Outsourcing

There are many reasons for outsourcing various types of work functions, the main one being cost saving. An example of this is “Do I need an in-house IT manager when all I need them for is several hours a week?”. Therefore business owners often find it’s better to outsource expertise than employ it.

Resons to Outsource

Cost savings – Lowering overall cost of the service to your business.

Focus on core business –Outsourcing of Bookkeeping, Finance Systems, Business Systems or IT (internet presence, computers) to a third party will free up investment, people and infrastructure to develop the core of the business.

Cost restructuring – Outsourcing offers a move from a fixed cost (permanent staff) to a variable cost (Outsourced temporary staff).

Improve quality – A higher level of quality by contracting out to experts with a new service level agreement.

Knowledge – Access to intellectual property and wider experience and knowledge.

Contract – Services will be provided to a legally binding contract with penalties. This is not the case with internal staff/services.

Operational expertise – Access to operational best practice that would be time-consuming and too expensive to develop in-house.

Enhance innovation – The use of third parties to supplement the capacity of product innovation that was previously limited in-house.

Leisure – Individuals may wish to outsource work to adjust their work/life balance.


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Android Blogging

Now I can blog from anywhere, I am not sure if that is s good thing but I can.

I am using Blogger Droid on a Sony X10, and so far everything hangs together well.

I am very much liking some of the Google tech, I changed to Chrome some months ago and saw a masive improvement in speed for my web brouser and generally the computer overheads. Then the android phone and even a gmail account. Certainly being a bit partisan with the technology helps pull everything together.

Not a great spell checker here and I am quite Dyslexic so please be kind.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

Do you take your tablet.

Since the release of the iPad I have been mulling the possible uses of the tablet PC and how it would fit into the day to day business world. I can think of a hundred reasons why it would be a great companion around the house, but in business, I am not sure especially as I  personally spend a large portion of my day at a screen already.

The technology makes me think of a 'Star Trek' utopian work place where various people are wondering around showing the captain shiny tablet devises with interesting glyphs. In that world there is little interaction with the Tablet they are transient message/list carriers or maybe a book replacement, but why would you want more when you can have a conversation with the computer and a holodeck.

I also wonder how much time and effort is spent trying to find a way to shoehorn this new technology into a business. In our business we are lucky in that we tend to deal with either new starts or new processes or products, we tend to look at the business as a whole and design the business process with technology in mind, the technology is not the driver, it is a facilitator.

So for me I would be only thinking of the tablet if the user connected with that part of the process was mobile, did basic data entry or data confirmation or needed to show information or media on the move. The key positions are sales and stock control. However, two things make me think beyond this; The power of the devices and the developments in cloud based services.

The power in the device means it can handle a lot more than just data entry, the latest offerings are going to be dual core with very light operating systems. Cloud services means a large part of the heavy work is done in the cloud, so as log as you have sufficient local storage to keep you going and a connection to the cloud in question all you need is the addition of a keyboard and a stand and what couldn't you do on a Tablet.

I am not about to ditch my work station, but I am looking forward to some of the new android tablets that are due to be released this year, I am not anti Apple just have a non Apple Inertia: Here is some further reading on the latest Android TablePC from Motorola by Matt Gunn of Bank Systems and Technology http://www.banktech.com/articles/229201118