PROFIT, BILLING AND PROFITABILITY: CONCEPTS AND DIFFERENCES

 Despite being commonly associated as synonyms, the words invoicing and monetization do not have the same meaning. Most authors tend to present the concepts of profitability and monetization, as a comparison between a company's profits and its sales revenue. Revenue is the "total sum of a company's sales", in a certain period, from its commercial activity. In that sense, billing is one of the main indicators used to measure the size of a business. Unlike billing, which is all the money that
goes into a company, profit is all the money that is left after deducting all expenses and costs.

Profitability is as a vital force for the organisation and it is the expression of the economic result which is the company-wide goal. Profitability is a
operational efficiency indicator that indicates what is the gain that the company manages to generate. The greater the profitability and turnover, the better the profitability of the company and the shareholders.

Considering that profitability also measures efficiency, it is also understood as the measure of financial return on an investment

Profitability, also expressed as the rate of return, is the profit to investment ratio. Determining the return on investment lets is see if it was consistent
with what had been planned. From the analysis of this indicator, it is possible to assess the organization's final performance, in addition to making it possible to analyse the causes of the problems about profitability. Based on the present considerations, it is important to know the main profitability indexes, since they provide the analyst with an assessment of the company's earnings.

Marketing Information System

Marketing information system is defined by some as a structure of interaction between people, machines, methods and controls, in order to create an information flow capable of providing the basis for decision making in marketing. The information itself does not lead to the decision; it is necessary to choose a course of action that helps identify problems and opportunities and that indicates paths that reduce uncertainty. It is worth noting that not all companies have exclusive departments for information handling. Generally, it is found in companies, mainly small and medium-sized, sectors such as commercial/sales, logistics that make projections based on sales data, or on small marketing research, which is rarer. An information system can bring different types of advantages for the company in general, not just for the marketing sector. 

 It as a system in which marketing data is formally gathered, stored, analysed and distributed to managers in accordance with their informational needs on a regular basis.Furthermore, an overall Marketing Information System can be defined as a set structure of procedures and methods for the regular, planned collection, analysis and presentation of information for use in making marketing decisions. A marketing information system, which continuously collects the initial, routine and systematic data, is not only used for one particular topic but is designed for monitoring the degree of the marketing success to ensure the achievable of the operation as well. Internal database is a part of the most marketing information systems. In addition, it's relatively convenient to access and retrieve information. A databases allow marketers to tap into an abundance of information useful in making marketing decisions: internal sales reports, newspaper articles, company news releases, government economic reports, bibliographies, and more, often accessed through a computer system.

Internal data is a part of the data that is needed to be collect and handled by the marketing information system. But getting the information that is really needed from a marketing information system depends on what the information is and how it is used. The following internal operating data are essential:

 - Sales data, presented in a graphic format, can provide regular sales trend information and highlight whether certain customer types need to be targeted or focused.

- Price information by product line, comparison with competitors, can monitor market trends; analysed by customer type, it can check price trends in customer groups.

- Stock level data and trends in key accounts or distributors, focusing on whether different outlets need support; provide market share information.

- Market support information, coordinating the effects of marketing promotions, through advertising, direct marketing, trade incentives, consumer competitions and so on; helps to determine whether decisions are being made effectively.

- Competitive information, reviewing competitors' promotions and communications to see if the company is doing it better or worse than competitors, can improve market targeting.

Marketing managers use marketing information systems to develop short-term and long-term plans that outline product sales, profits and growth targets. Information systems facilitate the analysis and monitoring of performance against the objectives of each area of the marketing function. Information marketing systems support models and expert systems are also used to examine the results of various marketing plans.

New Digital Markets

 The recurring changes brought about by technological evolution have impacted societies and markets. Consumer culture has been changing gradually. With the increase in mobility and connectivity, consumers now have limited time to examine and evaluate brands. In a fast-paced world,our attention span tends to go down; people find it increasingly difficult to concentrate. Yet, across multiple channels—online and offline alike— consumers remain exposed to an excess of everything: product features, brand promises and sales pitches. Confused by advertising messages that are too good to be true, customers often overlook them, preferring to turn to more reliable sources of information: their social circle of friends and immediate family. 

 The change in comsumer behaviour in different societies and social groups has directly influenced the market as a whole, pressing it to meet their demands, hitherto repressed, and making it present in the most varied media and platforms. There is virtually no doubt that the digital revolution is one of the most significant influences on consumer behaviour and that the web's impact will continue to expand as more and more people around the world turn to the online world for information and services. Many of us are eager to browse the internet, and it's hard to imagine a time when texting, tweeting, using Facebook, or pinpointing interests on Pinterest wasn't part of our daily lives. In view of the above, the importance of the internet and its influence in the current global market and its social context is undeniable.

 According to a report by We Are Social (2021), web platforms are present in the daily lives of 59.5% of the world population, that is, the internet today has more than 4.5 billion connected users. In this sense, the need for companies to understand that more points of contact and higher volume in messages do not necessarily translate into greater influence. More than that, you need to stand out from the crowd and meaningfully connect with consumers at just a few crucial points of contact. One of the first business models that relate the market to the internet is the well-known e-commerce, the process of buying and selling products by electronic means, such as mobile and Internet applications, both for the retail and online shopping sector, as well as electronic transactions. With the advent of globalisation, commerce is no longer limited to going to the physical store of your choice to choose a product; with one click we can check competing offers, choose brands, see what other buyers say about the product, all in real time. The growing success of commercial transactions of this type is due to the fact that online retailers can predictably provide convenient, informative and personalised experiences for quite different types of consumers and businesses. 

 We can distinguish between entirely virtual companies, which started with a website, with no previous existence as a physical company, and virtual and real companies (brick-and-click), companies that have added an informational website and/or e-commerce option to their operations.

Young people are trendsetters

Young people are trendsetters. They are consumers of Generation Right Now, demanding everything right away. When it comes to trends,they are so quick to spot and follow them that marketers often cannot keep up with them. The positive aspect is that these professionals can quickly identify patterns that will influence the market in the near future .

Despite this definition, it is still necessary to understand that many of the trends adopted by the younger consumer public generally turn out to be an ephemeral fad, while a few manage to evolve, evolving to a megatrend, and even reaching the predominant culture.

AIX Operating System

 The AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive) operating system is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems by IBM. It's based on UNIX System V with 4.3BSD-compatible extensions and was the first operating system to have a journaling file system, with continuous enhanced features such as processor, disk and network virtualization, dynamic hardware resource allocation, and reliability engineering. The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) is AIX's default graphical user interface, with open-source KDE Plasma Workspaces and GNOME desktop also available.

SMIT is the System Management Interface Tool for AIX. It allows a user to navigate a menu hierarchy of commands, rather than using the command line. The F6 function key generates the command line that SMIT will invoke to complete it, while the smit.script file automatically records the commands with the command flags and parameters used, being useful to rerun system configuration tasks.

Smitty also refers to the same program, though it invokes the text-based version, while smit will bring up an X Window System based interface by searching for the DISPLAY variable. Failure to fire up the x window system will instead present the text interface.

Object Data Manager (ODM) is a database of system information integrated into AIX, akin to the registry in Microsoft Windows. Data managed in ODM is stored as objects with associated attributes. Command-line utilities such us odmshow, odmget, odmadd, odmchange and odmdelete allow for interaction with ODM. ODM is stored on disk using Berkeley DB files.

running red lights is now rampant

I have noticed that reckless/murderous driving is at an all-time high. During March 2020-late 2021, driving where I live ebbed, and when people drove in that period they quickly got used to clog-free roads with no coppers on them and drove accordingly. Now that traffic is back to normal, they have not tightened up their driving and are running red lights, impatiently making right turns without looking and ignoring pedestrians crossing, doing U turns dangerously everywhere all the time, cutting corners by driving through gas stations at high speed, etc. It got so bad I started over the last few weeks seriously looking at who is doing this in my neighbourhoods. Most have tinted windows, so those are the usual suspects. They drive like fiends. This is a big deal for me because I don't own a car and walk on heavily travelled streets and roads every day. There have been times in the past where cars hit me but they were slowgoing and low-prowed and I rode up on the hood with no injury or police-legal-hospital-insurance involvement. The vehicles now are tank sized with like 4 or 5 feet grilles and they drive them like they're sports cars and they'll roll over me without the driver even knowing.

handling failure is like handling success- you should always keep the momentum going

We're all more or less cut from the same cloth. The only difference between men (and between our better selves and definitely our lesser selves) is what we do when things look bleak. Do we succumb to the bleakness and spiral further into it? Or do we pull ourselves together and fight through it, finishing the story on our own terms?

It's not always a clear choice. You can have a "bad decade".

One thing I've learnt is to go towards what scares you rather than away from it.

To put it another another way, there is more pain in avoidance than in action.

To put it yet another way, when you come to a fork in the road, take the side that will grow your nads.