Business Information System Management

Online Health Care Business Consultant Report

2009-07-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Khan's Obesity and Skin Online Clinic (KOSOC) is a collaboration of committed dermatologists and obesity specialists working online to provide low-cost and effective health care only for users in United Kingdom (UK). The objectives of this collaboration are to provide awareness and give treatment of Obesity and Dermatosis, which are two very common diseases in our society. Internet is the most accessible and easy to use service for everyone. Moreover people do not have time to visit doctors to discuss their health conditions. The specialists at KOSOC want to use internet to bring medical consultants closer to their customers, which will be 50% cheaper than the traditional general practitioner. Furthermore, the conventional time consuming process for getting an appointment and waiting in a queue for the turn, no more remains.
This is an instant service where patients have to log in and fill a medical form about their symptoms and get instant reply from the doctors with required prescription. They can order medicines from the same website. This service will not and should not replace your general practitioner but it is instant access which brings doctors closer to patients. Some of the medical conditions require face to face meetings where this service fails. However there are many others medical conditions, such as obesity and dermatosis which can be safer to prescribe remotely.

Services and Products are divided in to these two ranges. There are online obesity control programmes which will guide customers how to use health diet plan, which will differ from individual to individual .On the other hand, our skin clinic have many product for skin toning, anti ageing and specific skin diseases. This website will also supply skin and obesity related medicines which will be delivered by post.

Choosing a company name for registration

As the board of governors has already decided the company's name as Khan's Obesity and Skin Online Clinic, it is recommended to register the same name so that clinic must have legal grounds for 'identity fraud'. According to Companies Act 2006 (Commencement No. 6 and Commencement nos. 3 and 5 (Amendment)) Order 2008, there are several regulations applied when choosing a company name. Act states that company name must end with the prescribed statutory indicator such as "limited", "public limited company" or "community interest company" etc. The name must not be used by already existing company or shouldn't be offensive .Some names require the approval of the Secretary of State if they suggest any connection with the Her Majesty's Government or local government (Companies House, a, no date). The name of the company which sounds similar with any other but have different spellings will be accepted. However, we should avoid the name which is misleading to the public or used as trademark by another company. It is recommended that before choosing the name of the company we must search the name from companies' House website www.companieshouse.gov.uk as well as from UK Intellectual Property Office www.ipo.gov.uk/cna so that any legal action of passing-off will not happen. Even if the companies' house does not raise any objection to the company name this does not give you defence from trade mark infringement or passing off claim.

Keeping in view all these regulations, the company's name Khan's Obesity and Skin Online Clinic private limited is the most appropriate, according to all the clauses on the Companies Act. This
name is coined after researching according to the above mentioned procedure.

Process of registering the company's name

Under the UK Companies Act 2006, any business organization must register with the Registrar of Companies at Companies House, located in their respective regions (England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland). To establish a company, we have to file an application accompanying following documents to UK Companies Act 2006 (Companies House, b, no date)

Memorandum of association which must be authenticated by each subscriber,
Application for registration must contain the company proposed name; it must state that the company is limited by share or by guarantee and the company is private or public. If the company is limited by share, then it requires a statement of capital and initial share holding or in case of limited by guarantee, a statement of guarantee is required. Application must contain the name and address of person who is the first director or directors of the company. The application also contains name of the first secretary (or joint secretaries) of the company
Statement of compliance

All these forms are available at companies' house website as Form 10 and Form 12. We need to attach Memorandum of Association and Articles of Association also. Furthermore Form 12 must be signed in the presence of the Solicitor, Commissioner for Oaths, and Notary Public.

With the reference to above Act, fill Form 10 with our company name is Khan's Obesity and Skin Online Clinic private limited and address of the company office 171 Colin Crescent Colindale NW9 6ET, name and address of the agent if the documents of company registration are submitted by the agent such as solicitor etc and Name, Address, Date of birth, Nationality of the first Secretary and Directors. This form must be signed by all the members in the memorandum of association.

The form 12 is an announcement of agreement with the UK Companies Act 2006 which must be signed by the members in the memorandum of association in the presence of Solicitor, Commissioner for Oath, Notary Public.

The standard fee of registration is £20 and will require about 8 to 10 working days for processing, if the application is complete and no objection is raised by the company house. Furthermore if urgent registration is required in one day, then urgent fee of £50 has to pay.

The companies' house will register the company name and provide a Certificate of incorporation which state that company with mention name has been created according to the Companies Act. It is compulsory that company must compile annual returns and update all the accounts. Private limited must have at least one director as it is in our case.

License

According to Medical Act 1983, all medical practitioners must register to General Medical Council (GMC), but before16 November 2009 the doctors need to register for new license called 'The License to Practice'.
This license requires medical practitioners to demonstrate the best practices defined by the GMC in the Medical Act. All those doctors already register with GMC must reregister themselves and fee of The License to Practice is £410

License for Pharmacy

Under the Medicines (Registration of Pharmacies) Regulations Medical pharmacy must register with Health Sciences Authority and must display the Certificate of Registration of a Pharmacy. But in case of online pharmacy, Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain has recommended the code of ethics (Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, 2004) which states that every online pharmacy must display name and address of pharmacy at which they are conducting business. Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain also introduces a logo containing registration number, which must be displayed on their website. It shows that they are registered to the Royal Pharmaceutical society and have lenience to see medicines. This logo can be obtained this logo by filling am online application form and paying annual fee is £50 each, after assessing your application Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain will issue html code for the logo which is used in website and green online pharmacy logo must be visible all the time on the website (Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, 2004)

Intellectual property
1. Trade mark

After registration with Companies House it is strongly recommended that this company must apply for a trade mark. According to Community Design Regulation (council regulation (EC) 6/2002) every trading or service provider company should also consider their trade mark registered before trading and providing any services so that customer can recognise the product and service of a particular trade. It is strongly recommended that KOSOC should register its trademark so that it should have strong legal grounds against trademark infringement according to Trade Mark Act (1994). This also helps trading standards officers or police to bring criminal charges against counterfeits that use your trademark. This does not mean that only registered trademark can be protected under the Law, (Clarke, 2005) trademark can also be protected without registering by using TM with your trademark. You can also take action against the unregistered trade under the Passing off Law, Trade Mark Act (1994).

Trademark under Trade Mark Act 1994 is defined as any sign which distinguishes the goods or services of one trade from another. Customers can recognize the product and service of a particular trade. Trade mark can be a word, logo, slogan, three dimensional shapes etc. Internationally trade mark is divided in to 45 classes and the most likely classes regarding medical clinic are 01-2, 05-2, 09-2, 10-1, and 44-5. Any one can search these classes from intellectual property office website http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/tm/t-os/t-find-class.htm

It is also recommended that the KOSOC should register its trademark in the region in which services is being provided. In KOSOC's case, it should only be in UK because each country has its own trademark registry which is only valid in that particular area. Before applying for trade mark, it is necessary to carry out a research for similar trademarks to avoid the conflict with pre-existing national right. Even in case of a website, which is globally accessible, but KOSOC will only provide service in the UK. So search should be carried out in UK trademarks, European Community trade marks (CTMs), or International trademark's database if needed. We can search it from the private website which contains database of all the UK companies' trademarks and domain name, for e.g. http://www.anewbusiness.co.uk/trade_marks/search.php.

Before applying for trademark, KOSOC needs to create a distinctive word, logo, picture or other sign otherwise the application will be rejected. It is also mentioned in the Trademark Act 1994 that the trademark should not look and sound same or similar to any of the trademarks already registered, it should not be offensive, against the law or deceptive. There are some trademarks which are protected against international agreements such as Article 6 of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. If we have a distinctive trade mark and have verified it from the trade mark database, then we can apply for trade mark in the Intellectual Property Office.

KOSOC can apply for a trade mark at Intellectual Property Office http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ and can also submit a trademark application form or fill a form online from http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/tm/t-os/t-apply-online.htm.

Application

Form TM3 is the used to apply for trade mark which is available online http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tm3.pdf. Information required to fill this form is the illustration of your mark, colour, trade mark class number and list of goods and services traded under this mark. Name and address of the person applying for trademark is necessary and it is also included in trademark journal and could be used for notification of infringement of trademark.

Form FS2 is used for payment of fee.

Trade Mark registration Fee

Application fee of trade mark is £200 for one class of services or goods and £50 extra is charged for other class.

Trademark office examines our application to ensure that goods and services are correctly classified and trademark is distinctive. They will search it in UK trade marks, European Community trade marks (CTMs), or International marks database for similarities. If the examiner objects to our mark due to existence of similar mark, we will have two month to resolve the objection other wise they will reject our application. If there is no objection in the trade mark, they will advertise our application in the Trade Marks Journal. One trade mark is publishing in Trade mark journal any one can oppose this trade mark within two month time. If no one opposes this trademark, IP Office will provide the registration certificate.

Domain name

Domain name is a unique and easy way to remember alphabetic form of internet protocol address which is used to represent a unique computer on the internet. Users type the domain name in browser to access a particulate website. Domain name provide an address to company's website which can be used by customer to access service and product of your company. Domain name is provided by the domain name registrar on first come, first serve basis. We can not register a domain name which is already registered; we have to find availability of our select domain name from whois search http://www.whois.net

We can register the domain name through an ISP, which will deal as an agent on our behalf or we can directly apply for domain name on 'Nominet', which is a registered authority only for UK domain only.

We recommend you to register domain through ISP because they will provide you with website hosting, email address and website development service as well. Therefore, in registering the domain name, you will, in effect, be entering into two contracts; one between you and ISP and the other between you and registrar of the registration authority (Clarke, 2005).

Moreover, you need the following details before going into this contract: name, address and contact detail of the company for queries, billing address.

The cost of registration of .co.uk is £40 and .com is £50. But when applying through an ISP, cost variance depends upon the additional service provided by the ISP. It takes 24 to 48 hours to register your domain name but your website will be fully visible in 36 hours to 5 days on the internet.

When selecting an ISP for domain name registration and website hosting, it is recommended that the ISP selected for this purpose must be the member of an industrial association such as (ISPA).This industrial association is useful when launching any complaints against selected ISP. It is also important to verify the following key factors when signing an agreement between you and the ISP for buying a domain name.

Prices
Reliability of service and service availability
Security provided against attack on your website
Support and service level agreement
Law enforcement requirement

Competitor Survey

Before starting any new business, it is always recommended to identify the competitor and analyse their strategies, services and product line to understand the requirement of the customers and find gaps in the market which you can fulfil to get the competitive advantage. For that purpose, this survey has been conducted. There are many online clinics in UK and mostly they treat obesity and skin, the two most common problems in our society. People are ready to spend money on their appearances. Most of the website only provides the consultation and appointment but we are also providing online pharmacy. But skin treatment also covers cosmetic surgery which is not included in this survey.

We have selected Home Clinic http://www.homeclinic.co.uk/ and The Online Clinic
http://www.theonlineclinic.co.uk/default.asp because both provides treatment for Obesity and online pharmacy and we selected Spire Health Care http://www.spirehealthcare.com/ and Elan Medical Skin
http://www.elan-medical-clinic.co.uk/ for skin treatment but we are not including the Cosmetic Surgery section in the Survey. The reason of selection four websites with two of each type is that it will provide a fair sample of each kind. There are very few website which provides both obesity and skin care services together, Moreover, Home Clinic and The Online Clinic provide medical treatment for obesity and also provide an online pharmacy whereas Spire Health Care and Elan Medical Skin are skin clinics.

We are assessing these sites on the basis of advertising and marketing campaigns, customer care and website design and will try to find gaps in customer service and product line which we will fill to achieve the market share.

Both the websites Home Clinic and The Online Clinic have comparable marketing strategy. On the main page, they both emphasise on the quality and standard they follow, which is the key aspect of medical business which will help them to increase the patients' trust at the beginning of consultation. Furthermore, they also advertise the payment methods for medicines and consultation fee, the delivery method of their medicines, their contact number and address. This reflects that they are genuine and hence, enhance more trust of the users. The Online Clinic explains the legal detail of buying medicines online, which is a good step as Obesity is a common problem and is spread across a wide range of population. On the other hand Spire Health Care and Elan Medical Skin are very fancy websites. It could be because they target slightly posh markets which are popular of its spending on beauty product. Both the skin clinic websites only provide consultation and book appointments online but do not sell any medical products. Spire Health Care introduces very attractive offers of 'medical loans' and 0% finance which is the good method to attract the customer during this credit crunch. Like the previous two obesity websites, these websites also provide the contact details, quality and standard they maintain to ensure the patient's trust.

Customer Care

Home clinic provides 'Question Chat Now' sections where you directly ask questions from the doctor for instant reply. On the other hand, Elan Medical Skin Clinic adopts another strategy to contact doctors. There is a simple form to fill with details of the symptoms of the disease that is e-mailed to the doctors and they reply back. Home Clinic and The Online Clinic offer their customers to have an online account, which is used to consult their doctors and keep the treatment and payment record. This helps patients to securely and secretly communicate with their doctors, thus increasing their trust and confidence on the doctor. The entire four websites display their price list online and provide absolutely free consultancy, which is another superior move to satisfy the customer. All websites provide comprehensive information about their services and products online and explain all the procedures of treatments available.

Website design

All four website are built on simple and easy-to-navigate design. They use natural colours which does not distract the customers' eyes. The layout of Spire Health Care, Elan Medical Skin and Home Clinic
are centre-aligned and the main page contains brief information about the product and services. Clicking on a particular link will lead to separate page with detailed information about the disease. However, The Online Clinic follows the same technique of presenting information but the website is left-aligned and it wastes large space which could be used for advertisement. Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy are visible on the entire four website and explain detail method of there data protection.

The success of a medical business lies in gaining the trust of the patient. To achieve this, we will provide the names, professional qualification and experience of our consultant on our medical panel which is missing in all four sites. We will also introduce a 24/7 help line which can be used any time for consultation. We will advertise the customized treatments for each of our patients depending on their conditions. We will offer special delivery of medicines on holidays too, along with standard deliveries. We will offer group treatment programmes in obesity which will encourage patients' motivation. These offers are not given in any of the websites discussed above. The design of our website will be similar to the above-discussed websites because we don't want users to waste time in finding required information. We will provide audio narrator for blind persons if they access our website. The user can also change the font of our website for easier reading. None of these options are found in the discussed websites. Links for terms and conditions, legal requirements and privacy policy will be visible in all pages of our website. We will adopt the same style of availability of information about treatment and the diseases which all the mentioned websites use. We will not advertise our product range, but prescribed medicines will be available to our registered user only.

Privacy and Data protection

Once a company starts online activities, which includes the processing of personal data and credit card detail for payment of products and treatments, it automatically has to become obligated to the Data Protection Act 1998. This act governs the processing of information about a living individual in UK and failure to comply with this Act is punishable. It is significant for business that contains sensitive information about their customers like in medical business to comply all the rules of this Act. Online business is base on customer's trust, so it recommended that privacy policy should be remain posted all the time on the web and all users have to tick check box with consent statement of reading term and condition and privacy policy when submitting their personal information online.

Information Commission Office oversees the data protection Act and all the businesses which store or process the personal data of their customers should register with Information Commission and must notify the types and processing of personal data. There are eight practices which must be opted for, when processing any personal data. "

1. Personal data should be processed fairly and lawfully.

2. Personal data should be obtained only for one or more specified purposes, and should not be further processed in any manner incompatible with other purposes.

3. Personal data should be adequate and relevant.

4. Personal data should be accurate and where necessary, kept up-to-date.

5. Personal data processed for any purpose or purposes should not be kept for longer than is necessary.

6. Personal data should be processed in accordance with the rights of data subjects under the Act.

7. Appropriate technical and organisational measures should be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data.

8. Personal data should not be transferred to a country outside the European Economic Area unless that country ensures an adequate level of protection. "(zedbank, N.D.)

(http://www.zedbank.com/A7-dataprotection.php viewed on 09-June-2009)

These are more general concerns regarding Data Protection Act (DPA) 1998. In case of health care and medical record, it is treated as sensitive data in DPA Section 68. According to Data Protection Act, in processing sensitive information, following are the three main concerns which you will encounter regarding the collection of personal detail.

The patient must give explicit consent before processing his or her personal data.
If the information processed is medical diagnosis, then only the health professional or the person who owes a duty of confidentiality can process this information.
If data is transferred to a third party like a call centre or for billing purpose, then a written undertaking must be obtained from the third party confirming that they will only use the data as instructed to do so.

To resolve the first concern, website must force the user to read the privacy policy to tick the consent check box before submitting personal details when filling the registration form, signing for a medical treatment or submitting the symptoms of diseases. Secondly, website should enforce a security policy in which every server room where the data of the patients is stored must have access control doors and CCTV cameras. Only authorized person can access that room. Moreover, all the doctors who read patients' record must owe a duty of confidentiality .Thirdly, when the personal data is handed over to the third party for billing purpose, they have to give an undertaking stating that they will only use this data for the purpose required and will not forward it to any other party.

The issues which website must address in our privacy policy include:

Full contact detail of our company for user's concern.
General detail of how the user data is handled.
Date of the latest updating of information in privacy policy.
Information to disable the cookie technology and how this technology is used in the website.

Advertising and Marketing

To start online advertising on website is highly profitable for business but there are some legal and regulatory requirements which we should bear in mind before advertising and marketing. Although there is no single legislation which applies to advertisement, there are some industrial self-regulated codes which need to be measured. Advertising Standard Authority (ASA) has some code of practices which applies to online advertisement and their main objective is to provide truthfulness, transparency, morality and decency in advertisements and to protect against unfair competition and misuse of intellectual property.

There are serious offences against false, misleading and misrepresentation advertisement. The laws applicable against these crimes are described in the Trade Description Act 1968, specially Misleading Advertisements Regulations 1988 (as amended in 2000 and 2003) and Consumer Protection Act 1987, s. 20.(?) In case of advertising medicines, The Medicines (Advertising) Regulations 1994 S. 7 states that no person can advertise medicines which are supplied by prescription. Slimming and cosmetic products can be advertised but it is good to check your advertisement from Medicines and Healthcare Products' Regulatory Agency by sending an e-mail at advertising@mhra.gsi.gov.uk. In case of marketing medical services, it is recommended that the wording and images of ads must not be a misrepresentation or contain offensive images which come under Obscene Publications Act 1959 or Child Protection Act 1978.

In case of direct marketing by sending unsolicited e-mails for advertising and marketing purpose, there are various implications which must be considered before sending e-mails. In the Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations 2003, it is stated that explicit consent must be required by the consumer before sending any unsolicited e-mails. It is suggested that when the user is registered on the website, there must be a check box to get opt-in request from the user. It is also stated in the regulation that e-mail must contain name, geographical location and details of any supervisory authority which represent this e-mail and it should be clearly identified as advertisement. According to Direct Marketing Association which governs the code of practice for E-commerce, best practice is that unsolicited e-mail must contain mechanisms which help customer to get away from unsolicited e-mail list.

If a company wants to start a monthly lottery for the customers, there are some regulation which should be given due importance. According to the Lotteries and Amusements Act 1976, private lottery is illegal but there are some exemptions which include lottery for charity. Small lotteries are allowed only when the prize money is less than £50 or when the prizes are not in the form of cash. Private lottery "shall not be exhibited, published or distributed with any written notice or advertisement of the lottery" (Lotteries and Amusements Act 1976), prize of each ticket must be written on the ticket and the purpose of the lottery must also be mentioned.

Taxation

The taxation structure of an online company is not different from any other companies. As this company is based in UK, all UK tax regimes for business companies will be applicable on this company too. Corporation tax is the first tax that is to be paid by this company on all its taxable profits which is 28% of income profit and capital profit. If the company qualifies as small company between £50,000 and £300,000 profit, then tax rate will be 21%, which is calculated in accounting period of 12th month, but for newly formed companies, filing the first return can be more than 12 months. All the taxes in the UK are collected by HMRC. From 1st April 2011, we will be able to pay corporate tax online but now we can only fill our returns online (HM Revenue & Customs, N.D.). Since April 2002, there are certain tax exemptions on starting a new business. For example; tax relief is available on intangibles like intellectual property, information technology and goodwill. Capital allowance allows the business to write off certain kinds of capital expenditure against the income profits, which is 25% of a reducing balanced basis, will be writing off. Every UK Company must run a PAYE scheme to deduct income tax and national insurance for its employees and directors' salaries and must file P11d returns to HMRC at the end of the each year.
HRMC department might visit the company to see the procedure of PAYE scheme. These are the standard taxes which each company in the UK has to pay. But in case of online business, according to OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development) Ottawa conference 1998, there are no further tax liabilities other than applicable to standard trading companies in their respective country. Tax is applicable on selling of products and services on internet. It is also applicable on the selling of digital products like prescription in case of an online clinic. Value Added Tax (VAT) is the tax which is applicable on supplies of goods and services on a taxable person or business in the UK or EU in some cases. Each company must register for VAT and it must charge amount equal to VAT from the account of customer when goods and services are supplied. There is no difference in case of online transaction regarding VAT but there are some important considerations when dealing with business in UK or EU and private customers of UK and EU. For example, if the material goods are supplied to a VAT-registered business or a customer, there will be zero rate of VAT. But if a UK-based business is supplying goods or services to any private customer in EU, the UK VAT will be applicable. In case of digital goods, for example; software or internet service package, the supply of website housing is treated as services and you are no longer required to report VAT on supplies to the business in EU or any member of the state or the rest of the world. In case of customer in the UK, the payment of UK VAT is applicable on any of the two services or goods.

Reference

Companies House, a, http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/about/gbhtml/ca_gba7.shtml (accessed 25-05-09)

Companies House, b, http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/about/gbhtml/gbf1.shtml (accessed 25-05-09)

Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, http://www.rpsgb.org/pdfs/coun0412-C-88.pdf (accessed 25-05-09)

Clarke, O, 2005, A Practical Guide to E-commerce and Internet Law 2nd edition, Publisher ICSA Publishing, ISBN 1860723055.

Zedbank, N.D.

http://www.zedbank.com/A7-dataprotection.php (viewed on 09-June-2009)

HM Revenue & Customs, http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/ct/basics/intro.htm (viewed on 09-June-2009)

Legislation

Companies Act 2006 (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2006/pdf/ukpga_20060046_en.pdf)

Medical Act 1983 (http://www.gmc-uk.org/about/legislation/medical_act.asp)

Trade Marks Act 1994 (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1994/Ukpga_19940026_en_1.htm)

Data Protection Act 1998 (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/Acts/Acts1998/ukpga_19980029_en_1)

Trade Descriptions Act 1968 (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1968/pdf/ukpga_19680029_en.pdf )

Consumer Protection Act 1987 (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1987/pdf/ukpga_19870043_en.pdf)

The Medicines (Advertising) Regulations 1994 (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/SI/si1994/Uksi_19941932_en_1.htm)

Obscene Publications Act 1959 (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1959/pdf/ukpga_19590066_en.pdf)

Protection of Children Act 1978 (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/RevisedStatutes/Acts/ukpga/1978/cukpga_19780037_en_1)

Lotteries and Amusements Act 1976 (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/RevisedStatutes/Acts/ukpga/1976/cukpga_19760032_en_1)

What are the effects of Globalisation on Requirement Engineering?

2009-04-08T13:21:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Globalisation is about interconnection of economic, social, culture, technology, commercial among the organisations and peoples, which bring them together to form one interdependent community .The development made by human beings in the last century, is the greatest ever made in the history of mankind. This is mainly due to Globalisation and Information Technology. Globalisation enables us to exploit the vast natural and human resources of the world where as, information technology provides tools to help us achieve with progress. Due to Globalisation, software development units at Western is most shifted in the Eastern parts of the world, such as India, China and Pakistan, the reason mainly being inexpensive labour and recourses. This is because of rapid growth of IT education, due to which talented software developers and system analysis are easily available in eastern parts of world. This is also helpful for the developing countries in turn of employment generation and new review stream. Teams are working simultaneously from different parts of the world to develop software, resulting in satisfying the rapid demand of the software market in short time. “Reduce the development duration by 50% if there are two sites and by 67% if there are three sites” (Carmel E. at el, 2009).this is the main reason which compel western software industry to open development houses in the east.
Software is the essential part of Information systems, which help us to interact with IT infrastructure. Unlike other engineering fields, software engineering is not fully evolved. New methods and techniques of constructing software are introduced very frequently, but they still need lots of improvement and development. Requirement Analysis is the first and major process of Software Development, which help software developers to understand the real requirement and problem domain of the end user. This essay consist of two parts: first part explains the process of requirement engineering and the second describes the risk involved in requirement engineering due to by globalisation of software industry and finally the conclusion.

Requirement Engineering

Requirements are the needs of the user. In other words, these are the problems which need to be attended. In the software engineering context, it provides the justification of' “why” and “what” of software (Nuseibeh and Easterbrook, 2000) .The requirement engineering commences in the beginning of the software engineering process. If there are any mistakes or confusions in understanding the requirement, either by the software engineer or by the user, it is very difficult to resolve it after the development of the software. So it is suggested the requirement should be clearly communicated to both user and software developer so the end product will reflect the user needs.
Some examples of real systems which have failed due to poor requirement engineering are: (Bray, 2002)
• Performing Rights Society, PROMS project 1992
• London Stock Exchange TAURUS project
• London Ambulance Service Despatch system
The role of the Requirement Engineering in software engineering is very essential; it is like the foundation on which the software is built. According to Zave (1997):
“Requirements engineering is the branch of software engineering concerned with the real world goals for, functions of, and constraints on software systems. It is also concerned with the relationship of these factors to precise specifications of software behaviour and to their evolution over time and across software families.”
According to this definition, function and constraints of software should based on ‘real world goals’ and requirement engineering is used to translate these goal in to a software system.
A requirement engineer performs many tasks: first to identify the stakeholder/users as there could be many stakeholders and each with the different requirement: second to extract the tacit requirement of each of the stakeholder by close coordination and understanding of the work performed by each users effected by the new system, the third task is to list all the requirements for further examination and validation. It is necessary to confirm gathered requirement from the end user whether gathered information is actual account of stakeholder’s real requirement or not and finally negotiating the enlisted requirement with the stakeholder for further development of the software (Nuseibeh and Easterbrook, 2000)

Processes involved in Requirement Engineering

The input and output in requirement engineering process are “existing system requirement”, “stakeholder needs”, “organization standards” and “domain information”. As a result output are”agreed requirement”, “system specification”, “system models” (Kotonya and Sommerville, 1998) each of these outputs defines and states the user’s requirements, inform of a documents which helps software developers to understand who, what, how of problems faced by stakeholders.
The main actors involved in this process are domain experts often called End Users, System End User person who will administer the system after it is delivered, requirement engineer ,software engineer and project manager: each of them have specific role and deliverables. (Kotonya and Sommerville, 1998)
The processes involved in Requirement engineering are:
• Requirement Elicitation
• Requirement Analysis and Negotiation
• Requirement documentation
• Requirement validation

Requirement Elicitation
Requirement elicitation is the first step in requirement engineering. It is all about information gathering, identifying the correct source and method used to gather these requirements (Bray, 2002). The activities performed by the Requirement Engineer in requirement elicitation are
1. Establishes the objectives by identifying the business goals and understanding the problem to be solved.
2. Understands the background of the organization by analyzing the structure of the organisation, exploring the application domain and gathering knowledge about the existing system used in the organization
3. Gathers the knowledge about stake holder which includes the end user who will directly be affected by the system, customer or client “who pays for the system”, developer who will manage the system after deployment (Nuseibeh and Easterbrook, 2000) :
4. Extracts the “goal prioritisation” (Kotonya and Sommerville 1998).
5. Collects the stakeholder requirements because different stake holders may have different requirement.
6. Establishes the knowledge of domain in which system will work as no system works in vacuum, there must be other systems which will provide the inputs or extract output from this system.
7. Categorizes the organization requirement; this could be global policies of the organization. (Kotonya and Sommerville 1998).

There are many types of requirement which are necessary to collect during requirement elicitation process. Functional requirements are the ones which identify the core functionality of the system. Without them, the system will not complete or system will lose its basic needs. Performance requirements may be regarded as the “parameters” of the functionality which determine how fast or how reliable the system will work. Bray categorized it into “response times”, “quality of data”, “user friendly” (2002) .Design constraints are procured in requirement. It restricts the developer to perform the activities within limitation like system will only use client specified Object Oriented methodology, operation system, GUI or data base limitation.
Requirement Analysis and Notation
Requirements which are elicited earlier are analyzed and consensus of stakeholder on gathered requirement are required .This is performed because most of requirements may be ambiguous, incorrect, incomplete or might be incomparable with the budge allocated for development (Kotonya and Sommerville 1998). Requirement negotiation is vital because different stakeholders have different requirements and may disagree with requirement of different features of the system. Requirement negotiation is the process of discussing the conflict into the requirement and finding suitable consensus between stakeholders and developers .The main activity in Requirement Analysis is the analysis of check list which describes key feature such as “Premature design”,” combined requirement”,” unnecessary requirement” ,”non standard software and hardware”, “conformance with business goals”, “requirement ambiguity”, “requirement realism” and “requirement testability” (Kotonya and Sommerville 1998). Meeting is the most effective tool for requirement negations. Requirement analysis and negotiation is a time consuming task
Requirement documentation
Once the requirement is analyzed and all the ambiguities removed and all the stake holder are satisfied, then the gathered requirement are documented, as the standard defined in IEEE for further reference and traceability .This can used as a legal agreement of client and supplier about the characteristics and functionalities of developed software . The qualities of good requirement document as explain by IEEE are “Unambiguous”, “Complete”, “Verifiable”, “Consistent”, “Modifiable”, “Traceable”, “Usable during the Operation” and “Maintenance Phase” (IEEE Std 830-1984)
Requirement validation
Requirement validation is the last step in requirement engineering. As the name states, it is used to check the requirement document for any incomplete, ambiguous and inconsistent requirement in the document. The actors involved in the requirement validation are stakeholders, requirement engineer and system design engineer. The input required in the requirement process are “Requirement Document”, “Organization Knowledge “,”Organization standard” as the result of requirement validation output are “list of problem” and “agreed actions” (Kotonya and Sommerville 1998).Requirement Review is the technique used to validate the requirement. Prototyping is used to represent the gathered requirement in a small less function-able copy of the system required by the end user .It is another good technique to show the end-user how the system will work.

What is Globalisation?

Globalisation is the phenomena of making the world more connected interdependent, share the knowledge and resources. As definition suggests, it is a rapid increase in cross-border economic, social, technological exchange (globalisation guide, unknown). Globalisation started in the 19th century when the industries started producing commodities which were higher than the needs of local population and people started searching new markets to sell their products. The new ways of transportation aided globalisation to spread across the world. One of the reasons for globalisation is open, free markets. In the 80s “Structural Adjustment Programs” forced many third world countries to open their markets for foreign investors and trade. This encouraged them to spread their services and goods to developed countries. Free trade agreements like “North American Free Trade Agreement” and economic unions like the “European Union” led to higher rates of spread of money and ideas across the world. The growing cost of manufacture and labour in the industrialized nations compels them to seek other sources for cheap labour and resources. Developing countries give them perfect platform for both and help them to move the manufacturing plants to their countries. (SG Legal Solutions, 2008)

Information Technology and Globalisation

Information Technology (IT) is the driving from of globalisation. IT provides the communication and data services which help organizations to spread and connect their offices and peoples. In the context of the software industry, the most significant achievement of globalisation is Global Software work (GSW) (Shay at el, 2003) in other words distributed software development. In GWS software development team are collaborating with each other by using electronic collaboration site, email and video conferences to create the software collectively and development work follow the technique. called “Follow The Sun (FTS)” (Carmel E. at el, 2009) in with two or more team are situated at different geographic location and round the clock work is achieved by the difference of time zone between the two, when one team finishes one module at the end of the day it sends it to the other team in a region where the day has just started. Hence they just test the module and send it back for update. In this manner software are created in a much faster rate than before and this is all due to globalisation. (Shay at el, 2003)
These entire advances in the technology cannot help us to generate automated software like automobile industry where robots are used to manufacture automobile. We need human interactions in each process of software development from requirement to deployment, which leads us to failed software and cause disaster in financial, reputation and human life .There are many international standard which help us in maturing this process but error happen and mostly due to Human interaction.
It this section we are analyzing the effect of globalisation on one of the software engineering process i.e. Requirement Engineering which is elucidated briefly in previous section.
Requirement engineering in context of Distributed Software Development
Globalisation has change the nature of software development process ( Šmite , 2006), now teams which are located at vast geographical distance and different time zone can work on the same project ,this trend of developing software enable is resources “mobility “,knowledge sharing , “speeding time-to-market” , increase in “operational efficiency” (Smite, 2005).of software and this rapid development help the software industry to increase in production and effectively fulfil the requirement of customer. Many organizations from US and Europe form an alliance or partnership with software house in South Asia (India, Pakistan) and Far East to utilize the cheap resource and labour of these countries. The companies in US or Europe gather requirement by communicating with the customer and send the detail requirement document to the development in these countries .Some of these problem are explained by Berenbach (2006) the requirement engineer don’t have “time to read the requirement” from the customer and send the requirement document to developer, these types of problems are due to incompetence and are not analyse in this article. But according to some recent publications on effect of distributed requirement engineering we can categorize the effects of globalisation into three categories
Communication
Culture
Time
These categories are derived from the academic case studies performed by Edwards and Sridhar (2005) and real life projects and case studies described in articles by Damian and Zowghi (2003), Šmite, (2006), Berenbach (2006), Bhat, Gupta, Murthy (2006) and Hanisch & Corbitt (2004)
Communication
Communication is most important aspect in distributed requirement engineering (Hanisch & Corbitt, 2004), Success of any project depends on how the requirement is communicated to the developer and in the situation of distributed software engineering it becomes more difficult due to the geographical distant and mode of communication used (Gupta, Murthy 2006).Different formal and informal communication techniques are used in requirement engineering process (Hanisch & Corbitt, 2004),but major cause of project failure in Siemens Corporate are due to lack of communication Berenbach (2006) between the team members located in different offices of the company and even some fail due to movement of RE team of vendor from “onshore to offshore” and they reduce the communication between RE team of client (Bhat, Gupta, Murthy 2006). Electronic communication like Email is one of the most common asynchronous way to connect users with requirement engineers but it is found that email is less effective because email get lost or forgotten or misinterpret and end user may come up will same problem again, Damian and Zowghi (2003), so one of the most effective way to gather requirement in distributed environment is video conferences and live calibration software which enable you to interact with the end user directly and effectively (Damian and Zowghi, 2003).
Culture
Culture plays a critical role in any work and effect the requirement process in two ways, first differences in language of clients and development team can cause ambiguity in requirement and requirement document (Bhat, Gupta, Murthy, 2006). Language differences of client and vendor’s organization which is very common in outsourcing projects between Europe and India or Pakistan could lead to requirement document based on the “assumption derived from brief conversations” conducted between client and vendor .This can be overcome by using the standard language i.e. English throughout the project and define a glossary of terms used in that requirement document. Second most important aspect is Trust between the teams; this becomes more vital when the teams are distributed.”There is a wealth of research that systematically examines the effect of trust in the context of electronic commerce” (Cheung & Lee, 2001 cited in Edwards & Sridhar 2005) Virtual team project conducted by Edwards & Sridhar (2005) between student located in Canada and India clearly identify that trust level increase as the celebration between to team increase due to the use of synchronized method as Video conference Šmite, (2006)
Time
The differences in time zone is treated as a positive in the distributed requirement engineering because two teams located at different time zones can work for 24 hours a day on the project,since there is always a wide gap in the working hours of each team. This will increase the development and shorten the delivery time of the software. This time lapse gives extra time to both teams to utilize it in some useful way
On the other hand, there is a drawback is this, due to this difference in time the requirement engineer might not be in high spirits at dawn. According to Berenbach (2006) “if reviewers must be up at 3 am to conduct a Telco review, they may not be at their physical best, and might lack some enthusiasm.

Conclusion

Requirement engineering is all about understanding the right needs of right stockholders and translates them into system which will truly reflect the business value. In case of globalised distributed environment whether stakeholders or software developer are distributed on a geographical area, there are many obstacles in the requirement engineering process which need to addressed, for example one essential component of requirement elicitation is to identify the stakeholder, this process become difficult when the stakeholders are located in different geographical location and speak different language, to identify the correct stakeholder communication plays important role and project manager should use the standard language like English or some interpreter to identify or translator the real requirement . Difference of Time zone plays significant role in requirement negotiation with reference of both client and software developer because both have to either wake up or stay awake at wrong timings due to time zone different to negotiation and analysis the correct requirement.
Overall globalisation changes the conventional method of gathering requirement and new techniques are available which address communication, culture and time differences while gathering the requirement, but in overall globalisation increase the production of software and many developing countries are generating larger revenue due to shift in industry.

Reference List

Berenbach, B., 2006, Impact of Organizational Structure on Distributed Requirements Engineering Processes: Lessons Learned International Conference on Software Engineering 2006 international workshop on Global software development for the practitioner table of contents Shanghai, China Pages: 15 - 19 ISBN:1-59593-404-9
Bhat J. M., Gupta M, and. Murthy S. N, 2006 Overcoming Requirements Engineering Challenges: Lessons from Offshore Outsourcing, Software, IEEE Volume: 23, Issue: 5 On page(s): 38-44 ISSN: 0740-7459
Bray I.K. 2000, an Introduction to Requirements Engineering, Publisher by PEARSON EDUCATION (US) Date Published: 2002 ISBN-13: 9780201767926
Carmel E., Dubinsky Y., Espinosa A., (2009), Follow The Sun Software Development: New Perspectives, Conceptual Foundation, and Exploratory Field Study, International Conference on System Sciences, 2009. HICSS'09 42nd Hawaii
5-8 Jan. 2009
Damian D. E., Zowghi D.2003 Requirements Engineering challenges in multi-site software development Requirements Engineering Journal, 8, pp. 149-160, 2003
Edwards, H. K; Sridhar, V. 2005 Analysis of Software Requirements Engineering Exercises in a Global Virtual Team Setup Journal of Global Information Management, Vol. 13, Issue 2
Globalisation guide, Unknown viewed from http://www.globalisationguide.org/01.html on 25 February 2009
Globalization 2008 SG Legal Solutions viewed from http://sglegalsolutions.com/pdf/GLOBALIZATION.pdf on 25 February 2009
IEEE Guide to Software Requirements Specifications 1984 the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc 345 East 47th Street, New York, NY 10017, USA -1984
Nuseibeh B. and Easterbrook S., 2000, Requirements Engineering: A Roadmap, ICSE 2000, 22nd International Conference on Software Engineering, June 4-11, 2000, Limerick Ireland.
Sahay S., Nicholson B., Krishna S., 2003, Global IT Outsourcing:Software Development across Borders Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: December 2003 ISBN-13: 9780521816045
Šmite, D. 2006, Requirements Management in Distributed Projects, Journal of Universal Knowledge Management, vol. 1, no. 2 (2006), 69-76
Šmite, D., 2005 ,A Case Study: Coordination Practices in Global Software Development Product Focused Software Process Improvement, book series Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume 3547/2005 Springer Berlin / Heidelberg 1611-3349
Sommerville I., Kontonya G., 1998 Requirements Engineering: Processes and Techniques Publisher: Wiley Chichester Date Published: 1998 ISBN-13: 9780471972082
Zave P. (1997). Classification of Research Efforts in Requirements Engineering, ACM Computing Surveys, 29(4): 315-321.

Enterprise 2.0

2009-04-01T13:03:00.001-07:00

Introduction

From last ten years web applications has changed significantly; earlier web site was composed of static pages. Companies use their website as a mean to market their product. Corporate intranets were used as a repository of publishing news, employee announcement and policies. With the introduction of new Web 2.0, which is second phase of architectural change in the web technology and a improved form of WWW. Web 2.0 is the combination of social networking system based on the open communication method; it allows decentralization of authority to publish context and freedom of sharing information, media and emotions. It is achieved due to the wide access of board band which allow people to use internet more frequently (O'Reilly, 2005).One of the main advantages of Web 2.0 is systems or web contents are updated frequently and on real time basis, rather than Web 1.0 where webmaster updated that site. Another difference between Web1.0 is about text but Web 2.0 is about music, images and videos. Web 2.0 revolutionized web for the consumer by introducing ideas of sharing and ease of access.

The use to Web 2.0 in enterprise for business users gave birth to new term Enterprise 2.0which is introduced by MacAfee (2006). It facilitate enterprise to use social software such as Blog, Wiki, Tag etc in corporate environment to enhance the productivity, efficiency of knowledge workers. Organizations are also exploring to use Web 2.0 technologies outside the organization to improve the revenue and customer base of their organization. Now the question arises what is the earlier phase of Enterprise 2.0? Next section try to explain this answer .Third section explains how to implement Enterprise 2.0 in organization specially Vosapa Inc. In the end we conclude with some open questions.

Enterprise 1.0 and Enterprise 2.0

Enterprise 2.0 is the new turn coined by McAfee in his article "Enterprise 2.0: the Down of emergent collaboration" (2006). According to which use web 2.0 in business context to increase the collaboration in secure manner between employees, partner and customer is called Enterprise 2.0 but there is no explanation of what was enterprise 1.0 and there is not define example of the difference between enterprise 1.0 and enterprise 2.0. There is a chart which is available on

e2conf.com. Enterprise 2.0 Conference website which explains the concept in form of this chart and there is no other explain of enterprise model 1.0


Enterprise 1.0	Enterprise 2.0
Hierarchy Friction Bureaucracy Inflexibility IT-driven technology / Lack of user control Top down Centralized Teams are in one building / one time zone Silos and boundaries Need to know Information systems are structured and dictated Taxonomies Overly complex Closed/ proprietary standards Scheduled Long time-to-market cycles	Flat Organization Ease of Organization Flow Agility Flexibility User-driven technology Bottom up Distributed Teams are global Fuzzy boundaries, open borders Transparency Information systems are emergent Folksonomies Simple Open On Demand Short time-to-market cycles

Enterprise 2.0 Conference

Difference between enterprise 1.0 and 2.0 is much popular topic on blogs and there is no authenticated journal article on it. But there is a white paper "Business Management in the Age of Enterprise 2.0: Why Business Model 1.0 Will Obsolete You" by oracle (Buytendijk at el 2008) which explain the difference but at the end it emphasise on the oracle solution on Enterprise 2.0

If we analyze the information in the chart it emphasise the change in the social and business structure of organization like introducing flat organization structure, where every employees are participating in the decision making of organization. Organizations provide open access to information where employees could access and share information with partner, customer to make better decision. Feed back on the work of employees become ongoing process .In Enterprise 1.0 feedback from managers were given at the end of the business year but in Enterprise 2.0 appraisals are continuous and based on preference indicate and quality of work (Buytendijk, at el 2008)

The way organization work is changing, now the customer is driving the business, where knowledge become primary and good and product become secondary, this enable companies to provide the customized product. Feed back from the customer becomes primary input to drive the new product. The new method which engages the customer to manage self service was introduced as online banking, direct booking of flight, which helps in reducing the front end cost of the company and for the customer, there is no longer difference in front office and back office and Enterprise 2.0 make then transparent for the customer (Buytendijk, at el 2008). Enterprise 2.0 integrates the technology and experience to achieve the competitive advantage which clearly shows its difference from Enterprise 1.0

Enterprise 2.0 implementation in Organization

Common Applications used by organization or knowledge worker are email, instant messaging service, Intranet Portal. The problem with the email are they are asynchronous way to communicate and most of knowledge workers got hundreds of email every day ,which they simply send to junk or mark as read. Another disadvantage to email is it is shared by only few people which are included in the thread. Most of the Knowledge workers believe that email "are overused in their organization" davenport (cited in MacAfee 2006). On the other hand intranet portal are filled with all type of companies information and employees cannot find information they are looking for. To resolve this problem in Vosapa inc. (Vosapa, 2009) we used only two components from MacAfee's (2006) six component of Enterprise 2.0 technology which he named as SLATES as acronym for "Search", "Link", "Authoring", "Tags", "Extensions", "Signals" because we believe that Enterprise 2.0 technology need to be improved in the case of implementation in organization. Security and authenticity are challenges which still need to be addressed when using the Enterprise 2.0 in organization.

We use "Tags" to represent the key words in minutes of meeting of each project, which are posted in the forum (sections of eXperss for dissuasion form in intranet see more (Vosapa, 2009 ")). This will help the users to remember agenda of meeting and the key point highlighted during the meeting.

The second technology which is useful in the context of large organization is "Signals" or RSS feed. There are many discussions or projects happening simultaneously in organization. RSS feed help users to subscribe only those forums which are directly related to his work or the project he is supervising and all the updates are made in the forum will be send to him on his page of eXpress.

Conclusion

There are two main apprehension of Enterprise 2.0 which need to address before implementing in organization. First security and authenticity of information and data which is moving across the extranet or intranet of a company, this issue become essential in the case of company like banks and telecom with distributed office and people are allowed to connect from their home.

Secondly Wiki's are excellent example of collaborate data manipulation of Web 2.0 but the editable format of wiki, the work carried out by the individual can be modified by the other person, even if the idea of the first one is good for the organization. It shows that the there is no proper tracking facility to identify individual work, which is necessary to monitor the performance of the employee. Therefore enterprise 2.0 has to improve a lot in turn of value to the business context when creating business case to implement in Enterprise.

Reference list

Buytendijk F., Cripe B., Henson R., Pulverman K., 2008, Business Management in the Age of Enterprise 2.0: Why Business Model 1.0 Will Obsolete You, An Oracle Thought Leadership White Paper, Inform it online http://www.oracle.com/solutions/business_intelligence/docs/epm-enterprise20-whitepaper.pdf (accessed march 26, 2009).

McAfee A.P, 2006, Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration, MIT Sloan Management Review, Spring 2006.

O'Reilly T., 2005, what is Web 2.0 Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software, Inform it online http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html, (accessed march 26, 2009).

TechWeb Live Events, unknown, what is Enterprise 2.0, inform it online http://www.e2conf.com/about/what-is-enterprise2.0.php (accessed march 26, 2009).

Vosapa, 2009, VOSAPA Inc. (group course work), Inform it online http://vosapainc.blogspot.com/2009/03/vosapa-inc-group-course-work.html (accessed march 26, 2009).

Knowledge Economy

2009-04-01T06:25:00.000-07:00

Our economy is shifting from the industrial to knowledge economy, this shift is not direct and there are stages between, where meaning of product and workers changes gradually. In 18th century industrialization begun, where technology was first invented, mass production and production line was introduced. (Drucker, 1998) The farmers were brought in to the industries to do the work and they were taught to perform repeated task every days. At the end of 19th century, productivity set off, where knowledge was first introduced in work and workers; knowledge was used to find the better way to improve the work. "Frederick Winslow Taylor" (Drucker 1998) was the first to introduce the idea to improve the living condition of an ordinary worker by making education and knowledge necessary. In early 20th century, management era started and education became necessary for ordinary worker, knowledge is considered as essential resource in all the field and it became vital factor for the workers. The essential change happened in all these phase was the change in the meaning of knowledge .Now knowledge is in action and results are outside, in the society or economy. (Drucker, 1998) In the Industrial economy natural resources were the main resources. In Productivity, product was the key resource and management was the answer to the Management economy. In knowledge economy where knowledge of product, customer, partner and environment is essential resources.

It is very difficult to exactly pin point the definition of Knowledge Economy .Literature is lacking with the proper definition but we can get idea from the different definition given by (Powell & Snellman, 2004), (Leadbeater, 1999), (ESRC, 2005 cited in Brinkley, 2006) and form a definition according to their view.

Effective utilization of intellectual asset such as knowledge, skills and innovative in all manner of economical activities to create wealth

This definition explains that knowledge become more important than before as an input for the products and give rise to new form of trades. Codification of that knowledge will help in gathering wealth. This concept give birth to two type of knowledge in economy .First knowledge as product where it is used to earn wealth and second knowledge as a tool to gather intellectual asset, as it is believed that knowledge increases as we share, so organization use this tool to explore and excavate the knowledge and share it with partners and vendors to get competitive advantage on others. But in this article I am referring knowledge economy as a tool which is also called Knowledge based economy.

Factor that bring this change

It is argued that there are two main factors which cause this shift to new economy, first is Globalization and revolution in information and communication technologies (ICT).

Globalization is the phenomena of making world more connected, interdependent, share knowledge and resources of the world. It is about interconnection of economic, social, culture, technology, commercial among the organizations and peoples, which bring them together to form one interdependent community. The enlargement of globalization is due to the decrease in tariffs, foreign direct investment barriers and reduced power of national monopoly in telecom, air traffic (Houghton, Sheehan, 2000). Many western countries started investing in the developing countries where resources and cheaper, which also helps developing countries to generate the new revenue stream. Second main reason of Knowledge economy is rapid availability of information technology and communication. Internet was first introduced as for research bases but over few decades it developed in to necessity for every person. In economical term, ICT provide the easy was to store and transfer information which was not previously possible and the cost of storing this information is marginally zero. This helps the knowledge to apply and facilitate in all economical activities.

Knowledge Worker

Previously the term 'worker' was used for the person which uses their hand to perform work but now in knowledge economy workers mostly use their ideas and judgment to find new methods to improve their daily activity, they are consider as knowledge workers. They are benefiting companies by using their intellectual capability and experience for example software developers, system administrators, technical writers, lawyers, teachers, and scientists are knowledge worker in this new economy. Knowledge workers spend most of their time analyzing diagrams and chart to come up with new idea to improve the process of an organization. It is estimated that by the year 2000 there will be 59 per cent of work (Horibe, 1999)

Conclusion

Knowledge was always present whether in an industrialized economy or in knowledge economy, but now we start using it to get intellectual advantage because ability of the world to generate resources for us is a constant, for example consider circle as whole resources and every one wants to take their share, the only way to get a bigger share is to have competitive advantage on others, everyone is trying to get or increase their share of world resources, which is limited and in some cases declining. We are finding and introducing new ways to get our bigger chunk of share of the world economy.

Reference List

Drucker P., 'From capitalism to knowledge society' in Neef D. 1998, The Knowledge Economy, Butterworth Heinemann, p.15

Horibe F., 1999, Managing knowledge workers: new skills and attitudes to unlock the intellectual capital in your organization, Edition: illustrated Published by John Wiley and Sons

Houghton J. and Sheehan P., 2000, A Primer on the Knowledge Economy, Centre for Strategic Economic Studies Victoria University February 2000

Leadbeater C., London D., 1999, NEW MEASURES FOR THE NEW ECONOMY, International Symposium Measuring and Reporting Intellectual Capital:Experience, Issues, and Prospects Amsterdam 9-10 June 1999

Powell W. W., and Snellman K., 2004, The Knowledge Economy, Annual Review of Sociology Vol. 30: 199-220 (Volume publication date August 2004) Viewed on 24th March 2009
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100037?cookieSet=1

What is the role of IT in supporting Knowledge Management Systems?

2009-04-01T05:59:00.000-07:00

Introduction

For the last ten years, Knowledge Management System (KMS) has become one of the most significant topics in Information Technology and Business circles. Now it becomes a necessity for an organization to have KMS to show the world their intellectual capability. Still most of the companies think by deploying state of the art IT system will resolve their knowledge problems (Croasdell, 2001). According to McDermatt

"the Great trap in knowledge Management is using information management tools and concepts to design knowledge management System" (1999).

The question arises, what happens if the group of people does not have contact with each other and don't understand the information which will be helpful to perform their work better. Installing IT infrastructure will not help them in this situation. Most of the Knowledge managing efforts in an organization are based on Information technology improvement and consider culture and environment as secondary. Knowledge management in organization is about linking people to get knowledge flow and information technology could support to create this link. Second section will explain how different companies change their product name to knowledge product, third explains what when wrong when companies use just IT system in their KMS, last role of human resource development in knowledge management and finally conclusion

Renaming of IT System

Information system was developed to assist management and workers to process vast amount to data and information easily and quickly. It includes the MIS, DSS and EIS that interact with individual set of data and help in improving the organization process. But after the introduction of knowledge management or Intellectual Capital idea, the name of Information system has been reframed in to knowledge management system (Wilson, 2002). Data Base, Data Mining application and data warehousing software, market intelligence system, groupware and Intranet Web Portal are now renamed as knowledge management system and application. "Many existing business practices (such as information management and intelligence gathering) are coming under the knowledge management umbrella." (Skyrme, 1998) This branding of application divert focus on real purpose of Knowledge Management System, which was to help organization to access knowledge which was already there and help employees not to invent wheel again, during their daily activities .Furthermore, consultant of Knowledge management system also forcing IT and business related aspect rather than human related aspect .One of the top consultant Karl-Erik Sveiby in his paper "What is Knowledge Management?" 'First published in 1996' (2001) clearly suggests that Knowledge management got two tracks. "IT-Track" where knowledge is treated as an object and "People-Track" where knowledge is in processes .Despite these differences, we emphasize more on the IT part rather than People track.

What went wrong in Knowledge Management Systems?

Mostly KMS are designed on database, Information technologies and best practices. Due to the popularity of KMS, organizations are installing this system which codify, store, captures and shares the knowledge of individual and group within organizations. Despite the new technology used in KMSs, they fail with uncertainty because they could not fully understand the need, culture and environment of the organization. IT experts use complex system which is expensive to install and manage. But the end users do not have time to train and understand these systems due to this complexity. Another reason to KMS failure is trust of employees on information stored and the time required to retrieve this information. In most of the IT systems, the user downloads a file and finds that information is not accurate or useful. This could decrease the trust on the system that leads to its failure. In the example of Andersen Consulting (Benassi at el 2002) the first KMS was successful because workers were given freedom to manage their knowledge (Benassi at el 2002) according to their desire although they could not share document with other groups with the companies. Hence there were no rigid boundaries. Then they used second KMS which allow "peer to peer communication system"(Benassi at el 2002). This system was a success. But later it became crowded and people stopped using it. This shows that we cannot allow information to be shared with each other and there must be boundaries which allow user to have confidence in information store system.

Role of Human Resource Department in KMS

From above examples it is clear that Information Technology is not a key driving force in Knowledge Management Systems. These systems are all about people not technology and IT just has a supporting role. The second department which plays key role in organization KMS is Human Resource (HR) (Soliman & Spooner, 2000) because KMS is about business, people, environment and culture of organization. Many organization's culture is not knowledge friendly and often appraisals are judged on the basis of strict timelines, which force them to put aside knowledge sharing activities .In this situation HR department plays a significant role to improve the culture of the organization by

Creating knowledge supported environment which allows social gathering of staff.
Providing open office structure which enables frequent interaction of staff.
Improving the trust with the employees and management by introducing the tolerance of error policies and involving senior management.

All this will provide addition motivation to staff (Soliman & Spooner, 2000). HR department encourages employees to initiate knowledge and share environment and IT provides service to capture that knowledge.

Conclusion

It is a delicate balance between the technology system and organization which must be understood to achieve successful knowledge management system. In our previous report KMS at VOSAPA Inc. (2009). We used new recruitment policy, improve reword system, brainstorming session with in organization and staff training to create the environment of trust to flourish knowledge .To support our KMS we use intranet, extranet, data mining technique to capture and codify tacit and explicit knowledge and use collaboration tools to make it available to improve tacit knowledge of our employees.

Reference List

Benassi M., Bouquet P. and Cuel R., 2002, Success and Failure Criteria for Knowledge Management Systems, Technical report, December 2002, Trento – Italy, Inform it online http://fandango.cs.unitn.it/rcuel/publication.htm (accessed march 26, 2009).

Croasdell, D.T., 2001, IT's role in organizational memory and learning, Information systems management, vol. 18, no1, pp. 8-11 (18 ref.) ISSN 1058-0530

Dr Skyrme D.J., Knowledge Management Solutions - The IT Contribution, Inform it online http://www.skyrme.com/pubs/acm0398.doc (accessed march 25, 2009).

McDermott R. 1999, why Information Technology Inspired but cannot deliver Knowledge Management, California Management Review, Vol 41 No4 summer 1999

Sveiby K. E., 2001, What is Knowledge Management? Inform it online http://www.sveiby.com/articles/KnowledgeManagement.html (accessed march 25, 2009)

Soliman F. and Spooner K., 2000, Strategies for implementing knowledge management, Journal of Knowledge Management, Volume 4, Number 4, P 337-P 345

Wilson T.D.2002, The nonsense of knowledge management, Information Research, Vol. 8 No. 1, October 2002, http://informationr.net/ir/8-1/paper144, viewed on 23-march-2009

Knowledge Management Schools

2009-02-04T14:41:00.001-08:00

In my pervious blog I mentioned that our organization" VOSAPA inc." is a Mobile Phone Retail Company. Now it's time to unfold the basic structure of our organization for the purpose of implementation of Knowledge management system using KM School. The basic structure is simple, Emmanuel as CFO, Abhijith as CS&PO, Vaida as CMO, Praveen as CIO, bankie as VPHR and I, Salis khan as CEO. Our main office is in London with 7 branch offices all over the country. Our 430 retail outlets are connected with 7 different warehouses with 4500 knowledge workers. We anticipate bringing innovation and customization in our services and preserving intellectual and providing practical sources of knowledge in our organization. We have decided to implement Knowledge management system in our organization. The objective of the project is to create, improve, manage knowledge asset, "improve the knowledge environment "and "Delivering acquired knowledge to knowledge works" (Thomas, 1998). The focus of KMS is mainly to improve the knowledge and skill of our Customer care and retail centre staff and to aid other departments in delivering their organization goals.

To start KMS project in organization, we have to first understand the organization culture, goal and economic condition. We categorize the key area to address for major change and minor change. Moreover, we isolate the key department, Admin\HR which will be the stakeholder in this project, for human capacity development such as training, environment, policies, IT for development of basic infrastructure like application, network, storage and other technical support. Success indicators of KMS project decrease the customer waiting time in retail centres, provide customized mobile phone, deal with targeted clients and improve the supply of mobile phone between warehouses and retail centres.

We study different Knowledge management Schools to identify what fits accurate in this situation but 'as suggested by one of the organization during class discussion that there is not one life cycle which truly fits an organization it should be tailored to fulfil organisational needs', we agree with the idea and decide to use Earl 7 Schools (2001) primarily and other schools of thought to form an hydrate solution. Earl (2001) proposes that these schools are not mutually exclusive and we can find two or three in some organizations. Therefore we are not using all.

We select Cartographic schools for Earl 7 School (2001), to deploy Directory in our HRMS (Human Resource Management System) which contains the profile of all the employees, especially areas of expertise, list of pervious project, current project, location and contact detail. It is like the yellow page of our organization. It will help us to locate the accurate person who has the knowledge of particular problem. As Hansen at al (1999) explains the importance of Bain's "people finder" database which help in finding consultant which could help them in solving problems.

From the Technocrat category in Earl 7 School (2001), System methodology is chosen to deploy a web base solution portal in each department. This will as a common electronic repository which contains solution of common occurring issues and best practices. Employees can add more tips, tricks and experiences, which use to resolve problems and beneficial to others. This web base portal is managed by a team from each department which scrutinize new solution posted by employees and analyse the impact of system, policies and procedures and allow it to be used by others. This approach helps people to retrieve knowledge without contacting the person who develop (Hansen at al 1999)

One aspect of this project is to create knowledge community within our organization. Earl (2001), in Organization School of Behavioural Category explains, "The essential feature of communities is that they exchange and share knowledge interactively". To achieve this we set up Express in our intranet portal to share and pool in knowledge among our employees. They create forum regarding ongoing projects and sales and marketing campaigns where employees can share their experiences, give feedback and ideas about products and services. MExperss is an internal messaging service which can be used for desk to desk video conferences and chatting. It helps in solving external and internal issues.

We have introduced an open office culture to create the knowledge friendly environment and decrease the gap between management and employee. Here, every employee can sit where ever he or she wants. There is no separate sitting arrangement for management. This automatically decreases the barrier between the management and employees. Everyone can access the manager or even director easily and management can implement their decision very quickly and effectively. Our HR department introduces T.V lounges and kitchens in every office where employees can meet and share knowledge through discussion. This idea is based on the spatial school.

It is perhaps what Earl (2001) suggest as "An important feature of knowledge communities is that they bring together knowledge and knowers."

Knowledge management models don't provide any idea. We have to think how to convert explicit knowledge captured during KMS to improve the tacit knowledge of our employees. We have come up with an idea that every employee must undergo two training sessions in a year, first to improve the technical skills and second to improve the managerial or behaviour skills depending on the job group. Every manager must undergo training to improve their management and inter personal skills. Before every job group changes, every employee must pass exam which is held after the trainings mentioned above so that we can judge their abilities. Sherelle Folkes (2006) interviewing Tim Whiting Reading CEO of Phone 4 u explains "we have to ensure we are growing the capability of all of the people in the organisation all the time."

This is first phase of this project; you will find complete implementation and result on our organization website: http://vosapainc.blogspot.com/
soon

Reference

Hansen, M.T., Nohria, N. and Kierney, T. (1999), "What's your strategy for managing knowledge?", Harvard Business Review, March-April, pp. 106-16.
Earl, M.J. (2001), "Knowledge management strategies: toward a taxonomy", Journal of Management Information Systems, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 215-33
Sherelle Folkes interviewing Tim Whiting Reading CEO of Whiting's arithmetic 27/02/2006 viewed on 06 febrary 2009 http://www.phones4u.co.uk/Info/info_latestnews.asp title Mobile News magazine article - Interview with Phones 4u CEO, Tim Whiting
Thomas H. Davenport, David W. De Long, Michael C. Beers (1998), "Successful Knowledge Management Projects", Sloan Management Review. January 15, 1998 Volume 39 Issue 2 Pages 43

What is Knowledge Management? – Definitions and lifecycles

2009-01-28T21:24:00.001-08:00

Knowledge is a set of information stored in human brain and used with the help of our senses. Gathering Knowledge is one of the basic processes which start when a child is born and continues till his death. It is a never ending process. Knowledge management is not a new concept. From early days when a human starts learning about the environment and nature, he shares that information with other persons. Their interaction with others helps to enrich their experiences. In the beginning, people engraved information on stones to save it. When Chinese discovered paper, then paper was used to secure it. After the invention of computer, process of knowledge transfer is shifted to the disks and CDs

Knowledge management is not a new term as Wilson (2002) argues in his article the Nonsense of 'Knowledge Management'. "It can be seen that the term did not occur until 1986..." I believe it was there but with different name and method. After the World War II, when organizations started becoming global. It was observed that many teams within the organization solved similar tasks without coordination or even without knowing what others are doing. Moreover, whenever a new employee joins in, he has to search for guidelines and policies from the beginning. This wastes time and money.

According to Prusak, (2001)

"Perhaps the majority of sceptics take the position--not an unnatural one--that every so-called new approach is, in reality, either old or wrong I would say to them that knowledge management, like any system of thought that has value, is both old and new, and its combination of new ideas with ideas that "everyone has known all along" should reassure practitioners rather than unnerve them."

An organization wants knowledge management because they want to bring innovation and customization in the product and preserve intellectual and practical sources of knowledge. This article will define and explain the notion of knowledge management and SECI model.

Definition

There are three basic concepts in knowledge management: firstly, 'creating knowledge' from within an organization or outside which is called 'knowledge exploration'; secondly 'dissemination of knowledge' through sharing or transferring, communication, dialog and streaming; and finally 'knowledge utilization' which is acquired, continuous generation of knowledge and auditing of knowledge (Moteleb at el, 2005).

Why Knowledge Management for Organization

In the mid 1980s, the market became more demanding and companies started stressing on product and service quality, responsiveness, diversity and customization (Wiig, 1997). Hence knowledge management for an organisation is very necessary. Wiig also explains,

"Competitive and successful experience shows that enterprise must create and sustain a balanced intellectual capital portfolio" (Wiig, 1997).

Second reason to start knowledge management initiative in an organization is that when employees leave the company, they take their knowledge with them and it takes time and money to fill the gap created by them. A survey by KPMG Peat Marwick (1998, in Alavi et al 2001) finds that almost half of the companies reported having suffered a significant setback from losing key staff with 43% experiencing impaired client or supplier relations and 13% facing a loss of income because of the departure of a single employee."

Telecom Company where I worked, once suffer same problem. In four months, three key personals from system department, resigned and there was no one to handle the system. Management had to hire an expert who was already working on these systems from vendor side at a very high price to run the business. After that incident, they implemented different polices like every standard operation procedure should be documented in centralized repository and every incident must be reported in the form of post-mortem report. These are some reasons which compel companies to buy expensive knowledge management solutions.

Types of knowledge in Knowledge management

Experts of knowledge management explain that there are two types of knowledge which need to be stored in organization.

Tacit Knowledge explains how a worker performs his/her daily task and with recursive action improves it during the course of time or it can be standard operation procedure to perform a certain task. The knowledge worker cannot explain this type of information in word to another person.
Explicit knowledge is information in the form of documentation, report, memo and report. It is like a technical data.
The basic goal of knowledge management system is to switch tacit knowledge into explicit in an organization. To achieve this experts develop the Knowledge Management life cycle.

Life cycle

Success of any knowledge management system is how effective tacit Knowledge can be converted in to explicit knowledge.

Nonaka (1991) explains Knowledge Life Cycle in simple four steps. This model is called SACI model

Tacit Knowledge to Tacit Knowledge (Socialization)
Tacit Knowledge to Explicit Knowledge (Articulation)
Explicit Knowledge to Explicit Knowledge (Combination)
Explicit Knowledge to Tacit Knowledge (Internalization)

Socialization

In socialization tacit knowledge is transferred into tacit knowledge. For example, Carpenters get an apprentice. He teaches him how to make a piece of furniture. Thus he transfers his tacit knowledge to his apprentice by demonstration and his apprentice watches and understands his action and improves his own tacit knowledge. In my pervious organization we use Socialization to train new colleagues

Articulation

To understand articulation, I will just add another scenario in the above example. Now that apprentice thinks he should transfer all his knowledge on a paper; he now converts his tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge. This is the process of Articulation. The basic idea is to convert tacit knowledge in to explicit knowledge. In this process IT has a primary role to codify(this word has no meaning) and store knowledge .In Telecom Company We used to store standard operating procedure in HP service manager 7, a tool widely used to monitor, store and manage applications, service calls and network alarms

Combination

Now another person converts the same paper mentioned in the above example, into a tutorial with some pictures and further explains the process. This is combination. This methodology is generally used in organizations. In my work place, we used HP service desk to log all service calls regarding issues and data error in Customer relationship Management System and Billing System and on every Monday we used to extract data of service call logged, resolved and open from Service desk and form a weekly activities report. Then we calculated the turnaround time of each service call to analyse our system performance. This report was then presented in the management meeting.

Internalization

In continuation of the same example, another person reads the tutorial and starts making furniture. Here he gets information from tutorial which is explicit knowledge and improves his skills which is tacit knowledge .This is the process of Internalization.

Conclusion

Knowledge management is not a new idea it is in-practice from millions of years. We can implement Knowledge Management system in organizations to improve the functionalities.

References

Alavi, M., John and Lucy Cook, Dorothy E. Leidner (March 2001) Review: Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management System :Conceptual Fundation and Research Issues 1, MIS Quarterly Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 107-136
Moteleb, A., Woodman, M., Galal, G. & Bakry, W., (2005), 'Ontology of Knowledge Management Systems Elements', Proceedings of the European and Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems Information Institute Cairo Marriott Hotel & Omar Khayyam Casino, Cairo Egypt. June 7-8 2005
Nonaka, Ikujiro, "The Knowledge-Creating Company," Harvard Business Review, Volume 69, November-December 1991, pp. 96-104.
Prusak, L. (2001) where did knowledge management come from? IBM Systems Journal, 40(4), 1002-1007. Available at http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/404/prusak.html [Site visited 1 February 2009]
Wiig, Karl M. (1 September 1997) Knowledge Management: An Introduction and Perspective. The Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 1 Number 1
Wilson T.D. (October 2002) The nonsense of knowledge management. Information Research, Vol. 8 No. 1,

What is the difference between Organizations, Social/Business Networks and Communities of Practice (CoPs)?

2009-01-23T03:26:00.000-08:00

Man is a social animal. We need to interact with each other, whether its business or daily life. This helps us to develop relations and build up our trust in others. The basic concept behind all human networking platforms is to increase interaction between every kind of people so that we get to know them better.

Organization

People grouped together to pursue a common purpose or aim are part of an organization. It is an administrative or functional body with a hierarchical structure where everyone is designated with some responsibility. Each one has to work with in his jurisdiction.

Examples of organizations include:

UNO, NATO, OIC,

Social networks

A network is an interconnected chain, group or system. For example, a network of computers helps data to flow from one terminal to another. Similarly, in a social network, people connect with their friends, relatives and companions and form a network. This can help them to connect with their friends and also each other's friends. This way, they can increase their network of friends. As a social network help to develop a relation, like wise it also gives people opportunities to get jobs. Before the introduction of internet, people interacted with few people whom they knew, but after the development of social networking site, we get to know thousands of people with a single click. We can share information, pictures, events, emotions and experiences. This has given birth to a new concept of 6 degree of separation which is based on the experiment done by Jeffrey Travers and Stanley Milgram. (1969) the basic idea is that every person in the world is connected to the other with just 6 people between them.

As par business is concern, social networking sites earn money by advertising different products in the form of banners and this is a very profitable business which is rapidly growing.

Some common social networking sites:

Bebo, Orkut, Pownce, Facebook, Hi5, My Church, MySpace, You tube, linked In.

Business Network

Business network is same kind of network which helps to increase the business relation and circle of trust among business associates. We want to do business with person whom we trust and feel safe and business network is method to increase that trust and help use to develop contact and nerchering relationship which help our business to grow.

Communities of Practice

The word community is very common in our daily life .The dictionary meaning on community is "A group of people living in a particular local area" [1]

According to this definition people living in an area are community, student in one class, co-worker working in a factory or office are community. But if we talk about Communities of practice which is a new term, then immediately we get a picture that it could be people living and working together, sharing comment place and helping each other in different way become the Community of Practice. But actually the definition is quite different. According to Etienne Wenger" A community of practice is a group of people who share an Interest in a domain of human endeavour and engage in a Process of collective learning that creates bonds between them: a tribe, a garage band, a group of engineers working on similar problems." [2]

It is the collection of likeminded people grouped together to achieve a common goal but they could be from same or different knowledge backgrounds and each member has its own distinct identity within the group .A person could be the part to many communities of practice.

Implementation in our organization

VOSAPA inc. is a Mobile Phone Retail Company. All the partners are group together to from an organization to achieve our Business goal.

We introduce a social networking technique in our organization. A web portal Express to decrease social barriers within employees and management. We implement many traditions such as when an employ is hired he or she have to fill their profile with contain their basic information, education and experience. It is a sort of formal introduction of every employ with others members of organization. We encourage our employees to post articles and pictures about their families and their pervious experiences and any view about business Strategies and plans. We also implement internal web messaging service MExperss which help in communicating within a department and among retail stores, warehouses and different offices spread across country.

To implement business network technologies we have our business portal BIZExperss which connect all our mobile phone suppliers, office accessories suppliers, logistic services and recruitment ageneses. BIZExperss is a great opportunity for us to grow our business and help other companies to understand our business. This portal also help our partners companies to spread their business by discussing new aspect of their business and introducing new ventures and customers can get confidence on supplier through word of mouth and build strong relations with the help of our BIZExperss.

These are the small initiatives which VOSAPA inc. took in the context of community of practice within our organization and among our business partners. We are building relationships and bringing peoples together to form a nourishing community which will help peoples and business.

References

1. Reviewed from Google on 23 January 09 definition linked to http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=community )

2.Etienne Wenger (http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm viewed on 23/01/09).

what do we mean by strategy?

2009-01-22T02:34:00.000-08:00

Strategies

Strategy is a plan to achieve some target.It is like a road map to achieve goal.For an organization to grow, make profit and stay ahead in challenging business world, they need a good business strategy. Which could fulfil their business goal and with little modification they can introduce new idea in their organization and it must be long lasting.
For example if an organization plan to invest on their employees by training, health insurance, increasing wages or better working environment. Here organization is spending money on their employees but on the other hand they are making employees to stay in for longer time, that why companies run Career Development Programmers. Which help them to place employ in different role and judge his/her abilities to perform in particular role and they can place him/her where they work best.

Plan

bankie was right ,

Business plan is the formal write-up which tells how you will run your business to get financial help from sponsors and banks. We must to study the business plan of company if we want to invest in it.

Knowledge Management Stratagies lab 1

2009-01-16T02:10:00.000-08:00

Hi,
my name is salis and this is my first ever blog post