We managed to deal with the situation before it__________ .A.tightened upB.got ou
We managed to deal with the situation before it__________ .
A.tightened up
B.got out of control
C.lit up
D.caught on
We managed to deal with the situation before it__________ .
A.tightened up
B.got out of control
C.lit up
D.caught on
W: Don't worry. Banks will accept presentation on the following business day.
Q: When will the bank deal with the credit if the expiry date of a credit fails on a non-business day?
(19)
A.On every business day.
B.On Tuesday.
C.On Wednesday.
D.On the following business day.
W: Yes, Sir. That's an out-of-town personal check. We wouldn't be able to cash it for you until the proceeds are collected from the paying bank.
Q: How will the bank deal with the man's check?
(18)
A.The bank will cash the check immediately.
B.The bank will issue a new bank account and deposit the money for him.
C.The bank will cash it for him until the proceeds are collected from the paying bank.
D.The bank will endorse the check before payment.
(d) Family owned and managed businesses often find delegation and succession difficult processes to get right.
What models would you recommend that Tony use in looking to change his leadership and management style
to create a culture in the Shirtmaster Group better able to deal with the challenges it faces? (10 marks)
A.a certain amount of
B.a great deal of
C.a great number of
D.a large number of
we know _8_ the people who lived in China
A.a good deal about
B.a lot of about
C.many
D.much
—We have sent out leaflets to all residents, explaining what to do in an emergency.
A.How do you deal with emergency?
B.What have you talked to the public?
C.What do you want the residents do?
Let's not waste time on matters of no important. We have other vital problems to deal with.
A.Let's not
B.matters of no important
C.vital
D.deal with
Most of us have probably been angry with our friends, parents or teachers. Perhaps they said something you didn't like, or you felt they were unfair. Sometimes people can stay angry for years about a small problem. Time goes by, and good friendship may be lost.
When we are angry, however, we are usually the ones affected. Perhaps we have seen young children playing together. Sometimes they have disagreements, and decide not to talk to each other. However, this usually does not last for long. This is an important lesson for us to learn.
25、What is the writer?()
A.A shopkeeper
B.A doctor
C.A student
D.A dentist
26、What is the main idea of the passage?()
A.How to deal with problems
B.How to do at school
C.How to behave with families
D.How to talk to each other
27、What will happen if people stay angry for long according to the text?()
A.They feel unfair
B.They may get sick
C.Good friendship may be lost
D.They may miss each other
28、From the passage, we know an important lesson for us is()
A.playing together
B.learning to forget
C.staying angry
D.feeling unfair
Introduction
The following is an interview with Mick Kazinski, a senior marketing executive with Bridge Co, a Deeland-based construction company. It concerns their purchase of Custcare, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software package written by the Custcare Corporation, a software company based in Solland, a country some 4,000 km away from Deeland. The interview was originally published in the Management Experiences magazine.
Interviewer: Thanks for talking to us today Mick. Can you tell us how Bridge Co came to choose the Custcare software package?
Mick: Well, we didn’t choose it really. Teri Porter had just joined the company as sales and marketing director. She had recently implemented the Custcare package at her previous company and she was very enthusiastic about it. When she found out that we did not have a CRM package at Bridge Co, she suggested that we should also buy the Custcare package as she felt that our requirements were very similar to those of her previous company. We told her that any purchase would have to go through our capex (capital expenditure) system as the package cost over $20,000. Here at Bridge Co, all capex applications have to be accompanied by a formal business case and an Invitation to Tender (ITT) has to be sent out to at least three potential suppliers. However, Teri is a very clever lady. She managed to do a deal with Custcare and they agreed to supply the package at a cost of $19,995, just under the capex threshold. Teri had to cut a few things out. For example, we declined the training courses (Teri said the package was an easy one to use and she would show us how to use it) and also we opted for the lowest level of support, something we later came to regret. Overall, we were happy. We knew that Custcare was a popular and successful CRM package.
Interviewer: So, did you have a demonstration of the software before you bought it?
Mick: Oh yes, and everyone was very impressed. It seemed to do all the things we would ever want it to do and, in fact, it gave us some ideas about possibilities that we would never have thought of. Also, by then, it was clear that our internal IT department could not provide us with a bespoke solution. Teri had spoken to them informally and she was told that they could not even look at our requirements for 18 months. In contrast, we could be up and running with the Custcare package within three months. Also, IT quoted an internal transfer cost of $18,000 for just defining our requirements. This was almost as much as we were paying for the whole software solution!
Interviewer: When did things begin to go wrong?
Mick: Well, the implementation was not straightforward. We needed to migrate some data from our current established systems and we had no-one who could do it. We tried to recruit some local technical experts, but Custcare pointed out that we had signed their standard contract which only permitted Custcare consultants to work on such tasks. We had not realised this, as nobody had read the contract carefully. In the end, we had to give in and it cost us $10,000 in fees to migrate the data from some of our internal systems to the new package. Teri managed to get the money out of the operational budget, but we weren’t happy.
We then tried to share data between the Custcare software and our existing order processing system. We thought this would be easy, but apparently the file formats are incompatible. Thus we have to enter customer information into two systems and we are unable to exploit the customer order analysis facility of the Custcare CRM.
Finally, although we were happy with the functionality and reliability of the Custcare software, it works very slowly. This is really very disappointing. Some reports and queries have to be aborted because the software appears to have hung. The software worked very quickly in the demonstration, but it is painfully slow now that it is installed on our IT platform.
Interviewer: What is the current situation?
Mick: Well, we are all a bit deflated and disappointed in the package. The software seems reasonable enough, but its poor performance and our inability to interface it to the order processing system have reduced users’ confidence in the system. Because users have not been adequately trained, we have had to phone Custcare’s support desk more than we should. However, as I said before, we took the cheapest option. This is for a help line to be available from 8.00 hrs to 17.00 hrs Solland time. As you know, Solland is in a completely different time zone and so we have had to stay behind at work and contact them in the late evening. Again, nobody had closely read the terms of the contract. We have taken legal advice, but we have also found that, for dispute resolution, the contract uses the commercial contract laws of Solland. Nobody in Bridge Co knows what these are! Our solicitor said that we should have asked for this specification to be changed when the contract was drawn up. I just wish we had chosen a product produced by a company here in Deeland. It would have made it much easier to resolve issues and disputes.
Interviewer: What does Teri think?
Mick: Not a lot! She has left us to rejoin her old company in a more senior position. The board did ask her to justify her purchase of the Custcare CRM package, but I don’t think she ever did. I am not sure that she could!
Required:
(a) Suggest a process for evaluating, selecting and implementing a software package solution and explain how this process would have prevented the problems experienced at Bridge Co in the Custcare CRM application. (15 marks)
(b) The CEO of Bridge Co now questions whether buying a software package was the wrong approach to meeting the CRM requirements at Bridge Co. He wonders whether they should have commissioned a bespoke software system instead.
Explain, with reference to the CRM project at Bridge Co, the advantages of adopting a software package approach to fulfilling business system requirements compared with a bespoke software solution. (10 marks)
A successful WTO round requires two big bargains to be struck: a transatlantic deal between America and the EU and a north-south deal between the rich and the poor. Yet at Seattle this year there is a long way to go before such broad bargains can be considered, let alone struck.
America wants a few priority issues to be settled. Its list includes an extension of the duty-free status of e-commerce, a broader IT pact, reform. of the WTO dispute settlements system, increased WTO transparency and the phase out of tariffs in eight sectors including chemicals, energy products and environmental products. The EU on the other hand professes to want a more comprehensive approach that focuses on removing tariff peaks for such imports as textiles, glass and footwear, but would preserve tariff preferences for developing countries.
The biggest obstacle may be the insistence of many developing countries that they will block further liberalization until their gripes over the Uruguay round are addressed They want their obligations in areas such as intellectual property, investor protection, subsidies and anti-dumping to be eased. They argue that the Uruguay round has failed to deliver expected benefits in such areas as agriculture and textiles.
Though by no means a monolithic block, the developing countries share a feeling that whatever the promise of liberalization at the WTO, rich countries will Conspire to keep their markets closed. Indeed, the EU insists that freeing trade should be "controlled, steered and managed according to the concerns of EU citizens". That is in keeping with a view, widespread on the continent, that "a protectionist trade policy is a price readily paid for political objectives".
However great these obstacles are, they could be overcome if America were still leading the drive for freer world trade. With its economy doing well, greater access to foreign markets seems a less pressing priority. The Clinton administration is unwilling to make politically painful concessions required to achieve that aim. So there is a possibility that the Seattle round will turn out to be a fiasco. If that happens, it will encourage the anti-WTO groups to go on the offensive. America, the EU and Japan would increasingly be tempted by managed trade.
The WTO's transparent and non-discriminatory rules require all member countries to ______.
A.exchange domestic markets for foreign markets
B.make concessions in foreign trade
C.adopt the most effective route to free trade
D.enforce trade policies even handedly