Are You Ready For Outsourcing?
by Allen Mae Lavina
Friday, April 04, 2008

As more and more business firms are considering outsourcing, this does not mean that you should go with the flow and join the bandwagon right away. Before you consider outsourcing for your business, it is appropriate and inevitable for you to ask whether you are all set for it or not. Also, if you do consider outsourcing, make sure that you know which specific functions only should you outsource. While outsourcing could be a very good move and could pay off well, outsourcing can still be risky.

 

Consider the present condition of your business. Your company’s needs, functions, limits, baseline costs, to name a few, are the things you should consider when trying to determine if you are prepared for taking another step.


Monday, March 31, 2008

Handling new projects are difficult enough for managers, but a walk in offshore outsourcing is more of a trudge than a stroll for those who are new in the business, and in fact, at times it just gets downright overwhelming. Apart from the typical considerations, cultural barrier and the absence of physical presence, there are more factors to take into account such as different time zones, and the complexity of the project itself.

 

There are several points that may guide one to get the best out of their outsourcing teams.

 

1.        Create a merger

 

A delivery team is a single cooperative unit working on a single goal, and this is exactly as it should be established between onsite and offshore personnel. As an onsite project manager, it should be stressed that there is no onsite-offshore division, and your people are a single project team.

 

2.        No role playing

 

Avoid playing the role of another. Function as the liaison and eliminate any barriers of communication between stakeholders and the offshore team. Playing the role of a customer will not help with the accuracy of the product, and instead, might create setbacks that could have been avoided.


Thursday, March 13, 2008
Overlay is simply defined as covering or spreading something over another, and that is exactly what YouTube has decided to do, to earn revenue from millions of videos and their potential profits from numerous page views. It is an effort to meet the visitors’ high standards with optimum services, and equally monetize the video streams.

According to Google, the new overlay advertisements function as pictures within pictures. 15 seconds into the video, an overlay ad appears on the 20% bottom of the video screen. The overlay emerges as translucent, around 80% transparent, and animates for ten seconds. As it has begun, it also ends automatically, and can be replayed by clicking a button.

Friday, January 25, 2008

The American Government has finally made moves to expand the coverage of their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). American President George Bush has signed the amendments the Congress has passed, for the FOIA, now known as the Open Government Act of 2007.

The blog world has celebrated on the modification of the term “news media entity,” which now translates into people that distributes content electronically through telecommunications services. The quote on this section states:

...any person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience. In this clause, the term 'news' means information that is about current events or that would be of current interest to the public. Examples of news-media entities are television or radio stations broadcasting to the public at large and publishers of periodicals (but only if such entities qualify as disseminators of 'news') who make their products available for purchase by or subscription by or free distribution to the general public. These examples are not all-inclusive. Moreover, as methods of news delivery evolve (for example, the adoption of the electronic dissemination of newspapers through telecommunications services), such alternative media shall be considered to be news-media entities. A freelance journalist shall be regarded as working for a news-media entity if the journalist can demonstrate a solid basis for expecting publication through that entity, whether or not the journalist is actually employed by the entity. A publication contract would present a solid basis for such an expectation; the Government may also consider the past publication record of the requester in making such a determination.

The only constriction implied in this Act is that blogs and websites may be considered as members of the news media, provided that they are in the category mentioned above. Independent and non-traditional bloggers and websites are still in the borderline when it comes to the act, unsure if they are covered by this Freedom Act.


Friday, January 04, 2008

Mince Pies and Christmas cakes in Australia, Cougnou in Belgium, Apple Cider in Canada, Thirteen Deserts in France, and Roasted Turkey in the UK, while outsourcing company employees like in the Philippines turn on the microwaves and greet through messengers. Whilst the entire world is celebrating the holidays, every decent outsourcing company, and company employee have conditioned body clocks on queue with the project client.

Here are the top ten favorite Christmas celebrations in the very limited outsourcing Christmas world: