Why Good Gamblers Make Good Businessmen

Management InformationLet’s start the story at the beginning. Sometime in 2005 I was on my way back home on a Thai Air flight from Jakarta to Heathrow, via Bangkok. In Bangkok I was joined by a casually dressed, youngish Englishman. One look told me he had some money because his clothes and shoes looked expensive, as was his seat on the plane. After a while we got talking. I told him what I did, he told me what he did. It turned out he was a professional gambler living in Thailand. I was immediately captivated by the glamour of his profession, he seemed keen to talk and while away the hours, I was keen to listen. So in the intervening 12 hours I got a pretty good insight into the life and strategies of a professional gambler.

Well, surprise surprise, it’s not all glamour and it’s not all luck. The man was a statistician by education, a former mathematics teacher of all things, who had turned a knowledge of statistics to his advantage in the arena of sports betting. The trick to making a profit in the longer term was, apparently, to have an ability to identify when the bookies have got the odds wrong. That’s when you place your bet. They don’t all come off, but the odds start slanting your way as opposed to the way of the bookie. Being able to identify when the odds were wrong involved a working knowledge of statistics, and a better knowledge of the event than the bookie appeared to have, and that usually involved some very painstaking research. He was based in Thailand because (he said) the bookies in South East Asia get the odds wrong more often than they do elsewhere. Makes sense.

So what were his strategies? Well, here are some that I can remember:

* Bet with a clear head. If you have a favourite team, leave it alone
* Avoid accumulator bets. With each accumulated event, the odds lurch further the way of the bookie
* Do your research. Pick, say, ten football teams a year and study them continually. Find out which games they tend to win, which they lose, which players appear to be key, injury situations etc. This will all give you a clear advantage over the lazier bookies Read the rest of this entry »

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Tips to Get Rid of Unsecured Debt – Legally Never Pay Back Unsecured Debt

Management InformationMany people out there today are entangled in a web of credit card debt, something that is usually caused by the poor management finances by these people themselves. They have no one else to blame but themselves, and to combat this issue, they must look for viable solutions to get rid of their debts. Banks do not help with their continuous promotions of the latest credit cards with attractive incentives and attractions for the general public. The interest rates that are charged are high, but these facts are camouflaged from the public, while the benefits and the advantages of the credit cards are highlighted strongly. Before you know it, you end up with thousands in debt, and no proper solution in place to get rid of these debts.

Nevertheless, there is help in store for those in the quandary in the form of debt management services. Not only do they help you to get rid of current debt, they also help in terms of future debt prevention and management for your long term benefit. Those seeking debt management information could find most of the relevant information on the internet, or alternatively you could check with local debt relief and settlement firms that offer this service. Nevertheless, there is another way of dealing with these debts. It is called the liability settlement, something that would be appealing to those who cannot legally pay back their unsecured debts.

Using a liability settlement, you would be able to lower your debt amount through detailed negotiations with your creditors to reduce the amount that you owe them. A successful liability settlement process could see you pay less than half of what you actually owe the creditors, thus you would be able to gain in more than one way with this option. Financial companies are forced to consider this option with regards with the current economic situation, for them it is better to recoup as much as possible rather than nothing at all. Thus instead of going bankrupt, the financial companies are prepared to negotiate, and this could prove to be a blessing for those who have large amounts of unsecured debts. Read the rest of this entry »

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50 Business Intelligence Failures

  1. Management InformationInadequate integration knowledge on Business Intelligence and Decision Support System Level. Dashboards are not good solutions.
  2. Not seeing complete Business Intelligence picture.
  3. No vision of what is final goal of BI tool. What are final outcomes and how will they be used for company prosperity and competitive advantage.
  4. Demands are created faster than Management Information Systems can absorb, implement and stabilize = Generating to big cumulated requests.
  5. No or little relation between financial statements and non financial key performance indicators.
  6. Lack of integrative systems in Legacy level.
  7. No or inadequate Mater Data Management solutions.
  8. No or inadequate Data Quality processes.
  9. Minimizing data quality issues by customer.
  10. Too high expectations from Business Intelligence. It is not an Expert System.
  11. Business Intelligence solutions are specialised. Can not cover everything.
  12. Out of the box solutions cover minor part of your current process and required functionalities. Be prepared to change processes more then to customize out of the box solution.
  13. Too dynamic complex market, like telecommunications.
  14. No internal technical knowledge on management and on expert level Read the rest of this entry »
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