How deep do political changes affect enterprise environment?

The political system of a state designs and implements the fiscal policies.
As a result of the 2004 elections in Romania, taxes were lowered at 16% .
Mid and long-term foreign investment decisions are usually influenced by a list of factors.
One of them is the fiscal policy of the targeted country.
After the actual start-up of the business investment, it's financial performance will be also influenced by the country's fiscal policy and political stability.
So, after having at point 0 (at start-up) a Corporate income tax of 35% and after 5 years this tax is to be modified at 16%, represents a decrease of costs for the investor.
Certain European countries have different levels of taxes for resident (national) corporations and non-resident (foreign) corporations. Furthermore, many countries have a progressive tax calculation formula, depending on turnover, profit or other criteria. In this article, we'll use only the corporate tax-where it is appreciable.

Greece for example reduces step by step his corporate taxes by 1% every year, so Greece will reduce the tax from 25% (2009) to 20% (2009)

France has for example a combined taxing system, there is a minimum annual corporation tax (based on the companies turnover) followed by the actual income tax of 33%

Romania addopted in 2005 the unique tax of 16% . The direct result was an acceleration of economic growth. Many skepticists believed, that by lowering the tax, the GDP will decrease.
Reality proved this presumption wrong,
Here some examples of corporate taxes in Europe:

Country	Corporate income tax	Percent of GDP (for 2007)
Poland	19.00%	2.73%
Italy	27.50%	3.03%
Sweden	26.30%	3.28%
Netherlands	25.50%	3.27%
Lithuania	20.00%	2.74%
Finland	26.00%	0.26%
Hungary	21.28%	2.00%
Romania	16.00%	2.63%
France	33.33%	2.62%
Spain	30.00%	4.74%
Greece	25.00%	2.56%
Bulgaria	10.00%	2.96%
UK	28.00%	3.20%
Slovakia	19.00%	2.93%
Ireland	12.50%	2.73%

Romania, an emerging market for CRM Systems

Like most of the East European former communist countries, Romania went trough a lot of functional, social and economic changes.
From the centralized, state-owned socialist economy, Romania became a modern market-focused, mostly privately owned, capital-based economy. After joining the NATO and the European Union, all major international rating agencies improved the countrie's economical ratings.

So, regarding the economic growth\, Romania is slightly behind Greece, with a Growth Competitiveness Index (GCI) of 3.97 (as 4.08 for Greece or 4.62 Hungary and 5.55 for Denmark).
Source: World Economic Forum

All macroeconomic indicators show a healthy economic growth and an increase of foreign investments. (except of course the year 2009, where the worldwide financial crisis interfered)

	MU	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005
GDP growth	%	2.1	5.7	5	4.9	8.3	4.1
Industrial output growth	%	7.1	8.4	6	3.1	4.3	2.5
Final consumption	%	1.4	6.3	2.4	6.9	10.2	8.5
Gross Fixed Capital Formation	%	5.5	10.1	8.2	9.2	10.1	13
Foreign direct investments	Euro mill	1147	1294	1212	1946	5183	5197
Employment	Thou. pers	4623	4619	4568	4591	4420	4704
Unemployment	Thou. pers	1007	827	827	659	558	523
Unemployment Rate	%	10.5	8.8	8.4	7.4	6.3	5.9

So, while other countries in the region had in 2008 a GDP growth of 0.5% (Hungary) or 3.2 and 3.5 (Czeh Republic and Slovenia), Romania had a growth of over 7.1%.
The strength of the economy was proven again trough the 2009 crisis, compared with -15.9 and -18.4 GDP loss in Lithuania and Latvia, Romania resisted with a GDP loss of 5.7% (estim)

GDP Growth, % y-o-y	2007	2008	2009	2010 est
Czech Republic	6	3.2	-3.1	1.1
Hungary	1.1	0.5	-6.4	0.1
Poland	6.6	4.9	1.0	3.4
Slovakia	10.4	6.4	-4.2	1.3
Estonia	6.4	-3.6	-13.2	-1.2
Latvia	10.2	-2	-18.4	-2.3
Lithuania	8.9	3.2	-15.9	0
Romania	6.2	7.1	-5.7	0.3
Bulgaria	6.2	5.9	-5.3	0.4
Slovenia	6.8	3.5	-5.9	1
Croatia	5.6	2.4	-5.1	1.1
Turkey	4.7	1.1	-6.2	3.4

Source: http://www.emergingeuropemonitor.com


About ERP and CRM Systems in Romania.
The emerging Romanian economy offered in the last 10 years, for many multinational and transnational corporations a great relocation opportunity. As a consequence, major players in the Automotive, Electronics and Telecom industry relocated (or started Greenfeeld investments) in Romania. We're talking about companies like Siemens, Alcatel, Continental, Nokia, Ford, Oracle, IBM etc.

The demand for CRM systems appeared together with the major multinationals.
Managing the relations with the customers, vendors and partners, the diversity of delivered/obtained goods and services,

Features like Customer contract management; References, Contract service and support; Commission management; Contact management; Channel management, Internationalization or Collaborative e-commerce (buy-side, sell-side, digital marketplaces) were eventually needed , in order to manage optimize and control the companie's business processes (focusing on CRM).
The BIG4 vendors for CRM (also ERP and other related software) are probably ORACLE, SAP, MICROSOFT and INFOR. Here a short list after a quick walk-trough in the ERP-CRM market.

Oracle - Siebel or Oracle CRM On Demand
SAP - SAP CRM
Microsoft - Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Infor - Infor CRM Epiphany, ERP XA CRM, ERP SyteLine CRM

• Sage Software - SageCRM.com
• Lawson - Lawson M3 Customer Sales and Service
• Salesforce.com - Salesforce.com Enterprise Edition
• SugarCRM - SugarCRM Suite
• Surado Solution - Surado CRM TOTVS S/A -
• Microsiga Protheus Maximizer Software - Maximizer CRM
• BizAutomation.com - BizAutomation CRM + Business Management
• Epicor - Clientele CRM.NET
• Sage Software - Sage SalesLogix
• b2bCRM A/S - b2bCRM
• Consona - Onyx Adaptive CRM
• Impact Profile - Health Care Management System
• Intélisis S.A. de C.V. - Intelisis ERP
• Kepler - Kepler
• Oncontact - Oncontact CRM
• SemaTree Inc - ECS 2003
• SuperOffice - SuperOffice
• SYSPRO - SYSPRO CRM
• Vertical Marketing, Inc. - crmEZ.net
• IFS - IFS CRM
• Exactus de Costa Rica - Exactus CRM Metrix LLC -
• Metrix Deltek Systems - Deltek CRM & Propoals
• TOTVS S/A - LOGIX CRM

Bottom-line is, that the demand for Data and Process Management Tools is growing.
The Romanian economy within the global market is a continuously evolving organism, with various and many business opportunities.

MBA's, Distance Learning and the Middle Ages

Distance learning. This sounded 30 years ago like a strange paradox. Two centuries ago it would have been impossible to achieve.
MBA: How to teach managers and leaders to become even better managers and leaders.
All the Leadership trainings, management, financial analysis and other types of professional improvements can not be subtituted (a leastnot yet, in my opinion) with some strange distant learning or online courses. The ''student' must attend the classes, the physical presence, the immediate experience of the course, the teachers charisma, the interactive style is a key succes factor for the efficiency of the pedagogical exercise.
The classical approach towards the academic-level teaching was focused on the direct, personal and face to face approach.

Since the early middle ages, the famous Chines, Middle-East and European universities -like Nanjing University, University of Al-Karaouine (Fes, Marocco), Nizamiyya (Iran), University of Bologna or the Charles University of Prague-prepared their students to become the intellectual elite of their society, and not necessary to become good managers.

Most uf the medieval universities (word derived from the latin "universitas magistrorum et scholarium" which means"community of teachers and scholars"- received a strong influence from the national church.

So, the benefited education was a result of the strong combination of scientific theses with religious dogmas. A good example towards this example is the famous geocentric vs heliocentric debate within European universities during the Renaissance period.
Let us imagine a Project Management training in the University of Oxford at the year 1167...

How can soft skills, communication or sales technique inherited by a student trough online courses? Is this the future way to form the knowledge of our children, is this the way the future generations will learn their competences, just by sitting in front of the monitor and completing exams?
The future's right, the future's us.

The first ERP & CRM implementation in the world

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. John 1:1
At the beginning was the DEMAND. As a response, came the OFFER.
Mr Keynes described it more gracefully, including a large and complex explanation set into his dissertation.
In the late 60's came the computer. Actually, a Grandfather-like role model of what we call today a PC.
IBM, Apple, HP, Compaq, Fujitsu-Siemens-Nixdorf, Commodore 64, HC, Felix, TIM S ...all of them contributed somehow to our present state.
On a separate branch, let us call it "Software-branch", a new era begun.
Primitive, simple basic applications from the late 80's evolved into complex, multi-platform million dollar ERP solutions.
This overwhelming offer of "business optimization" products had a predictible outcome:
a new species came alive- The Project Manager.