“SmartSource IT Resources”

My name is Scott Nash, your dedicated SmartSource Account Manager and a preferred vendor for IT staffing services since 1996.

My goal is to introduce our services and make you aware of how we can help you. SmartSource can provide IT resources in 98% of US zip codes and Canadian provinces on short notice. See some of our other benefits below:

Single point of contact nationwide – USA and Canada
Staff augmentation
Contract to hire
Nationwide IT projects
Perm placement services
Payrolling/PEO services

Please take a look at our consulting rates and staff augmentation services and let me know how SmartSource can assist you with your staffing requirements.

Thank you for your time.

Scott Nash
Director of Sales

630-607-7203

SmartSource Inc.
http://www.smartsource-inc.com/

About Us:
Since 1996, SmartSource has been building relationships with its clients by providing temporary resources and placing full-time employees who satisfy clients’ IT staffing requirements. SmartSource has been successful in doing this by building ongoing relationships with thousands of the best-qualified individuals in consulting. Our consultants possess a broad range of skills and experience spanning the latest, state-of-art technologies to older legacy systems. With an established pool of reliable, highly qualified resources, SmartSource has coverage in nearly every major city in the United States and Canada.

Finding Ways to “Outsource”

Are you considering outsourcing but have no idea where to start? In almost every industry there is the opportunity to outsource at least a few of the common tasks performed in the industry. In some industries there may the possibility of outsourcing the majority of the common tasks while in other industries there may only be the opportunity to outsource one or two of the common tasks. In either case outsourcing can result in a lightened workload as well as an increase in profit.

Evaluate Daily Activities

The first step in finding ways to outsource is to take a really close look at the daily activities you perform when tending to your business. Make a list of each of these activities and note any related activities that are typically performed in conjunction with each other. Making this note is important because activities which are typically performed together should either be outsourced together or remain as in-house activities together to maintain the highest level of efficiency.

Once you have compiled this list of activities, carefully consider which activities can easily be performed by another person and which activities require your personal attention. This will give you a good idea of which activities you could outsource and which activities would not be good opportunities for outsourcing.

Finally, review your list of activities and note how long it takes you to perform each of the activities you could outsource. This information will be helpful later if you decide to search for a candidate to complete these tasks.

Prioritize Daily Activities

After you have carefully examined your daily activities, it is time to prioritize these activities. Create a comprehensive list of all of your daily activities in their order of importance. For this list include both the activities requiring your personal attention and the activities which can be outsourced.

When you make your decision to start outsourcing some of your daily tasks, start with the highest priority on the list which you believe can be outsourced. Attempt to outsource this task as a test to determine whether or not outsourcing will work for you. If you decide you are comfortable with outsourcing and that it is working for your business, you can continue down the prioritized list attempting to find those capable of handling your daily activities.

Consider Administrative Tasks

We have already discussed the importance of evaluating your own daily tasks in the process of finding ways to outsource but it is also important to consider tasks completed by your staff members. Administrative tasks are often tasks which can be outsourced so examining these tasks will give you a good idea if you can increase the efficiency of your administrative assistance by outsourcing some of their responsibilities.

Activities such as data entry, transcription and other activities often handled by personal assistance are all example of activities which can easily be outsourced. Additionally, there is a great deal of qualified candidates available to fulfill these tasks. The industry of virtual personal assistants has become a booming industry with many savvy entrepreneurs offering their skills in these areas as a consultant.

Develop a Plan for Managing Outsourced Activities

Before starting to outsource daily activities, you should develop a plan for managing all of your outsourced activities. This plan should include the following:

* Method for selecting candidates to handle outsourced work

* Method for overseeing the work performed by independent contractors

* Method for evaluating the work performed by independent contractors

Scott Nash | SmartSource Inc | Director of Sales
Ofc: 630-607-7203 | Mobile: 469.233.7155 |snash@smartsource-inc.com

“Computer Consulting Services” Protecting Client Data

As a provider of computer consulting services, you should communicate to your clients that a dedicated server generally can enforce strong user passwords. This means your clients can:

•    Force users to change passwords at predetermined intervals
•    Prevent recycling of previously-chosen passwords
•    Eliminate the use of blank passwords
•    Enforce selection of passwords that are a mixture of both letters and numbers, as well as upper and lower case characters

Protection Against “Accidental” Reboots

When a PC is used in a peer-to-peer network as both a server and a workstation, sooner or later the server will get rebooted accidentally – no matter how careful the server’s primary user is.

Let your computer consulting services clients know that whether the peer-to-peer server gets rebooted as a result of installing a new piece of software, or a buggy application with memory leaks causes system crashes, sooner or later their employees will be livid when the server goes down without warning.

This will likely cause corrupted data files and lost hours of collective work in progress. A dedicated server system is a simple way to prevent this enormous potential problem.

Centralized File Protection

With a peer-to-peer network, servers tend to sprout up throughout your computer consulting services clients’ office as multiple end users set up file and printer shares on their own PCs.

With a client/server network, files are centrally protected from data loss and corruption resulting from hardware faults, accidental deletion, power problems, hacking, sabotage, and virus threats.

Don’t Forget Back Up Solutions

As their computer consulting services provider, communicate to your clients that conversely in a peer-to-peer network environment, with decentralized file storage, they should consider how crucial data files will be backed up.

Will data backup be a manual process? Will an external tape backup drive get passed from user to user (requiring each end user to take initiative)?

The Bottom Line about Computer Consulting Services

When providing computer consulting services, have clients consider how often antivirus definitions will get updated on each server. And don’t forget to think about whether each peer-to-peer server has a UPS (battery backup unit) capable of unattended shutdown if power is lost, when no one is around to manually and safely shutdown the “server”.

Scott Nash | SmartSource Inc | Director of Sales
Ofc: 630-607-7203 | Mobile: 469.233.7155 |snash@smartsource-inc.com

*Small Biz Tech Talk.

Why IT Teams Become Short-Staffed and How to Address It

Staffing in IT has two major complications. The first is that the skills needed to address modern business computing architecture are very rare in the workforce. A tiny fraction of college graduates earn degrees in computer science, information technology, engineering, or other relevant majors. Of those that do, it can take years in the workforce to acquire the full set of skills needed to address the problems of enterprise IT systems.

The second complication is that employee career goals can be unpredictable from the perspective of management. As an employee with a high skill set is always in demand, it is very likely that the employee is unofficially “on the market” despite being committed to permanent or long-term contract employment. Even if the employee is not actively seeking a position, it is likely that dozens of headhunters are notifying him or her about persuasive, lucrative openings on a daily basis. It is for this reason that IT teams must expect to become short-staffed at any moment and tend to think of staffing as a moving target.

One practice that can help mitigate the problem of short-staffing is cross-testing, though it is easier said than done. A team can assign members in pairs to test each other’s fixes and solutions. If there is a sudden departure from the team, there is rarely ever enough time for adequate knowledge transfer. The practice of cross-testing means that at least some of the critical knowledge transfer is integrated into the course of daily work.

However, aside from cross-testing, the one other tactic an organization can really take is matching the offer of any competitor in terms of compensation and benefits. However, for the majority of organizations this is not feasible.

What this leaves as far as addressing the issue of short staffing is trusting in an IT staffing firm such as SmartSource. With this option, an IT organization can quickly find qualified, screened, background-cleared professionals with proven experience.

Scott Nash | SmartSource Inc | Director of Sales
Ofc: 630-607-7203 | Mobile: 469.233.7155 |snash@smartsource-inc.com

“Outsourcing HR”

There’s no denying the trend toward HR outsourcing. In fact, most of the U.S. companies currently experiencing rapid growth – 83% – are outsourcing at least some or even all of their HR functions, and they say they plan to continue to do so for at least the next two years (“Almost All,” 2005). But organizations must outsource in a thoughtful way. Before spending countless hours reviewing vendors’ offerings, they should consider the following points.

First, know your reasons

Whether and what to outsource will be influenced by the reasons for outsourcing. Companies often share similar motives. Below are some of the top reasons mentioned in recent surveys conducted by Hewitt Associates (Stopper, 2005), Towers Perrin (2005), Mellon Financial Corporation (2005) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (“Almost All,” 2005):

• achieving cost savings and freeing up capital for use elsewhere
• allowing HR professionals to focus on the core business of the company
• improving business processes
• improving services to employees
• providing access to leading-edge technologies
• shedding the burden of navigating through the complexities of regulatory compliance
• focusing on strategic HR
• improving quality of service.

Beware the fallout

With all of these good motives, executives sometimes overlook the impact outsourcing can have on employees. Even if the decision to outsource doesn’t result in any employees losing their jobs, change can breed fear and doubt among both HR workers and those who rely on them. Failure to address the people issue can lead to lower morale, lower productivity and a poor outsourcing relationship. Mark Goulston, SVP of emotional intelligence for business consultant Sherwood Partners, emphasizes that communication is critical during an outsourcing event. “Rumors are really destructive…. Uncertainty breeds fear, fear breeds panic, and panic breeds paralysis. Employees who don’t panic start polishing their resumes,” says Goulston (Overby, 2004.

And, certainly, a tense work environment and unwanted turnover can interfere with the perception of the positive outcomes of HR outsourcing. Therefore, time and effort should be invested in preparing both the HR staff – and employees companywide – for the changes they will experience.

Reduce the pain

The time for communicating the outsourcing decision is sooner rather than later. Terry McKenzie, director of employee communications at Sun Microsystems Inc. in San Francisco, advises telling the HR staff even before a provider is chosen. And no one should be so naïve as to think the message will not be shared. If the organization does not plan and shape the message, others will – and not necessarily with the same positive spin. The announcement should be crafted with consideration for what the company would like employees to know, feel and do. Managers should describe the business rationale for the decision and the way success will be measured. Supervisors should be trained to deal with the emotional responses of employees. And, above all, employers must handle employees fairly, with dignity and respect. The organization’s credibility and trust is all- important at this time (Grensing-Pophal, 2005.

Employers should keep a close eye on service. Service quality may be a rationale for outsourcing, but it’s also the most common reason for employers bringing outsourced functions back in-house, according to Hewitt Associates’ 2005 HR Outsourcing Trends & Insights survey. Therefore, the vendor selection process, with an emphasis on cultural fit, is vital to providing employees with a positive experience, as is establishing service excellence goals (Geisel, 2006).

Outsource the right things

Not all HR responsibilities are likely candidates for outsourcing. Human Resource Planning magazine lists what it considers to be core responsibilities that need to remain within HR. These include developing the HR strategy that will drive results for the company, designing the HR programs, coaching and supporting executives, helping managers with HR-related issues, assisting strategy planning for mergers and restructurings, managing the HR budget, and managing the relationship with the external HR service providers (Stopper, 2005). This combination of strategic and high-touch responsibilities makes good use of HR’s unique talents and helps to ensure that decisions to outsource are made with benefits to the larger organization in mind.

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Scott Nash

“Outsource Staffing” Meeting Your Business Needs

Outsource staffing is an effort made by outsourcing Outsource Staffing to provide you and your company with just the perfect employee capable of doing your work to help you run your business smoothly and perfectly. To run any organization successfully and efficiently it is very important to choose the right people who can do the required work. Well it is correctly said that a company or an organization is as good as its people. So choosing the man power who will work for a company is as crucial as selecting any other major component of a business. Business owners must make an extra effort to select the best people to work for them.On the whole staffing process, that is selecting the right staff and training them to do the work for a business is a time consuming and exhaustive process. Outsource staffing is a simple means for you to be free from all staffing worries. It requires a lot of effort, time, planning and other resources for an organization to go about hiring the best staffing services. Outsourcing staff is the best and the most viable option for any firm to select and hire the services of the best people to work for them.One of the main benefits of outsource staffing is that you can save lots of money, time and other resources. Most businesses and companies have many time consuming and complicated jobs to take care of for running their business successfully. So in such a scenario outsourcing staff becomes the best option. You can also save huge amounts of money if you outsource staff from outsourcing companies. The cost of labor in developing countries is very low and when professionals do the outsourcing work from developing countries, the work can actually be done at a much lower rate.

Once you have outsourced the staff of your business you can also have lots of time at your disposal. This becomes possible as outsourcing lets you free up your valuable time. The professionals who have freed up from the workload can deal with other important business deals. Also all the other important sectors of your business can be dealt with as the internal staff can be freed up.

One thing that has been noticed in most businesses is the fact that professionals switch jobs very frequently. This has a very negative effect on any business. After a professional has been hired and trained to do particular types of work, they leave the organization. This means the loss of time money and all the other resources that was used for training the professional to work according to company standards. So the next time you want to hire new professionals think about all these aspects and you can find outsourcing staff to be a better option for your business.

Whether to outsource staff or not is entirely your decision and no one can force you to decide on anything. So before you actually go about outsource staffing you must find out if this will benefit your business or not. After you have undertaken the process for your business, at anytime you find that you are not satisfied with the work done, you can simply take back the work and let someone else do the thing for you. There are plenty of outsourcing companies form which you can hire the outsourcing services.

Scott Nash | SmartSource Inc | Director of Sales
Ofc: 630-607-7203 | Mobile: 469.233.7155 |snash@smartsource-inc.com

Main Advantages of “Data Entry Outsourcing Services”

Data Entry Outsourcing functions as contracting with outside consultants, software firms and then to do analysis of systems, system programming and data center operations. The special purpose for doing outsourcing is the availability of qualified and experienced computer operators at low cost. The professionals excel at data processing are very detail oriented, quick typists, and able to check their work for errors as they go. The professionals do all types of Data Feeding operations for instance data conversion, data processing, catalog processing services, image enhancement, image editing and photo manipulation services, etc. There are a number of data feeding outsourcing companies which are getting profitable business from various parts of the world. They are saving time and money.

Most data processing outsourcing companies offer some sort of non-disclosure guarantee, to verify that the data will remain safe and secure. In addition, the company offers a quality guarantee, as well as the benefit of having qualified employees doing the work. The company also uses an experienced freelancer for small projects with longer deadlines. It is especially attractive for companies that only occasionally need the service, such as for producing annual or semi-annual reports. Working for a data processing company can be a great employment opportunity.

Many companies that do data feeding or punching work will train new employees on-site, and then allow them to work from home part-time or even full-time A freelancer can be a great way to earn extra income on the side, and often offers great flexibility regarding hours worked and workload. The freelancer to whom the work is outsourced is a specialist in the job and hence the work is completed with more precision and with lower turnaround time. Data Entry online services outsourcing, infrastructure and management problems, minimizes capital costs. These companies make their best possible use of international resources.

Scott Nash | SmartSource Inc | Director of Sales
Ofc: 630-607-7203 | Mobile: 469.233.7155 | snash@smartsource-inc.com

What to look for in a “professional staffing agency”

A “professional staffing agency” can be defined as a firm or agency that is engaged in the acquisition of professionals on behalf of their clients on temporary, flexible, or permanent basis. A professional staffing agency primarily looks upon to placing the best available candidate or professional with appropriate employers. Majority of professional staffing agencies also provide various add on programs that include providing insights into the current labor trends, local market activities and industry specific information that the client organization may be unable gather.

Numerous professional staffing agencies that are spread around the globe are rendering important services in the field of staffing and recruitment. These professional staffing agencies in addition to generating huge revenues for themselves are also helping businesses to flourish worldwide by providing professional staff as per the need of their client organizations. An immediate access to the qualified talent is enabling organizations to be flexible, productive and in expanding their businesses globally. However, before going in for choosing a professional staffing agency, there are certain areas to be taken into account or looked into by the organization that is in need of right personnel for vacant job positions and these are:

1.Trust: Before hiring a professional staffing firm, the organization must observe the testimonials of the concerned staffing agency before placing a trust on it. The number of years of experience that the staffing agency is having in the field of professional recruitment, how it had helped local employers in managing their workforce for special projects, short-term assignments and long-term employment plays an important role in building a trust on the staffing firm.

2.Agility: Another way to look into the concerned staffing agency is about its flexibility and ability to fill large number of positions quickly and efficiently. Whether the agency is locally owned and operated without any overheads and lethargy or bureaucracy of local companies should be looked into.

3.Reputation of the agency: The other factor to be considered is about the reputation of the professional staffing agency. A good reputation and respect will not only help the organization in entering into a partnership agreement with the concerned staffing agency but it will also help in attracting the best talent into its’ recruitment stream.

4.Using innovative technologies: The available technologies at the disposal of the professional staffing agency must be able to understand the recruitment process and recommend solutions for the specific staffing and project needs of the client organization.

As a leader in the staffing industry Talent Logic is committed to connect companies with influential, highly motivated and qualified talent around the world that will help to enhance a company’s productivity and specializing in the placement of full-time and temporary professionals in accounting staffing, financial staffing, engineering staffing, IT staffing, legal staffing and Scientific staffing. Talent Logic has a well developed search and match process designed to spot engineers with the right set of qualification, expertise and experience and specialize in locating and placing technical, personnel and qualified engineers who are seeking employment with clients seeking specific personnel.

Talent Logic specializes in providing human resources support to the scientific and biotechnology marketplace and provides a broad range of scientific candidates; from bench-level technicians to Ph.D. level senior scientists and from associate scientists to consultants.

Having duly certified processes such as ISO 9001:2000, professional talent databases etc. would be an ideal resources for a professional staffing agency.

These are areas that an organization should look before hiring a professional staffing agency.

Scott Nash – Skype: iamscottnash

scott@iamscottnash.com /(630) 607-7203

“Outsourcing Companies”: How Your Company Can Benefit

Outsourcing is the handing over of a business process to an external service vendor. The service provider will take over the responsibility of day to day function and continuance of the assigned process.

There are a number of diverse types of outsourcing. Several companies outsource some degree of functions, while others outsource complete operations. Let’s take Microsoft for example; their entire manufacturing process is outsourced.Obviously, fees are part of outsourcing depending on the services necessary, and in cases like Microsoft, the contract can cost millions and billions of dollars, and it becomes frequent for the client’s employees to be moved to the supplier company. Companies such as IBM, HP, EDS and Accenture are some of the leading outsourcing companies offering their services.

Those who outsource entire operations can be categorized in two; Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO).

Business Process Outsourcing is sub-divided into call centre outsourcing (CCO), human resource outsourcing (HRO), finance and accounting (FAO) outsourcing, and claims processing outsourcing (CPO).

1. Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO)
2. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)
b. Human Resource Outsourcing (HRO)
2.2. Human Resource Outsourcing (HRO)
2.3. Finance and Accounting Outsourcing (FAO)
2. Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO)

Basically, every business process can be transferred over to outsourcing companies. The most frequent processes being outsourced are recruitment, marketing, editing, web design, web hosting, website maintenance, and IT maintenance, switch board (telephone answering), manufacturing, accounts, logistics, and distribution.

There are innumerable motivations why a business ought to consider outsourcing. Several firms may not have the on hand skills needed to finish a process, handing over this process to outsourcing companies may assure a higher success rate rather than if the business itself runs it.

Another reason is that the process may be difficult to control, in general, or perhaps due to business growth. Experienced outsourcing companies already have the necessary skills and knowledge to manage the process for you. Additionally, the process can be performed better, cheaper, and faster too.

If a business has inferior domestic service, which may or may not be related to deficiency of skills, or every so often, a company may be deficient in the resources, or the resources are not available in-house at all, in order to complete the process, such as the case for smaller companies.
Outsourcing companies can present the best solution.

Other reasons may be that you require your employees’ time elsewhere in the business and the process may not contribute to competitive advantage. Outsourcing aids companies to make more efficient their business operations by allowing them to concentrate on core income generating activities.

Outsourcing companies offers companies access to specialist capabilities, therefore leveling the playing field for smaller companies. It minimizes risks by sharing it between the company and the outsourcing provider – who has the skills and experience for managing the risk better, giving businesses peace of mind that the process is in good and reliable hands.

With outsourcing, companies do not have to be anxious about continually commencing new technologies to keep them competitive. An excellent outsourcing provider will already have this covered for them.
Outsourcing frees up human resources, letting companies focus their employee’s activities on more crucial tasks. Outsourcing frees up cash flow by converting fixed costs to variable costs.
Moreover, it boosts service quality, improves the control of your business, and allows the business more flexible to change/demand.

Scott Nash | SmartSource Inc | Director of Sales
Ofc: 630-607-7203 | Mobile: 469.233.7155 | snash@smartsource-inc.com

Time is running out! See this important notice from “Microsoft”

Important notice for users of Windows XP with Service Pack 3 (SP3): The support for this product ends April 8, 2014. To ensure that you will receive all important security updates for Windows you need to upgrade to a later version such as Windows 7.

SmartSource has experienced technicians at a national level that can help your customers migrate from XP to WIN 7.

Rates range from $45.00 to $55.00 per hour based on location, duration, and hours of service.

Most Respectfully,

Scott Nash | SmartSource Inc | Director of Sales
Ofc: 630-607-7203 | Mobile: 469.233.7155 | snash@smartsource-inc.com

SmartSource, Inc. http://www.smartsource-inc.com/