as energy information systems (EIS). In both the United States and India, organizations are seeking operational excellence, enhanced tenant relationships, and topline growth. Hence it is imperative to engage the executives with decision-making power, by tapping into their interest in sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and innovation. This expansion of interest can enable data-driven decisions, strong energy investments, and deeper energy benefits, and would drive innovation in this field. However, none of this would be possible without robust, consistent building energy information to provide visibility across all the levels of decision making, i.e. from the basement where the facilities staff take operational action to the boardroom where the executives make investment decisions. Price, security, and ease of use remain barriers to the adoption and pervasive use of promising EIS technologies in commercial office buildings. We believe that these barriers can be addressed through the development of ready, simplified, consistent, commercially available, low-cost EIS-in-a-box packages, that have a pre-defined set of hardware components and software features and functionality that are pertinent to a particular building sector. These simplified, sector-specific EIS packages can help to obviate the need for customization, and enhance ease of use, thereby enabling scale-up, in order to facilitate building energy savings. The EIS-in-a-box are adaptable in both U.S. and Indian office buildings, and potentially beyond these two countries

On Evaluating Commercial Cloud Services: A Systematic Review

Background: Cloud Computing is increasingly booming in industry with many competing providers and services. Accordingly, evaluation of commercial Cloud services is necessary. However, the existing evaluation studies are relatively chaotic. There exists tremendous confusion and gap between practices and theory about Cloud services evaluation. Aim: To facilitate relieving the aforementioned chaos, this work aims to synthesize the existing evaluation implementations to outline the state-of-the-practice and also identify research opportunities in Cloud services evaluation. Method: Based on a conceptual evaluation model comprising six steps, the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method was employed to collect relevant evidence to investigate the Cloud services evaluation step by step. Results: This SLR identified 82 relevant evaluation studies. The overall data collected from these studies essentially represent the current practical landscape of implementing Cloud services evaluation, and in turn can be reused to facilitate future evaluation work. Conclusions: Evaluation of commercial Cloud services has become a world-wide research topic. Some of the findings of this SLR identify several research gaps in the area of Cloud services evaluation (e.g., the Elasticity and Security evaluation of commercial Cloud services could be a long-term challenge), while some other findings suggest the trend of applying commercial Cloud services (e.g., compared with PaaS, IaaS seems more suitable for customers and is particularly important in industry). This SLR study itself also confirms some previous experiences and reveals new Evidence-Based Software Engineering (EBSE) lessons

Women And Men In Rural Microfinance: The Case Of Uganda

Uganda, where 85 % of the population live in rural areas, has experienced a rapid rise of rural and microfinance over the last ten years. There is a pronounced gender awareness in public policities and programs. Best practices have been mastered by institutions in the formal and the NGO sector. In the latter, women dominate as borrowers. Yet, as the vast majority still have no access to deposit and credit services, expansion of outreach remains as the biggest challenge. Rapid expansion of sustainable financial services to women is best achieved in Uganda not through women-only programs, but by a broad range of financial institutions with unbiased services to both women and men, the poor and the near-poor. NGO-supported microfinance institutions (MFIs), through group lending up to a ceiling, have provided start-up finance, particularly for women; but this has added borrower transaction costs and restricted growth. In Centenary Rural Development Bank and some MFIs, voluntary savings and individual lending to enterprising men and women have fostered sustainable farm and nonfarm business growth beyond the poverty line, creating at the same time employment opportunities for the very poor. Under the prevailing conditions of a conducive policy environment, diversified agricultural and microenterprise opportunities, good practices in agriculture and microfinance, and effective agency coordination, the most effective means of donor assistance are equity investments in rural banks to extend their branch network and staff; equity investments in MFIs to transform into regulated deposit-taking institutions; support to banks and MFIs for staff selection and training; the facilitation of linkages between MFIs and banks; and the development of gender-sensitive strategies in different culture areas of Uganda based on the differential analysis of customer information in each institution?s management information system. --

Impact of Electronic Trading Platforms on the Brokered Interdealer Market for Government of Canada Benchmark Bonds

This study examines the impact of increased transparency, brought about by the introduction of three electronic trading systems, on the brokered interdealer market for Government of Canada benchmark securities. Using the CanPX dataset for the 2-, 5-, 10-, and 30-year benchmarks, the paper finds some evidence of decreased bid-ask spreads for the 30-year benchmark in the months following the introduction of the electronic platforms. Bid-ask spreads are not significantly different in the pre- and post-transparency periods for the 2-, 5- or 10-year benchmarks. The price-impact coefficient, calculated using dollar value as a measure of order flow, also decreased in the post-event period for the 30-year benchmark but is not statistically different for any of the other benchmarks. Overall, there is little evidence that liquidity improved or was lowered by the introduction of the electronic systems.Financial markets; Market structure and pricing

Managing at the Speed of Light: Improving Mission-Support Performance

The House and Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittees requested this study to help DOE's three major mission-support organizations improve their operations to better meet the current and future needs of the department. The passage of the Recovery Act only increased the importance of having DOE's mission-support offices working in the most effective, efficient, and timely manner as possible. While following rules and regulations is essential, the foremost task of the mission-support offices is to support the department's mission, i.e., the programs that DOE is implementing, whether in Washington D.C. or in the field. As a result, the Panel offered specific recommendations to strengthen the mission-focus and improve the management of each of the following support functions based on five "management mandates":- Strategic Vision- Leadership- Mission and Customer Service Orientation- Tactical Implementation- Agility/AdaptabilityKey FindingsThe Panel made several recommendations in each of the functional areas examined and some overarching recommendations for the corporate management of the mission-support offices that they believed would result in significant improvements to DOE's mission-support operations. The Panel believed that adopting these recommendations will not only make DOE a better functioning organization, but that most of them are essential if DOE is to put its very large allocation of Recovery Act funding to its intended uses as quickly as possible

Serbia - public sector accounting review : report on the enhancement of public sector financial reporting

The government’s public financial management (PFM) Reform Program 2016-2020 foresees the gradual transition of public sector financial reporting from a cash basis to an accrual basis of accounting and the application of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS). This will significantly improve the quality of financial information and should enable better informed decision-making, more efficient use of public funds and resources and improved fiscal performance. This Report on the Enhancement of Public Sector Financial Reporting is one output of the Serbia Public Sector Accounting Reform Technical Assistance project funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) through the Strengthening Accountability and Fiduciary Environment (SAFE) Trust Fund under the Public Sector Accounting and Reporting Program (PULSAR) which provides support for the development and implementation of public sector accounting standards. This report supports the development of a plan towards that goal by assessing the institutional framework for public sector accounting as well as the gap between Serbian public sector generally accepted accounting principles (PS GAAP) and IPSAS

Design and modeling of a hybrid database schema: transactional and analytical

Os sistemas de bases de dados em contexto organizacional estão segmentados em duas categorias: bases de dados operacionais e bases de dados analíticas. Como consequência da constante evolução tecnológica, vários esforços foram levados a cabo com o objetivo de reavaliar o paradigma atual. Assim, a conceção de bases de dados híbridas capazes de suportar o processamento transacional e analítico é vista como possível e viável. No entanto, é clara a presença de uma lacuna no que diz respeito à existência de abordagens que demonstrem como modelar esquemas conceptuais para este tipo de bases de dados. Neste póster é apresentada uma conceção e modelação de um esquema lógico de uma base de dados híbrida.Database systems in organizational context are segmented in two categories: operational databases and analytical databases. Several efforts have been undertaken to re-evaluate the current paradigm, based on the constant technological evolution. Thus, the design of hybrid databases, capable of supporting transactional and analytical processing is possible and feasible. Even so, it is clear a gap about the existence of approaches regarding the modelling of conceptual schema for this type of databases. In this poster, is presented a logical schema for a hybrid database.(undefined)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio