...www.pwc.co.uk The direct economic impact of gold October 2013 www.pwc.co.uk The work carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP ("PwC") in relation to this report has been carried out only for the World Gold Council and solely for the purpose and on the terms agreed between PwC and the World Gold Council. The report does not constitute professional advice. No representation or warranty (express or implied) is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this report and, to the extent permitted by law, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, its members, employees and agents do not accept or assume any liability, responsibility or duty of care for any consequences to anyone acting, or refraining to act, in reliance on the information contained in this report or for any decision based on it. © 2013 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. All rights reserved. In this document, "PwC" refers to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (a limited liability partnership in the United Kingdom), which is a member firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited, each member firm of which is a separate legal entity. The direct economic impact of gold Contents Foreword ........................................................................................................................................................................1 Executive summary ...........................................................................................................................................
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...identical to existing products in the same market. The terms VPN, MPLS, convergence, the ubiquitous “IP,” service level agreements (SLA), single points of contact, managed network services, and global footprints are important in the telecommunications market, but we have heard them all before. The competitive differentiation that service providers desperately seek will not occur on this homogenous slate of technology and service offerings. Only when service providers truly understand what is happening from the customer’s perspective will real competitive differentiation take place. Providers must realize that they do not drive the networking and telecom environment; the customers’ strategic and tactical objectives drive it. If service providers wish to position at higher levels in the corporation, they must change the way they communicate. Such communication should not only show an understanding of the enterprise applications themselves but also an understanding of how the applications relate to the service providers’ product set. This paper will outline three (of the many) enterprise applications and business drivers service providers can use to differentiate themselves. We will examine the concepts of data warehousing and data mining for the purpose of effective enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management (SCM). We will define the major aspects of each, examine the drivers and impacts of each, and consider...
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...MARKETING & DIRECT MARKETING MODULE NOTES Code | 50121621 A | Course | Rural and Development Marketing | Topic | Division | | | What are rural markets? Is there a uniform identity? Global trends impacting rural behavior (only India)- WTO, technology and social behavior | Nikita Naina Kumar | | | India's rural communities- disparities, segmentation and social factors | Trishla Jhaveri | | | Media penetration, impact and costs in rural India | Shayan Roy | | | Psychographics, demographics and societal impact on the rural consumer | | | | Profiling the rural male consumer | | | | Profiling the rural female consumer | | | | The rural business model- distribution, pricing, packaging, promotion- in rural markets | | | | Branding and brand management in rural India | | What is Rural Marketing? Rural Marketing is defined as any marketing activity in which the one dominant participant is from a rural area. This implies that rural marketing consists of marketing of inputs (products or services) to the rural as well as marketing of outputs from the rural markets to other geographical areas. Rural markets have emerged as an important growth engine in the Indian consumption story. With about 70 per cent of the Indian population residing in the hinterlands, rural markets seem to be a significant opportunity for business conglomerates. Rural areas of the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large...
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...VALE Briefly explain its profile (e.g. activity, business model, history, who are the owners). Vale is a Brazilian multinational specialised in mining and metal operations. It is the third largest mining company in the world, with over 85,000 employees and a revenue of $44 billion in 2013. The ownership is currently split into 3 golden-shares owned by the Brazilian Government and the rest is owned by pension funds. Founded in 1942 by the Brazilian Federal Government as Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD), it soon became the biggest company responsible for the country’s iron ore exports (80% in 1949). In 1982, Vale diversified its activity portfolio, but also expanding geographically. The firm was privatised in 1997, and as a result, decided to focus mainly on mining extraction as a primary business, only keeping logistics and energy as a way to reduce costs and risks of their main activity. From 2000 to 2007, Vale entered a phase of market consolidation, resulting in the company owning 85% of the iron ore production in Brazil. At the same time, the company diversified internationally to increase the participation of non-ferrous metals on total revenues – for example, a nickel-producing company in Canada, or coal-mining companies in Australia or China. Explain the company’s strategy, drawing from the data you found plus your assumptions. Vale’s vision is to be the number one global natural resources firm. In order to achieve its vision, Vale has a strategy of expansion: ...
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...In today’s business environment, businesses must be able to sift through and analyze massive amounts of data to gain a competitive edge over their competition. Utilizing data mining techniques, businesses are given the ability to analyze data from different points of view and turn it into useful information that can be used to increase revenue, cut costs, or both (Jason.Frand, n.d.). In today’s environment, competitive businesses use what is known as “Predictive Analytics” to perform mining and analysis of their data. In fact, predictive analytics is a form of data mining that if used properly can automatically sort and index a company database to create a predictive model based off corporate knowledge (Eric Siegel, 2005). Predictive Analytics use business intelligence technology to produce a score known as a predictor, which is a measurable value for every customer or organizational element. Once data records such as where, when, and how purchases are made are correlated, a predictive predictor or score is created. This predictor, in conjunction with other information, can assist in informing businesses what actions to take in order to get the consumer to purchase the goods they are offering. In fact, the proper utilization of predictive analytics can optimize marketing campaigns, improve web site behavior, reduce customer response times, increase revenue, and cut costs. The way companies and customers interact and perform their daily business has changed throughout the years...
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...greater interaction between it and other economies. Thus, following economic reforms that focused considerably on opening the economy to greater and freer external trade, globalization has been a major aspect of the economy and society. But this influence has been observed not only in the area of external trade; it is seen also in terms of capital flows, aid, technology transfer, international migration, etc. All of these have seen significant expansion in the period of reforms, even if this has been on a scale far smaller than in South East Asia and the other faster growing developing economies. Globalization has definitely created opportunities for various parts of the economy to gain access to larger pools of resources as well as markets. While this may generally be perceived to have impacted positively on the beneficiaries, there are also indications that globalization has introduced new risks to environments that were hitherto closed to those risks. The increased risk may, in some cases, have accentuated poverty and worsened income distribution in parts of the country. While poverty has always been generally closely associated with the condition of African states, its link with globalization is a more recent development, and is much less understood. The relationship between globalization and poverty is obscured by the fact that for long poverty was more generally associated with rural economies and societies than urban ones, while globalization was expected to reflect...
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...Data Mining By: Holly Gildea CIS 500 Dr. Janet Durgin June 09, 2013 Data Mining We learn that data mining is a method of evaluating data from different viewpoints and summarizing it into useful information. Such information can be beneficial and used to increase things like revenue, and cutting costs, and so on. There are four categories that we will look at and determine the benefits for in regards to data mining: predictive analytics to understand the behavior of customers, associations discovery in products sold to customers, web mining to discover business intelligence from web customers, and clustering to find related customer information. To understand the behavior of customers by the use predictive analytics we must first understand what predictive analytics is. “Predictive analytics is the process of dealing with a variety of data and applying various mathematical formulas to discover the best decision for a given situation” (ArticleSnatch, 2011). This gives any business a competitive edge and helps to remove the guess work out of the decision making process therefore helping to find the right solution in a shorter amount of time. In order to find the solution faster there are a seven simple steps that must be worked thru first: what is the problem for the company, searching for multiple data resources, take the patterns that are observed from that data, creating a model that contains the problem and the data, categorize the data and find important...
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...Helping mining and mineral companies make the grade Improving your throughput and material grade Mining is simple, right? It is all about getting more product out of the ground, processing, and transportation. Whether you’re producing gold, diamonds, platinum, coal, iron ore, aluminium, or copper – the more you dig and process, the more you sell. But how much control and monitoring do you have over your work in process? How visible is your material as it flows through stockpiles, smelters and concentrators? Do you have visibility of progress toward your throughput goals and objectives? These are important questions mining operators address every day. These questions are imperative to success, allowing mining organisations to be competitive in global markets, increase shareholder returns, increase operational efficiencies, and reduce energy consumption. > What is Ampla Inventory? Ampla Inventory is a module of Ampla MES software solution. The total Ampla solution is working today for some of the world’s largest mining organisations. Ampla bridges communication between the plant floor and corporate or as they say, it is at the coalface of the operation. Ampla provides mining organisations with the competitive edge to realise business and operational targets, ensuring increases in market share and shareholder return. + Growing demand for raw materials and minerals. = Real-time visibility of your stockpiles and work...
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...Faculty of Science and Engineering Department of Mining and Engineering and Mine Surveying Western Australia School of Mines 12585 - Mine Planning 532 Research Paper 1 – Mine Planning Process and the Carbon Tax Due Date : Friday 19-8-2011 Word Count: 2470 Abstract On 15 December 2008, the Federal Government launched its 2020 target for greenhouse gas emissions and its White Paper on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) as the start of the policy and legislation process. The mining sector in Australia has been cited as being a major contributor to greenhouse gases. The introduction of the CPRS means carbon emissions of a mining project should be considered from the initial stages of mine planning. The traditional approach to mine planning involves consideration of technical and economic data as inputs to the process. This paper considers the effect of the CPRS on various technical and economic factors related to the mine planning process. The results of this paper imply that the introduction of the CPRS makes it is imperative for mining companies to assess the impact of carbon emissions on a mining project during mine planning. Introduction Climate change has become an increasingly topical issue in recent times. Mounting scientific evidence suggests that human activities are causing a buildup of greenhouse gases and that this in turn is causing changes to the world’s climate (Gregorczu, 1999). Further complicating the issue, there are economic costs, scientific...
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...AND ANALYTICS: FROM BIG DATA TO BIG IMPACT Hsinchun Chen Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 U.S.A. {hchen@eller.arizona.edu} Roger H. L. Chiang Carl H. Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0211 U.S.A. {chianghl@ucmail.uc.edu} Veda C. Storey J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30302-4015 U.S.A. {vstorey@gsu.edu} Business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) has emerged as an important area of study for both practitioners and researchers, reflecting the magnitude and impact of data-related problems to be solved in contemporary business organizations. This introduction to the MIS Quarterly Special Issue on Business Intelligence Research first provides a framework that identifies the evolution, applications, and emerging research areas of BI&A. BI&A 1.0, BI&A 2.0, and BI&A 3.0 are defined and described in terms of their key characteristics and capabilities. Current research in BI&A is analyzed and challenges and opportunities associated with BI&A research and education are identified. We also report a bibliometric study of critical BI&A publications, researchers, and research topics based on more than a decade of related academic and industry publications. Finally, the six articles that comprise this special issue are introduced and characterized in terms of the proposed BI&A research framework. Keywords: Business intelligence and analytics, big data analytics, Web 2.0 Introduction...
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...ANALYTICS: FROM BIG DATA TO BIG IMPACT Hsinchun Chen Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 U.S.A. {hchen@eller.arizona.edu} Roger H. L. Chiang Carl H. Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0211 U.S.A. {chianghl@ucmail.uc.edu} Veda C. Storey J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30302-4015 U.S.A. {vstorey@gsu.edu} Business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) has emerged as an important area of study for both practitioners and researchers, reflecting the magnitude and impact of data-related problems to be solved in contemporary business organizations. This introduction to the MIS Quarterly Special Issue on Business Intelligence Research first provides a framework that identifies the evolution, applications, and emerging research areas of BI&A. BI&A 1.0, BI&A 2.0, and BI&A 3.0 are defined and described in terms of their key characteristics and capabilities. Current research in BI&A is analyzed and challenges and opportunities associated with BI&A research and education are identified. We also report a bibliometric study of critical BI&A publications, researchers, and research topics based on more than a decade of related academic and industry publications. Finally, the six articles that comprise this special issue are introduced and characterized in terms of the proposed BI&A research framework. Keywords: Business intelligence and analytics, big data analytics...
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...* How the Internet works * Packet-switching technology Actual data transmission takes place sporadically, rather than continuously. Data to be transmitted is divided into small packets of information and labeled to identify the sender and recipient. These are sent over a network and then reassembled at their destination. If any packet did not arrive or was not intact, original sender requested to resend the packet. -> This enables millions to transmit data at the same time. * Understand the importance of standards (protocols) * What problems are and tasks are involved in networks and why are standards important for networks to run? Computers and applications of different kinds need to use the same network. Packets could get altered/lost/out of sequence. Many computers send packets simultaneously. There are lots of different destinations, routes, and sometimes some of them ‘close down’. * Bandwidth Bandwidth is transmission capacity of a computer or communications channel, measured in bits per second (bps). * TCP/IP protocol and layered standards of the Internet * Application layer, network layer (TCP/IP) Applications layer (e.g. HTTP, FTP) specifies how application programs communicate. Network layer (e.g. TCP/IP) consists of transport layer and internet layer. Transport layer (TCP) breaks, reassembles messages into packets. Internet layer (IP) specifies the address a packet is headed to. * Internet addressing and architecture:...
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...Impact of Globalization on Human Resource Management Bhushan Kapoor, Professor and Chair, Information Systems & Decision Sciences, Cal State University, Fullerton, USA ABSTRACT The roles and responsibilities of Human Resources departments are transforming as the modern business faces pressures of globalization. The global supply of talent is short of its long-term demand, and the gap is a challenge for employers everywhere. The shortage between the demand and supply of talent is likely to continue to increase, notably for high skilled workers and for the next generation of business executives. Now organizations need to place greater emphasis on attracting human capital rather than financial capital. Global staffing and management of a workforce diverse in culture and language skills, and dispersed in different nations are the key goals of global human resources. Only those multinational enterprises willing to adapt their human resource practices to the changing global labor market conditions will be able to attract and retain high performing employees. Companies with the ability to foresee their business needs and their workforce needs – especially for high skills – will gain the decisive competitive advantage. Keywords: Human Resource Management, Globalization, Data Analytics, Data Warehouse, Online Analytical Processing, Data Mining, Key Performance Indicators, Dashboards, Scorecards. INTRODUCTION Human Resources departments are transforming as the modern...
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...CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1Background to the study Mining is the extraction of minerals and precious metals from the earth. These minerals and metals consist of manganese, tantalum, copper, tin, silver, diamonds and gold. Mining may be considered in two forms: large scale mining and small scale mining. Large scale mining generally employs large number of people and produces huge tonnes of gold. Examples of companies who engage in these are the Anglo-Gold Ashanti of Ghana, Newmont Ghana, Goldfields Ghana and Minas Serra Palade Mines in Brazil which employed about over thousands workers and yielded thousands tonnes of gold (Amankwah and Anim-Sackey, 2003). Small scale mining is a form of mining that is done at small levels and mostly employs relatively a low number of people (Appiah, 1998). It is generally engaged in by local people within the area where these activities occur, and comes along with it the influx of people from other areas. Small Scale Mining companies use a considerable number of the labour force in the country. While there is no accurate SSM employment number for Ghana (Appiah, 1998), it is estimated that some 500,000 people are openly employed in the sector while additional 500,000 may indirectly be benefiting from the doings. About half of those directly engaged in the S.S.M are said to be illegal operators (Amankwah & Anim-Sackey, 2003) commonly known as “galamsey operators”. The actions of small-scale miners also generate economic linkages with other...
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...512 Use of Data Mining in the field of Library and Information Science : An Overview Roopesh K Dwivedi Abstract Data Mining refers to the extraction or “Mining” knowledge from large amount of data or Data Warehouse. To do this extraction data mining combines artificial intelligence, statistical analysis and database management systems to attempt to pull knowledge form stored data. This paper gives an overview of this new emerging technology which provides a road map to the next generation of library. And at the end it is explored that how data mining can be effectively and efficiently used in the field of library and information science and its direct and indirect impact on library administration and services. R P Bajpai Keywords : Data Mining, Data Warehouse, OLAP, KDD, e-Library 0. Introduction An area of research that has seen a recent surge in commercial development is data mining, or knowledge discovery in databases (KDD). Knowledge discovery has been defined as “the non-trivial extraction of implicit, previously unknown, and potentially useful information from data” [1]. To do this extraction data mining combines many different technologies. In addition to artificial intelligence, statistics, and database management system, technologies include data warehousing and on-line analytical processing (OLAP), human computer interaction and data visualization; machine learning (especially inductive learning techniques), knowledge representation, pattern recognition...
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