memo for motion against summary judgment :: essays research papers

I.     Introduction and Standard for Opposition to Summary Judgment      Crowell Academy, Inc. furthermore, Arturo Gomez, (hereinafter, on the whole â€Å"Crowell†) were horribly careless and utilized adamant offense in their duties including the fencing club. The dealing intensity of Crowell was so terribly inconsistent in order to put Lajuana Barnett helpless before Crowell’s carelessness. In conclusion, the exculpatory proviso contained in the discharge structure (see discharge structure) is void as against open approach. Thus, under Maryland law, it is up to the trier of actuality to decide whether the exculpatory condition is unenforceable. Thusly, there is a debate with respect to the real issue of material truth identified with Crowell’s Answer, Crowell can be at risk to Lajauna Barnett for carelessness, and Crowell isn't qualified for Summary Judgment as an issue of law.      Summary Judgment ought to be allowed distinctly upon an indicating that there is no real issue concerning any material actuality. Fireman’s Fund Ins. Co. v. Rairigh, 59 Md. Application. 305, 313, cert. denied, 301 Md. 176 (1984). In the event that there is a contention between the surmisings which might be drawn from the proof under the steady gaze of the court, synopsis judgment isn't appropriate. Boucher v. Riner, 68 Md. Application. 539, 543 (1986) (citing Coffey v. Derby Steel Co., 291 Md. 241, 246-247 (1981)). Except if the realities are so clear as to allow a decision as an issue of law, it is for the trier of truth to decide if a defendant’s careless direct adds up to net carelessness. Jacob v. Davis, 128 Md.App. 433, 465 (1999) (citing Artis v. Figures, 100 Md.App. 633, 652 (1994)). By and large, exculpatory understandings in any case legitimate are not translated to cover the more outrageous types of carelessness wilful, wanton, crazy, or gross. Winterstein v. Wilcom, 16 Md.App. 130, 136 (1972). II.      Statement of Undisputed Material Facts 1.     Defendant Arturo Gomez is the fencing trainer at Crowell and consistently applicable to this issue went about as Crowell’s hireling. 2.     Crowell gives weapons and electronic scoring gadgets for club individuals; club individuals give their own defensive hardware, including veil, glove, coat, and plastron. 3.     In the fencing Club meeting before October 16, 2001, Gomez taught colleagues in footwork preliminary to permitting them to deal with weapons 4.     In the October 16, 2001 club meeting, Gomez trained club individuals to wear their defensive gear for their underlying involvement in utilizing their weapons. 5.     Plaintiff’s nerve was cut off under her left arm when an epee cut through plaintiff’s coat. 6.     Plaintiff had put the plastron on her correct arm.

Substainable Tourism Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Substainable Tourism - Research Paper Example For example, the program to build different offices including shopping centers, film corridors, lodgings and gambling clubs on the Sentosa Island was started in 2005 by the legislature of Singapore (Quah, 2010). The essential goal of this task was to make new openings other than expanding outside ventures and the travel industry. As indicated by Chen (2009), the focal point of the SDC in creating areas along the coastline is producing new roads for relaxation, for example, yachting and wind-riding which inevitably is adding to the age of more employments for the nearby populace. The legislature has likewise changed numerous recreation exercises including betting along the southern piece of Singapore. Other than pulling in ability and speculation, this move is improving Singapore’s notoriety as a liberal city. SDC has exploited these ongoing changes by building up a few club at huge numbers of its areas. Bunnell (2010) says that SDC utilizes more than 1000 specialists at every one of its club and gives circuitous work to another 5000 through close by bars, cafés, providers and lodgings.

CP13 Podcast with Mike Smalls from Hoopla Software about Boosting Team Performance

CP13 Podcast with Mike Smalls from Hoopla Software about Boosting Team Performance INTRODUCTIONMartin: Hi folks! Do you have a sales team and are really interested in pushing up your motivation while achieving more results? Today we have an entrepreneur who knows all about this. Hi, Mike, who are you and what do you do?Mike: Hello, Mike Smalls, Im the founder and CEO of Hoopla. So I lead the strategy and direction of the company.Martin: What is Hoopla?Mike: Hoopla is a sales motivation and communication platform that allows companies to take          normally hidden data from backend systems like CRM systems and other areas, and bring that data to light. In order to drive the right kind of behaviors and actions from the sales teams and other people within the company by highlighting successes, creating competitions and recognizing performance as it happens through big screen TVs or mobile devices around the company. Its like an ESPN network for the entire company.Martin: Mike, can you elaborate a little bit on your background and at what point in time did you come up with this idea? Was there some kind of moment where you thought: Ah! Thats a super cool idea?Mike: So my background is in building and running sales teams, sales and marketing teams for a variety of companies, big companies like Symantec as well as a bunch of start-ups. I just kept seeing the same kind of patterns and challenges. I wanted to solve problems that I had, which was getting folks to do the right kind of actions and behaviors in advance to produce results as opposed to reporting on information after the fact.So getting them to do the right kind of calls, meetings, and create opportunities we needed to tap into their natural psychology. And the Ah-ha moment really was sitting in front of my TV on a Sunday watching a football game. When I watched one of these athletes do a flip into the endzone just to get on the Sunday highlight reel and the next weeks review show. I realized that the wiring of an athlete and a sales person are very similar. They love to be on stage an d they love to get the recognition and they love to compete and win. So there is a lot of similarities between athletes and sales people. That was the Ah-ha moment.Martin: Cool, so after this football match what did you do next?Mike: I was actually working for a company. I actually had a special clause in my contract that allowed me to work on my start-up in kind of my spare time without worry of them owning the idea. I had this idea where I hired a developer that came and worked out of my house. I paid him with my own money to build a prototype of an early sketch that I kind of thought through. It was very different from what Hoopla is today, but it was the beginnings of that. Essentially it was taking that data that was buried and was putting it out in an application, which then I was able to show some early investors, some seed investors the concept. Once that prototype was done it allowed me to raise a little bit of money to get the whole thing launched.Martin: Cool, so you got investors before you approached potential clients?Mike: Well, actually there is a sidebar to this story. One of the things I did to try and get prepared for launching this company was that we created a free application. It was just a simple little countdown clock that counted down the number of selling days left in a week, month, quarter, year, or what have you, subtracted out the weekends. That worked inside of sales force and it displayed the remaining selling days right at the sidebar. It was a component of Hoopla, but I figured we would get that out there on the market first to see if we could get some early adoption for free and build our marketing database.That actually was a really great start because what it did was allow us to get into communication and conversations with potential customers before we launched the real product. To date, we have had over 2,000 companies download that free little countdown clock that is forming the basis for our marketing efforts.Martin: Cool , Lets talk about the first three or six months after you successfully raised the money and you developed the MVP version and put it out to the sales force. What was it really like when you got the money to your bank account and started to build a team?Mike: Well, first of all, it was a little leap even though I had a little money it wasnt a lot. It wasnt enough to live off of. I ended up taking a serious haircut in salary, pay, compensation, and all that. I knew the clock was ticking from day one, but it was invigorating in that we got our very first customer. That moment when you sign that contract and they give you a check it is really invigorating. What happened from there was the word of mouth started to spread. Things started to build and to grow. Once we had the investment dollars we still had a six months of development to go before we could actually get out there and sell it full force.Martin: Understood.BUSINESS MODEL OF HOOPLA SOFTWAREMartin: Lets talk about the business model. So who are your major customers? Is it only the sales department or others functions? Are you focusing on a specific industry or region? What are your target customers?Mike: That is a good question. We started out built completely on the sales force platform and so our customers were the only customer who was used sale force at the beginning. Sales teams were the subset within that. Our customers were all sort of mid-size and larger companies that had inside sales teams that did transactions and had a lot of activity that they wanted to track and measure.One of the main components of our system is our TV experience where the individual reps are being highlighted on the screen and they are being recognized. Having people inside an organization to be able to view that was a key element for that first success. We have since expanded out that customers can use us with other data sources as well as other departments. That core first audience of that inside sales team that within t hese organizations is still our primary foot in the door. We do sell in the US, Europe, Australia, and Canada. Those are our four main geographies.Martin: Cool, I want to understand a little bit more how the product works. Is it really that a customer is building the dashboard for himself and needs to plug in the TV in order to show this to the sales people? Or is it that you are automatically building some great dashboards and distribute them to the TV?Mike: Yes, good question. We have a bunch of template elements that can be displaced. So leaderboards, top performers, countdowns, and team versus team kind of elements. We have all these kind of templates that are fed by the data that the customer will link into our system. That linking in can come from a sales force report or it can come from a CSV file, Excel file, and soon a Google sheet spreadsheet. All that information can be fed in automatically.The customer doesnt have to be an expert in design or all that. Essentially it is like building a PowerPoint slide show if you will. Put these different components together that play in a loop and they are dynamically being updated as the data is changing. One of the key things that people love is the automated alerts or news flashes that occur whenever data changes that it significant. A deal gets closed, a goal gets met, somebody achieves something, there is fan fair, there is a song that plays, a video that plays and each individual rep can put their own walk-up song, their own custom soundtrack to their face and their image, or show a GIF image. It gets real fun and they have a lot of fun doing that.Martin: Okay, I understand. So this is the unique selling point, I guess.Mike: Part of it, yes.Martin: Imagine Im a sales guy. I have at least two options when I want to understand my metrics. I can either use Hoopla software or I can use some other dashboard provider which delivers me some real time analytics? Why should I use Hoopla?Mike: Hoopla makes everything come to life and it is pushing that information out, it is broadcasting that information out as opposed to you having to log into some system to do your own analysis and to remember to do that, right. So to what is happening is as things are occurring in your organization information is being pushed out. People are being celebrated. Wins are being recognized. People can even challenge each other live on a given metric. So I might challenge you to a three-day competition that you have to accept and its all public information through a broadcast. The big difference is that its relevant, interesting, and engaging, but its being pushed out to you and being broadcast to you as opposed to you going I need to go check my dashboard.Martin: So you are trying to use gamification and pushing the message out there?Mike: Yes, thats right. Game mechanics play a role here because its recognition, competition, and you can see progress against goals. It is very relevant as opposed to static informa tion.Martin: Can you put some light on how the competitive situation in a sales team changes once the Hoopla system is in place? For example, what is the average uplift in productivity, sales, per sales person, whatsoever? And what is the effect of the people selling the lowest? Are they team motivated?Mike: Those are good questions and they come up a lot. First of all from an uplift perspective, are customers report to us all kinds of uplift activities that they see happening. Anywhere from 30% on up and it is pretty amazing the kind of changes that can happen. Sort of to highlight that we have, one customer they bought Hoopla and they had this problem where they had to field in a sales force that wasnt being updated. It was like a lead source field and they wanted to get that done. What they did was created a little highlight and then focused on that. A competition around who could get those fields updated. The first day they broadcasted that information out there people started t o question what field do we have to fill up and etc. By day three, 100% had been changed and been filled out. So by this quick and simple little highlighting gamification techniques, it actually causes the behavior change.Your question about top performers versus bottom: I think one of the things that are interesting is people have control over these metrics. This is not something happening to them. So if for example you are measuring people on the number of calls being made and they are at the bottom of the list. They have control over how to change that. They can see that and see that as a fair system versus the manager giving favoritism for somebody over another and they dont know if its fair or not. This is an objective system. Its clear how you can win. That makes it much more motivational.Martin: How is your pricing model working and how did you come up with this price point?Mike: Our pricing model is we charge per user, per month. Its around $15 a user, per month. It actually goes down depending on your connections. But that price point was built on some research that we did by talking to existing customers. We actually hired a firm to help us with that to help us  understand the optimal point where customers really saw the value and wanted to have a price point that mapped to the value proposition. We did a lot of analysis on that and that has really been paying off for us. It helps to give us an optimal curve in terms of price point and value gained by the customer.Martin: Mike, I understand how your business model is working right now. But did it change significantly over the years?Mike: Not significantly, but definitely we have made tweaks. We have made changes things as we have learned by talking to customers and by seeing what happens on a given quarter or month basis. But nothing really has been significantly different. Its just minor changes to packages and pricing over time.Martin: How are you now a days acquiring customers and what did you do in terms of customer development?Mike: So we started off very direct sales, inside sales, where we were using that marketing tool of a free application to kind of generate leads to then contact those folks to create our first customers. We built up a sales organization that did that over time. What we have been doing in the last six months is steering more and more toward making the self-service experience much more possible with the product. You can now go up to Hoopla.net today. You can sign up for a free trial. You get 14 days. You can set up your whole system. At the end of that time, you can just put your credit card in and you buy the product without even talking to anyone if you want or we are here to help. We have live chat. We have people on call. People that can help with the demo of it. The goal is to reduce all the friction to let people buy on their own and add users as they need.Martin: Mike, when you are looking into the future for the next two or three years, what t hings of the following do you want to focus on? Is it:An internationalization because you said that youre only active in only four countries?Do you want to focus down on the sales department meaning extending the value propositions you are offering the sales department? OrExtending the current value proposition you have that means active metrics and motivation gamification and extending this to other departments like for example marketing, customer support, product, and so on?Mike: I would say that it is the latter. Our vision is that Hoopla is applicable and valuable to every employee in every company. We think every company in the world should be using the product because it makes the employees perform better. It makes them more engaged. It gives them visibility into where they are against their goals, progress, and against each other. So we think that multiple departments are the right answer going forward.Martin: When you started out what had been your expectations? So lets say this is what I wanted to have achieved after four years and now you are here and what is the delta between what you have expected and what you actually achieved?Mike: Good question. You know that everybody always assumes a perfectly linear growth path that keeps going up and to the right. When the day you start till you advance four years and everything goes perfectly and smoothly. I think the difference in reality versus expectation is that is a very herky-jerky path to success. It is not a smooth road. You have got to expect a lot of bumps along the way and be able to react to those changes. Nothing ever goes as planned. Things take twice or three times as long as you expect, but you just got to stay the course otherwise you will get derailed. So it is definitely different than I expected, but very rewarding.Martin: What have been the biggest bumps and how did you circumvent or manage them?Mike: I would say categories of bumps, right. It is people, hiring the right kind of people and putting them on the team. Its making the right kinds technology and product decisions. Where do you put your investment? How fast do you spend your money? Do you optimize for growth or different areas?I think there is learnings along the way. You know the CEOs job is to make sure we have the right strategy, make sure we have the right people, and that we have money in the bank. I have made mistakes in each one of those areas, but I think we are settling down it that.Martin: Good stuff.ENTREPRENEURIAL ADVICE FROM MICHAEL SMALLSMartin: Great, I assume you have a lot over the years. So if your child comes up to you and says: Daddy, I would like to start a company and imagine your child is a little bit older like 15 or 16 or so. What type of advice would you give your child?Mike: Well, I would say first of all the company is going to be more successful if youre attempting to solve a problem you are intimately aware of, something you are passionate about. Just starting a company for starting a companys sake I would not recommend it. I would recommend you first identify an area of expertise and a problem to solve that you are passionate about solving because you have to be able to stick with it. I would also give him advice or her advice that you need to be prepared for a long grueling effort and you have got to be prepared for that. Its not a get rich quick scheme at all. I would recommend that as well.Martin: Any other things that you have learned?Mike: I would say go with your gut because you are going to get a lot of advice from a lot of people, investors, other folks, and if you get tossed and turned a little bit you are going to get off course. If you follow your gut you know exactly what and your gut can usually be trust on that. I think that is a key piece of advice.I would say dont spend the money too quickly, be careful, be conservative about it. It goes fast. So you have to make sure you are managing your finances very well because its a long road an d you want to be equipped for that.Martin: So when I talk to start-ups most of them, especially in the early days have problems with generating sales. Either because they dont understand the customer, they dont know how to reach them, close a deal, etc. You have lots of experience in terms of sales. What is your advice on really closing a deal and getting to the customers fast and cheap?Mike: You know its back to the old crossing the chasm model, but you have to find the early adopters that are going to have influence with other customers. One of the most important things you can do is build sort of band equity and word of mouth within a particular area. If you have got a product and you want to find those customers that want to be your advocates and you want to really leverage those advocates to help spread the word to other customers.We had the wonderful experience of having some early influential customers that they would tell other people about it or people would come to their o ffices with our product on the walls, being used and they wanted to know more about it. I think its that and making sure that you create really good equity with your customers so you dont burn any of those bridges. You treat everybody fairly. Its better to start off with a good group of customers than to have bad word of mouth to be spread out there.Getting to them the challenges are always breaking through the noise. That is why we did the countdown clock. It allowed us to get in the door. But finding those customers and asking them for referrals, asking people to spread the word for you are really key elements.Martin: Mike, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and walking us through how you business model and your model works. Thank you so much.Mike: My pleasure. Thank you.Martin: Have a great day.THANKS FOR LISTENING! Welcome to the 13th episode of our podcast!You can download the podcast to your computer or listen to it here on the blog. Click here to subscribe in iTunes. INTRODUCTIONMartin: Hi folks! Do you have a sales team and are really interested in pushing up your motivation while achieving more results? Today we have an entrepreneur who knows all about this. Hi, Mike, who are you and what do you do?Mike: Hello, Mike Smalls, Im the founder and CEO of Hoopla. So I lead the strategy and direction of the company.Martin: What is Hoopla?Mike: Hoopla is a sales motivation and communication platform that allows companies to take          normally hidden data from backend systems like CRM systems and other areas, and bring that data to light. In order to drive the right kind of behaviors and actions from the sales teams and other people within the company by highlighting successes, creating competitions and recognizing performance as it happens through big screen TVs or mobile devices around the company. Its like an ESPN network for the entire company.Martin: Mike, can you elaborate a little bit on your background and at what point in time did you come up with this idea? Was there some kind of moment where you thought: Ah! Thats a super cool idea?Mike: So my background is in building and running sales teams, sales and marketing teams for a variety of companies, big companies like Symantec as well as a bunch of start-ups. I just kept seeing the same kind of patterns and challenges. I wanted to solve problems that I had, which was getting folks to do the right kind of actions and behaviors in advance to produce results as opposed to reporting on information after the fact.So getting them to do the right kind of calls, meetings, and create opportunities we needed to tap into their natural psychology. And the Ah-ha moment really was sitting in front of my TV on a Sunday watching a football game. When I watched one of these athletes do a flip into the endzone just to get on the Sunday highlight reel and the next weeks review show. I realized that the wiring of an athlete and a sales person are very similar. They love to be on stage an d they love to get the recognition and they love to compete and win. So there is a lot of similarities between athletes and sales people. That was the Ah-ha moment.Martin: Cool, so after this football match what did you do next?Mike: I was actually working for a company. I actually had a special clause in my contract that allowed me to work on my start-up in kind of my spare time without worry of them owning the idea. I had this idea where I hired a developer that came and worked out of my house. I paid him with my own money to build a prototype of an early sketch that I kind of thought through. It was very different from what Hoopla is today, but it was the beginnings of that. Essentially it was taking that data that was buried and was putting it out in an application, which then I was able to show some early investors, some seed investors the concept. Once that prototype was done it allowed me to raise a little bit of money to get the whole thing launched.Martin: Cool, so you got investors before you approached potential clients?Mike: Well, actually there is a sidebar to this story. One of the things I did to try and get prepared for launching this company was that we created a free application. It was just a simple little countdown clock that counted down the number of selling days left in a week, month, quarter, year, or what have you, subtracted out the weekends. That worked inside of sales force and it displayed the remaining selling days right at the sidebar. It was a component of Hoopla, but I figured we would get that out there on the market first to see if we could get some early adoption for free and build our marketing database.That actually was a really great start because what it did was allow us to get into communication and conversations with potential customers before we launched the real product. To date, we have had over 2,000 companies download that free little countdown clock that is forming the basis for our marketing efforts.Martin: Cool , Lets talk about the first three or six months after you successfully raised the money and you developed the MVP version and put it out to the sales force. What was it really like when you got the money to your bank account and started to build a team?Mike: Well, first of all, it was a little leap even though I had a little money it wasnt a lot. It wasnt enough to live off of. I ended up taking a serious haircut in salary, pay, compensation, and all that. I knew the clock was ticking from day one, but it was invigorating in that we got our very first customer. That moment when you sign that contract and they give you a check it is really invigorating. What happened from there was the word of mouth started to spread. Things started to build and to grow. Once we had the investment dollars we still had a six months of development to go before we could actually get out there and sell it full force.Martin: Understood.BUSINESS MODEL OF HOOPLA SOFTWAREMartin: Lets talk about the business model. So who are your major customers? Is it only the sales department or others functions? Are you focusing on a specific industry or region? What are your target customers?Mike: That is a good question. We started out built completely on the sales force platform and so our customers were the only customer who was used sale force at the beginning. Sales teams were the subset within that. Our customers were all sort of mid-size and larger companies that had inside sales teams that did transactions and had a lot of activity that they wanted to track and measure.One of the main components of our system is our TV experience where the individual reps are being highlighted on the screen and they are being recognized. Having people inside an organization to be able to view that was a key element for that first success. We have since expanded out that customers can use us with other data sources as well as other departments. That core first audience of that inside sales team that within t hese organizations is still our primary foot in the door. We do sell in the US, Europe, Australia, and Canada. Those are our four main geographies.Martin: Cool, I want to understand a little bit more how the product works. Is it really that a customer is building the dashboard for himself and needs to plug in the TV in order to show this to the sales people? Or is it that you are automatically building some great dashboards and distribute them to the TV?Mike: Yes, good question. We have a bunch of template elements that can be displaced. So leaderboards, top performers, countdowns, and team versus team kind of elements. We have all these kind of templates that are fed by the data that the customer will link into our system. That linking in can come from a sales force report or it can come from a CSV file, Excel file, and soon a Google sheet spreadsheet. All that information can be fed in automatically.The customer doesnt have to be an expert in design or all that. Essentially it is like building a PowerPoint slide show if you will. Put these different components together that play in a loop and they are dynamically being updated as the data is changing. One of the key things that people love is the automated alerts or news flashes that occur whenever data changes that it significant. A deal gets closed, a goal gets met, somebody achieves something, there is fan fair, there is a song that plays, a video that plays and each individual rep can put their own walk-up song, their own custom soundtrack to their face and their image, or show a GIF image. It gets real fun and they have a lot of fun doing that.Martin: Okay, I understand. So this is the unique selling point, I guess.Mike: Part of it, yes.Martin: Imagine Im a sales guy. I have at least two options when I want to understand my metrics. I can either use Hoopla software or I can use some other dashboard provider which delivers me some real time analytics? Why should I use Hoopla?Mike: Hoopla makes everything come to life and it is pushing that information out, it is broadcasting that information out as opposed to you having to log into some system to do your own analysis and to remember to do that, right. So to what is happening is as things are occurring in your organization information is being pushed out. People are being celebrated. Wins are being recognized. People can even challenge each other live on a given metric. So I might challenge you to a three-day competition that you have to accept and its all public information through a broadcast. The big difference is that its relevant, interesting, and engaging, but its being pushed out to you and being broadcast to you as opposed to you going I need to go check my dashboard.Martin: So you are trying to use gamification and pushing the message out there?Mike: Yes, thats right. Game mechanics play a role here because its recognition, competition, and you can see progress against goals. It is very relevant as opposed to static informa tion.Martin: Can you put some light on how the competitive situation in a sales team changes once the Hoopla system is in place? For example, what is the average uplift in productivity, sales, per sales person, whatsoever? And what is the effect of the people selling the lowest? Are they team motivated?Mike: Those are good questions and they come up a lot. First of all from an uplift perspective, are customers report to us all kinds of uplift activities that they see happening. Anywhere from 30% on up and it is pretty amazing the kind of changes that can happen. Sort of to highlight that we have, one customer they bought Hoopla and they had this problem where they had to field in a sales force that wasnt being updated. It was like a lead source field and they wanted to get that done. What they did was created a little highlight and then focused on that. A competition around who could get those fields updated. The first day they broadcasted that information out there people started t o question what field do we have to fill up and etc. By day three, 100% had been changed and been filled out. So by this quick and simple little highlighting gamification techniques, it actually causes the behavior change.Your question about top performers versus bottom: I think one of the things that are interesting is people have control over these metrics. This is not something happening to them. So if for example you are measuring people on the number of calls being made and they are at the bottom of the list. They have control over how to change that. They can see that and see that as a fair system versus the manager giving favoritism for somebody over another and they dont know if its fair or not. This is an objective system. Its clear how you can win. That makes it much more motivational.Martin: How is your pricing model working and how did you come up with this price point?Mike: Our pricing model is we charge per user, per month. Its around $15 a user, per month. It actually goes down depending on your connections. But that price point was built on some research that we did by talking to existing customers. We actually hired a firm to help us with that to help us  understand the optimal point where customers really saw the value and wanted to have a price point that mapped to the value proposition. We did a lot of analysis on that and that has really been paying off for us. It helps to give us an optimal curve in terms of price point and value gained by the customer.Martin: Mike, I understand how your business model is working right now. But did it change significantly over the years?Mike: Not significantly, but definitely we have made tweaks. We have made changes things as we have learned by talking to customers and by seeing what happens on a given quarter or month basis. But nothing really has been significantly different. Its just minor changes to packages and pricing over time.Martin: How are you now a days acquiring customers and what did you do in terms of customer development?Mike: So we started off very direct sales, inside sales, where we were using that marketing tool of a free application to kind of generate leads to then contact those folks to create our first customers. We built up a sales organization that did that over time. What we have been doing in the last six months is steering more and more toward making the self-service experience much more possible with the product. You can now go up to Hoopla.net today. You can sign up for a free trial. You get 14 days. You can set up your whole system. At the end of that time, you can just put your credit card in and you buy the product without even talking to anyone if you want or we are here to help. We have live chat. We have people on call. People that can help with the demo of it. The goal is to reduce all the friction to let people buy on their own and add users as they need.Martin: Mike, when you are looking into the future for the next two or three years, what t hings of the following do you want to focus on? Is it:An internationalization because you said that youre only active in only four countries?Do you want to focus down on the sales department meaning extending the value propositions you are offering the sales department? OrExtending the current value proposition you have that means active metrics and motivation gamification and extending this to other departments like for example marketing, customer support, product, and so on?Mike: I would say that it is the latter. Our vision is that Hoopla is applicable and valuable to every employee in every company. We think every company in the world should be using the product because it makes the employees perform better. It makes them more engaged. It gives them visibility into where they are against their goals, progress, and against each other. So we think that multiple departments are the right answer going forward.Martin: When you started out what had been your expectations? So lets say this is what I wanted to have achieved after four years and now you are here and what is the delta between what you have expected and what you actually achieved?Mike: Good question. You know that everybody always assumes a perfectly linear growth path that keeps going up and to the right. When the day you start till you advance four years and everything goes perfectly and smoothly. I think the difference in reality versus expectation is that is a very herky-jerky path to success. It is not a smooth road. You have got to expect a lot of bumps along the way and be able to react to those changes. Nothing ever goes as planned. Things take twice or three times as long as you expect, but you just got to stay the course otherwise you will get derailed. So it is definitely different than I expected, but very rewarding.Martin: What have been the biggest bumps and how did you circumvent or manage them?Mike: I would say categories of bumps, right. It is people, hiring the right kind of people and putting them on the team. Its making the right kinds technology and product decisions. Where do you put your investment? How fast do you spend your money? Do you optimize for growth or different areas?I think there is learnings along the way. You know the CEOs job is to make sure we have the right strategy, make sure we have the right people, and that we have money in the bank. I have made mistakes in each one of those areas, but I think we are settling down it that.Martin: Good stuff.ENTREPRENEURIAL ADVICE FROM MICHAEL SMALLSMartin: Great, I assume you have a lot over the years. So if your child comes up to you and says: Daddy, I would like to start a company and imagine your child is a little bit older like 15 or 16 or so. What type of advice would you give your child?Mike: Well, I would say first of all the company is going to be more successful if youre attempting to solve a problem you are intimately aware of, something you are passionate about. Just starting a company for starting a companys sake I would not recommend it. I would recommend you first identify an area of expertise and a problem to solve that you are passionate about solving because you have to be able to stick with it. I would also give him advice or her advice that you need to be prepared for a long grueling effort and you have got to be prepared for that. Its not a get rich quick scheme at all. I would recommend that as well.Martin: Any other things that you have learned?Mike: I would say go with your gut because you are going to get a lot of advice from a lot of people, investors, other folks, and if you get tossed and turned a little bit you are going to get off course. If you follow your gut you know exactly what and your gut can usually be trust on that. I think that is a key piece of advice.I would say dont spend the money too quickly, be careful, be conservative about it. It goes fast. So you have to make sure you are managing your finances very well because its a long road an d you want to be equipped for that.Martin: So when I talk to start-ups most of them, especially in the early days have problems with generating sales. Either because they dont understand the customer, they dont know how to reach them, close a deal, etc. You have lots of experience in terms of sales. What is your advice on really closing a deal and getting to the customers fast and cheap?Mike: You know its back to the old crossing the chasm model, but you have to find the early adopters that are going to have influence with other customers. One of the most important things you can do is build sort of band equity and word of mouth within a particular area. If you have got a product and you want to find those customers that want to be your advocates and you want to really leverage those advocates to help spread the word to other customers.We had the wonderful experience of having some early influential customers that they would tell other people about it or people would come to their o ffices with our product on the walls, being used and they wanted to know more about it. I think its that and making sure that you create really good equity with your customers so you dont burn any of those bridges. You treat everybody fairly. Its better to start off with a good group of customers than to have bad word of mouth to be spread out there.Getting to them the challenges are always breaking through the noise. That is why we did the countdown clock. It allowed us to get in the door. But finding those customers and asking them for referrals, asking people to spread the word for you are really key elements.Martin: Mike, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and walking us through how you business model and your model works. Thank you so much.Mike: My pleasure. Thank you.Martin: Have a great day.THANKS FOR LISTENING!Thanks so much for joining our 13th podcast episode!Have some feedback you’d like to share?  Leave  a note in the comment section below! If you enjoyed thi s episode, please  share  it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post.Also,  please leave an honest review for The Cleverism Podcast on iTunes or on SoundCloud. Ratings and reviews  are  extremely  helpful  and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show, and we read each and every one of them.Special thanks  to Mike for joining me this week. Until  next time!

Afropithecus - Facts and Figures

Name: Afropithecus (Greek for African ape); pronounced AFF-roe-pith-ECK-us Habitat: Jungles of Africa Historical Epoch: Middle Miocene (17 million years ago) Size and Weight: About five feet tall and 100 pounds Diet: Fruits and seeds Distinguishing Characteristics: Large size; relatively long snout with large teeth About Afropithecus Paleontologists are still trying to sort out the complicated relationships of the early African hominids of the Miocene epoch, which were some of the first true apes on the prehistoric primate evolutionary tree. Afropithecus, discovered in 1986 by the famous mother-and-son team of Mary and Richard Leakey, testifies to the ongoing confusion: this tree-dwelling ape had some anatomical features in common with the better-known Proconsul, and it also seems to have been closely related to Sivapithecus as well (a genus to which Ramapithecus has now been assigned as a separate species). Unfortunately, Afropithecus isnt as well attested, fossil-wise, as these other hominids; we do know from its scattered teeth that it fed on tough fruits and seeds, and it seems to have walked like a monkey (on four feet) rather than an ape (on two feet, at least some of the time).

Legalization Of Marijuan A Controversial Issue Essay

Zhewei Yang Ms. Nutter Health 2016/11/11 Legalization of Marijuana A controversial issue relating to the legalization of Marijuana has been brought to the attention of the public. Many Americans support the legalization of marijuana for numerous reasons, such as it is a useful aid to alleviate medical ailments and it has a low risk of abuse; nevertheless, others people do not believe that the marijuana should be legalized. When the practical reasoning is involved, however, I believed that the positive impacts of remaining marijuana illegal outweigh the negative aspects of illegalization of marijuana. To support my opinion against the legalization of the marijuana, I have organized my paper into. In the first section, I provide an account However, I need to provide an historical context about marijuana HISTORICAL CONTEXT In 1545, marijuana was brought by the Spanish the New World. In 1611, the English introduced marijuana in Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the America.1 Then marijuana became a major commercial crop and was grown as a source of fiber. Some historians analyze that marijuana emerged because of Prohibition, a constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages in the nation.2 Marijuana replaced the alcohol to achieve the recreational use because it was not a social threat. Marijuana clubs were built in every major city in United States. According to the research, until 1930s, the U.S. Federal

Cohesive Strangers in Tobias Wolff’s Say Yes - 792 Words

In Tobias Wolff’s Say Yes, a central strain between the husband and wife is illuminated and never settled by the end of the story. The tension revolves around racism and the meaning of true love. In this story plot, point of view and irony reveal a married couple that becomes strangers. The story commences talking about a married couple that seems to have a solid relationship where they work really well together. Having this cohesive and unified relationship really helps to set the story up for the conversation they have about racism and marriage. The husband believes he knows his wife, but he doesn’t really know her at all. The husband says to the wife, â€Å"A person from their culture and a person from our culture could never really know†¦show more content†¦The story makes clear that the husband knows he needs to put a stop to the tension created from the argument so he goes to tell his wife the only thing she wants to hear in the first place. Because the entire story is told through third person limited point of view, the husband doesn’t seem to see how much this argument affects his wife until he speaks to her in the bathroom. The point of view in this story has a lot to do with how the story is perceived. For the entire story, it is told through the husband and narrators perspectives. Because of this, the argument is portrayed as more of a game or competition to see if the husband can win the fight, â€Å"He took a deep breath. He had won the argument but he still felt concerned†(247). The husband is also portrayed in a light that makes him look unsympathetic to his wife’s feelings about their love, â€Å"He hoped that she appreciated how quickly he had come to her aid. He’d acted out of concern for her, with no thought of getting anything in return, but now the thought occurred to him that it would be a nice gesture on her part not to start up that conversation again, as he was tired of it†(247). The story suggests that the husband isn’t taking this argument as seriously as the wife is and that he doesn’t see the severity of the underlying meaning of the fight. C loser to the end of the story the husband finally comprehends how much his words impacted his wife’s

Case Study of BUPA Insurance Company-Free-Samples for Students

Question: Discuss about the Case Study of Bupa Insurance Company. Answer: Background of the Organization Bupa is a leading healthcare organization that provides health and care services over Australia and New Zealand. The organization helps the members to lead a long, healthy and happy life. It offers both healthcare and insurance services for the customers to ensure good health of their family and wellness. The company has to follow a standard procedure for every activity whether it is enrolment of insurance policies or handling of insurance claims. In this report, the focus is particularly on describing the process of claims handling within the organization. A model is designed to illustrate on the flow of activities that is being followed by the company when a health insurance claim is lodged by customer. Textual description of the chosen process The process that has been chosen for this report in health insurance claim handling that depicts the process that is being followed by Bupa insurance to handle claim requests from customers. The process that has been undertaken in this particular study is one of the activities that is being carried out in the business operations of the company. This process helps the customers to live a long, healthy and happier lives with support of the company. The process of claims handling comprises of two cases that is the claim amount may or may not exceed the range covered by the insurance policy being enrolled by the customer. The claiming of the health insurance amount can be processed by the customer as per their requirement whether hospital treatment, health issues or accidental incident but the receivable amount depends on the value of the enrolled insurance policy. In the chosen process, first step is taken by the customer who files a claim request to the company against their insurance policy. It is assumed that the customer is a member and has an insurance policy enrolled within the company. Then the request is being passed onto the claims handler who is responsible for handling the claims processing within the company. The claims handler after receiving the claim request from the customer checks whether the policy is valid or not. Now, if the claims handler finds the policy to be valid then he/she will enter the data into system so that it can be processed further or else the claim will be reject as there is no valid policy as mentioned by the customer. After the data is being entered into the system, the claim request is being forwarded to the Assessor in the service centre for investigating the case. The Assessor handling the case will then check whether the claim being requested in under the policy coverage or not. If the assessor finds that the claim is being under coverage then he/she approves for preliminary estimate of the amount that can be given against the policy. The approved estimate may or may not exceed the range fixed for the insurance policy so if the estimate is found to exceed the range then the request is being passed onto the Assessor present in the Headquarter and if it does not exceeds the range then the claim request will be passed to the Senior Assessor. The Assessor present in headquarter is then requested to conduct an investigation on the case that has been put forward by the customer. After checking the requirements of the customer, the Headquarter assessor identifies whether the mentioned cause for claim is under the coverage of enrolled policy by the customer. If the Headquarter assessor finds that it is under coverage then he/she processes further to determine the actual expense and approves the case but forwards to the Senior Assessor to check the case for the claim request which is again connected indirectly with the Assessor in service centre remains as if the estimate does not exceeds the range. Now after verification of the claims case by Senior Assessor, data is being entered into the management system for processing of payment and the claims handler is being informed about the payment being processed. The claims handler then processes payment to the customer and at the time of payment processing the system has to perform two operations. The system after processing claim amount for the customer closes the case and files the claim being processed against the requested claim on behalf of the particular customer. Finally, the customer can fulfill the requirements with the claim amount being processed from the health insurance claim process. BPMN model of the chosen process Figure 1: BPMN model for Health Insurance Claim process (Source: Created by Author) Overview and explanation of assumptions The assumptions that has been considered for designing the business process model in context to the health insurance claim process are listed as below: The type of claim being made is one that can be lodged online, and does not require the policy holder to phone, mail in a claim, or visit a claim branch in order to lodge the claim. The health insurance claim is logged online by the policyholder prior to the claim being received by the Health Insurance Company (presumably via a support portal). The health insurance claim being lodged includes specific details about the claim including the claimants details, the practitioner they are claiming services for, and the item codes for the individual services they are claiming for. The health insurance claim contains photos or scanned copies of receipts for the health service as a verification method for the health insurance company. The conditions of the policy being valid (indicated in an early step in the process) also include the assumption that the policy has surpassed all waiting periods associated with type of claim being made against the policy. The health insurance claim being made is that of general dental, as to not need to differentiate the different types of claims being made and ways that they can be made. The health insurance company has a system that calculate the refund amount, and no manual intervention to calculate the amount needing to be refunded is needing to be made by the finance team. The system used by the health insurance company stores all previous claim requests that are able to be reassessed and reopened should the circumstances require it. Once the claim is finalized on the end of the insurance company, no intervention is needed by the claimant in order for the claim to be marked as closed. Bibliography de Oca, I. M. M., Snoeck, M., Reijers, H. A., Rodrguez-Morffi, A. (2015). A systematic literature review of studies on business process modeling quality.Information and Software Technology,58, 187-205. Harmon, P. (2015). The scope and evolution of business process management. InHandbook on business process management 1(pp. 37-80). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. Koschmider, A., Caporale, T., Fellmann, M., Lehner, J., Oberweis, A. (2015). Business process modeling support by depictive and descriptive diagrams.Enterprise modelling and information systems architectures. Li, Y., Cao, B., Xu, L., Yin, J., Deng, S., Yin, Y., Wu, Z. (2014). An efficient recommendation method for improving business process modeling.IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics,10(1), 502-513. Pinggera, J., Soffer, P., Fahland, D., Weidlich, M., Zugal, S., Weber, B., ... Mendling, J. (2015). Styles in business process modeling: an exploration and a model.Software Systems Modeling,14(3), 1055-1080. Rosa, M. L., Van Der Aalst, W. M., Dumas, M., Milani, F. P. (2017). Business process variability modeling: A survey.ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR),50(1), 2. Van Der Aalst, W. M., La Rosa, M., Santoro, F. M. (2016). Business process management. Welcome. (2018).Bupa - a global healthcare company. Retrieved 29 March 2018, from https://www.bupa.com/