Outsourcing: Glossary

Offshore outsourcing, a type of business process outsourcing (BPO), is the exporting of IT-related work from the United States and other developed countries to areas of the world where there is both political stability and lower labor costs or tax savings. Outsourcing is an arrangement in which one company provides services for another company that could also be or usually have been provided in-house. Offshore simply means "any country other than your own." The Internet and high-speed Internet connections make it possible for outsourcing to be carried out anywhere in the world, a business trend economists call globalization. In general, domestic companies interested in offshore outsourcing are not only trying to save money in order to be more price-competitive against each other, but also to enable them to compete with businesses in other countries.

Critics of offshore outsourcing worry that if too much IT-related work is farmed out to other countries, home-grown IT talent will "dry up." They point out that once a company begins outsourcing overseas, they will find it difficult to reverse the trend and justify paying more in salaries, taxes, and job benefits for the same work they used to outsource. Proponents maintain that the judicious use of offshore outsourcing will help make all IT workers become more productive and allow companies to develop more agile and responsive business models, which in turn, will raise salaries for domestic workers in all countries.

According to the IT research and analysis firm Gartner, by the year 2004 more than 40% of IT-related businesses will either be investigating the possibility of offshore outsourcing or will have already shipped some IT-related work overseas.

Supply chain management checklist for BC/DR practitioners

Most organizations deal with multiple external suppliers to support their business. One way to minimize supply chain disruptions is to learn whether your key suppliers have business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) plans. More importantly, you’ll need to know how your supplier views the importance of BC/DR plans, how they manage their own plans, as well as how frequently those plans are updated and tested by the supplier.

Download this detailed supply chain management checklist, which can help you ask the right questions to assess and audit key supplier BC/DR plans and associated programs. This makes it easier to determine if your key suppliers are committed to BC/DR activities, as well as documenting and regularly testing those plans.

Evaluating supplier BC/DR plans

If a prospective or existing supplier is likely to become a key resource to your organization (e.g., suppliers of raw materials or shipping companies), be sure that the vendor has the resources and operational capabilities to stay in business even with the potential for a disruption. In both cases, examine each vendor’s BC/DR program and associated plans. The absence of such programs may not be deal-breakers, but if any of your suppliers are critical to your organization’s supply chain, their BC/DR plans could be the difference between the success and failure of your business.

You can perform the assessment yourself or use your internal audit department. The questions are designed primarily to elicit a yes or no response to minimize the amount of time needed to conduct the audit/assessment help pinpoint areas where you’ll need to dig deeper.

If at all possible, review the vendor’s BC/DR plans instead of simply taking the vendor’s word. Remember that a vendor’s refusal to let you examine the entire plan may be tied to a company security policy and should not necessarily be cause for concern. In that case, ask the vendor to provide excerpted sections from the plan, such as the table of contents and sample pages from the document.

Also be sure to assess the following when evaluating suppliers:

1. Check on the financial status of the supplier, e.g., Dun & Bradstreet reports.
2. Check on the supplier’s reputation in the community, e.g., Better Business Bureaureports.
3. Contact existing customers for references.
4. Learn if the supplier’s business has been growing, declining or staying relatively stable.
5. Review legal documents carefully, especially contracts, warranties, maintenance agreements and service level agreements.
6. Determine if the supplier has faced any legal issues, such as customer complaints, regulatory violations or litigation for poor performance.
7. Examine where the supplier’s offices, including warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and specialized facilities such as where fuel storage tanks are located.
8. Compare supplier pricing and discounting options with other suppliers.
9. Can you negotiate prices with the supplier?
10. Ask the supplier’s vendors for their opinions about the firm.

Summary

Use the supply chain management checklist to protect your organization from vendors who may not be able to maintain normal operations in the aftermath of a disruptive incident. Remember that any disruption to your supply chain can affect your organization and possibly other firms that are also in your supply chain.

Resignation letters.. !

Short but not formal....

 

 

 

A bit formal.....

 

 

 

Formal One......

 

 

 

Or this Deadly one ?

Questions You Can Never Answer..

- Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard? 

- Why do we press harder on a remote control when we know the batteries are flat? 

- Why do banks charge a fee on 'insufficient funds' when they know there is not enough? 

- What is the speed of darkness? 

- Why is it that people say they 'slept like a baby' when babies wake up every two hours? 

- If the temperature is zero outside today and it's going to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold will it be? 

- Do married people live longer than single ones or does it only seem longer? 

- How is it that we put man on the moon before we figured out it would be a good idea to put wheels on luggage? 

- Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground? 

Did you ever stop and wonder... 
- Who was the first person to look at a cow and say, 'I think I'll squeeze these pink dangly things here, and drink whatever comes out?'

Be Careful While Buying a Cake

A man wants to celebrate his wife's Birthday by throwing a party. So he goes to order a birthday cake.

 

The salesman asks him what message he wants to put on the cake.

 

Well he thinks for a while and says:

 

Let's put, "you are not getting older you are getting better".

 

The salesman asks, "How do you want me to put it?"

 

The man says, Well put "You are not getting older", at the top and "! You are getting better" at the bottom.

 

The real fun didn't start until the cake was opened the entire party watched the message decorated on the cake:

 

"You are not getting older at the top, you are getting better at the bottom".

Guardian Angel

A man was walking in the street when he heard a voice. "Stop! Stand still! If you take one more step, a brick will fall down on your head and kill you."

 

The man stopped and a big brick fell right in front of him. The man was astonished.

 

He went on, and after awhile he was going to cross the road. Once again the voice shouted: "Stop! Stand still! If you take one more step a car will run over you and you will die."

 

The man did as he was instructed, just as a car came careening around the corner, barely missing him. "Where are you?" the man asked. "Who are you?"

 

"I am your guardian angel," the voice answered.

 

"Oh yeah?" the man asked. "And where the hell were you when I got married?"

 

Natural Home Remedies for Acidity

Having too much acid in your body can cause you to feel generally not as well as you could, make you more susceptible to illness and cause ailments like irritable bowel syndrome and acid reflux.

While it's important to have some acid in your body, you can get rid of too much acid by eating more alkalizing foods to help neutralize the pH in your body. Keeping your pH around 7.35 and 7.45 keeps you primed for optimum health, and simply changing your diet to include more alkaline foods can help get you there.

1) Start each morning off with fruit to help balance the acid in your body. Even fruits that seem acidic, like citrus fruits, lemons, oranges and grapefruits, have alkalizing properties once consumed and digested. Other good fruit choices include cherries, avocados, berries and watermelon.


2) Choose leafy green vegetables for lunch. Studies published in a 2008 Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition found that a diet rich in green vegetables helped to alkalize the body, neutralize acids and result in a decreased chance of osteoporosis. Brightly colored vegetables like carrots, beets, peppers and sweet potatoes are all highly alkalizing and can restore the pH balance in your body and blood to result in less acid in the body.


3) Avoid eating meat with your dinner. While most American meals center around some kind of meat, animal products introduce acid into your body, especially beef and pork products. If you feel like you need an extra boost in your protein level around dinner, try tofu, textured vegetable protein or soy products as a healthy and low-acid substitution.


4) Drink freshly prepared juices and smoothies to get as many alkalizing foods into your system as possible. You can add leafy greens to fruit juice to sweeten them up and make them more enjoyable. This ensures that you get at least five servings of fruits and vegetables every day to keep your pH at an optimum level.


5) Utilize spices in your cooking to help perk up otherwise bland eating. Cinnamon, nutmeg and paprika are all examples of spices that won't introduce new acid into your body. Prepare the food in different ways to alter the flavor. Roasting or grilling fruits and vegetables can give them new and interesting flavors so that you're mroe apt to enjoy them as you get rid of too much acid in your body naturally.