Tag: Performance

The 3 P’s of Successful Performance

Pressure

We all experience having an enormous amount of obligations, responsibilities & tasks on a daily basis with little time to accomplish them all. Do you ever feel like you are an octopus with skates on, constantly moving but not going anywhere? If that is the case, use pressure to your advantage. Think about it, I bet at some point in your business or career you had a deadline or an unexpected project that needed to be completed yesterday and somehow with all your other obligations you pulled it off! It was completed and you wondered, how did I do it? Have you ever realized that a project can be completed in the time allowed? For example, it is a given that you typically have 12 months to prepare for your taxes and you just have not found time to accumulate, print, file receipts, track mileage or document business expenses in an orderly fashion for your accountant in 12 months; now it is 3 days before “the big tax day” & miraculously you have prepared & sent all documents required to your accountant in just two days to meet the three day deadline. Remember this is a task that had been on your “to-do” list for 12 months!

Why? How?

Because when we are pressured to complete a task, project, or meet a deadline, we become focused, avoid interruptions, use our time wisely, have a clear vision on what needs to be accomplished and prioritize tasks. We kick up our success performance about 10 notches!

Don’t feel overwhelmed or stressed out when pressured, welcome the opportunity to operate from your highest performance level and adopt those traits to your daily routine.

Prioritize

Among the life of numerous tasks, projects, to-do list, family responsibilities & other obligations, take a step out of overwhelm by simply setting priorities. You will never be able to do everything at once, so quit trying! You must decide which task, project or responsibility needs your immediate attention or has the soonest deadline and that is the task that gets worked on first, put the others in a tickler file according to priority. But what if there are projects that share the same deadlines?

Get started with the most difficult ones first. For example: a business owner needs to prepare for an upcoming federal contract audit, a speaking engagement and an advisory board meeting: all scheduled for the same day.

Which is priority? The audit will require the gathering of specific information from the past year, a financial fiscal report with supporting documents and the audit will determine if the business owner will receive additional funding. The speaking engagement speech will be 20 min. in length and can be recycled from a previous speaking engagement or article, just a little rehearsal is needed. The advisory board meeting will require an agenda, previous meeting minutes, and a meeting place to hold a meeting of 10 members.

The audit is the most difficult and will require a little more time than the others, so the business owner should start with the audit and give it the most blocked time during the day, the other projects can be worked on throughout the day as well, but priority is the audit.

Prioritizing brings clarity, gives direction and streamlines your process for completing tasks and projects. When you are juggling multiple tasks, prioritize them from most to least difficult and get the difficult out of the way. Establish a hierarchy for completing tasks and take action.

Present

Be fully present in the moment. Yes, this sounds so simplistic but in an era where multi-tasking is queen, we must remember to capture complete genuine focus, we must give undivided attention to a task. Maximize your performance by avoiding external distractions (TV, telephone, email,) as well as internal distractions (sabotaging thoughts, thinking about the past, and wondering about the future) concentrate only on the task at hand. After you have worked on a particular task, put it aside and remember that you gave it your full attention, don’t fret over it anymore. When you are ready to continue to work on the task, concentrate on it only and you will began to see success. Be present with your clients/customers, don’t worry if they will purchase your product or services, be present with their needs and know that you have produced the best product or service that will meet their needs. Be present in all your endeavors.

Now you know the three P’s of successful performance:

Pressure, Prioritize, Present – incorporate them into your daily routines and your performance level will soar.

© 2007 Bridgette Boudreaux

Sales Peak Performance: Creating the Emotional Resiliency of a Champion

Eight decades ago, Dr. Evan O’Neill Kane of New York’s Kane Summit Hospital felt doctors were losing too many Customers in appendectomy surgery, many because of the effects of general anesthesia. He felt that local anesthesia would be better for the Customer but, not surprisingly, no volunteers came forward to test his hypothesis. Until, that is, February 15, 1921. That’s when he finally performed an appendectomy with local anesthesia — on himself! In the process, he changed accepted medical practice. To be your best you can be in sales, you often need to change too; sometimes that change means operating on yourself! Begin analyzing your own situation by simply counting the how many times the letter f appears.

FEATURE FILMS ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE FORMAL EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

How many did you get? 3? 4? 5? 6? 7? There are a total of seven! Most people get four or five. If you missed some, why? Why would anyone miss an f or two or three? It has to do with our mental model or the way we perceive things and act on them. This little exercise points out that what you are missing in terms of sales performance improvement is most likely right in front of you. Sometimes the solutions to your challenges are there, but you just don’t see them. Why? Because of entrenched habits, perceptions and beliefs. When you try to improve, it seems as futile as trying to lose weight with fad diets.

So what’s the key? How do you breakthrough? Dr. Charles Garfield of the Peak Performance Institute has discovered exercises that help individuals tap their personal best performances. Garfield experienced these techniques himself as a world- class weigh-lifter and researcher. Garfield explains, ” In the process, the researchers discovered that mental training techniques not only combated negative reactions, but also threw open the doors to hidden reserves of energy and endurance.” Dr. Denis Waitley identified similar peak performance strategies in his work with Olympic athletes and business people. To begin remember these important principles to achieving sales peak performance:

  • Self-development is self-management. There is no self-improvement only increasing in the ability to be all that you already are. You can’t change others but you can change yourself.
  • To manage yourself better to sell more effectively you must be willing to change some habits to increase productivity.
  • A foundation to self-management is to respond to all events based on your goals and priorities rather than reacting to spot urgencies, problems or needs.

Mind and body are intricately intertwined; to control what you do, better control what you think. Just like a champion athlete systematically physically and mentally prepares to win the gold, champion salespeople do likewise. Know your product, learn selling techniques to be customer centered and prepare mentally too. It will help you handle the setbacks, the no’s and rejection that go with the job and think creatively. We call it Emotional Resiliency.

The Best of the Best Exercise

Think of a time in your sales career when you did your best work ever. Choose a situation that exemplifies your highest performance. Get a clear mental picture of the event. Replay it in your mind as if it were a movie. Think of the details –people, problems, sounds, feelings, and surroundings. Review in your mind what happened, how you behaved, what you felt and achieved. Capture your thoughts with the questions below:

  • What was the situation?
  • What was your motivation to succeed or act?
  • How did you feel?
  • What key behaviors or strategies did you use?
  • What lessons can you learn or relearn about your Peak Performance?

By learning to replicate that experience and improving the result as well, you’ll become a sales leader. To be the best you can be, make a commitment to personal development and excellence. If you want to be exceptional, do exceptional things. The difference between sales winners and losers is that the winners do what losers won’t do at all or won’t do enough. Never forget that success is not accidental. Achieve peak sales performance by continuing to learn from your experiences and others.

Teaching English for Communicative Performance and Business Communication

It is a challenge to us English teachers to manage with our own widely differing linguistic competence the large classes of mixed ability students. Non-availability or high cost of books and instructional material are the challenges just as tests and exams seem to have become the only goal in themselves. In addition, lack of students'(and even teachers’) motivation, administrative apathy, inaccessibility to electronic media, journals and books, balance between the use of mother tongue and English to ensure acquisition of communication skills, or perhaps, a better teaching-learning situation in the mother tongue and other languages, and dissemination of best English Language Teaching (ELT) practices internationally, with an e-culture interface are the new problems teachers have to cope with.

As teachers we need to work on our own affirmative action programmes, despite constraints of our situation. In order to do something new, we may have to give up the old. As John Swales says, “We may need to recycle not only our projects and our programmes but also ourselves.” In fact a practical teacher should be able to operate within, what may be called, “here and now” state of affairs. It is with some sort of inbuilt flexibility and utilitarian purpose that one can practice ELT in the days ahead.

NEGOTIATING DIFFERENCES

With sensitivity for the language (to me, language use is more a matter of pleasure and beauty than of rules and structure), I would like to assert that the yardsticks of the British or American native speakers, or their standards as reflected in GRE, TOEFL or IELTS etc, or their kind of tongue twisting, are simply damaging to the interests of non-native speakers. We have to develop our own standards, instead of teaching to sound like Londoners or North Americans. Pronunciation must be intelligible and not detract from the understanding of a message. But for this nobody needs to speak the so called standardized English (that makes inter- and intra-national communication difficult). David Crystal too appreciates this reality and favours ‘local taste’ of English in India and elsewhere. The problems of teaching, say spoken English, relate to lack of intercultural communicative competence.

Many of the misunderstandings that occur in multicultural or multinational workplace are traceable to inter-group differences in how language is used in interpersonal communication rather than to lack of fluency in English. In fact native speakers need as much help as non-natives when using English to interact internationally and inter-culturally. It is understanding the how of negotiation, mediation, or interaction. We need to teach with positive attitude to intercultural communication, negotiating linguistic and cultural differences. The focus has to be on developing cultural and intercultural competence, tolerance (the spread and development of various Englishes is an instance of grammatical and lexical tolerance), and mutual understanding. Rules of language use are culturally determined. I doubt all those who talk about spoken English, or communication skills, care to teach or develop intercultural communicative abilities. This presupposes a good grasp of one’s own culture or way of communication, or the language etiquette, gestures and postures, space, silence, cultural influences, verbal style etc.

Understanding and awareness of non-verbal behavior, cues and information is an integral part of interpersonal communication in many real-life situations, including business and commerce. Though research is needed to understand the role of visual support in our situations, it does seem relevant in making students aware of the context, discourse, paralinguistic features and culture. This can be advantageous in teaching soft skills which are basically life skills, or abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour, so necessary for successful living.

If one has to work abroad and use English with others there, one has to be sensitive to the culturally governed ways of speaking or talking to each other. The speech community’s (the language culture of the group of people) ways of communication cannot be taken for granted, when one seeks to learn or teach spoken English. People fail or suffer discomfort or embarrassment in negotiations in business or political affairs, or achievement of personal goals due to incompetence in persuasion, negotiation, mediation, or interaction. It is their performance, their intercultural interactional competence which matters; it lies in managing social interaction, and not just communication, in the narrow sense of the word, or use of right grammatical form, syntax, vocabulary, or even certain polite phrases. The goal is to enable one to express what one wishes to convey and make the impression that one wishes to make, using language with a sense of interaction and mutuality.

BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

In the context of Business Communication, it is not without a sense of social business for creating value and better business outcome. One needs to demonstrate social insights, too, in the use of, say, (social) networking sites, smart phones, mobile, tablet PCs, voice mail, electronic mail, and other e-business instruments such as computer network, teleconferencing and video conferencing that are being integrated to enterprise design. This means one needs to be able to share information, discover expertise, capitalize on relationship, and be collaborative in creatively solving business challenges. One needs to demonstrate leadership and management traits, innovation, and decision-making; one needs to be able to identify oneself with the shared values and beliefs of the organization one is associated with; and more importantly, one needs to demonstrate intercultural and interactive abilities with sensitivity for change and adaptation, if one is working in a foreign country or in a multinational company.

In short, one’s personal communication, both oral or written, needs to be in tune with the communication philosophy — goals and values, aspirations and pledges, beliefs and policies– of the organization one is working for, just as one should be able to blend with the host culture.

When I mention intercultural interaction, I point to the need for adapting to differences in life style, language, business philosophy as well as problems with finances, government, cultural shock, housing, food, gender, family etc. Although many of the people sent on foreign assignment know their (foreign) market, they are often unable to accept another culture on that culture’s terms even for short periods. Sensitivity for intercultural business environment, or being aware of each culture’s symbols, how they are the same, and how they are different, is important.

COMMUNICATIVE PERFORMANCE

The staff development programme of this kind provides us with an opportunity to revisit the issues related to ‘communicative’ teaching, in general, and business communication, in particular. If communication is the aim of English (or any other language) teaching and ‘communicative’ syllabuses fail to develop what Dell Hymes called ‘communicative competence’ and Noam Chomsky mentioned as communicative performance, we need to reflect on our classroom practices, research and materials production from time to time. Chomsky’s focus was on the sentence-level grammatical competence of an ideal speaker-listener of a language, and Hymes, as a sociolinguist, was concerned with real speaker-listeners who interpret, express, and negotiate meaning in many different social settings; he brought into focus the view of language as a social phenomenon and reflected on its use as units of discourse. Socializing competence and performance, Dell Hymes also mentioned ‘appropriateness’, that is, “when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about and with whom, when, where, in what manner.” This concept of “appropriate use” as ‘communicative competence’ was accepted by Chomsky and called “pragmatic competence” (i.e. rules of use). Thus, Dell Hymes ‘communicative’ is Chomsky’s ‘pragmatic’ and includes knowledge of sociolinguistic rules, or the appropriateness of an utterance, in addition to knowledge of grammar rules. The term has come to negotiate meaning, to successfully combine a knowledge of linguistic and sociolinguistic rules in communicative interaction, both oral and written.

Michael Canale and Merril Swain in various papers on communicative competence have referred to “appropriacy” in terms of ‘sociolinguistic competence’. In fact, they offer another term “strategic competence”, that is, the ability to use communication strategies like approximation (or paraphrase strategy, using, for example, ‘pipe’ for waterpipe or ‘flower’ for leaf to come close to the intended meanings), word-coinage, circumlocution (i.e. describing objects or ideas using “It looks like…”, “It’s made of…” etc when one temporarily forgets an exact word), borrowing including literal translation and language mix, appeal for assistance, ie. asking for information appropriately using “Excuse me,” “Could you…?” “What’s the word for…?” “I didn’t know how to say it,” etc). mime and all that. Their strategic competence(Canale and Swain) refers to the ability to enhance or repair conversations and means the same as Chomsky’s ‘pragmatic competence’ or Fluency. Brumfit and others too have used the term ‘pragmatic’ in the sense of fluency.

Thus, communicative competence consists of LINGUISTIC competence (ACCURACY), PRAGMATIC competence (FLUENCY), and SOCIOLINGUISTIC

competence (APPROPRIACY).

The Linguistic competence or Accuracy in communication is much broader than mere grammatical competence; it includes the linguistic domains of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation as well as the linguistic skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing, spelling, discourse (particularly interconnections and interdependence of the sentences and paragraphs), and the ability to contrast with the mother tongue.

The pragmatic competence or Fluency in communication relates to ease and speed of expression, i.e. how to keep talking, how not to remain silent because one doesn’t know the word (the skill of paraphrasing), and other strategies of learning, including how to listen to oneself and so be able to self-correct and self-edit at once; that is, the ability to monitor immediately.

The sociolinguistic competence or Appropriacy includes varieties of text types (stories, dialogues, non-fiction passages etc) and functions of the language, different levels/degrees of formality or informality, or appropriacy and use of language in authentic situations.

I doubt if we follow such a communicative curriculum with understanding of communicative competence in terms of linguistic ability, pragmatic ability and sociolinguistic ability. But its adoption should help students become independent learners; it should equip them with linguistic forms, means, and strategies that would help them overcome communication difficulties both inside and outside the classroom. From this perspective, communicative competence should be thought of as communicative performance just as a communicative syllabus should be essentially performance-based, that is, increasing the learner’s proficiency.

To quote Brendan Carroll: “The use of a language is the objective, and the mastery of the formal patterns, or usage, of the language is a means to achieve this objective. The ultimate criterion of language mastery is therefore the learner’s effectiveness in communication for the settings he finds himself in.”

POOR COMMUNICATIVE PERFORMANCE

Work-related skills such as team work, cultural awareness, leadership, communication and I.T. skills are as vital as academic achievement for Business/Management students. It would be poor communicative performance if, for example, someone makes a multimedia presentation without knowing how to use the equipment and experiences technical difficulties, or “tries to liven up a dull topic merely by adding flashy graphics rather than by improving the content of the presentation. People who attend meetings unprepared waste others’ time. People with poor listening skills frustrate those who have to repeat information for them. Those who make inappropriate grammatical or vocabulary choices embarrass themselves and those around them. Incompetent communicators hurt the organization they represent. This has especially been the case with hastily sent emails composed in a moment of anger.”

POSITIVE ATTITUDE NEEDED

Academic or professional communication skills, both written and oral, have to be imparted in such a way that students in their contexts are able to identify their own language learning needs and to set their own language learning goals. At college and university level, teachers may act as facilitators, just as they would need to teach with positive attitude for inter- and intra-cultural communication, the skills of negotiating linguistic and cultural differences.

It is with this sensibility for English language and its teaching in various contexts that I speak to you. Yet, as I say all this, I keep in mind the ground reality: that is, poor literacy skills, fluency, and even comprehension; poor communicative ability, with limited experiences in writing, speaking and listening unless, of course, teaching of English as a Second, or additional language improves from school level and need for a supportive classroom climate and positive student attitudes towards learning at post secondary level is recognized. Also, both teachers and students need to be aware of what to do, how to do it, and when and why to do it, as part of practicing self-regulation strategies.

The English Language Teaching community as also the other stake holders in the country should, therefore, revise and reformulate appropriate strategies and policies, with tolerance and multilingualism at the core, to remain relevant in the coming decades. The objective of looking back is to move forward with a reasoned perspective for taking measures to develop communication abilities and higher discourse competence, with a broadened inter- and cross-disciplinary bases, for learning to understand (rather than memorize) and apply in one’s own contexts.

COMMUNICATION IN BUSINESS

The digression apart, let me now come back to teaching communication in business. In terms of ESP, we should be aware of the ‘specific purposes’ of what we do in the classroom, just as we should do it in terms of students’ specific needs. For example, if we teach written communication, we teach it in the specific context of Business, maybe, where applicable, in terms of ‘rhetorical functions’, with a sense of logical organization of knowledge or information, as noticed in actual use. Students need to be exposed to range of authentic report material from business, commerce, finance, administration, marketing, production, personnel etc. They need to understand the logical steps in writing a report, from ‘collecting the information’ through to ‘summarizing’ and ‘appendix’. In short, they need to be presented with task-oriented activities that are both challenging and authentic in the field of business: they need to be forced to read and think about the content of the report; they need to be made to think about the structure and organization of the report; they need to think about the language used to express the content; and they have to be made to apply this knowledge to the skill of writing a report. The variety of writing exercises may include paragraph writing, expansion of notes, completion of paragraphs, sequencing of sentences into paragraph, and using the right punctuation marks, connectives, sub-headings, presentation of non-verbal information or transfer of information from text to diagram (graph, chart, table, outline etc); linking findings, conclusions and recommendations, extracting main points for making descriptive and evaluative summaries etc. We teach all this in terms of what the students already know and what they need to know. They unlearn, learn, and re-learn, both formal and informal expressions, within the conventions of the discipline they belong to.

As I already said, their career success depends on good writing and speaking skills, along with proper etiquette and listening skills and understanding skills. Skills that need particular attention are informational and analytical report writing, proposal writing, memo writing, letter writing, oral presentation, and a sense of grammar, punctuation, word, sentence and paragraph.

The methodology should encourage students to learn from each other via activities both of a productive kind and of a receptive nature. We may exploit developments in the case study approach, use role plays and simulations that place the students in realistic and stimulating situations to create spontaneous personal interaction and creative use of the language in a business context.

A mix of the task based approach, group work, and simulations should help the future business people develop the skills for meeting and negotiating as also for the necessary mastery of English for functioning autonomously in the field. The challenge is not to teach a descriptive course on discourse, but to provide for a pragmatic and custom-tailored input, ready for processing by the learners in an authentic learning environment.

In other words, in stead of mere ‘business communication’, the emphasis has to be on, what I already mentioned, ‘interaction in business context’. It is not merely the language of business, but also the cultural conventions of meetings and negotiations in an intercultural setting that one has to be aware of, and learn. As far as teaching is concerned, it is rather helping students with learning how to learn, how to create the learning opportunities for themselves, and understanding the ways in which language and business strategies interact. If we follow a learner-centred approach, a three-step procedure could be: first, to illustrate (=a good model), then, to induce (=induction for effective learning by the learner), and finally, to interact (=the outcome).

I would like to quote Christopher Brumfit from his opening speech to SPEAQ Convention in Quebec City (in June 1982): “…Being communicative is as much or more a matter of methodology as of syllabus or materials, and methodology is something that teachers are uniquely qualified to contribute to. We should therefore be willing to use our expertise, to innovate, to improve, to inform each other, and to criticize.” What we are doing here, friends, is just to make a beginning, the beginning of a process of communicating, of understanding, that we can start but cannot finish.

ECLECTIC APPROACH

I am aware that there is no universal teaching method or ideal teaching material suited to many contexts of language teaching. Whatever didactic techniques one knows without excluding the behaviouristic drills, and practice and use of mother tongue, where appropriate, are all valid at different points in the teaching process. I stand for an eclectic approach as different methods for different students have always worked and there has not been one best method any time. With our freedom to choose and adopt any notion that serves our teaching ends, with a reasonable degree of historical sense, flexibility and adaptability that allows us to select among a variety of approaches, methods and techniques, we can meet the challenges of today and tomorrow. I see teaching communicatively essentially consisting of an eclectic methodology which incorporates what is valuable in any system or method of teaching and refuses to recognize bad teaching or defective learning. In any educational setting, sensitive and sensible application and continuing evaluation of the chosen practices should be inbuilt.

English has been practised in a social, economic, political, educational and philosophical “hot-house”, to use Peter Strevens’ expression, and the hot-house in India differs in quality from state to state. It is necessary to create an enabling environment – managerial, administrative, institutional, academic, and curricular-to promote not only quality education and effective learning with exposure to lots of natural, meaningful and understandable language, but also genuine communication. This means learners should read and listen to live language; they should speak and write it in ways that can be understood by educated speakers everywhere. Moreover, they should eventually be able to produce and comprehend culturally appropriate natural discourse.

SUMMING UP

To sum up, we as teachers need to recognize the changes that have shaken all human conditions with new technology, new social structures, new values, new human relations, new functions. As Young Yun Kim notes: “The complexity, diversity, and rapid pace of change makes us ‘strangers’ in our own society.” The challenge is, to understand the “sameness in differences” for international/intercultural exchanges, or learning business negotiations and written communication. Language teaching alone may not develop communicative abilities in business English unless we realize that learning the language implies learning the culture also-one’s own culture and other’s culture. It is language and culture teaching together and sharing the “us” and “them” differences to reflect on one’s own culture from the viewpoint of an outsider, and thus, become less ethnocentric and more tolerant of the values of the foreign people and their ways.

The ESP of business communication seems highly culturally biased and value based, even as Western ethno-centricism, including the North American, may not be the answer to our communicative difficulties. But we have to be OPEN to all local peculiarities to communication and interaction. If we view English as the lingua franca for business negotiations, we should also not forget that it is NOT the mother tongue of any or most of the negotiators. To that extent, the English used is commonly a variety in which the mother tongue interferes not only phonetically and phonologically, but also in the cultural norms and attitudes expressed by the speakers. To quote Susanne Neimeir, “Their non-verbal behavior, for example, does not automatically switch to an ‘Englishized’ non-verbal behavior but normally stays rooted in their home culture. Thus, even when they think the negotiation partner should have understood (verbal and non-verbal) signs they are using, misunderstandings still occur because signs may be differently encoded-and decoded-on the other’s cultures or may not be noticed to be signs at all.”

Therefore, we need to sensitize students to cultural richness and cultural diversity for developing mutual understanding and using individual and group knowledge constructively, and not stereotypically, in learning skills of business communication, both oral and written. It also seems imperative to integrate discourse analysis, decision-making and generic patterns of meetings and effective conversation and the role of cultural influences for success in actual business situations. In fact, it is significant to provide professional students with opportunities to experience what it means to communicate and to do business with different people who obviously are alike in several basic ways.

In today’s globalized business context, while teachers of business English have to be aware of various analytical and practical approaches to business communication, especially as intercultural understanding and strategies of flexibility, adaptability and tolerance are some of the keys to make the best of economic opportunities, students of Business communication have to learn to find their own strategies, or use of structural and stylistic devices for successful business interaction. Their verbal communication in the ‘ESL’ context, to my mind, would be largely ‘EIL’ to be able to work together, using English as the common language.

I hope at the end of the programme, having shared with each other what some of you have done and how, we will emerge more enlightened and aware about what more we need to do to succeed in the days ahead. Mutual interaction should help us envision a possible policy framework required to support teaching for economically valuable language skills at tertiary and/or professional level.

(Text of the author’s Special lecture delivered at the AICTE SPONSORED STAFF DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME ON ‘EMERGING TRENDS IN BUSINESS ENGLISH AND THE METHODS OF TEACHING’ at National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST), Berhampur, Odisha on 23 March 2012.)

Copyright:

–PROFESSOR (DR) R.K.SINGH

Dept of Humanities & Social Sciences

Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad 826004 India

Concern About Fraud In Crude Oil Selling? 2 Percent Performance Bond Surest Proof of Genuine Seller

Concerned About Fraud In Crude Oil Selling? Why, for Buyers, getting the 2 Percent Performance Bond by the seller is the Simplest & Surest Proof of a Genuine Seller

Credible research has shown that, while virtually every supposed crude oil seller who goes to a potential crude buyer to solicit business, would almost ALWAYS profusely forswear heaven and earth that he, or the crude oil he professes to be selling, is “absolutely trustworthy, reliable, genuine, authentic, and honest,” virtually every OBJECTIVE, CREDIBLE EVIDENCE available, on the other hand, gives a completely opposite and contrary REALITY – namely, that the overwhelming majority of these supposed sellers and their offers (in deed, up to the level of 99.999999%, according to one report) are totally fake, bogus, fraudulent or not legitimate.

MASTERFULLY FORGED & FALSE DOCUMENTS ARE AT THE HEART OF THE CRUDE/BUYING SELLING SCAM OPERATIONS

The primary instrumentality by which these fraudulent con artists and crude “sellers” operate or perpetrate their con game, is the use of skillfully forged or false documents. Such fraudulent and fake “sellers” – or, at least, the ultimate masterminds who originate and stand behind the scheme – are notorious for being master forgers and excellent copiers of every conceivable legitimate refinery and government agency documents related to crude sales or purchases. In deed, according to experts, so masterful at this game are these fraudsters, that the documents they provide to prospective buyers are often so strikingly convincing and real-looking that they are frequently plain difficult, if not impossible, for almost all but the most skilled of document authentication experts to immediately distinguish from the real and authentic ones.

As one report by the Fraud Watch International summed it up, “Victims [of such fraud] are often convinced of the authenticity of Advance Fee Fraud schemes by the forged or false documents bearing apparently official Nigerian government letterhead, seals, as well as false letters of credit, payment schedules and bank drafts.”

The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, in a report titled “Nigeria Advanced Fee Fraud,” describes the documents employed by the Nigerian Advanced Fee Fraud (AFF) or 419 perpetrators, as “official-looking stationery with appropriate government seals, stamps, and signatures,” whose quality, it says, has “evolved over the years, from poorly handwritten letters to more professional products prepared on word processors. Word processors also allow AFF criminals to generate more letters.” It adds that the “AFF criminals include university-educated professionals who are the best in the world for nonviolent spectacular crimes.”

THE MAIN PROBLEM: INABILITY BY BUYERS TO VERIFY SELLERS’ CLAIMS & DOCUMENTS

The point is that, largely in consequence of the above reality, for serious international buyers of Nigerian crude oil, the single most critical and most difficult and risky problem they confront in the open market, is now often the verification and confirmation of the seller’s claims about having an authentic crude allocation and/or its current availability, and the confirmation of the proofs and documents submitted by them in support of those claims. For most buyers, undertaking that task is often dreaded and viewed as something fraught with massive risks and uncertainties that should only be threaded with the utmost caution, and the greatest care and deliberation.

BUYERS’ “PREFERRED” PROOF & EVIDENCE OF CREDIBLE SELLER TODAY – a 2% PB

Because verification and confirmation of such documents from sellers are generally so difficult and dicey, most such international crude oil buyers seek, therefore, to buy ONLY from sellers who can provide them what they consider the safest, most tangible, and most easily reliable kind of proof and evidence of credibility by a seller. And what is this “preferred” proof and evidence that most buyers would rather have? It is simply this – the provision by a seller of a 2% Performance Bond (PB) to the buyer.

THE USUAL VERIFICATION & CONFIRMATION APPROACHES

In a word, the usual proofs and evidence of crude allocation and availability offered by sellers to prospective buyers, is often the provision to the Buyer of the cargo’s PROOF OF PRODUCT or POP. In a C.I.F. or F.O.B deal, for example, the typical manner by which a supposed crude oil seller shows “proof” or evidence to a potential buyer that the Seller has a genuine crude allocation or crude available to sell, is for the seller to provide the buyer the PROOF OF PRODUCT, and the buyer is asked to “verify and confirm” the authenticity of this on his own, and, upon that, for the buyers to issue their Bank Guarantee or Letter of Credit (or other payment instrument) to cover the purchase cost of the product at delivery.

But the problem with this traditional method, is that for most international crude buyers, the average Nigerian seller’s POP (an array of documents that could include the current loaded vessel documents, current Authority to Board (ATB) that was specifically issued to the initial buyer (consignee) of the crude in whose name the vessel was issued, Certificate of quality, Certificate of origin, Cargo manifest, Vessel ullage report, Certificate of quantity, Bill of lading, the Bulk Allocation Details, the Seller’s Authority to Sell (ATS) from the NNPC, etc), is NOT reliable or readily verifiable for genuineness. For example, the POP, which is, in a word, the seller’s main document that’s meant to prove to the buyer that the seller actually has the product being sold, might be showing that an owner of the oil allocation or commodity has possession of the product as of the specific time of the transaction, say, at a certain hour of the day today. But yet, there is no guarantee that the product might not have been sold to another buyer just hours, or even minutes, right after that transaction, and that the commodity is actually still available for sale or delivery to the buyer.

“Most buyers do not accept Nigerian sellers’ proof of product (POP),” says Sam Nelson, an expert in crude buying and selling methods and the author of a primer on the subject. “As a result of this, they (the Buyers) want a tangible (Physical) proof of product. The buyer would request that the seller inspect the cargo and present a verifiable inspection report from accredited agencies like SGS, Q & Q or Robinson International before they (the Buyers) will charter a vessel for the transaction. This is because some so-called Nigerian sellers have false claim over products that never existed and they would forge documents to present as POP. Nigerian market has to be followed very carefully and all documentations thoroughly verified.”

Nelson adds: “Please do not give any inspection money to the seller. Always pay the money directly to the inspection company after they have collected samples of the crude oil from the mother vessel for chemical analysis to confirm the quality and quantity of the crude in the vessel. Also, insist that the ATB (Authority To Board) from the vessel for inspection originated from the captain of that vessel. Do not accept any documents as authentic if you did not verify it from the captain of the feeder vessel. Any documentation from a Nigeria seller must be verified for authenticity.”

MOST DOCUMENTS OR PROOFS BY NIGERIAN SELLERS ARE VIEWED WITH SUSPICION

In deed, nowadays, the same problem of general inability to definitively authenticate genuine crude allocation or availability, now pervades even situations where “tangible, physical” POP inspection has supposedly been made. And some buyers find that even this cautionary advice by Nelson, that the buyers should “insist that the ATB (Authority To Board) from the vessel for inspection originated from the captain of that vessel,” would often not quite work any more in many situations today.

In a TTO deal, for example, the fact of the buyers’ representatives boarding the vessel to make an “inspection” or “confirmation” of the “loaded” vessel, is often no more a guarantee that the transaction is necessarily genuine or legitimate. Nigerian con men and 419ers who operate in the crude oil industry, have been known to work with fraudulent vessel managers and captains or con men disguised as staff of the Shell/JV terminal operators. And Vessels confirmed as “pregnant” (i.e., loaded) even by the buyer’s representatives and his appointed SGS inspectors invited to come aboard the ship on a presumed ship “captain’s” ATB document, have been known to be actually arranged by fake ship operators and ship managers and “captains”; and in such cases the buyer will only be taking over a ship and cargo with FAKE Charter Party Agreement executed between the buyer and fake ship manager, with no AUTHENTIC ship owner’s approval and no authentic shipping documents. And once the buyer’s representatives aboard the vessel confirms that the vessel is “pregnant,” the buyer pays for the cargo, takes over the vessel, and the con men quickly split the money and vanish. The buyer losses everything since the legitimate vessel owner never authorized the captain to issue the CPA, and the essential cargo shipping documents used in the transaction are all merely fake.

Nigeria’s bureaucratic quagmire

And there’s yet another problem involved in trying to authenticate Nigerian crude oil documents. The problem of the bureaucratic quagmire associated with doing business in Nigeria. One expert vastly experienced in doing crude oil buying business in Nigeria, put it this way to this writer: “NNPC Crude Oil Marketing Department, Abuja, is the authoritative source to verify the Authority to Sell document. But you will spend an endless amount of time trying to verify it. As with most Nigerian establishments, people use personal connections to get such documents, but that does not mean that they can deliver.”

WHAT BUYERS NOW VIEW AS THE BEST AND MOST “PREFERRED” PROOF OF AN AUTHENTIC CRUDE SELLER – A SELLER WHO CAN PROVIDE BUYER A 2% PERFORMANCE BOND

In short, the point is that virtually all traditional manners of verification and confirmation of crude oil ownership and availability have become seriously infected and adulterated by con artists and fake operators to the point that many international crude oil buyers regard those methods as largely unreliable, too difficult to verify, and fraught with intolerable risks. And consequently, there has evolved among them what could today be called a “preferred” method for determining an authentic and credible seller of crude oil in today’s market. Such a seller is simply one who can meet one basic requirement – namely, is willing and able to provide the buyer a 2% Performance Bond upfront in a transaction.

What is a Performance Bond or PB?

This is, in a word, an insurance document issued for the seller by seller’s bank or insurance company guaranteeing that the issuer will pay a stipulated amount (a sum amounting, in this case, to 2% of the total value of the cargo being purchased) to the buyer in the event that the seller breaches (fails to perform) the terms and specifics of the contract signed by the seller with the buyer. (The Performance Bond could also be posted in the form of a Cash Bond). The bank or insurance company which issues the PB acts as the responsible “surety” of the bond

If a seller contracts with a buyer to put up a 2% PB – and is able to actually post that bond with his bank or insurance company – the seller is, in a word, guaranteeing the buyer that if he were to fail to perform his obligations under that contract, his bank or insurance company, in their roles as the “surety” of the bond, will pay the buyer a sum amounting to 2% of the value of the crude being purchased, regardless.

WHY BUYERS LOVE THE PERFORMANCE BOND GUARANTEE

Buyers love finding sellers who can provide them UPFRONT 2% Performance Bond, overwhelmingly viewing that as the “preferred” option as they consider that the safest, most reliable, most tangible, and most assured and least fraud-prone kind of proof and evidence of credibility by a seller. Most experts contend that if a seller can offer a 2% PB deal – and, what is even more important, is actually able to post the PB because he has the financial wherewithal to do so – it is almost assured that the seller will not fail the buyer in the actual execution of the deal, but will almost surely perform those obligations as contracted with the buyer.

Sam Nelson, expert in crude buying and selling methods and the author of a primer on the subject, put it this way: “A contract with any of these bonds in place will be successfully completed. A bonded contract has a higher degree of success than a non-bonded contract. A bonded contract is a bankable contract. The players have their money at stake and that is a good reason for them to perform.”

And the Legal Dictionary explains it this way: “The purpose of a bond is to provide an incentive for the fulfillment of an obligation. It also provides reassurance that the obligation will be fulfilled and that compensation is available if it is not fulfilled. Performance Bonds guarantee for the satisfactory completion of a project.”

There are a few specific bases why buyers and experts feel that way:

1. Being able to post a PB is a sign of financial credibility and ability.

To be able to finance an actual posting of a 2% PB (which will mean, for example, at the current crude prices, 2% of, say, $200 million for a 2 million barrels cargo, something amounting to $4 million), a seller would have to have some substantial financial ability and resources.

2. Financial Cost and Penalty Involved In Posting a PB, is a Powerful Disincentive Not to Perform.

Sam Nelson: “The players have their money at stake and that is a good reason for them to perform.” In deed, most buyers, upon getting the 2% PB issuance from a seller, would promptly accept that as equivalent to POP and forgo having to review the POP.

3. The Normal Con Man or 419er Will Not Have the Disposition, the Reputation & Financial Wherewithal to Post a PB.

Robert Strickland of Strickland Associates, an experienced New York dealer in crude oil deals, says as follows: “If you are concerned with FRAUD! ONLY true Sellers that offer a 2%+ Performance Bond are genuine Sellers of Nigeria [crude oil].”

Sam Nelson, the crude oil deals expert and author: “These bonds are necessary to protect the interest of the parties involved for unnecessary losses due to fraud or complete negligence.”

4. Being able to post a PB is a solid indication to a buyer that the Seller has already been vetted.

Obtaining a PB is generally not an easy or automatic thing. Before a bank or insurance company would give a seller a bond, the seller shall have gone through a rigorous application process, and must have met a set of stringent financial and character requirements and conditions. Hence, when a buyer gets a seller who can, and does actually, post a 2% PB, the buyer is almost assured that he’s got a credible seller, and one most unlikely to be a fraudster or a 419er.

For just an example, one Syracuse, New York, insurance company requires applicants for a Public Construction job PB to provide them the following items, among others:

Surety Questionnaire Filled Out Completely

Copy of Contract/Award Letter or Solicitation Letter

Business Financial Statements (2 years audited fiscal year financials) OR

Last 3 years Company Income Tax Returns

Personal Financial Statements and Resumes on all owners of 10% or more

Work in Progress Schedule (if applicable)

Insurance Confirmation

A. Workman’s Compensation

B. Liability Certificate

C. Key Man Policy

Supplier and Contractor Reference Letters

Schedule of Completed Jobs

Bank Reference Letter

Company and Personal Indemnification (GAI we supply)

Articles of Incorporation

Corporate Resolution

Job Cost Breakdown and/or bid specs

IN SUM

To most buyers of crude oil in the international open market, getting an UPFRONT 2% Performance Bond issuance from a seller, is the overwhelmingly “preferred” method for doing a sales/purchase deal. It is the option they consider to be the safest, most reliable, most tangible, and most assured and least fraud-prone kind of proof and evidence of credibility by a seller.

For various reasons and factors, many of which are outlined above, most buyers and experts believe that if a seller can offer a 2% PB deal – and, what is even more important, is actually able to post the PB because he has the financial wherewithal to do so – it is almost assured that the seller will not fail the buyer in the actual execution of the deal, but will almost surely perform his own obligations as contracted with the buyer. Hence, in a deal of that kind the buyer has little or nothing to worry about concerning a potential risk of fraud or scam. In consequence, buyers love finding sellers who can provide them – who can actually post – a 2% PB, and consider that to be the best evidence and assurance of having a credible seller, and one most unlikely to not perform the contract, or to be a fraudster or a 419er

NOTE: As with many things concerning many a Nigerian crude seller, it’s one thing for a seller to claim to a buyer that he’ll post the PB, but quite another thing altogether for the seller to be able to actually do it, or to actually do it!),.

FOR A FOLLOW UP

YOU WANT TO FOLLOW UP ON HOW YOU CAN ASSURE GETTING A NIGERIAN CRUDE OIL SELLER WITH A TRUE, UPFRONT 2% PERFORMANCE BOND? OR SELLER WITH OTHER KINDS OF SALES DEALS THAT ARE GENUINE, “SAFE” AND SCAM-FREE?

INSTRUCTION: You can do so. You can readily obtain the specific basic requirements you’d need to meet in order for you to become automatically considered “proven” as a truly LEGITIMATE seller who really genuinely has some crude to sell. USE THE AUTHOR’S FIVE BASIC OPTIONS PROGRAM.

Just send an email and simply ask for “the FIVE OPTIONS.” CONTACT THE AUTHOR ON THIS ONLY BY EMAIL, PLEASE, at: anosikemo@yahoo.com OR anosike2@aol.com

MORE ON THIS AND RELATED TOPICS ON THE AUTHOR’S BLOG AT: http://www.affordablebankruptcy.blogspot.com/

Biometric Techniques – Enhancing Security Standards In High Performance Enterprise

INTRODUCTION:

In today’s digital economy, where many important activities are carried out with the help of computer, the need for reliable, simple, flexible and secure system is a great concern and a challenging issue for the organisation. Day by day security breaches and transaction fraud increases, the need for secure identification and personal verification technologies is becoming a great concern to the organisation. By measuring something unique about an individual and using that to identify, an organisation can dramatically improve their security measures. Awareness of security issues is rapidly increasing among company how they want to protect the information which is a greatest asset that the company possesses. The organisation wants to protect this information from either internal or external threat. Security plays a very important role in the organization and to make computer system secure, various biometric techniques have been developed. Today biometric techniques are a reliable method of recognising the identity of a person based on physiological or behavioral characteristics. Biometrics techniques exploit human’s unique physical or behavioral traits in order to authenticate people. The features measured are face, fingerprints, hand geometry, iris, retinal, voice etc. Biometric authentication is increasingly being used in areas like banking, retailing, defense, manufacturing, health industry, stock exchange, public sector, airport security, internet security etc. Biometric technologies are providing a highly-secure identification and personal verification solutions. Biometric techniques are an attempt in providing a robust solution to many challenging problems in security. Biometrics focuses on the analysis of physical or behavioral traits that determine individual identity. Biometrics can he used to verify the identity of an individual based on the measurement and analysis of unique physical and behavioral data. Indeed, biometrics techniques increasingly are being viewed as the preferred means to confirm an individual’s identity accurately.

The history of biometric techniques is not new, it trace its origin from the past. The ancient biometric technique which was practiced was a form of finger printing being used in China in the 14th century, as reported by the Portuguese historian Joao de Barros. The Chinese merchants were stamping children’s palm and footprints on paper with ink to distinguish the babies from one another. Biometrics the ancient Greek word is the combination of two words -bio means life, metric means measurement.It is the study of methods for uniquely recognizing humans based upon physical or behavioral characterstics. The physiological characterstics are fingerprint, face, hand geometry, DNA and iris recognition. Behavioral are related to the behavior of a person like signature, study of keystroke, voice etc. Thus a biometric system is essentially a pattern recognition system which makes a personal identification by determining the authenticity of a specific physiological or behavioral characteristic possessed by the user. Biometric characteristics are collected using a device called a sensor. These sensors are used to acquire the data needed for verification or identification and to convert the data to a digital code. The quality of the device chosen to capture data has a significant impact on the recognition results. The devices could be digital cameras for face recognition, ear recognition etc or a telephone for voice recognition etc. A biometric system operates in verification mode or identification mode. In verification mode the system validates a person identity by comparing the captured biometric data with the biometric template stored in the database and is mainly used for positive recognition. In the identification mode the system captures the biometric data of an individual and searches the biometric template of all users in the database till a match is not found.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF BIOMETRIC TECHNIQUES

o Face Recognition

The biometric system can automatically recognize a person by the face. This technology works by analyzing specific features in the face like – the distance between the eyes, width of the nose, position of cheekbones, jaw line, chin ,unique shape, pattern etc. These systems involve measurement of the eyes, nose, mouth, and other facial features for identification. To increase accuracy these systems also may measure mouth and lip movement.Face recognition captures characteristics of a face either from video or still image and translates unique characteristics of a face into a set of numbers. These data collected from the face are combined in a single unit that uniquely identifies each person. Sometime the features of the face are analyzed like the ongoing changes in the face while smiling or crying or reacting to different situation etc.The entire face of the person is taken into consideration or the different part of the face is taken into consideration for the identity of a person. It is highly complex technology. The data capture by using video or thermal imaging. The user identity is confirmed by looking at the screen. The primary benefit to using facial recognition as a biometric authenticator is that people are accustomed to presenting their faces for identification and instead of ID card or photo identity card this technique will be beneficial in identifying a person. As the person faces changes by the age or person goes for plastic surgery, in this case the facial recognition algorithm should measure the relative position of ears, noses, eyes and other facial features.

o Hand Geometry:

Hand geometry is techniques that capture the physical characteristics of a user’s hand and fingers. It analyses finger image ridge endings, bifurcations or branches made by ridges. These systems measure and record the length, width, thickness, and surface area of an individual’s hand. It is used in applications like access control and time and attendance etc. It is easy to use, relatively inexpensive and widely accepted. A camera captures a 3 dimensional image of the hand. A verification template is created and stored in the database and is compared to the template at the time of verification of a person. Fingerprint identification.Currently fingerprint readers are being built into computer memory cards for use with laptops or PCs and also in cellular telephones, and personal digital assistants. It is successfully implemented in the area of physical access control.

o Eye Recognition:

This technique involves scanning of retina and iris in eye. Retina scan technology maps the capillary pattern of the retina, a thin nerve on the back of the eye. A retina scan measures patterns at over 400 points. It analyses the iris of the eye, which is the colored ring of tissue that surrounds the pupil of the eye. This is a highly mature technology with a proven track record in a number of application areas. Retina scanning captures unique pattern of blood vessels where the iris scanning captures the iris. The user must focus on a point and when it is in that position the system uses a beam of light to capture the unique retina characterstics.It is extremely secure and accurate and used heavily in controlled environment. However, it is expensive, secure and requires perfect alignment and usually the user must look in to the device with proper concentration. Iris recognition is one of the most reliable biometric identification and verification methods. It is used in airports for travellers.Retina scan is used in military and government organization. Organizations use retina scans primarily for authentication in high-end security applications to control access, for example, in government buildings, military operations or other restricted quarters, to authorized personnel only. The unique pattern and characteristics in the human iris remain unchanged throughout one’s lifetime and no two persons in the world can have the same iris pattern.

o Voice Biometrics

Voice biometrics, uses the person’s voice to verify or identify the person. It verifies as well as identifies the speaker. A microphone on a standard PC with software is required to analyze the unique characteristics of the person. Mostly used in telephone-based applications. Voice verification is easy to use and does not require a great deal of user education. To enroll, the user speaks a given pass phrase into a microphone or telephone handset. The system then creates a template based on numerous characteristics, including pitch, tone, and shape of larynx. Typically, the enrollment process takes less than a minute for the user to complete. Voice verification is one of the least intrusive of all biometric methods. Furthermore, voice verification is easy to use and does not require a great deal of user education.

o Signature Verification

Signature verification technology is the analysis of an individual’s written signature, including the speed, acceleration rate, stroke length and pressure applied during the signature. There are different ways to capture data for analysis i.e. a special pen can be used to recognize and analyze different movements when writing a signature, the data will then be captured within the pen. Information can also be captured within a special tablet that measures time, pressure, acceleration and the duration the pen touches it .As the user writes on the tablet, the movement of the pen generates sound against paper an is used for verification. An individual’s signature can change over time, however, which can result in the system not recognizing authorized users. Signature systems rely on the device like special tablet, a special pen etc. When the user signs his name on an electronic pad, rather than merely comparing signatures, the device instead compares the direction, speed and pressure of the writing instrument as it moves across the pad.

o Keystroke

This method relies on the fact that every person has her/his own keyboard-melody, which is analysed when the user types. It measures the time taken by a user in pressing a particular key or searching for a particular key.

OTHER BIOMETRIC TECHNIQUES ARE
o Vein/vascular patterns: Analyses the

veins in, for example, the hand and the face.

o Nail identification: Analyses the tracks in the nails.

o DNA patterns: it is a very expensive technique and it takes a long time for verification/identification of a person

o Sweat pore analysis: Analyses the way pores on a finger are located.

o Ear recognition: Shape and size of an ear are unique for every person.

o Odour detection: Person is verified or identified by their smell.

o Walking recognition: It analyses the way the person walks.

METHODS OF BIOMETRIC AUTHENTICATION:

o VERIFICATION : is the process of verifying the user is who they claim to be.

o IDENTIFICATION : is the process of identifying the user from a set of known users.

WORKING OF BIOMETRICS:

All biometric systems works in a four-stage process that consists of the following steps.

o Capture: A biometric system captures the sample of biometric characteristics like fingerprint, voice etc of the person who wants to login to the system.

o Extraction: Unique data are extracted from the sample and a template is created. Unique features are then extracted by the system and converted into a digital biometric code. This sample is then stored as the biometric template for that individual.

o Comparison: The template is then compared with a new sample. The biometric data are then stored as the biometric template or template or reference template for that person.

o Match/non-match: The system then decides whether the features extracted from the new sample are a match or a non-match with the template. When identity needs checking, the person interacts with the biometric system, a new biometric sample is taken and compared with the template. If the template and the new sample match, the person’s identity is confirmed else a non-match is confirmed.

[Biometric Authentication System and its functional components]

The Biometric authentication system includes three layered architecture:

o Enroll: A sample is captured from a device, processed into a usable form from which a template is constructed, and returned to the application.

o Verify: One or more samples are captured, processed into a usable form, and then matched against an input template. The results of the comparison are returned.

o Identify: One or more samples are captured, processed into a usable form, and matched against a set of templates. A list is generated to show how close the samples compare against the top candidates in the set.

A biometric template is an individual’s sample, a reference data, which is first captured from the selected biometric device. Later, the individual’s identity is verified by comparing the subsequent collected data against the individual’s biometric template stored in the system. Typically, during the enrollment process, three to four samples may be captured to arrive at a representative template. The resultant biometric templates, as well as the overall enrollment process, are key for the overall success of the biometric application. If the quality of the template is poor, the user will need to go through re-enrollment again. The template may be stored, within the biometric device, remotely in a central repository or on a portable card.

Storing the template on the biometric device has the advantage of fast access to the data. There is no dependency on the network or another system to access the template. This method applies well in situations when there are few users of the application. Storing the template in a central repository is a good option in a high-performance, secure environment. Keep in mind that the size of the biometric template varies from one vendor product to the next and is typically between 9 bytes and 1.5k. For example, as a fingerprint is scanned, up to 100 minutia points are captured and run against an algorithm to create a 256-byte binary template. An ideal configuration could be one in which copies of templates related to users are stored locally for fast access, while others are downloaded from the system if the template cannot be found locally.

Storing the template on a card or a token has the advantage that the user carries his or her template with them and can use it at any authorized reader position. Users might prefer this method because they maintain control and ownership of their template. However, if the token is lost or damaged, the user would need to re-enroll. If the user base does not object to storage of the templates on the network, then an ideal solution would be to store the template on the token as well as the network. If the token is lost or damaged, the user can provide acceptable identity information to access the information based on the template that can be accessed on the network. The enrollment time is the time it takes to enroll or register a user to the biometric system. The enrollment time depends on a number of variables such as: users’ experience with the device or use of custom software or type of information collected at the time of enrollment

Biometric Performance Measures:

o False acceptance rate (FAR) or False match rate (FMR): the probability that the system incorrectly declares a successful match between the input pattern and a non-matching pattern in the database. It measures the percent of invalid matches. These systems are critical since they are commonly used to forbid certain actions by disallowed people.

o False reject rate (FRR) or False non-match rate (FNMR): the probability that the system incorrectly declares failure of match between the input pattern and the matching template in the database. It measures the percent of valid inputs being rejected.

o Receiver (or relative) operating characteristic (ROC): In general, the matching algorithm performs a decision using some parameters (e.g. a threshold). In biometric systems the FAR and FRR can typically be traded off against each other by changing those parameters. The ROC plot is obtained by graphing the values of FAR and FRR, changing the variables implicitly. A common variation is the Detection error trade-off (DET), which is obtained using normal deviate scales on both axes.

o Equal error rate (EER): The rates at which both accept and reject errors are equal. ROC or DET plotting is used because how FAR and FRR can be changed, is shown clearly. When quick comparison of two systems is required, the ERR is commonly used. Obtained from the ROC plot by taking the point where FAR and FRR have the same value. The lower the EER, the more accurate the system is considered to be.

o Failure to enroll rate (FTE or FER): the percentage of data input is considered invalid and fails to input into the system. Failure to enroll happens when the data obtained by the sensor are considered invalid or of poor quality.

o Failure to capture rate (FTC): Within automatic systems, the probability that the system fails to detect a biometric characteristic when presented correctly.

o Template capacity: the maximum number of sets of data which can be input in to the system.

For example, performance parameters associated with the fingerprint reader may be:

o a false acceptance rate of less than or equal to 0.01 percent

o a false rejection rate of less than 1.4 percent

o the image capture area is 26×14 mm.

Obviously, these two measures should be as low as possible to avoid authorized user rejection but keep out unauthorized users. In applications with medium security level a 10% False Rejection Error will be unacceptable, where false acceptance rate error of 5% is acceptable.

False Acceptance When a biometric system incorrectly identifies an individual or incorrectly verifies an impostor against a claimed identity. Also known as a Type II error. False Acceptance Rate/FAR

The probability that a biometric system will incorrectly identify an individual or will fail to reject an impostor. Also known as the Type II error rate.

It is stated as follows:

FAR = NFA / NIIA or FAR = NFA / NIVA

where FAR is the false acceptance rate

NFA is the number of false acceptances

NIIA is the number of impostor identification attempts

NIVA is the number of impostor verification attempts

False Rejection Rate/FRR The probability that a biometric system will fail to identify an enrollee, or verify the legitimate claimed identity of an enrollee. Also known as a Type I error rate.

It is stated as follows:

FRR = NFR / NEIA or FRR = NFR / NEVA

where FRR is the false rejection rate

NFR is the number of false rejections

NEIA is the number of enrollee identification attempts

NEVA is the number of enrollee verification attempts

Crossover Error Rate (CER)

Represents the point at which the false reject rate = the false acceptance rate.

Stated in percentage

Good for comparing different biometrics systems

A system with a CER of 3 will be more accurate than a system with a CER of 4

BIOMETRICS USE IN INDUSTRY

Punjab National Bank (PNB) installed its first biometric ATM at a village in Gautam Budh Nagar (UP) to spread financial inclusion. “The move would help illiterate and semi-literate customers to do banking transaction any time.

Union Bank of India biometric smart cards launched. Hawkers and small traders could avail loan from the bank using the card.

In Coca-Cola Co., hand-scanning machines are used to replace the time card monitoring for the workers. In New Jersey and six other states, fingerprint scanners are now used to crack down on people claiming welfare benefits under two different names.

In Cook County, Illinois, a sophisticated camera that analyzes the iris patterns of an individual’s eyeball is helping ensure that the right people are released from jail. At Purdue University in Indiana, the campus credit union is installing automated teller machines with a finger scanner that will eliminate the need for plastic bankcards and personal identification numbers.

MasterCard International Inc. and Visa USA Inc., the world’s two largest credit card companies, have begun to study the feasibility of using finger-scanning devices at the point of sale to verify that the card user is really the card holder. The scanners would compare fingerprints with biometric information stored on a microchip embedded in the credit card.
Walt Disney World in Orlando has started taking hand scans of people who purchase yearly passes. These visitors now must pass through a scanner when entering the park preventing them from lending their passes to other people.

The technology also received widespread attention at summer’s Olympic Games Atlanta, where 65,000 athletes, coaches and officials used a hand-scanning system to enter the Olympic Village.

Selection of Biometric Techniques:

There are a lot of decision factors for selecting a particular biometric technology for a specific application.

1. Economic Feasibility or Cost:-The cost of biometric system implementation has decreased recently; it is still a major barrier for many companies. Traditional authentication systems, such as passwords and PIN, require relatively little training, but this is not the case with the most commonly used biometric systems. Smooth operation of those systems requires training for both systems administrators and users.

2. Risk Analysis:-Error rates and the types of errors vary with the biometrics deployed and the circumstances of deployment. Certain types of errors, such as false matches, may pose fundamental risks to business security, while other types of errors may reduce productivity and increase costs. Businesses planning biometrics implementation will need to consider the acceptable error threshold.

3. Perception of Users:-Users generally view behavior-based biometrics such as voice recognition and signature verification as less intrusive and less privacy-threatening than physiology-based biometrics.

4. TechnoSocio Feasibility:-Organizations should focus on the user-technology interface and the conditions in the organizational environment that may influence the technology’s performance. The organization should create awareness among the users how to use the techniques and should overcome the psychological factors as user fears about the technology. Organization has to also consider the privacy rights of users while implementing the biometric techniques.

5. Security: Biometric techniques should have high security standards if they will be implemented in high secure environment. The biometric techniques should be evaluated on the basis of their features, potential risk and area of application, and subjected to a comprehensive risk analysis.

6. User friendly and social acceptability -Biometric techniques should be robust and user friendly to use and they should function reliably for a long period of time. The techniques should not divide the society into two group i.e. digital and non digital society.

7. Legal Feasibility-Government has to form a regulatory statutory framework for the use of biometric techniques in various commercial applications. It should form a standard regulatory framework for use of these techniques in commercial applications or transactions. If required the framework has to be regulated and changed time to time.

8. Privacy-As biometric techniques rely on personal physical characteristics, an act has to be made to protect the individual’s privacy data not to be used by other. A data protection law has to be created in order to protect the person’s privacy data.
Criteria for evaluating biometric technologies.

The reliability and acceptance of a system depends on the effectiveness of the system, how the system is protected against unauthorized modification, knowledge or use, how the systems provide solutions to the threats and its ability and effectiveness to identify system’s abuses.

These biometric methods use data compression algorithms, protocols and codes. These algorithms can be classified in three categories:

o Statistical modeling methods,

o Dynamic programming,

o Neural networks.

The mathematical tools used in biometric procedure need to be evaluated. Mathematical analysis and proofs of the algorithms need to be evaluated by experts on the particular fields. If algorithms implement “wrong” mathematics then the algorithms are wrong and the systems based on these algorithms are vulnerable. If the algorithms used in the biometric methods have “leaks”, or if efficient decoding algorithms can be found then the biometric methods themselves are vulnerable and thus the systems based on these methods become unsafe.

Different algorithms offer different degrees of security, it depends on how hard they are to break. If the cost required to break an algorithm is greater than the value of the data then we are probably safe. In our case where biometric methods are used in financial transactions where a lot of money is involved it makes it worth it for an intruder to spend the money for cryptanalysis.

The cryptographic algorithms or techniques used to implement the algorithms and protocols can be vulnerable to attacks. Attacks can also be conceived against the protocols themselves or aged standard algorithms. Thus criteria should be set for the proper evaluation of the biometric methods addressing these theoretical concerns.

The evaluation of the biometric systems is based on their implementation. There are four basic steps in the implementation of the biometric systems which impose the formation of evaluative criteria.

o Capture of the users attribute.

o Template generation of the users attribute.

o Comparison of the input with the stored template for the authorized user.

o Decision on access acceptance or rejection.

Applications of biometric techniques

Biometrics is an emerging technology which has been widely used in different organization for the security purpose. Biometrics can be used to prevent unauthorized access to ATMs, cellular phones, smart cards, desktop PCs, workstations, and computer networks. It can be used during transactions conducted via telephone and Internet (electronic commerce and electronic banking). Due to increased security threats, many countries have started using biometrics for border control and national ID cards. The use of biometric identification or verification systems are widely used in different companies as well as the government agencies. The applications where biometric technique has its presence are

o Identity cards and passports.

o Banking, using ATMs, Accessing Network Resource

o Physical access control of buildings, areas, doors and cars.

o Personal identification

o Equipment access control

o Electronic access to services (e-banking, e-commerce)

o Travel and Transportation, Sporting Event

o Border control

o Banking and finance, Shopping Mall

o Airport security

o Cyber security

o Time Management in Organization

o Voice Recognition(Telebanking)

o Prison visitor monitoring system.

o Voting System

Prospects of Biometric Techniques:

The biometric industry is at an infancy stage in India, but is growing fast to capture the entire market. This technique is expanding both into private and public areas of application. Biometric applications need to interconnect to multiple devices and legacy applications. The industry market and consumer markets are adopting biometric technologies for increased security and convenience. With the decreasing price of biometric solutions and improved technology, more organization is coming forward to implement this technology. The lack of a standard regulatory framework is a major drawback in implementing biometrics in organisation.It is not widely accepted by the users because some organization and society have the opinion that this technology is inappropriate and the privacy data of the users are lost. If proper regulatory framework is not established it will not be accepted by the organization as well as by the user. The devices manufactured for biometric techniques has to comply with standards Increased IT spending in the government and financial sector offers better opportunities for such deployments. Even though there are no global mandated or regulatory frame works as of now, they are expected to arrive very soon.
Standarad law and regulation will open a wide market for biometrics in electronic legal and commercial transactions.

The anti-terrorism act has introduced has a wide scope for the biometric techniques to be implemented.

Consumer privacy data has to be protected in order to be widely accepted by the user.
Integration of biometric with different legacy application and hardware.

Biometric technique has a great demand in the telecommunication domain.

The notebook and laptop manufacturer has already implemented the biometric techniques like finger printing for the enhancement of the security.

The biometric industry must address major challenges related to performance, real-world utility, and potential privacy impact in order for biometrics to reach their full potential
Many companies are also implementing biometric technologies to secure areas, maintain time records, and enhance user convenience.

An interesting biometric application is linking biometrics to credit cards.

Other financial transactions could benefit from biometrics, e.g., voice verification when banking by phone, fingerprint validation for e-commerce, etc. The market is huge, and covers a very wide range of hardware, applications and services.

Conclusion:

The future of this technology is booming. With the rapid increase of fraud and theft in commercial transaction; it is a great concern for the organization to use biometric as key instrument in eliminating the fraud and flaws in the traditional security approach. Both businesses and consumers are anxious for greater security in commercial transactions. The technology is increasingly reliable and affordable, and the question of the legal enforceability of electronic contracts is settled. While consumers recognize the benefits of biometric authentication, they are reluctant to fully accept the technology without adequate assurances that companies will keep their biometric information confidential and subject to various safeguards and the existing law provides a limited measure of protection for biometric information so greater protection should be offered to consumers so that their personal information is not misused. Biometrics will play vital roles in the next generation of automatic identification system. Biometric identifiers must be considered when implementing a biometric-based identification system. The applicability of specific biometric techniques depends heavily on the application domain. Biometrics must be implemented properly to be effective and the consequences considered. Biometrics will become increasingly prevalent in day-to-day activities where proper identification is required. The real future of the technology lies in creating a biometric trust infrastructure that allows private sector and the public sector to handle security needs. Ultimately, such an infrastructure would allow people to move to various locations worldwide while maintaining their security clearance as defined by their physiological and behavioral identities.

Small Businesses – Measuring Business Performance From The Customer Perspective

Measuring your business performance from the customer perspective is a must for any business, regardless of its size. It will pay small business owners to become intimately familiar with the Key Performance Indicators used to measure, monitor and provide the actionable insights needed to readily adapt your business to the changing demands of its customers whilst maintaining a growth trajectory.

Regardless of the industry you are in there are core set of metrics you need to apply to your business. The core customer metrics you need to become familiar with are:

* Market Share/Market Penetration

* Customer Acquisition

* Customer Retention

* Customer Satisfaction

* Customer Profitability

Market Share/Market Penetration

Market Share reflects the proportion of business in a given market (in terms of customer numbers, dollars spent, or unit volume sold) that a business sells. To measure this effectively, you need access to market research which identifies the size of the total market.

These market figures are usually available from your government statistician, industry bodies and trade associations. The government statistician provides high level research and is usually available for free. Industry groups and trade associations may charge non-members, while members may access the information for free, or at a reduced rate.

While these reports usually provide information about the Market Share of each of the competitors, it is usually limited to only those competitors that hold significant share in the market, while small businesses and start-ups are lumped together in a single measure. So until you reach critical mass and are rewarded with recognition in the market research papers, my suggestion is that you substitute the Market Share key performance indicator with the Market Penetration measure.

Market Penetration uses the your business’s customer numbers, dollars spent or units of volume sold and measures them against the total market figures to get some idea as to your performance in this area.

Customer Acquisition

Measures, in absolute or relative terms, the rate at which a business unit attracts or wins new customers or business. Typically, if your business is on a grow path your objective will be to increase your customer base. Usually it is measured by either the number of new customers or the total sales to new customers. Measures could also be applied to each customer segment if you apply customer relationship management principles.

Another key measure that I suggest you apply in relation to measuring customer acquisition is the Acquisition Cost. This measures the performance of your marketing campaign in regards to the achieving the desired outcome – acquiring new customers.

Acquisition Cost is the number of new customers since the campaign started divided by the total marketing campaign cost.

The final measure to add is the Customer Conversion Rate, which measures the total number of leads generated divided by the number who actually made purchases, and expressed as a percentage.

Customer Retention

Tracks, in absolute or relative terms, the rate at which a business retains or maintains ongoing relationships with its customers. Clearly, the best way for increasing market share is to start by retaining your existing customer base. Customer Retention is measured by measuring your existing customer base at the beginning of a given period divided by the number of lost customers during that period. It is sometimes difficult to identify when they are considered to be ‘lost’. I’d suggest that anyone who did not make a purchase for over a year, is a lost customer.

Customer Satisfaction

Customer retention and customer satisfaction are driven by meeting customer needs. A successful business will be looking to provide customers’ innovative products with an excellent value proposition. Research has shown high degrees of customer satisfaction correlate with achieving loyalty, retention and profitability. Today, with competitors only a mouse click away, your focus should be on generating ‘raving fans’ by providing them with exceptional customer experiences. This not only drives repeat custom but creates valuable word-of-mouth recommendations to their family and friends.

You need to derive a satisfaction measure based on direct feedback from your customers. This measure will differ for each business, but should assess each component of the buyer’s experience to garner actionable insights which will act to focus your attention and activities.

Customer Profitability

This measures the net profit of a customer after allowing for the unique expenses required to support that customer. A financial measure like customer profitability, keeps the business from becoming customer-obsessed. Companies should aim to have more than satisfied and happy customers – they should be aiming for profitable customers.

This helps the business to assess whether they should continue in a particular market or,due to the drain on the business, should choose to opt-out.

Implementing core customer metrics in your organisation can help you track your performance and provide the basis for effective, fact-based decision-making in your small business.

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