Browsing by Author "Deasley, Peter J."
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Item Open Access How companies embed non-quantifiable product qualities through their product development process(Cranfield University, 2006-06) Guldbrandsen, Marianne Norden; Deasley, Peter J.; Kay, John M.Many consumer products have reached a high level of technical product quality. Rapid adoption of new technologies and access to a global market means that markets are getting saturated. This means that technical differentiation is often not enough to sell a product and products compete more and more on intangible product qualities - these are meant to delight, bring pleasure, be easy to use and to create an experience. These qualities are often difficult to measure in the product using scientific descriptions and numerical measures. This research studies these Non-Quantifiable Product Qualities and the thesis presents research into how companies embed these Non-Quantifiable Product Qualities into their products in an attempt to satisfy their customers. The aim of this research was to gain insight into how large manufacturing companies embed product qualities that are difficult to quantify, by studying their product development process. This was done in two stages, firstly an exploratory study into five case organisations, secondly an in-depth study into three of the original five companies. Fifty interviews with designers, engineers and marketers formed the main source of data, supplemented with observations and document analysis. In the exploratory stage nine initial themes emerged out of data analysis, which then informed the data collection in the descriptive stage. The final output is seven confirmed themes, with 43 major findings and three conceptual models, that describe how companies embed Non-Quantifiable Product Qualities through their product development process. The research has found that the researched companies have some common strategies for embedding Non-Quantifiable Product Qualities. One example is that they will typically seek to translate an emotional response in the customer into measurable product qualities that will evoke such response. It is also common to seek out customer reaction to products during development to ensure successful embedding of Non-Quantifiable Product Qualities.Item Open Access Managing processes and information technology in mergers - the integration of finance processes and systems(Cranfield University, 2003) Pedain, Christoph; Deasley, Peter J.Many companies use mergers to achieve their growth goals or target technology position. To realise synergies that justify the merger transaction, an integration of the merged companies is often necessary. Such integartion takes place across company business areas (such as finance or sales) and across the layers of management consideration, which are strategy, human resources, organisation, processes, and information technology. In merger integration techniques, there is a significant gap regarding the management of operational level issues. Yet, especially for the finance business area, an integration of processes and information technology is of high importance and often required swiftly after the merger. The author therefore presents an approach designed for managing the operational level merger in the finance business area. To close the gap in considering operational level issues, the author has developed a model for integraring finance processes and information technology of merging companies. For such model development, literature resources have been used along with merger experiences of the author, and interviews with merger experts. Validation of the developed model has been conducted by using in-depth case studies for showing the effects of applying the model. Further validation interviews have been conducted to support the generality of the approach. Accommodating the significant increase of task complexity during mergers compared to normal business operation, the presented approach focuses on managing interdependencies instead of project detail. Features of this approach comprise: An organisational proposal to settinmg up merger programme management; An interdependency model, vertically interconnecting the finance business area with strategic and organisational merger decisions, and horizontally interconnecting the finance business area with other business areas. It could be shown that the presented model improves merger integration quality by reducing complexity of merger management. The model is most applicable for larger companies, and can be used in any merger phase.