External Clients Research Articles

Construction of an ATMP manufacturing facility and scale up of production: Advent Bioservices

Background & Aim In recent years, the UK cell and gene therapy industry has expanded rapidly. Cleanroom space capacity has increased during the last five years to a total of 7,819m2. In 2019, cleanroom facilities in the UK ran at 72% of operational capacity on average with 80% generally considered full. This demand has been driven by the success of the UK in capturing a disproportionately high level of investment and clinical trial activity. Between 2014 and 2019, the UK initiated 112 new ATMP clinical trials which was the highest total figure for any European country. This increase in the number of candidate treatments is projected to increase the production of ATMPs from hundreds to tens of thousands per year by 2028, resulting in strong demand for GMP manufacturing services and expertise in commercialisation and scale-up of manufacture. Advent Bioservices began activity as a cell therapy contract development & manufacturing organization in 2016 and is in the process of building a state-of-the-art multiproduct GMP production facility outside Sawston in Cambridgeshire, which will allow the scale up of current commercial production and the provision of contract manufacturing services to meet the growing demand for such services in the UK. Methods, Results & Conclusion The Sawston facility is located just 7 miles outside Cambridge city centre with excellent transport links to Central London, London Stansted airport and is 4 miles from the M11 motorway. The facility consists of 1700m2 of GMP lab space, 325m2 for process development and an additional 1450 m2 for future expansion. Initial construction work has focused on the building of 2 separate GMP suites with grade B/C classified areas, in house QC testing and office space as well as a multipurpose cryogenic storage unit. The entire facility will operate under a comprehensive IT infrastructure including eQMS and an eBMR, with a LIMS with secure storage for client documents and paperless systems. Clients operating within these suites will benefit from already validated cleanrooms, in-house environmental monitoring system as well as training, ancillary services and technical support inclusive of process development and validation. Our cryogenic facilities are available to external clients as off-site storage and offer disaster recovery services as per UK regulatory (HTA) requirements. Advent Bioservices is currently in the process of applying for licencing and accreditation from UK authorities including the HTA, MHRA and HFEA for the Sawston site.

Business virtual system in the context of e‐governance: Investigation of secure access to information resources

AbstractContemporary digital age proposes different opportunities in the public, social, private, and business areas based on remote access to distributed resources placed in virtual, cloud, educational, governmental, business, smart, and so forth environments. In this reason, the e‐governance is realized on the basis of digital communications between different parties that requires strong protection of the information resources and personal data. The digital sustainability is an important task for e‐governance in the digital world. Article deals with principles of correct protection of the information resources (including in the cloud) by using strong procedures for access regulation of the external clients. Organization of Information Security Management System for identification, registration, authentication, and authorization of the requests is discussed. An investigation of the proposed functionality is made on the basis of stochastic analytical modelling by using the apparatus of Markov chains and statistical processing and interpretation of the obtained results.

Uloga i značaj marketing menadžera u poslovanju kompanije - primer AD Planinka iz Kuršumlije

Marketing management has undergone numerous changes in its development. The changing environment and internal conflicts have led to an increase in the importance of marketing and the complication of the roles of marketing managers. The original view of marketing as a function that deals with product promotion has grown into a business philosophy that permeates all departments and deals with building long-term relationships with customers. The aim of this paper is to consider the role and importance of marketing managers in companies with reference to AD Planinka from Kuršumlija. The paper will present the evolution of marketing from the founding of the company to the present day with an emphasis on the activities of marketing managers and their connection with internal and external clients. The change in the way of a company's management thinking has resulted in the positioning of marketing as an umbrella function that unites all others and determines the future direction of the company.

Propuesta de laboratorio de certificación en la norma ISO 29119 de pruebas de calidad de software en el Centro de Servicios y Gestión Empresarial del SENA

Este trabajo propone la estructuración de un laboratorio de pruebas de calidad de software bajo el lineamiento de la norma ISO 29119 con el objetivo de certificar la calidad de los productos desarrollados por la Fábrica de Software de una entidad de formación o clientes externos. Una revisión bibliográfica permitió identificar los diferentes procesos y técnicas de pruebas, a su vez los diferentes formatos de apoyo para registrar su trazabilidad. Finalmente, se establece el procedimiento operativo para el funcionamiento y la certificación de un laboratorio de pruebas de software en el Centro de Servicios y Gestión Empresarial del SENA Regional Antioquia.

Uncoupling innovation and entrepreneurship to improve undergraduate education

PurposeWhen it comes to undergraduate education, the terms “innovation” and “entrepreneurship” are often used interchangeably with respect to curricular practices and their associated learning and developmental outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to chart a course through the vast and growing multidisciplinary literature covering both topics to argue that innovation and entrepreneurship are not only different concepts, but they also play out in postsecondary institutional contexts in different and important ways.Design/methodology/approachBased on these differences, the authors propose that developing innovators must precede teaching future entrepreneurs and that the home of innovation education is not necessarily in the business school at all. Ideally, the authors believe innovation should be taught separately from any one disciplinary context. To illustrate the concept, the authors point to an existing program where professors and students from different disciplines work together on actual problems provided by external clients from both the public and private sectors.FindingsBased on the authors’ rationale and approach, the authors propose an agenda that would allow for a deep analysis of the interaction between organizational behaviors and student outcomes, providing insight into effective practices and strategies for mobilizing institutional efforts aimed at teaching innovation and better aligning innovation with entrepreneurship education.Originality/valueThe authors provide a clear rationale for separating innovation and entrepreneurship pedagogy in higher education, terms that have been conflated in literature and in practice for nearly a century. The authors do this in an original way by pairing a theoretical framework with a short case study of an education program that has developed innovation pedagogy at the undergraduate level.

Total Quality Management Practices and Performance of Commercial Banks in Kilifi Town, Kenya

Any business entity aims at attaining high level of customer satisfaction. The entity always does this by providing quality goods and services. It is crucial that within a firm, all of its internal clients are fulfilled in ensuring that effective satisfaction of external clients is attained. TQM has been presently presented as the means of management that focus in improving an organization’s financial performance by attaining customer needs and quality of product provision. The research primary focused on examining the key impacts of TQM on management and financial performance of Kenya’s banks in Kilifi Town. The study’s objectives were based on establishing the impact of staff involvement, the management commitment, regular improvements and customer focus of the bank’s performance. The entire research was based on Deming’s theory of TQM and Porter’s theory of competitive advantage. In attaining the research objectives, the research utilized descriptive research technique and a population of 195 participants from 13 commercial banks in operation within the Town of Kilifi. A 30 percent sample was considered reflections of 59 participants. In getting information from the respondents the study utilized both structures and unstructured questionnaires that consisted of both open and closed ended questions. However, respondents had varying questions and had the opportunity to answer appropriately. SPSS (Version 22) stands out as one of the key analysis tool to be used in examine the quantitative data collected, and then the information was presented by the use of means, frequencies, percentages, standard deviations an means. The research utilized multiple regressions analysis in estimating the study model. The study’s gathered and analyzed data was presented by the use of tables, charts, graphs and frequencies meant to enhance the process of interoperations, provision of conclusions and recommendations. Theoretically, the research is expected to be of importance both to firms expected to use the information in enhancing quality products provisions and academicians expected to do researches on a similar or related topic.It was established that the selected TQM practices which included customer focus, top management commitment, continuous improvement and employee involvement significantly and positively influence the performance of commercial banks in Kilifi Town. The study concluded that the banks to a great extent embrace the four TQM practices in a bid to improve service provision, client attraction and retention and also improve organizational performance. It was further concluded that the banks embrace continuous process, procedures and system improvement to enhance operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. The study also concluded that the banks valued customers in a bid to enhance market share and customer base and also stay competitive in the market. The study further concluded that the top management was committed to enhancing service quality, employee participation and involvement in quality integration, stakeholder involvement, communication and collective decision making. The study recommends that the banks need to involve employees and stakeholder more in decision making and policy formulation to promote collective responsibility and performance. The study recommends that there is need for improved customer care to cater for all categories of clients and also embrace value addition to the clients. The study was conducted on only four TQM practices, there is need for further studies on other TQM practices.

Engaging engineering students in socially responsible design using global projects

ABSTRACTEngineering education for sustainable design often focuses on technical solutions with little consideration of social impact. This paper presents a case study of a project-based learning (PBL) studio course engaging engineering students in social and sustainable design practices with external clients in developing economies. The case is a review of how concepts from Socially Responsible Design (SRD), Appropriate Technology (AT) and Human-Centred Design (HCD) integrated into a pedagogical model (Locale) focusing student effort on the socio-cultural, technical, economic and environmental aspects. Drawing on data from ten years of course operation the analysis identifies three distinct variants. Re-examining all 186 design projects using a new metric based on the pedagogical model (Locale) revealed an upward trend in the socio-cultural and economic appropriateness of the solutions without any diminution of technical suitability. Thus, the paper provides a new approach for designing and evaluating PBL courses specifically focused on social and sustainable design.

Decentralizing IoT Management Systems Using Blockchain for Censorship Resistance

Blockchain technology has been increasingly used for decentralizing cloud-based Internet of Things (IoT) architectures to address limitations faced by centralized systems. While many existing efforts are successful in decentralization with multiple servers (i.e., full nodes) to handle faulty nodes, an important issue has arisen that external clients have to rely on a relay node to communicate with the full nodes in the blockchain. Compromization of such relay nodes may result in a security breach and even a blockage of IoT sensors from the network. In this article, we propose blockchain-based decentralized IoT management systems for censorship resistance, which include a “diffusion” function to deliver all messages from sensors to all full nodes and an augmented consensus protocol to check data losses, replicate processing outcome, and facilitate opportunistic outcome delivery. We also leverage public key aggregation to reduce communication complexity and signature verification. The experimental results from proof-of-concept implementation and deployment in a real distributed environment show the feasibility and effectiveness in achieving censorship resistance.

The Impact of Emotional Intelligence as Buffer Effect of Stress in the Working with External Clients, The Specificity of the Health Professionals

Aim: Skills based on EI (Emotional Intelligence) lead to challenges both in the area of personal excellence and professional success, so with this research we intend to explore the relationship between EI and PS (perceived stress) in workers with external clients, particularly health professionals. Materials and Methods: empirical, cross-sectional and non-experimental study, with a non-probabilistic sample by networks of 874 workers from different professional activities (154 healthcare area). The applied questionnaire includes four scales, however in this study we used the EI and PS scales. Results: The scales used with good indexes of adjustment: EI [ /df= 3,965; NFI= .923; RMSEA= .055; α= .84; M= 5.11 (SD= .63)]; PS [ /df= 4.045; NFI = .953; RMSEA = .059; α = .82; M = 1.79 (SD = .51)]. The results support empirically a negative relationship between emotional intelligence and perceived stress in workers, this relationship can be enhanced with the relationship with other people, such as external clients. Conclusion: We conclude that people who contact the general public develop EI more, in turn EI relates has a negative and statistically significant relationship with PS.

Integrative Propositional Analysis for developing capacity in an academic research institution by improving strategic planning

AbstractAlthough current systems‐based methods of organization development provide some benefit to improving the ability of organizations to reach their goals, consultants are continually seeking to improve the way they may be used to support internal and external clients. This paper reports on an emerging systems‐based analytical method, “Integrative Propositional Analysis,” and its use for improving strategic plans leading to improvements in the capacity of an academic research institution. This preliminary report suggests a new structural perspective that may be useful for consultants and leaders interested in improving the usefulness of strategic plans for improving organizational effectiveness so that organizations may better fulfil their missions.

Перспективные решения в сфере мотивации персонала в цифровой экономике

The development of information technology (IT) has led to the development of a new generation of people who live in the virtual world. Such people live by different laws, have their own value systems, and have specific needs and demands. They are little loyal to traditional organizations, which creates problems in securing and motivating staff. The subject of the article is the positioning of technical solutions in the field of material motivation of personnel in the era of digital business transformation. The purpose of the article is to present the requirements for IT systems imposed by the Y, Z generations, the characteristics of existing technical solutions in the light of digital business transformation at the current stage and possible software options for implementation, the choice of which for implementation is determined by the scale of the business and the company’s strategy. These problems are significantly enhanced in the banking sector, where employees are both external and internal clients of the bank, and have the opportunity in real time to compare the quality and usability of IT solutions from the perspective of such clients. Prospective directions for the development of technical solutions based on the future preferences of external and internal customers (employees) due to scientific and technical progress are given. Recommendations for the introduction of new data storage and processing tools, as well as software for visualization of productivity — sales — employee bonuses, the implementation of which will lead to increased labor motivation and involvement of line staff, and through it to improve external customer experience, are offered. Conclusion: the introduction of IT solutions that meet the specific needs of generations of workers Y, Z, will help the organization to achieve the goals stated in the development strategy.

POMIAR MEDIÓW SPOŁECZNOŚCIOWYCH JAKO ELEMENT ZARZĄDZANIA WIEDZĄ I INFORMACJĄ W PRZEDSIĘBIORSTWACH

Nowadays, social media are one of the most frequent and the most used communication channels in enterprises - both in internal and external communication, with current and potential clients and other stakeholders. In order for the implemented activities to achieve the intended goals, it is necessary to constantly monitor and analyze the data obtained in this way. This is the only way to decide whether to continue or correct the strategy if it is not effective.

CONCEPTS OF RECRUITING IN LABOR LAW OF UKRAINE

The article explores the nature and characteristics of the processes of recruitment and staff development as a factor of safety of personnel. Proved that the recruitment and staff development should take into account the need to ensure the safety of personnel of the enterprise, and the formation of human resources in the enterprise security is closely linked to the processes of recruiting and staff development.
 The lexico-semantic analysis shows that the word "recruiting" comes from the French "recruit", "to recruit", ie to recruit anyone, to recruit, to recruit anyone, to hire for money. Recruiting is based on elements such as search, selection, selection of employee incentives to work.
 In general, there are various HR-branding channels through which employees are recruited, from which the following main channels can be distinguished: social media (social networks, forums, corporate blogs) - a universal tool for building an HR-brand; a career site is an extremely effective tool in the hands of a skilled employer; Job search sites are very popular due to the ability to reach a large target audience; brand advocates are a strategic channel for building an HR brand within the company through interaction with internal and external clients, which can serve as employees of the company as well as external candidates, clients, partners, contractors, etc .; referral programs are designed to accelerate the closing of vacancies and find candidates with the help of company employees. Everyone who invites or recommends a candidate; HR-branding as a tool for promoting the employer brand in the labor market - media, conferences, seminars, competitions.

Client‐based project work as experiential education

The student practicum is a time‐honored part of design education. That's why it's so surprising that very little research has been done into the pedagogy, design, operations, and assessment of this type of “experiential education.”Most design schools include some kind of studio practicum course in which educators seek to create “real world” projects with external clients. Do these experiences lead to an increase in student understanding of design management practices? How do educators assess these projects?

Auditor Communication Provisions in Private Loan Agreements: Do They Matter?

We examine auditor communication provisions (ACPs) in private loan agreements, which are private contracting mechanisms between external auditors and audit clients which establish communication between lenders and their borrowers' auditors. We provide evidence that lenders value privately-contracted auditor communication and often specify multiple ACPs that facilitate lender monitoring. In terms of debt contracting outcomes, we find ACPs are associated with a lower ex ante likelihood of loan covenant violation. We also examine audit fee implications for the borrower and find that ACPs are associated with higher audit fees, which is consistent with auditors responding to the litigation risk these provisions impose. We corroborate this by providing evidence that this relationship is concentrated in samples where the risk of third-party litigation is greater. Finally, we find evidence that ACPs lead auditors to become more conservative as their clients exhibit lower signed discretionary accruals when the risk of third-party litigation is greater.

A Modified Hill Cipher For Better Security

Security is the most challenging aspects in the internet and network application. These days the applications like Internet and networks are growing very fast, thereby the importance and the value of the exchanged data over the internet or other media types are increasing. While transmitting any confidential information across network, some unauthorized user tend to steal or corrupt the data. To prevent this interruption, security of data is needed. As data security is needed for protecting data from unauthorized users and destructive forces, some security techniques are used. Encryption is one such technique which is used to protect the database from unauthorized accesses and unwanted actions of external clients. It is used to secure the confidential information from unauthorized user by converting the data in to that format that is only understandable by the authorized receiver that knows the respective decryption to obtain the original data or information. In this paper, our focus will be on Database Security, as databases are considered as the storehouses of data. Generally, data of an organization or a company is stored in databases and is very crucial to the organization. Today, most of the organizations allow their clients to use their services (online banking, online shopping etc) by accessing their databases. This leads to a requirement of high level security to deal with information attackers. An information attacker tries to illegally acquire or modify the highly confidential data of the organization. An innovative approach for database security using Hill Cipher encryption & decryption method is proposed. This cryptography based approach provides an additional level of security to the database systems. Important data or information crucial to the organization should be secured from illegal theft and attacks. This encryption scheme completely is based on key matrix that a organization decides before encryption and decryption. In this proposed scheme a common key is used to encrypt the data items. Keywords: Database, Data security, Encryption, Decryption, Hill Chiper Algorithm.

Optimising learning outcomes through social co-creation of new knowledge in real-life client challenges

People are naturally creative, subjective creatures who (when engaged well) love to learn. However, traditional education is about transferring known content rather than stimulating the co-creation of new knowledge and insights to generate future value in unknown situations. Too often, in this misaligned traditional approach, there is an overemphasis on quantitative assessment of ‘remembered facts’ and insufficient attention given to demonstrated capabilities to apply the learned insights to a range of possible future scenarios. The outcome of this can be graduates who are not ready for the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world. This conceptual article describes an experiential learning programme in which there is no teaching of content. Instead, learners experience a range of real project challenges in contexts where the clients genuinely want well-informed, relevant advice to implement recommended options. Learners collaboratively interact in an Applied Social Learning Ecosystem (ASLE) to build content that is relevant to the external clients’ challenges and resources. Learners co-create a range of prioritised options for their client to adopt, adapt and apply and build a compelling argument to engage them to do so. The course was designed with a wide range of learning theories embedded and facilitated in a way where these have been applied in practice rather that taught as models. The course has received positive feedback from all parties – the learners, the clients, the business mentors and the school. The “Co-created Projects Worth DOING” generated by the learners in the process of their learning activities have generated significant social benefits for the clients. The experience has been consistently enjoyed by all, including the learning facilitators and mentors. It continues to evolve as feedback from the participants informs the next iterations.

The use of traditional and non-traditional career theories to understand the young’s relationship with new technologies

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to, which involved 123 students in their last year of an administration course at a private university in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, evaluate the importance of analyzing the pressure from new technologies on the careers of young university students from a career theory perspective.Design/methodology/approachFrom the perspective of traditional theories, the authors used “career anchors,” and from the perspective of non-traditional theories, “intelligent careers,” in which people develop three competency groups that are transferable between organizations: knowing why; knowing how; and knowing whom. The hypotheses the authors raised were analyzed using statistical techniques and the following results were obtained: young people do not see new technologies as a threat to their current job; people who see the “Knowing How” competence as being more developed feel less pressure from new technologies; non-traditional theories show a greater potential to analyze technological pressure than traditional theories; and, finally, the nature of people’s jobs produces different impacts on the pressure of new technologies on their careers, since people who occupy positions involving more human interaction with internal or external clients feel less threatened.FindingsIt was found that the lowest mean among the constructs analyzed was the pressure from technology on career. The correlations between the competencies of intelligent careers and the perception of the pressure from technology on career were weak, but significant, whereas the “Knowing How” competency was negatively correlated with the pressure caused by technology. There was no significant influence of the anchors on the pressure from technology on career. However, incorporating the competencies of intelligent careers improved the statistical model’s fit. In associating job positions with the pressure from technology on career, administrative and operational positions showed higher averages than sales associate and management positions.Originality/valueBroadly speaking, it can be noted that traditional career theories, especially the vocational counseling approach, are not sufficient to explain the impact of new technologies on careers. At the same time, one way of coping with the pressure brought about by technological advances may be in using technology itself to develop “useful professional skills,” in a manner consistent with “intelligent careers.”

Ensuring Measurable Strategic Alignment to External Clients and Society

Ensuring Measurable Strategic Alignment to External Clients and Society

Implementation Features of Effective Optical Transport Networks

The purpose of this article is to analyze the features and formulate practical recommendations for the construction of efficient optical transport networks. To sum up the main area of application of CWDM - optical transport networks of urban and regional scale. At the same time, the costs are much lower (cheap laser diode, lack of optical amplifiers) compared to DWDM, but such a network will have fewer build opportunities due to the limited number of channels (8, max 18) and lower speeds in the optical channel. The DWDM platforms have significantly higher performance and scalability and allow you to fully realize the capabilities of optical fiber throughputs to dozens of Terabytes/sec due to the increased number of optical channels and the increase in speed in each channel. The use of multi-service transport platforms (MSTP) on the optical transport network (OTN) provides the integration of several network technologies at the hardware level and allows the creation of various network node configurations: ROADM, optic channel termination node, linear optical amplifier node, etc. When creating or upgrading OTN it is necessary to take into account: the type of optical fiber (related to the compensation of the chromatic dispersion, the presence of "water" peak of attenuation); future expansion of the network; Scalability equipment, software and hardware upgrades, build-up, component integration, port density and optical channels per board, unification of used components when building network nodes, efficient system management, and energy efficiency. The considered example of using the Cisco MSTP ONS15454 equipment demonstrates the ability to create a highly productive, scalable, versatile, efficiently managed transport network. Such transport networks and similar equipment may be used by corporations that have branching throughout the territory of Ukraine. The return on investment will increase if you attract external clients to transfer their traffic to the corporation's transport network.