Supporting Complex Business Decisions with a Fuzzy Mobile Assistant

Researchers have recognized the importance of semantic expressiveness in understanding and solving complex problems and have identified a need to incorporate reasoning about uncertainty into decision tools that assist business managers. This study extends current approaches and develops new tools to allow artificial mobile assistants to manage rule-driven consultations by capturing and recommending problem solutions through natural language interfaces. A prototype assistant is described to support fuzzy knowledge representations and fuzzy rule-based consultations. The prototype’s application is implemented in a Windows 8 mobile device and applied in a case study of business outsourcing decisions

A Fuzzy Linguistic RFM Model Applied to Campaign Management

In the literature there are some proposals for integrated schemes for campaign management based on segmentation from the results of the RFM model. RFM is a technique used to analyze customer behavior by means of three variables: Recency, Frequency and Monetary value. It is s very much in use in the business world due to its simplicity of use, implementation and interpretability of its results. However, RFM applications to campaign management present known limitations like the lack of precision because the scores of these variables are expressed by an ordinal scale. In this paper, we propose to link customer segmentation methods with campaign activities in a more effective way incorporating the 2–tuple model both to the RFM calculation process and to its subsequent exploitation by means of segmentation algorithms, specifically, k-means. This yields a greater interpretability of these results and also allows computing these values without loss of information. Therefore, marketers can effectively develop more effective marketing strategy

Prioritization of the launch of ICT products and services through linguistic multi-criteria decision-making

The market launch of new products and services is a basic pillar for large and medium-sized companies in the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) sector. Choosing the right moment for it is usually a differentiating factor in terms of competition, since it is a source of competitive advantage. There are several mechanisms and strategies to address this problem from the market perspective. However, the criteria of the different actors involved – managers, sales representatives, experts, etc. – coexist in the corporate sphere and they often differ, causing difficulties in priority setting processes in the launch of a product or service. The assessment of the prioritization of these criteria is usually expressed in natural language, thus adding a great deal of uncertainty. Fuzzy linguistic models have proved to be an efficient tool for managing the intrinsic uncertainty of this type of information. This paper presents a linguistic multi-criteria decision-making model, able to reconcile the different requirements and viewpoints existing in the corporate sector when planning the launch of new products and services. The proposed model is based on the fuzzy 2-tuple linguistic model, aimed at managing linguistic data expressing different corporate criteria, without compromising accuracy in the calculation of said data. In order to illustrate this, a practical case study is presented, in which the model is applied for scheduling the launch prioritization of several new products and services by a telecommunications company, within the deadlines set in its strategic planning.The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support received from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) for the Research Projects TIN2016-75850-R, TIN2016-79484-R and TIN2013-40658-P

Rethinking the risk matrix

So far risk has been mostly defined as the expected value of a loss, mathematically PL (being P the probability of an adverse event and L the loss incurred as a consequence of the adverse event). The so called risk matrix follows from such definition. This definition of risk is justified in a long term “managerial” perspective, in which it is conceivable to distribute the effects of an adverse event on a large number of subjects or a large number of recurrences. In other words, this definition is mostly justified on frequentist terms. Moreover, according to this definition, in two extreme situations (high-probability/low-consequence and low-probability/high-consequence), the estimated risk is low. This logic is against the principles of sustainability and continuous improvement, which should impose instead both a continuous search for lower probabilities of adverse events (higher and higher reliability) and a continuous search for lower impact of adverse events (in accordance with the fail-safe principle). In this work a different definition of risk is proposed, which stems from the idea of safeguard: (1Risk)=(1P)(1L). According to this definition, the risk levels can be considered low only when both the probability of the adverse event and the loss are small. Such perspective, in which the calculation of safeguard is privileged to the calculation of risk, would possibly avoid exposing the Society to catastrophic consequences, sometimes due to wrong or oversimplified use of probabilistic models. Therefore, it can be seen as the citizen’s perspective to the definition of risk

The Impacts of Culture on Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions Post-Financial Performance in the Banking Industry using Multi-Group Structural Equation Modeling

This thesis is concerned with the impacts of national culture on the cross-border-mergers and acquisitions performance in the banking industry across Egypt and UK through studying the role of the human side as a mediator variable. The main conceptual framework has been developed based on the GLOBE cultural project. It perceives the national culture as a multi-dimensional construct that interacts between levels. The thesis consists of a mixed methods approach which investigated international mergers and acquisitions by banks in Egypt and the UK from 2004 to 2007. The data collection process was carried out between June 2008 and November 2009 and was divided into three Phases: 1) desk research on the Egyptian and British banking industries; 2) 6 interviews with middle managers in both countries, and 3) (876) returned questionnaires (in Egypt and in the UK) of three mediating multi-sample groups (middle managers, employees and customers). The data analysis process involves analysing the case studies using pattern-coding, triangulation data methods and two distinct statistical methods: multiple regression analysis and multi-group structural equation modelling to test the hypothesised models. The analysis techniques used examined the significance of the differences of the two national cultures and their impacts on cross-border banks. For purposes of quantitative testing of bank-level cross-border MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS post performance was examined using two distinct multi-dimensional constructs: between multi-group (middle managers, employees and customers) and within groups (the two nations). The findings seem to suggest that post-MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS performance in the banking industry across nations has been influenced by very distinguishable cross-cultural leadership behaviours in each country. The findings of the qualitative and quantitative data analysis are consistent. The multiple regression findings indicate that the impact of v cultural distance on cross border acquisition performance varies with the level of post-acquisition integration, with cultural distance reducing performance to a larger extent at high levels of integration. These findings are consistent with previous researchers. However, in the Egyptian banking sample, the impact on the Egyptian leadership style has more positive impacts of the Egyptian shared understanding vales of Egyptian banking staffs than the British banking leaders. On the other hand, the British leaders, in the British banking sample, show a strong interaction between banking managers and employees, and between the leadership and the perceived services quality of the British customers. The multi-dimensional cultural interface developed from the literature has been supported by the findings of the research. It shows the complex interactions of national culture on the post-cross-border MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS financial performance in banking industry. The thesis suggests that by charting the culture-financial performance relationship, it may be possible to anticipate certain behavioural patterns of leaders, employees and customers for each country

Análisis de sentimientos enfocado a la calidad de servicios en la banca española

Fac. de Estudios EstadísticosTRUEpu

An Exploration of Sustainable Customer Value and the Procedure of the Intelligent Digital Content Analysis Platform for Big Data Using Dynamic Decision Making

The dynamic Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (PZB) service quality model is applied in the analysis of different customer clusters of sustainable customer value, while considering enterprise sustainability, customer relationship management (CRM), and customer equity of customer satisfaction and customer value. Based on intelligent digital content analysis and the recommendation platform of the different customer clusters of sustainable customer value, the dynamic six-sigma method is applied to the leisure agriculture of sustainable key resources and procedures solutions, as well as the impact of environmental and social costs and benefits. Based on the leisure agriculture of sustainable key resources and procedures solutions, the sustainable contradictions of leisure ecotourism agriculture are considered using dynamic multi-criteria decision making (dynamic gray multi-attribute decision making and dynamic multi-objective planning) to analyze the optimal plan for balancing the leisure agriculture of ecotourism and sustainable contradictions. First, sustainable and local identification plans are developed by the dynamic grey multi-attribute decision making method. Next, dynamic multi-objective planning is developed, as based on the priority factors sorted by gray multi-attribute decision making, in order to carry out the decision-making analysis of different objectives under different situations; thereby, helping the development of featured sustainable customer value of local leisure agriculture

Application of grey analytic hierarchy process to estimate mode choice alternatives: A case study from Budapest

This study proposes a multi-criteria decision-making approach using the grey theory to analyze mode choices. An extended analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model, which combines the advantages of the classic AHP and the grey theory for the accurate estimation of the commuting mode weight coefficients, is applied to a real transportation problem involving evaluators. The presented approach is applied for a real-life case study in Budapest. Based on the results, for all distances, public transport is ranked first followed by the car mode; however, for short- and mid-distance commuters, home office and bike might be suitable options, too. The results of this method are compared with the fuzzy AHP method. Having the same ranking in case of the two analyses means that the proposed method provides correct results under uncertainty in a group decision-making process. Thus, the outcomes highlight the applicability of the proposed method to the evaluation of mode choice