Contract Management

Archive for the ‘Contract Project Management’ Category

A Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) plan can be created for anything. Natural disasters, business plans, infrastructure projects, daily operations of a business, sports teams, really anything that has the possibility of not running right can have a plan. For this article the term will be project, which is open to your interpretation on what a project actually is.

Who takes the kids to schools when the primary driver has the flu? That is the most basic BC plan.

What do we do when we get a flat tire? That is the most basic DR plan.

These 2 examples may not be written out, but they are just as valid as any other plan, and there is usually a plan in place. And yes, you can have one half without the other or call the plan DRBC if recovering from the disaster is a higher priority than continuing business.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plans are developed for certain circumstances that have the probability of occurring. Spending years of work and millions of dollars to secure a data center in the Atacama mountains desert region against flooding is useless. Equally useless is spending years of work and millions of dollars to prevent a New York snow in the winter.

There are 4 primary categories that are considered important in BCDR; avoidance, mitigation, transference and acceptance. Acceptance is contested as an option because there are not many people want to build a plan that says we accept a risk and a failure and can not mitigate, transfer or avoid it. There are cases when there is no real option other than accepting that there may be failure.

A sample project is to install a new telephone system in my office.

In a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plan, avoidance is building steps into your project to eliminate the risk or to protect the project from anything negative by means that you will determine.

My project may be late because it takes place from 15 December to 15 January, a time when many of my staff will take vacation. I can avoid an impact on my project by requesting an extension on the project, requiring additional resources, requesting extra money or many other options – you are limited by your imagination.

The idea behind transference is that the possibility of financial impact to the project is limited by contracting out some aspect of the work. I transfer the responsibility for part of the project to someone else. Transferring responsibility does not transfer accountability. The person in charge still has to accept that a failure is related to improper planning.

My December project may be late so I have hired a company to accomplish 3 critical tasks. If these tasks are not finished on time and in sequence, the project will not finish on time. I have signed a service level agreement with the vendor and the company will put all the resources required to deliver on time. If they fail to deliver on time they will not be paid, it the overall project is late because they fail to deliver on time they will pay me $1000 per day for a maximum of 15 days.

Mitigation is the part of the plan that takes the most thought. If mitigation is done properly then avoidance, transference and acceptance are clear. Mitigation is something you do to reduce the probability or consequences of a risk impacting your project. You may also define an acceptable level of impact that does not threaten the completion of your project Mitigation is very often costly and time consuming.

My December project requires new telephones for each of the 500 desks in our office. My regular supplier can guarantee 400 telephones at an $262.50 per phone, a 25% discount. The supplier is also reasonably sure to deliver the 500 on time and at the same price. To mitigate the risk of having 100 people without phones I agree that the supplier contract with a third party and buy 100 phones at the standard $350 price

1. Total cost of 500 phones from one supplier 500*262.50=$131,250.
2. Total cost of my phones from two suppliers (400*262.50)+(100*350)= $140,000
3. Mitigation cost $8750
4. Solution, pay the slight increase.

Second scenario for a larger company:

My December project requires new telephones for each of the 5000 desks in our office. My regular supplier can guarantee 2500 telephones at an $262.50 per phone, a 25% discount. The supplier is unable deliver the 5000 on time and at the same price. To mitigate the risk of having 2500 people without phones discuss with senior management to contract with a third party and buy 2500 phones at the standard $350 price, plus 10% for shipping

1. Cost of 2500 phones from one supplier 2500*262.50=$656,250.
   
2. Cost of 2500 phones from second supplier 2500*385=$ 962,500.
   
3. Total budget for phones $ 1,312,500
   
4. Total cost of phones $1,618,750
   
5. Mitigation cost $ -306,250
   
6. Solution – do you have $306,250 spare, or do you delay project completion?

Acceptance is the decision to accept certain risks and live with them. This means you do not change the project plan to deal with a risk or identify any response strategy other than agreeing to accept the risk if it is too costly or time consuming. A decision must be made to accept the risk, and the consequences. This decision must be made by a person with the highest level of authority. If the risk comes to pass and something fails the decision may mean late delivery of a project or failure as a team.

Second scenario similar to the one above:

My December project requires new telephones for each of the 5000 desks in our office. My regular supplier can guarantee 2500 telephones at a $262.50 per phone, our standard 25% discount. The supplier is unable deliver the 5000 on time and at the same price. To mitigate the risk of having 2500 people without phones discuss with senior management to contract with a third party and buy 2500 phones at the standard $350 price, plus 10% for shipping

1. Cost of 2500 phones from one supplier 2500*262.50=$656,250.
2. Cost of 2500 phones from second supplier 2500*385=$ 962,500.
3. Total budget for phones $ 1,312,500
4. Total cost of phones $1,618,750
5. Mitigation cost $ 306,250
6. Management does not have $306,250 to spend on the project and accepts that there may be a late delivery on some phones.
7. A mitigation plan will be put in place to make sure that the problem is handled the best way possible.

As stated above, a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) plan can be created for anything. The coach of a team has a replacement in mind when players are injured, Floridians board up windows when a storm comes. The most important part of your BCDR is realizing that you need one and start defining the actions that people will take when things go wrong, and at one time or another – they will.

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Cindy King
http://www.articlesbase.com/project-management-articles/business-continuity-and-disaster-recovery-categories-718828.html

It will all start with some negotiations. You and the service providers should come to an agreement regarding the cost of their services and the amount you are willing to pay for the whole project. If you want to get high quality and efficient service, you must be willing to pay a fair amount of money for it and service providers must deliver excellent services if they want to be compensated well.

Then you can proceed with the structuring of the BPO contract. This will include the terms, conditions, and principles of the whole project. You will have to make sure that the terms in the contract are fair for both parties so both you and the providers or vendors will agree with every little details and conditions that are stated in the contract. If this works well, this could lead to a long-term partnership between you and the providers.

If you are planning to outsource a group or a team, it would be better if you could clearly state the transitioning process for employees and management. You must make sure that the employees can understand and recognize the person who will be in charge of the whole team. This will prevent any confusion among employees regarding the new management. Hand over the business duties and responsibilities smoothly and properly to the right people and make sure that they are highly skilled for the job to avoid any trouble or problem in the future.

You should also state a clear, definite, and distinct benchmark that will let you assess and evaluate the service provider’s overall performance and to make sure that the quality of his work will meet your standards and requirements. It would be better if you could also include the measures or things you could do in case your provider fails to meet set standards and requirements.

It is also important that you will set a time frame or a deadline for the completion of the whole project. This will mean that the provider has to finish the whole project within that given period of time. Just make sure that you allow enough time to make sure that the quality of the job will not be compromised because of a rushed project. You can state a consequence or a measure when the provider fails to meet that deadline. It is also important that you include your full project governance to make sure that everything is going smoothly.

Doing this could help you evaluate if outsourcing the work or job is better for you and your company. It could also help you determine if a certain provider will be a good asset to the company and you could base it on his performance if you are going to keep him and offer him more projects in the future or you should find another provider for the job. Hiring a group of service providers could also help you pick an individual with an excellent performance and delivers high quality works.

Max Info
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/making-a-bpo-contract-736849.html

I have been working as an Admin Assistant for 2 years and I am really bored of it and feel i am not reaching my potential, looking for some direction.

I am not sure what I can do with my 2 years experience, I have been trying to apply for PA jobs, some things a bit more different but I have no luck. I am on rubbish money, I am 21 with 11 A-C GCSE’s and A Levels. I turned down positions at Uni cause i wasnt sure what I wanted to study and I want to work normal office hours to spend time with family/friends and my partner who I live with who all have 9-5 jobs.

I like working in an office environment and really need a trainee roll in a field such as Human Resources, Project Admin/Management/Contracts Money so I can just have a chance to earn a higher salary, Im not expecting to earn a lot, just a comfortable amount.

But I am unsure of what direction to take, what would be right considering the current market, and there are so many courses and am unsure what are the right ones to take.

I have no idea what career I would like. I enjoy writing, english is a strength of mine, as opposed to Maths. I am under threat of redundancy at the moment and would really like to find the right job this time round rather than just taking a job because I have to.

Anybody have some useful advice?

Take a chance. Apply to be a real estate appraiser. You set your own hours. Every realty sale has to have an appraiser and there are not enuf appraisers so everyone has to wait.

See if you can get a job on a ship. No one thinks about working on a boat for 8 months out of the year. That is why no one applies for those jobs. Take any job; even if you have to cook. You can switch later.

Go to the local colleges and high schools. Offer to sell the students’ art work and split the profits 50-50 with them. You will be your own boss. There is a ton of beautiful art sitting in basements and storage rooms.