The Relationship Between Strategic Planning and the Effectiveness of Marketing Operations

Professionals and management experts have viewed the phrase “Organizational Planning” as one function of management that is indispensible in any corporate environment. Informally speaking also, individuals carry out this planning function on a day-to-day basis whether consciously or unconsciously, however, it is apparent to be the only means through which inadequate human and material resources can be thoughtfully and efficiently distributed to meet varying needs and wants of the community. Planning precedes other functions of management process such as organizing, staffing, leading and controlling. This study seeks to investigate the relationship that is inherent between these two terminologies “Strategic Planning and Marketing Operations” and how they reflect on the performance of government owned and managed companies especially in Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) as a case scenario. Questionnaires were distributed to staff of PHCN and the data was analyzed using mean score analysis and correlation. The research findings revealed that strategic planning contributes substantially to the effectiveness of marketing operations in public corporations. Future authors should incorporate sufficient organizations such as public and private industries to enhance generalization of findings. This study concludes with a few recommendations to professionals, academics and policy makers

Venture Capital in Malaysia: A Case Study of Malaysian Venture Capital Berhad (MAVCAP)

The idea of the establishment of Malaysian Venture Capital Berhad (MAVCAP) was conceived when information and communications technology (ICT) were beginning to transform firms universally and it was obvious that the future lie in knowledge-driven economy. Particularly in the USA, such companies where being born on a daily basis with venture capital (VC) boosting their exponential development. In view of this, the Malaysian government dreamt to replicate some of the interesting successes in the domestic economy and pushed the progress of the country through to the next logical phase, one that is based on intellectual property (IP). Hence, they government identified Venture Capital as a veritable instrument essential to finance technology innovation by supporting research and development (R & D) activities in universities and other public research institutes. The objective of this study is to review the activities of MAVCAP from inception about twelve years ago and find out if the main purpose of establishing the organization has been achieved. The methodology adopted here is a single case study based on in-depth review of empirical literature, newspapers, secondary data, and document analysis about the activities of the case study organization. This study finds that up to date, MAVCAP has succeeded in collaboration with other active agents in the innovation ecosystems helped to build a thriving VC industry in Malaysia. MAVCAP has also contributed in no small measure in helping to groom pools of VC professionals among young Malaysian university graduate

Nurturing Roles of Venture Capital Firms and the Sustenance of Technology Ventures

In Malaysia and other part of the world, Venture Capital (VC) was acknowledged as being among the most vital technology financing mechanisms assisting Research and Development (R n D) activities, from encouragement of rudimentary scientific research to technology development and commercialization. The purpose of this research is to find out how the Nurturing Roles of Venture Capital Firms (VCFs) in Malaysia help in the sustenance of Technology Based Firms (TBFs). This study adopts a qualitative method of data collection, where 47 participants such as Business Angels (BA), Government Venture Capital Firms (GVCF), Banks Venture Capital Firms (BVCF), Academic Technopreneurs (AT) and Conventional Technopreneurs (CT) are interviewed. Data was transcribed, analyzed and coded using the Miles and Huberman Model for qualitative data analysis. Findings from this study reported how the roles of VCFs enhance the business performance of TBFs

The Roles of Government in the Commercialization of Technology Based Firms

The Commercialization of Technology Based Firms (TBFs) have been acknowledged to play an increasingly significant role in economic development and has been regarded as an engine of growth that gingers rapid industrialization, generates revenue, wealth creation and employment generation. Many universities and other research institutes in Malaysia have established Technology Transfer Offices (TTO) to support the scientist in the bid to commercialize Research and Development (R and D) initiatives. This among others are the lessons learnt from the Bayh Dole Act which shows that increasing policy support from various government has motivated academic entrepreneurs to chun out spin off companies. The purpose of this research is to find out the roles of government in the commercialization of TBFs in Malaysia. In this research, 28 technology based firms and 19 venture capital firms were interviewed with the aid of a tape recorder and some through observation. Data was later transcribed and analyzed through content analysis, identified items coded and emerging themes sorted. Conclusions are drawn from the study findings and recommendations made

Prospective Secondary Teacher’ Beliefs About Mathematical Problem Solving

The main purpose of this study was to explore prospective teachers’ beliefs on mathematical problem solving. This research was a survey study that uses a questionnaire to collect data from prospective secondary teachers at the Faculty of Education. The data was analyzed using Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16.0. Findings from this study reveals the following; that majority of prospective mathematics teachers held positive beliefs on the importance of understanding mathematics problems, problems with multiple ways of solution, the kind of mathematics instruction that are emphasized by the principles of new mathematics curriculum. Considering the aforementioned findings from analysis of questionnaires the study concludes that; those prospective mathematics teachers’ beliefs about mathematical problem solving have strong connection to their study level and prospective teachers have both traditional and contemporary views about mathematical problem solving. In view of the study findings and conclusions, the researcher advice educational policy makers to ensure that more researches on teacher beliefs are conducted and an ongoing mathematical problem solving beliefs assessment should be a major component at Teacher Training Institutes. Teacher educators should raise student teachers’ awareness about mathematical problem solving once they join programs. A revision of teachers’ mathematics pedagogical courses and content courses should be a continuous process at Universities of Education

Samba Openldap: An Evolution And Insight

Directory services facilitate access to information organized under a variety of frameworks and applications. The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is a promising technology that provides access to directory information using a data structure similar to that of the X.500 protocol. IBM Tivoli, Novell, Sun, Oracle, Microsoft, and many other vendor features LDAP-based implementations. The technology’s increasing popularity is due both to its flexibility and its compatibility with existing applications. A directory service is a searchable database repository that lets authorized users and services find information related to people, computers, network devices, and applications. Given the increasing need for information — particularly over the Internet — directory popularity has grown over the last decade and is now a common choice for distributed applications. Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) accommodates the need of high level of security, single sign-on, and centralized user management. This protocol offers security services and integrated directory with capability of storage management user information in a directory. Therefore at the same time the user can determine application, service, server to be accessed, and user privileges. It is necessary to realize files sharing between different operating systems in local area network. Samba software package, as the bridge across Windows and Linux, can help us resolve the problem. In this paper, we try to explore previous literature on this topic and also consider current authors work then come out with our views on the subject matter of discussion based on our understanding

The Impact of Sales Promotion and Product Branding on Company Performance: A Case Study of AIICO Insurance Nigerian PLC

The effect of product branding and sales promotion to an organization growth has its contribution in the insurance industry because the growth of this industry is mainly tied to the success of good product brands and sales promotion. However, the organizational performance and increase in profit and revenue should be understood by the content. Survey of insurance companies is to be considered but due to the large number of the operators, the authors chose only one case sample of AIICO Insurance PLC which has a larger sales outlet and good number of branches nationwide. AIICO has about 300 branches in Nigeria and 1000 all over the world, but Lagos is chosen as the base location being the financial headquarters and main business hub of Nigeria. A total of 60 field survey questionnaires were distributed while 14 refined. The data collected and analyzed using the chi-square (x2) method. Hence, our conclusions from findings show that product branding and sales promotion affect organizational growth

Samba Openldap Performance in a Simulated Environment

The Information Technology world is developing so fast and it is been reported that Open Source tools will eventually take over proprietary tools in no to distant future. The Open Source Community is integrating its products with that of the proprietary ones and the integration of Windows machines into Linux network is evident of such practices. The purpose of this project is to implement Samba with OpenLDAP in a simulated environment. This implementation is conducted within a virtual environment by simulating the setup of Linux and Windows Operating systems by reducing physical setup of machines. Samba will act as an interface between Linux and Windows, files will be accessible to both server and client. OpenLDAP stores the user accounts and configuration files. A performance test carried out on Samba determining effect on CPU power and Memory usage shows a decrease in the CPU power and an increase in Memory usage

A Conceptualised Approach towards Building a Growth Model for Venture Capitalists Financing of TBFs

The purpose of this study is to develop a conceptual framework towards building a model for venture capitalists to evaluate investments in technology based firms, considering them from their growth stage. Fast growth entrepreneurs need this model to determine the right investors to approach, since not all specialize in funding early stage high risk companies. Previous studies revealed that major problems TBF owners face is identifying financial institutions to approach for funding, and what criteria that financial institutions used to evaluate the technologies? And also, several capital are lying idle with retired and successful individuals who also encounter difficulty of identifying the right companies to fund, because they do not possess the requisite skills to evaluate businesses based on their proposals. Past research have failed to represent the growth stages of the TBFs in a model such as this, which makes it easier for interest parties to adopt when evaluating thousands of business proposals, though they all mentioned the various growth stages except the Death stage mentioned in this study. Literature review is from secondary sources such as journals, textbooks, e-journals, websites, newspaper articles, online materials, personal discussions with colleagues. The findings of this study are important because it contributes more insights to the academic research of financing technology based firms, and call for further research on presenting the growth stages using graphical approach. Furthermore, the result of this research will be useful to link theory to practice

The Roles And Importance Of Technology In Mathematics Teaching And Learning-a Literature Review

There has been a general consensus among industry watchers, educational executives and several other stakeholders on the need to continually demonstrate the promotion of critical thinking and practical interdisciplinary education for engineering technology students. They also agreed that instructions of many practical technical applications require the utilization of mathematical concepts necessary for parametric analysis and problems solving methods. Problem solving is characteristics of mathematical activity and an important way of developing mathematical and analytical knowledge. A main purpose of mathematics teaching and learning is to develop the ability to solve a wide variety of complex mathematics problems. However, the process of problem solving in mathematics has not been given the proper recognition, probably due to the fact that teachers themselves are not comfortable with problem solving. As a result, teachers do not teach the process and technique of problem solving as an integral part of mathematics learning process. This paper aims at conducting an indebt literature survey and unveils the roles and importance of mathematics teaching and learning through the use of technological applications. To investigate prospective mathematics teachers’ beliefs on technology usage in classroom mathematical problem solving. Also make recommendations to educational policy makers and other stakeholders in the industry for proper and timely decision making