Finance Tips » Bad Idea

Pragmatic Look At Outsourcing

admin — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 12:59:25 +0000

A large number of companies from all over the world look see outsourcing as a way to reduce their operational costs, thus increasing their chances to make it through the global economic crisis. The number of services and jobs that are suitable for outsourcing is constantly growing together with the increasing capabilities of today’s technology. Whether offshore or onshore, companies are outsourcing a wide array of services, ranging from writing or transcription services to management and in some cases even customer care and technical support services. This may seem like a bad idea because of the many known drawbacks of outsourcing and the unknown pitfalls of outsourcing, but outsourcing is seen by more and more companies as a winning solution to many of their problems. Even though there are plenty of pros to outsourcing, the large number of drawbacks should make those deciding whether or not to outsource, to really think twice about their options. One of the largest pitfalls of outsourcing is poor quality of service. Of course, we cannot generalize but out of the tens of thousands of professionals and outsourcing companies operating in every field possible, a great proportion are individuals advertising skills they do not possess. Take writing skills for example. Believe it or not, the vast majority of so called writers advertising their services on freelancing websites have never written one page professionally. Sure, outsourcing some articles for your magazine in order to save some money is a great idea but if you fall prey to the pitfalls of outsourcing, you will only stand to lose. One of the most relevant drawbacks of outsourcing is the lack of proper work ethics and discipline. We can’t generalize here either, but the reality is that a large number of all freelancers lack even the most basic work discipline. Having no one to direct their efforts leads to many freelancers becoming unreliable in the sense that they are not able to deliver projects on time, or deliver products which are of an inferior quality. This is one of the drawbacks of outsourcing projects or services which involve a creation process. Also, two of the great pitfalls of outsourcing are insufficient communication and poor planning. Regardless of the effort you may put in, there are still considerable chances that the project will fail due to the outsourcing company or freelancer’s lack of commitment. This is why, whenever you are outsourcing a project you not only have to make sure you have a strict set of guidelines to follow, but also outsource to professionals that are able to abide by your rules. Another pitfall of outsourcing is the lack of consistency throughout the project. Even if you are able to find a professional that has proven to successfully carry out similar projects, due to slightly different demands and requirements, the professional may not be able to complete the project even if in the early stages everything was going as exactly as planned. No one can deny the benefits of outsourcing but before placing your company’s funds and name on the line make sure you are well aware of all the risks and pitfalls of outsourcing.

Life Insurance For Children – A Terrible Idea?

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:37:04 +0000

Life Insurance for children looks like a terrible idea. Life Insurance for a child? Children do not earn an income and isn’t insurance meant to cover a financial loss?

Insurance is meant to cover a financial loss. So it is critically important that parents buy a life policy on themselves to protect their family. After the parents buy a policy on themselves I think there is reason to consider a Child Life policy.

So why would anyone buy life insurance for children? There are a few good reasons. And I will start with the financial reasons.

I would argue that the death of a child could cause financially difficulty. Can you imagine your child dying? It is a terrible thought and it brings tears to my eyes. The death of a child could be paralyzing and you would need time off. Most employers would certainly give a week or two of paid leave. But how long can that generosity last? What if you are not ready to go back to work for months – or years? Would your employer be that generous? For this reason alone I think a small policy on a child is not a bad idea to consider. The money would allow you to take time off work and heal.

A second financial reason is your other children (assuming you have others … if not skip ahead to the next paragraph). Would they need you more if they lost a sibling? Probably. Yet another reason you would take time off work. Beyond that, what if your children need counseling? That’s not free.

The most obvious financial reason to buy insurance on your kids is the cost of a funeral. The last thing you want to worry about is bills for a funeral if a child dies.

You might be thinking that none of the above applies to you. That’s fine. Before you go I would ask you to consider another reason When your child grows into adulthood and is looking for insurance coverage there is a chance that it will not be available due to their, health, lifestyle, or occupation. A good children’s life insurance policy will have a guaranteed insurability built in that allows them to buy more coverage without any questions about health, lifestyle or occupation.

If you are considering buying a policy for your child – please remember to review your own coverage first. There are plenty of good policies available in Canada for children. Make sure you look for the guaranteed insurability I mentioned above.

No-Cost People Locater – Avoid Hidden Fees

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:48:27 +0000

Does a no cost people locater exist? My answer is yes and no. Just the other day I shared about 3 types of people search finders you can find and yes I did say there is the totally free service but I also highlighted that even then you have to give up something – that may end up costing you i.e. you email address and user name.

It is not such a bad idea to provide your email and user name especially if you want to be alerted about the person’s whereabouts later on but I can totally understand if you are looking for an absolutely no cost people locator.

So how can you get hold of one? You can’t but you can use multiple sources that will not cost you anything.

First of you can use a search engine like Google and Yahoo, which offer a people finder feature that you can access at no cost to you. This means you can just search for someone as you would search for any information. The only difference here is that the results will be a list of possible names or contact details of people who could be the one you are looking for.

You can also use social networking sites to scan through a million profiles. Websites like Myspace and Facebook offer you free access to millions of people located all over the world. In just a click of a mouse you could find long lost friends, relatives and classmates. You may need to own an account with these services before you access their database. It’s free and easy to open one.

WoW PvP Guide – Arena Communication

admin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 05:56:24 +0000

Communication can arguably be the most important thing to any successful arena team or premade battle ground team. It doesn’t matter how good you and your teammates are, or how powerful your setup is, communication is a must. Just typing to each other is a bad idea, its very hard to type and play at the same time. If you or your teammates are constantly having to try typing while playing, or stop playing to type it will put you at a serious disadvantage all around. So what you want to do is make sure that you and your teammates have a microphone so you all can communicated with each other.

Once you have a microphone setting it up is as easy as plugging it into your computer. But just having a microphone isn’t enough to talk to your teammates, you need some chat program that you all can get on. The default blizzard microphone chat system is junk. Its very low quality you can’t understand the other person and is really just a huge pain the butt to use. I suggest that you get a program like ventrilo, skype, or teamspeak. Skype is my personal favorite because it’s got very high quality, you don’t need to push to talk button, and you don’t need a server you can just call anyone and start a chat.

Now that you have a microphone and a means of communication you want to get your whole team into whatever you are using as the means of communication, skye, ventrilo, teamspeak, etc. With your whole team in there you want to pick one person to call out the majority of what need to be done, such as the main target you guys should get on. Or how the crowd control should be set up, and what order interrupts are going in.

Even thought you picked one main person to call the majority of the stuff that’s going on, what the plan is, everyone on the team should be calling stuff out aswell. The healer should be calling out how he is doing on heals, whether someone need to play defensive or if its fine and they should keep going offensive because heals are coming. The damage people, and even the healer, should call out when they use their cooldowns so the rest of the team knows the situation going on. Most importantly if the healer calls out when he uses his cool downs the damage know that they don’t need to worry about the healer or whether or not someone on their team is susceptible to a death or not.