Business Example

Business Example Business – Article Example SWOT Analysis in Practice [ID Is SWOT analysis only used by MBAs in es, or is it actually useful for people in the field? Two SWOT papers done by companies in the field indicate it has independent utility.Skoda Auto Skoda Auto in the UK conducted a SWOT analysis to guide their strategy in the UK market. What was surprising was how helpful simple analysis of the marketplace was. For example: The fact that the UK car market is highly fragmented and competitive, a weakness, meant that brand distinction became far more important than actually changing the cars themselves. Similarly, their analysis that their customers generally liked driving a Skoda indicated that they needed to actually make no changes to the actual car. The most interesting element was that Skoda realized that other manufacturers focused on the car, despite nominal changes in performance, and that they should instead focus on the experience of the brand and intangible assets.Microsoft Hafner and Hibbert performed a SWO T analysis of Microsoft in 2001. Some of the conclusions were obvious: Linux and Macintosh were potential threats, Microsoft had been slow in coming to the Internet and had been beaten out by companies like Google, etc. But others were more interesting. For example: â€Å"Currency exchange rates affect demand for application/operation software and hardware, and fluctuating currencies can negatively impact revenues in the global marketplace†. Hafner and Hibbert point out that Microsoft had not done the management to protect against that kind of volatility. Conclusion SWOT in practice, then, can help companies do two things: 1) Catalog for the obvious that has thus far escaped attention or has simply been assumed and not been critically analyzed; 2) Perceive past the obvious to the non-trivial.Skoda Autos. â€Å"SWOT Analysis in Action†. Times 100. 2008. Web. Retrieved from: thetimes100.co.uk/downloads/skoda/skoda_13_full.pdf . Accessed 1/9/2011. Last changed 2008.Hafn er, Arthur W. and Hibbert, Erica L. â€Å"SWOT Analysis: Microsoft Corporation†. Ball State University.

Creating a Splash Screen in Delphi Applications

Creating a Splash Screen in Delphi Applications The most basic splash screen is just an image, or more precisely, a form with an image, that appears in the center of the screen when the application is loading. Splash screens are hidden when the application is ready to be used. Below is more information on the different types of splash screens you may see, and why theyre useful, as well as steps for creating your own Delphi splash screen for your application. What Are Splash Screens Used For? There are several types of splash screens. The most common are start-up splash screens - the ones you see when an application is loading. These usually display the applications name, author, version, copyright, ​an image, or some type of icon, that uniquely identifies it. If you are a shareware developer, you could use splash screens to remind users to register the program. These may pop up when the program first launches, to tell the user that they can register if they want special features or to get email updates for new releases. Some applications use splash screens to notify the user of the progress of a time-consuming process. If you look carefully, some really large programs use this type of splash screen when the program is loading background processes and dependencies.  The last thing you want is for your users  to think that your program is dead  if some database task is performing.   Creating a Splash Screen Lets see how to create a simple start-up splash screen in a few steps: Add a new form to your project.Select New Form from the File menu in the Delphi IDE.Change the Name Property of the Form to something like SplashScreen.Change these Properties: BorderStyle to bsNone, Position to poScreenCenter.Customize your splash screen by adding components like  labels, images, panels, etc.You could first add one TPanel component (Align: alClient)  and play around with BevelInner, BevelOuter, BevelWidth, BorderStyle, and BorderWidth properties to produce some eye-candy effects.Select Project from the Options menu and move the Form from the Auto-create listbox to Available Forms.Well create a form on the fly and then display it before the application is actually opened.Select Project Source from the View menu.You can also do this through  Project View Source.Add the following code after the begin statement of the Project Source code (the .DPR file): Application.Initialize; //this line exists! SplashScreen : TSplashScreen.Create(nil) ; SplashScreen.Show; SplashScreen.Update; After the final Application.Create() and before the  Application.Run statement, add: SplashScreen.Hide; SplashScreen.Free; Thats it!  Now you can run the application. In this example, depending on the speed of your computer, you will barely see your new splash screen, but if you have more than one form in your project, the splash screen will certainly show up.For more information on making the splash screen stay a bit longer, read through the code in this Stack Overflow thread. Tip:  You can also make custom shaped Delphi forms.