Drilling Down


Book Description

For more than a century, oil has been the engine of growth for a society that delivers an unprecedented standard of living to many. We now take for granted that economic growth is good, necessary, and even inevitable, but also feel a sense of unease about the simultaneous growth of complexity in the processes and institutions that generate and manage that growth. As societies grow more complex through the bounty of cheap energy, they also confront problems that seem to increase in number and severity. In this era of fossil fuels, cheap energy and increasing complexity have been in a mutually-reinforcing spiral. The more energy we have and the more problems our societies confront, the more we grow complex and require still more energy. How did our demand for energy, our technological prowess, the resulting need for complex problem solving, and the end of easy oil conspire to make the Deepwater Horizon oil spill increasingly likely, if not inevitable? This book explains the real causal factors leading up to the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history, a disaster from which it will take decades to recover.




Drilling Down: Turning Customer Data into Profits with a Spreadsheet


Book Description

I spend a lot of time in marketing-oriented discussion lists. If you do, you probably also sense the incredible frustration of people who keep asking about using their customer data to retain customers and increase profits. Everybody knows they should be doing it, but can't find out how to do it. Consultants and agencies make this process sound like some kind of "black magic", something you can't possibly do yourself. I disagree. I think the average business owner can do a perfectly decent job creating profiles and using them to retain customers and drive profits. Thus the book. The examples provided are Internet specific, but the methods can be used in any business where customer data is available. This book is about the down-and-dirty, nitty-gritty art of taking chunks of data generated by your customers and making sense of it, getting it to speak to you, creating insight into what types of marketing or general business actions you can take to make your business more profitable. We'll be talking about "action-oriented" ideas you can generate on your own to drive sales and profits, ideas that will reveal themselves by analyzing your own customer data, using only a spreadsheet. We have all heard how important it is to collect customer data, to "know" your customer. What I don't hear much about is what exactly you DO with all that data once you have collected it. How is it used? What exactly is Drilling Down into the data supposed to tell me, and what am I looking for when I get there? For that matter, what data should I be collecting and how will I use it when I have it? And how much is this process going to cost me? The following list outlines what you will learn and be able to do after reading the Drilling Down book: --What data is important to collect about a customer and what data is not --How to create action-oriented customer profiles with an Excel spreadsheet --How to use these profiles to plan marketing promotions --How to use these profiles to define the future value of your customers --How to use these profiles to measure the general health of your business --How to use these profiles to encourage customers to do what you want them to --How to predict when a customer is about to defect and leave you --How to increase your profits while decreasing your marketing costs --How to design high ROI (Return on Investment) marketing promotions How to blow away investors with predictions of the future profitability of your business Table of Contents Chapter 1: What's a Customer Profile? Chapter 2: Data-Driven Marketing - Customer Retention Basics Chapter 3: The Language of Data, The Science of Profit Chapter 4: Interactivity Changes the Rules of the Game Chapter 5: How to Build a Customer Profiling Spreadsheet Chapter 6: How to Profile (Score) Your Customers Chapter 7: Marketing Using Customer Scores - Basic Approach Chapter 8: Using Customer Characteristics and Multiple Scores Chapter 9: Watching Scores over Time - Customer LifeCycles Chapter 10: Customer Scoring Grids - Profiling on Steroids Chapter 11: Calculating and Using LifeTime Value in Promotions Chapter 12: Turning Profiles into Profits - the Staging Area Chapter 13: Turning Profiles into Profits - the Financial Model Chapter 14: Turning Profiles into Profits - Financial Tweaks Chapter 15: Measuring Success in Best Customer Promotions Chapter 16: Some Final Thoughts Seasonal Adjustments to Marketing Promotions Don't Fight Customer Behavior CRM Software and Customer Scoring Data-Driven Marketing Program Descriptions There's more! Automate the basic customer scoring process on large groups of customers. Use the software included free with this edition! Windows OS and MS Access and Excel required to run the software.




Drilling Down on America's Energy Future


Book Description




Drilling Down and Leveling Up


Book Description

Building a business is just like building a house: You need a blueprint. Without this kind of tactical plan, it's hard to pinpoint where things go wrong-or visualize how much better they could be.This book shows readers how to attain consistency, profitability, and scalability in your construction or trade business. As the cofounder of the industry-leading coaching practice Small Business Growth Partners, Chris has helped develop a proven system for unlocking organizational growth. Whether you've been struggling with personnel issues, marketing, sales, processes, or anything in between, this book will help you transform your pain points into strengths.




Pandemic Drill-Down


Book Description




Crystal Reports XI Official Guide


Book Description

The authorized guide to the latest edition of the #1 business intelligence software product - Crystal Reports. More than 16 million licenses of Crystal Reports have been shipped to date. This book is a reference designed to provide hands-on guidance for the latest release of the product suite. The latest version of Crystal Reports and the Business Objects enterprise reporting suite delivers vast product enhancements and a tighter integration that will drive upgrades from licensees. Brand new features (e.g. Dynamic and Cascading Parameter Generation) will also appeal to new audiences. Over 1 million new Business Intelligence licensees will be migrating to the Crystal Enterprise Reporting platform, as this is the first release of the software with the existing Business Objects (BO) products being integrated into the Crystal infrastructure. As Business Objects insiders, the authors bring unique and valuable real-world perspectives on implementations and uses of the Crystal Reports product. The book also includes content, tutorials and samples for reporting within the Microsoft Visual Studio.NET and J2EE development environments and also on top of the SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW) and the Peoplesoft platform. Advanced content on report distribution and integration into the secured managed reporting solution known as Business Objects Enterprise XI, is also now included in this definitive user guide with coverage on the new Web Services SDK.




GUI Bloopers


Book Description

"Better read this book, or your design will be featured in Bloopers II. Seriously, bloopers may be fun in Hollywood outtakes, but no movie director would include them in the final film. So why do we find so many bloopers in shipped software? Follow Jeff Johnson as he leads the blooper patrol deep into enemy territory: he takes no prisoners but reveals all the design stupidities that users have been cursing over the years." -Jakob Nielsen Usability Guru, Nielsen Norman Group "If you are a software developer, read this book, especially if you don't think you need it. Don't worry, it isn't filled with abstract and useless theory--this is a book for doers, code writers, and those in the front trenches. Buy it, read it, and take two sections daily." -Don Norman President, UNext Learning Systems hr align="CENTER" size="1" width="75%" GUI Bloopers looks at user interface design bloopers from commercial software, Web sites, and information appliances, explaining how intelligent, well-intentioned professionals made these dreadful mistakes--and how you can avoid them. While equipping you with all the theory needed to learn from these examples, GUI expert Jeff Johnson also presents the reality of interface design in an entertaining, anecdotal, and instructive way. This is an excellent, well-illustrated resource for anyone whose work touches on usability issues, including software engineers, Web site designers, managers of development processes, QA professionals, and usability professionals. Features Takes a learn-by-example approach that teaches you to avoid common errors by asking the appropriate questions of your own interface designs. Includes two complete war stories, drawn from the author's personal experience, that describe in detail the challenges faced by UI engineers. Covers bloopers in a wide range of categories: GUI components, layout and appearance, text messages, interaction strategies, Web site design, responsiveness issues, management decision-making, and even more at www.GUI-bloopers.com. Organized and formatted based on the results of its own usability testing--so you can quickly find the information you need, packaged in easily digested pieces.




No Stress Tech Guide to Crystal Reports Basic for Visual Studio 2008 for Beginners


Book Description

If you have been looking for a beginners book that has a lot of easy to understand, step-by-step instructions and screen shots that show you how to complete and master Crystal Reports 2008 design techniques correctly, this is the book for you. The No Stress Tech Guide To Business Objects Crystal Reports 2008 For Beginners book, is a self-paced visual guide to learning Crystal Reports and is written from the perspective that the reader has not created a report before or has not used Crystal Reports. This book is for the beginner and intermediate user. To help you become familiar with the options and features, this book contains over 500 illustrations that provide a visual tour of the software. If you are looking for a book for Crystal Reports Basic for Visual Studio 2010, see ISBN 9781935208129. If you have used a previous version of Crystal Reports and only want to learn about the new features, see ISBN 1-935208-01-2 What's New in Crystal Reports 2008.




Building Dashboards with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Excel 2013


Book Description

Follow real-life, step-by-step examples that provide the building blocks to build engaging dashboards. This practical guide is all about doing. Get your data, open up Excel, and go!You don't need to be an expert to get the most out of your Dynamics GP implementation and build great-looking, easily maintained dashboards using Microsoft Excel. If you have a working knowledge of Dynamics and Excel you'll be producing amazing dashboards in hours not days.




No Stress Tech Guide to Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2005 for Beginners


Book Description

This book is specifically for the version of Crystal Reports that comes with Visual Studio 2005. If you have been looking for a beginners book that has a lot of easy to understand, step-by-step instructions and screen shots that show you how to learn and use the version of Crystal Reports that comes bundled with Visual Studio 2005, this is the book for you. The No Stress Tech Guide To Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2005 For Beginners book, is a self-paced visual guide to learning Crystal Reports and is written from the perspective that the reader has not created a report before or has not used Crystal Reports. This book is for the beginner and intermediate user. To help you become familiar with the options and features, this book contains over 500 illustrations that provide a visual tour of the software. Crystal Reports Basic for Visual Studio 2008, ISBN 978-0-9773912-8-8 is also available. If you are looking for a beginners book for Crystal Reports XI, see ISBN 978-0-9773912-3-3.