Contract Management

Archive for October, 2009

Data Entry Work from Home is a home sitting data entry contract in which a company pays you to manage and organize its transactional and history data. This data entry may also include, changing of data, adding more data, proofreading it and even making spreadsheets and charts out of the data. It is a very prospering job and those manage to do it to the company’s best interests, can have $30000 to $50000 per month on full time data entry cleric jobs.

Before going to how data entry from home works lets have a look at some basic information that you need to know before starting data entry from home jobs. As most of the data entry at home jobs given by companies requires you to write magnificent ads for them which would lure the buyers into buying the product therefore you need to have very strong management skills for it.

The other data entry jobs require editing, writing, making charts, spreadsheets and even checking the data for redundant errors; therefore it is very important for you to learn how to use word processing applications and to use them effectively, so that your job doesn’t get affected and money keeps flowing in.

There are certain scammers also in this business, so beware. Never click on a link which uses tools as Ad word and Click Bank. Always, before taking up a contract make sure that the company is legitimate and have it confirmed from the company whether they posted an ad for the job or not.

Now let’s see how it works. It’s simple you get a PC; have internet service installed in it and a word processing software. Then all you have to do is contact a company which wants a home data entry expert and you are right on the money. Manage their data as they want it and in return get paid for your services.

Data Entry Work from Home might seem very easy to most people, but it isn’t. You see many people want to do home jobs therefore it brings a lot of competition among them. For getting the job you need to have extra skills, like knowing how to read medicals transcripts, legal documents, able to make spreadsheets and having strong management skills. The company wants the best person to handle their valuable data and information so they are going to select only those who are the best for the company’s own well being.

Alan Lim
http://www.articlesbase.com/home-business-articles/data-entry-work-from-home-forging-new-dwelling-home-job-opportunities-1170293.html

How not to buy a business.

It’s a bit of a drug I suppose. Technology just seems to suck you in, you resist from time to time but eventually it gets you and you end up with that gadget or thing or new faster gismo, or cool software ‘cos all your mates told you that you REALLY did need it. Only to find that it’s not really helped you or given you a better quality of life. In fact, it’s just made it harder because now you have to keep feeding the beast to keep up with the ‘upgrades’.

Well I think I took that one step further and not only bought the gadget, I bought the company. And I REALLY DIDN’T need it! This is not a story of how technology helped or hurt me in my business, this is a story of the business of technology and how it can get you all tangled up if you’re not careful.

It was early 2000, I was running a great little franchise consulting business that we’d had for over a decade, a business that had kept us fed comfortably for years. I had a financial interest in a Playground hire company, had some investment property that we were renovating on the side, and was right in the middle of a divorce. So, that seemed like a perfect time to go buy a technology company that was losing $60k a month!… sure, great idea, fantastic, let’s do it!

What was I thinkin’!

On the surface it seemed like a good deal. We were going to steal the company from the hands of the receiver for a song. And not only for a song but on an ‘earn out’ to boot so we didn’t have to put much cash into it to do the deal. Clever huh? Oh you ain’t seen nothing yet! The company had developed a pretty cool content management product, it seemed to have good staff, a great sales team, a bunch of solid clients earning recurring revenue from the ISP that was attached to it, and as we saw it, it seemed solid in a market that was going nuts. Perfect positioning for us to turn it around and flip it.

So very entrepreneurial of us.

….. And here’s where it all went pear shaped.

Day one. We settled on the business and within about an hour we had a call from Microsoft asking when we would like to pay the $250,000+ in licensing fees for the unlicensed software we were running the ISP and the web development business on. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘We have warranties in the contract that it is all licensed’…the sheepish voice came down the phone from the other end, ”arh….nup… sorry!… and you’re still using it. So… pony up boys!’ To their credit they did give us 12 months to pay the fees. And so they should have really, after all they did wait till AFTER settlement to make the call.

Week one. I call in the sales team for our first chat as I was not able to talk to them during due diligence (given due diligence only went for a few short days), ’so guys how often do we call the 4,500 customers we have on our data base?’…. the silence told me not often, and in fact when pushed, ‘not often’ turned into NEVER.

Excellent! So one week into the game and Microsoft want to sue us and our customers don’t know us.

Month one. Another call from our 3rd party uplink internet supplier, you know the guys, they’re the ones that keep your ISP connected to the Internet. ‘So boys, when are you going to fix that old payment up, you know the one for $65,000 that you owe us?’ ‘But we don’t owe you that, you see we bought the asset, NOT the company, that’s not our debt’, I replied. ‘Oh well then, we’ll just have to stop supply’. Click. Fortunately for us we ended up winning the court action and did not have to pay the back debt, but we did have to scramble and change suppliers overnight to keep the ISP up and running.

Month 2. On separate occasions, three of our staff approached us to ask for a pay rise. It was not that they deserved it, they just knew we had no idea how to run an ISP, or a software company, after all, we were entrepreneurs. Checkmate.

Year 1. I’ve never worked so hard in my life! 4am till early afternoon I would work in my core consulting business and then slip across town to the Internet business to run the sales team and develop marketing strategy. Lucky for us, a simple call to the 4,500 customers on our data base had us back in the black quite quickly. But it was a struggle. Sales in my consulting business dropped 40% as a result of me taking my eye off that ball. And it was a constant balance and battle to keep all the businesses running, growing and profitable.

So, what were our key lessons in this process?

1. It’s one thing to invest in technology and another to invest in the knowledge of technology.

2. The licensor is the only person you trust when it comes to warranties on software. Go to the source!

3. Software is always just the ‘widget’, the money is always in the customer relationships and brand.

4. There is no such thing as a ’steal’ when buying a business. You always get what you pay for, or don’t pay for. It’s how resilient or clever you are to enforce change that creates the opportunity for generating value.

5. Don’t make one child sick to save another. When sales started to drop in my consulting business, I should have spent the time there to ensure its safety, after all, prior to buying the technology business it was a great little bread winner. We came dangerously close to having ALL businesses in trouble because I was stretched too thin.

At the end of the day I am glad to have had a technology business adventure. And I am also glad to be out of it!

It was a great lesson in how NOT to buy a business.

Troy Hazard
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/techno-eeekkkk-756137.html

General ledger excellence in an outsourced arrangement is challenging but achievable. Why?

• The hand-offs between the client and provider are many and can be complex.
• The provider is “once-removed” from the day-to-day local business issues and environment/culture.
• Heterogeneous processing–the provider has many different accounting issues for many different customers.
• Resources are leaner. Studies indicate that the providers’ full-time equivalents (FTE) process 30 percent more general ledger entries and reconciliations than in-house general ledger groups.
• Relationships with the end-customer are typically newer and attaining a working trust level takes longer.

Clients can take steps, however, to mitigate the risks associated with the list above. However, we would suggest, at a minimum, the following four steps toward general ledger excellence in outsourcing:

1. Work Plan Each Month, Every Month: All good GL managers have a close checklist. Similarly, all good finance and accounting providers have them as well. The reality is that pre-close, close and post-close takes two weeks in a fairly well-run outsourcing GL shop. That leaves two weeks to get other work done. Most GL shops we have worked with use that window to breathe a sigh of relief, fix prior-month entries and gear up for the new monthly close. Instead, take four hours after every monthly close to pre-plan the new month with your provider. Leverage those 14 days to wisely allocate the scarce resource of time, with a daily plan mapped to each deliverable or objective.
2. Have the Provider Improve One Thing Every Month: All providers’ GL operations have room for improvement. Pick one thing every month and work with them to fix it. Here’s a quick list of items that are typical candidates:

   • Creating automatic data feeds for select balance sheet reconciliations to minimize manual and redundant data entry
   • Automating 10 manual journal entries every month
   • Designing and imbedding a process to start measuring one new “thing” that impacts service levels every month that has not been measured before
   • Reconciling the fixed asset ledger to identify candidates for write-offs
   • Identifying one enterprise resource planning (ERP) screen that is unused and could add process value, and then designing a process
   • Updating approval and routing tables
   • Identifying three bottlenecks in the close process and eliminating them

1. Insist that the Provider Learns Your Internal Customers’ Business: Once a quarter, ensure that the provider either spends a week in person with your clients or conducts a series of calls at a customer’s location learning their business and building trust. Work with your customers and the provider to build an agenda that will add value to them and execute against it. If your customer is a merchandising business, have the provider go to their site and work with them to streamline the inventory process. If the customer is a construction company, have the provider work to educate their project engineers on good capital management. The idea is for them to spend time at the site, add value and build trust. The key takeaway for the provider will be a better appreciation of the business and a longer list of allies out in the field.
2. Review Your Service Level Agreements Twice a Year: Your service level agreement with your provider is your guarantee of service, and your guarantee of their participation. As your service improves, so must their level and quality of participation (and vice versa). At least twice annually, dust of the agreements, compare service levels against historical performance, and work with the provider to set new standards for your organization and new expectations for the businesses. This option to reset service levels, however, must be built into the outsourcing contract. This will serve to improve performance, build a greater level of trust with the businesses and ensure that you stay on the leading edge in the marketplace.

Although these four steps will never be a replacement for a full-blown re-engineering effort, they are relatively low-cost, low-pain techniques for ensuring continued success with your processing and maintaining good relationships with your F&A provider.

Akshay Upadhye
http://www.articlesbase.com/outsourcing-articles/leveraging-your-outsourcing-advantage-in-general-ledger-processing-730472.html