Planning is the first phase of the overall deployment process.

Planning Phase consists of several steps from envisioning the deployment goals and vision the gathering data and resources that the teams will use during the following phase.

The preliminary planning phase is the first phase of the competition process and results in the decision of whether or not to conduct a competition.  At the end of this phase, you will have a good idea of the benefits and risks associated with conducting a competition of a certain function.

The process begins with Bureau offices and the Competitive Sourcing Program Office (CSPO).  The CSPO works with the Bureaus to identify a set of functions that are commercial in nature (meaning that the private sector does similar work, either for other private sector organizations or for other government agencies) and will engage the CSPO to conduct a preliminary planning study.  This can also be referred to as a feasibility assessment or competition business case.

The main steps in this phase are:

• Determining Scope
• Grouping Functions
• Assessing Workload data
• Establishing Baseline Costs
• Conducting Market Research

In a little more detail, the steps described above involve the CSPO interviewing employees and determining the size and shape of a potential competition.  Preliminary planning seeks to answer the question - “What makes a good candidate for competition?”  Some of the general considerations that are taken into account include:

• Are the services readily available in the marketplace?
• Are the activities independent of other internal business processes?
• Is there a high return-on-investment in terms of factors such as cost, quality, timeliness, or improved customer service?

An example could be if we were looking at the motor vehicle functions provided by the Department - would an appropriate scope include just the drivers or should it include the dispatchers and inventory positions as well?  Should the competition involve one business unit or multiple business units?  We also look at the workload collection systems in place to make sure that we can accurately capture the work being performed so that industry and the government’s Most Efficient Organization (MEO) team will have a firm basis on which to calculate their costs.  We carefully consider the private sector marketplace (market research) to determine whether or not they would be interested in submitting an offer for the function being considered.  This helps us to ascertain whether there will be enough interest to generate competition and savings.  We sometimes do this by issuing a Request for Information (RFI) on www.fedbizopps.gov, where companies interested in doing business with the government look for job opportunities. 

We will also look at the baseline costs of the current organization to capture the cost of doing business as it stands now.  The baseline costs collected include the ‘total cost of ownership’ for the functions or services determined to be in scope.  This would include the costs of labor, facilities, supplies, and equipment that are used to provide the service.  This baseline cost will help us to track savings generated by the competition process and can serve as a benchmark during the source selection phase for determining whether an offer being submitted is realistic and reasonable.

Envisioning Phase unifies the project team with a common vision. It culminates with a well-defined scope of work and project structure indicating team and customer agreement on the project direction.

Feasibility is the quality or condition of being feasible.

Feasibility study is a brief look at the major factors that will influence the ability of the system to achieve the desired objectives.It is also the study  to determined the desirability of adopting a plan or system.

Steps of Planning Phase

1.Recognized the problem.

2.Define the problem.

3.Set the system objectives.

4.Identify system constraits.

5.Conduct a feasibility study.

Database is the collection of related records organized to make any part of it easily accessible or information stored on a computer.

Data Dictionary is formal description of the contents of the data base.

Prototyping the process of  of producing a prototype.

Type 1 Prototype eventually becomes the operational system.

Type 2 Prototype is a throwaway model that serves as the blueprint for the operational system.

Organizational Behavior

Nowadays,the cellphone is rapidly becoming the over device, the one device that seems to have it all and becomes even more indispensable than it is now.Cell phones have already started functioning as more than just communications devices. Cellphone serve as watches and alarm clocks. Even with the limited free games that come with basic phones, they are already good for “time-pass”.They can also function as calculators. In case study provides an effective way to analyze scientific information on topics that interest the students. It helps the students develop skills in critical thinking and, because it is based on a current issue, it makes science relevant to them. It also provides students an opportunity to critically analyze press articles. So, cellphone should not cross  the line of inappropriateness.

Technology with its advent has taken a toll even in the field of marketing at last. E-mail is now turning out as an indispensable medium of marketing on internet.

Internet as whole has a wide marketing area because of the fact that it is spread whole and wide over the whole word. This makes it accessible to almost every country and eventually to the people in the country. E-mails are very tech-savvy and more effective and fast. This is the reason that we can now see e-mails developing as an indispensable media of marketing.

Over the years people and corporate houses have started realizing the advantages of e-mail marketing. E-mail marketing carries a lot of advantages along with it. Some of the benefits are:

a) Speed:

This is the main factor as to why e-mail marketing is considered better and over the other Medias of marketing. E-mail marketing along with it brings the advantage. E-mail marketing has a very high speed of information transfer. It just takes a second for the person to transfer information from his working place to the internet worldwide, where everyone can view it worldwide.

b) Reach:

One another factor as to why e-mail marketing is considered a better option is because of the fact that it has a better reach to the people worldwide than the other medias of marketing. E-mail marketing knows no boundaries and this helps the people to continue or conduct their marketing work in larger scale. The higher reach of e-mail marketing, attracts more people towards it and thereby assists the whole marketing process.

c) Inexpensive:

E-mail marketing is comparatively much and more cheap than that of the other medias of marketing. The people do not have to incur any special or extra cost to market their product or point of view. Being inexpensive it suits the people and they thereby resort to e-mail marketing than the other Medias.

d) Effective:

E-mail marketing is very effective than the other medias of marketing. The reason being, that they are very techno-savvy, very fast and still pretty cost effective. This whole package makes e-mail marketing very cheap and pretty attractive. This is the reason that e-mail marketing is pretty effective and thus more approachable.

e) Personalized marketing:

E-mail marketing avails the people the opportunity to avail and conduct personalized marketing. In this the people can send only to people whom they think that they would be interested in it. In this the mails will only be forwarded to people on whom the concern is interested.

Thus we see that why and how e-mail marketing has turned out to be an indispensable tool in marketing.

Source: sirjcm