So why do so many companies act like adrenalin junkies, chasing after new customers at the expense of creating deeper, more profitable relationships with the ones they already have? Evergreen exposes the mad pursuit for what it is: a brief spike in metrics and an ongoing revenue drain, as one-time customers fail to return. A better solution is to shift resources from attracting new customers to engaging the base--the path to stable growth, season after season. The book's entertaining stories and action steps reveal how anyone can: * Cultivate the 3Cs of evergreen companies: character, community, and content * Build loyalty programs that turn satisfied customers into enthusiastic advocates * Nurture profitable customers while pruning those who sap time and money * Inject authenticity into social media communications * Invert the expectations gap that can drive customers away From Internet startups and mom-and-pop businesses to multinational giants, strong companies are rooted in customer retention. Evergreen helps anyone merge high-tech tools with the personal touch to forge lasting bonds and steady profits.

    But this book offers more. It provides important insights into both what can go right and what can go wrong in a product offering. To make great products, we need to understand what makes some fail and others succeed. To all the aspiring, young entrepreneurs who are reading this: take heed. Embrace failure to learn from failure. Learn from failure to avoid failure." —Don Norman Co-founder, Nielsen Norman Group Author of The Design of Everyday Things (Revised and Expanded) Just as pilots and doctors improve by studying crash reports and postmortems, experience designers can improve by learning how customer experience failures cause products to fail in the marketplace. Rather than proselytizing a particular approach to design, Why We Fail holistically explores what teams actually built, why the products failed, and how we can learn from the past to avoid failure ourselves.Why We Fail will help you:1. Understand the key mistakes other teams have made so you don't repeat them2. Turn unavoidable failures into building blocks to be successful3. Create a team environment where failures are controlled and valuable

    . . . Put this one on your must-have list if you have software, love software, hate programmers, or even ARE a programmer, because Mr. Platt (who teaches programming) has set out to puncture the bloated egos of all those who think that just because they can write a program, they can make it easy to use. . . . This book is funny, but it is also an important wake-up call for software companies that want to reduce the size of their customer support bills. If you were ever stuck for an answer to the question, 'Why do good programmers make such awful software?' this book holds the answer."--John McCormick, Locksmith columnist, TechRepublic.com "I must say first, I don't get many computing manuscripts that make me laugh out loud. Between the laughs, Dave Platt delivers some very interesting insight and perspective, all in a lucid and engaging style. I don't get much of that either!"--Henry Leitner, assistant dean for information technology andsenior lecturer on computer science, Harvard University "A riotous book for all of us downtrodden computer users, written in language that we understand."--Stacy Baratelli, author's barber "David's unique take on the problems that bedevil software creation made me think about the process in new ways. If you care about the quality of the software you create or use, read this book."--Dave Chappell, principal, Chappell & Associates "I began to read it in my office but stopped before I reached the bottom of the first page. I couldn't keep a grin off my face! I'll enjoy it after I go back home and find a safe place to read."--Tsukasa Makino, IT manager "David explains, in terms that my mother-in-law can understand, why the software we use today can be so frustrating, even dangerous at times, and gives us some real ideas on what we can do about it."--Jim Brosseau, Clarrus Consulting Group, Inc. A Book for Anyone Who Uses a Computer Today...and Just Wants to Scream! Today's software sucks. There's no other good way to say it. It's unsafe, allowing criminal programs to creep through the Internet wires into our very bedrooms. It's unreliable, crashing when we need it most, wiping out hours or days of work with no way to get it back. And it's hard to use, requiring large amounts of head-banging to figure out the simplest operations.It's no secret that software sucks. You know that from personal experience, whether you use computers for work or personal tasks. In this book, programming insider David Platt explains why that's the case and, more importantly, why it doesn't have to be that way. And he explains it in plain, jargon-free English that's a joy to read, using real-world examples with which you're already familiar. In the end, he suggests what you, as a typical user, without a technical background, can do about this sad state of our software--how you, as an informed consumer, don't have to take the abuse that bad software dishes out.As you might expect from the book's title, Dave's expose is laced with humor--sometimes outrageous, but always dead on. You'll laugh out loud as you recall incidents with your own software that made you cry. You'll slap your thigh with the same hand that so often pounded your computer desk and wished it was a bad programmer's face. But Dave hasn't written this book just for laughs. He's written it to give long-overdue voice to your own discovery--that software does, indeed, suck, but it shouldn't.

    Billions of interconnected devices will be monitoring the environment, transportation systems, factories, farms, forests, utilities, soil and weather conditions, oceans and resources Many of these sensors and actuators will be networked into autonomous sets, with much of the information being exchanged machine-to-machine directly and without human involvement. Machine-to-machine communications are typically terse. Most sensors and actuators will report or act upon small pieces of information - chirps. Burdening these devices with current network protocol stacks is inefficient, unnecessary and unduly increases their cost of ownership. This must change. The architecture of the Internet of Things will entail a widely distributed topology incorporating simpler chirp protocols towards at the edges of the network. Rethinking the Internet of Things describes reasons why we must rethink current approaches to the Internet of Things. Appropriate architectures that will coexist with existing networking protocols are described in detail. An architecture comprised of integrator functions, propagator nodes, and end devices, along with their interactions, is explored. What you'll learn Teaches the difference between the "normal" Internet and the Internet of Things, Describes a new architecture and its components in the "chirp" context. Explains the shortcomings of IP for IoT. Describes the anatomy of the IoT. Re-frames key ideas such as reliability. Describes how to build the IoT Who this book is forThought leaders, executives, architectural, standards and development leaders in the evolving IoT industry

    Find all of the following, explained in plain-English with no legal jargon:Business Taxation 101: A brief primer on tax topics in general, especially as they apply to businesses.Home Office Deduction: How to ensure you qualify for it and how to calculate it.Estimated Tax payments: When and how to pay them, as well as an easy way to calculate each payment.Self-Employment Tax: What it is, why it exists, and how to calculate it.Business Retirement Plans: What the different types are, and which one is best for you.Numerous Business Deductions: Several deductions explained in detail, including how to make sure you can qualify to take them and how to maximize them.Audit Protection: Learn what records you need to keep (and how long to keep them) in order to protect yourself in case of an audit.

    This practical book shows you how to bundle reusable R functions, sample data, and documentation together by applying author Hadley Wickham’s package development philosophy. In the process, you’ll work with devtools, roxygen, and testthat, a set of R packages that automate common development tasks. Devtools encapsulates best practices that Hadley has learned from years of working with this programming language. Ideal for developers, data scientists, and programmers with various backgrounds, this book starts you with the basics and shows you how to improve your package writing over time. You’ll learn to focus on what you want your package to do, rather than think about package structure. Learn about the most useful components of an R package, including vignettes and unit tests Automate anything you can, taking advantage of the years of development experience embodied in devtools Get tips on good style, such as organizing functions into files Streamline your development process with devtools Learn the best way to submit your package to the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) Learn from a well-respected member of the R community who created 30 R packages, including ggplot2, dplyr, and tidyr

    It reflects the latest information (in 2001), including the impact of global competition and rapid technological advances, that have accelerated trends such as shared service centres, outsourcing and just-in-time training. A number of actual company examples demonstrates how concepts are being used in several leading-edge organizations.

    How advances in technology is affecting banking

    Written for a senior-level course, this engineering textbook presents the concepts of feedback control system theory as they have been developed in the frequency and time domains, discussing such topics as robust control systems, state variable models, computer control systems, internal model contro

    IT expert Nicholas G. Carr offers a radically different view in this eloquent and explosive book. As IT's power and presence have grown, he argues, its strategic relevance has actually decreased. IT has been transformed from a source of advantage into a commoditized "cost of doing business" - with huge implications for business management.Expanding on Carr's seminal Harvard Business Review article that generated a storm of controversy, Does IT Matter? provides a truly compelling - and unsettling - account of IT's changing business role and its leveling influence on competition. Through astute analysis of historical and contemporary examples, Carr shows that the evolution of IT closely parallels that of earlier technologies such as railroads and electric power. He goes on to lay out a new agenda for IT management, stressing cost control and risk management over innovation and investment. And he examines the broader implications for business strategy and organization as well as for the technology industry.A frame-changing statement on one of the most important business phenomena of our time, Does IT Matter? marks a crucial milepost in the debate about IT's future.An acclaimed business writer and thinker, Nicholas G. Carr is a former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review.

    Many leadership books can be boring. Instead of reading another repetitive book about 100 leadership essentials by a corporate CEO, search no more for the perfect leadership book. In "The Diary of a West Point Cadet," by Captain Preston Pysh, the author teaches essential West Point leadership through the most fun and unique reading of any book in its class. If you are an aspiring cadet, a small-group leader, or even an emerging leader in corporate America, this book is for you. Each intriguing firsthand account of Preston's most memorable stories from attending West Point will capture your interest and imagination. At the conclusion of each gripping story, Preston efficiently summarizes how the experience taught him lessons about leadership, which later prepared him to be a combat commander. If you like twists and turns while reading and learning, you are in for a treat. Prepare to be glued to your seat and the text as you experience unforgettable stories and lessons from "The Point."

    Each major topic is organized into two chapters, beginning with basic concepts that provide necessary background for understanding each data mining technique, followed by more advanced concepts and algorithms.

    Until recently, the venerable firm had been regarded as the accounting profession's conscience. In Final Accounting, Barbara Ley Toffler, former Andersen partner-in-charge of Andersen's Ethics & Responsible Business Practices consulting services, reveals that the symptoms of Andersen's fatal disease were evident long before Enron. Drawing on her expertise as a social scientist and her experience as an Andersen insider, Toffler chronicles how a culture of arrogance and greed infected her company and led to enormous lapses in judgment among her peers. Final Accounting exposes the slow deterioration of values that led not only to Enron but also to the earlier financial scandals of other Andersen clients, including Sunbeam and Waste Management, and illustrates the practices that paved the way for the accounting fiascos at WorldCom and other major companies. Chronicling the inner workings of Andersen at the height of its success, Toffler reveals "the making of an Android," the peculiar process of employee indoctrination into the Andersen culture; how Androids—both accountants and consultants--lived the mantra "keep the client happy"; and how internal infighting and "billing your brains out" rather than quality work became the all-important goals. Toffler was in a position to know when something was wrong. In her earlier role as ethics consultant, she worked with over 60 major companies and was an internationally renowned expert at spotting and correcting ethical lapses. Toffler traces the roots of Andersen's ethical missteps, and shows the gradual decay of a once-proud culture.Uniquely qualified to discuss the personalities and principles behind one of the greatest shake-ups in United States history, Toffler delivers a chilling report with important ramifications for CEOs and individual investors alike.From the Hardcover edition.

    This essential resource is a complete guide to preparing for the ITIL Foundation exam and includes everything you need for success. Organized around the ITIL Foundation (2011) syllabus, the study guide addresses the ITIL Service Lifecycles, the ITIL processes, roles, and functions, and also thoroughly explains how the Service Lifecycle provides effective and efficient IT services.Offers an introduction to IT service management and ITIL V3 service strategy Highlights the topics of service design and development and the service management processes Reviews the building, testing, authorizing, documenting, and implementation of new and changed services into operation Addresses creating and maintaining value for customers through monitoring and improving services, processes, and technology Download valuable study tools including practice exams, flashcards, a glossary of key terms and more. If you prefer self-study over the more expensive training course, but you don't want to skimp on information or preparation, then this study guide is for you.

    Risk measurement and quantitative tools are critical aids for supporting risk management, but quantitative tools alone are no substitute for judgment, wisdom, and knowledge. Managers within a financial organization must be, before anything else, risk managers in the true sense of managing the risks that the firm faces.