The trend of outsourcing inbound and outbound contact centers the past few years have become a billion dollar industry, the main issue here however are the growing acceptance by companies to move their outsourced contact center offshore. The large numbers of Filipino English speaking personnel, Indian technical expertise, and very low cost Chinese labor have proven to be a worthwhile management decision for a lot of industries.
There is no need to discuss the advantages of outsourcing contact centers when even the government itself has begun outsourcing a lot of their public service lines to outsourcing companies. The main discussion right now is how to manage the cost of the outsourcing business on the technology side in the meantime maintain the level of quality control level on the personnel side.
Outsourcing companies normally have technologies geared toward achieving this goal. The price for telecommunication hardware and equipment has been the main financial concern of most contact centers especially the outsourced ones.
There are also issues of connectivity, IPL reliability, and proximity to skilled workers. Positioning contact centers to highly skilled areas reduce the impact of having cheap labor by having additional costs on office maintenance and salary competitiveness.
If such a technology where a contact center queue can be routed to anywhere in the world at anytime even to a mobile phone, will it solve issues. To some it will. If such a technology exists and in spite of having agents work remotely from a contact center itself, will it resolve such issues? Maybe it does. If the technology still allows you to manage your agent’s skill routings, live queue management, live quality control monitoring and call recording? Will that reduce the loss of quality control? Probably.
If the extra budget due to the reduction of sophisticated hardware and brick and mortar office are spent on US quality voice and not VoIP IPLs? Will that make the phone quality better? Most likely.
In the end, the virtual contact center technology has created as much questions as it has answered. It has solved a lot of problems yet created new ones. But aren’t these factors the same issues when outsourcing is still an infant? Aren’t these the same concerns when a company decides to go virtual? History has proven that it may not be for everyone, but if it’s for you. The impact to your business is enormous.
The technology is already here. It is ready, It can do inbound and outbound from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world. Monitor and manage real time anywhere in the world. The real question is. Would your business model benefit from having such technology on your side?
I guess it would.
Carlo Caparras is currently a marketing consultant for several ISP’s, webhosting, web development, web-services, outsourcing, colocation, and telecommunication companies including toll free express (http://www.tollfreeexpress.com)
We all know who Microsoft are and they need no introduction, they are, for the context of this article, the owners and developers of Microsoft Office.
Not all of us, though, may have heard of Mindjet. They are a company who have developed a leading software product called Mind Manager. Mind Manager, currently in version 6, is a mind mapping or concept mapping software that is widely used in business and in education.
Why might Microsoft be interested in buying Mindjet? The answer could be to add a mind mapping application to their Office suite. Mindjet already publish an addin for Office applications that allow mind maps to be published in Word or PowerPoint. By buying Mindjet, Microsoft could take this development a lot further and make Mind Manager an integral part of the Office suite of applications with full dynamic linking.
So what would be the advantages to the end user, that is to say the Microsoft Office user, of having a mind mapping application included? First of all, the user would obviously be able to use the application to produce mind maps. Now, though, they could incorporate into their maps, Office Clipart, sheets or cells from Excel, documents or paragraphs from Word, presentations or individual slides from PowerPoint etc..
One of the advantages of mind mapping is that it enables the user to break down an initial theme, topic or idea into progressively smaller sub themes, subtopics or ideas. This is great for enabling the user to come to terms with a complex or, maybe, vague original theme. It can also allow the user to explore possible consequences or additional effects associated with the original theme. Sometimes the original theme is narrow and needs to be expanded, which the mind map technique encourages.
Another aspect of a mind map is that it presents information in short, concise pieces; often a single word. This is excellent for putting thoughts on paper, exploring new ideas or, of course, brain storming. There are times, however, when an idea or a sub topic needs to be presented in much greater depth and detail. In such a case, a document, article or report written on a word processor is required.
It is this latter point which offers a clue to the real potential behind Microsoft buying Mindjet. Once a user has created their map, each of the sub topics can be linked to a blank Word document in which the user can write their detailed report. Equally in some cases an Excel spreadsheet may be required or a presentation created to support a sub topic. One final bonus is that, when fully complete with map and supporting documents, files etc., the whole lot can be collated as a single large document and saved, printed, presented or whatever.
So it can be seen that by including Mind Manager into their Office suite, Microsoft could benefit greatly from any purchase of Mindjet and so too could the users of both parties’ products. I do not think the purchase could be made in time for the release of the next version of Microsoft Office but let’s hope that the subsequent version could benefit.
The only trouble is, I have no knowledge whatsoever whether Microsoft is intending to buy Mindjet (or anyone else). This article is just supposition. I write it in the hope that somehow it gets in front of the eyes of Bill Gates who thinks it is a good idea and invites me over to discuss it with him.
Douglas Woods is a teacher, ICT trainer and Life Coach working in the United Kingdom. You can find out more from his website, http://www.dougwoods.com.
The Windows registry is the nerve center of your PC its made up of information called Keys and strings which simply put are directions for your software so it knows how to run.
Installing an application is an easy task for most users. But what about uninstalling? Do you know how to completely remove an application from your system? Did you know that most applications leave permanent files or registry entries on your system? In order to keep your system clean, you need to properly install and uninstall applications. Correctly uninstalling an application can ensure that it will not cause you any problems in the future.
The right way to uninstall software is definitely not the delete key. And it’s not always the familiar Add/Remove Programs dialog. In many cases, you need to follow a series of steps in order to completely remove a program from your system.
Add/Remove Programs: This is the familiar application you can find on your Control Panel. It is (obviously) the most important tool that you use to remove an application. It is primarily intended for applications that don’t offer an Uninstall program on their own. Most of the times however, it can be safely used to uninstall these applications as well, since their own uninstall program will be started by the Add/Remove Programs dialog. It can be found at Start - Control Panel - Add/Remove Programs.
Many applications tend to leave permanent files laying around on your hard disk. Your system does not need these files and so, apart from wasting space, sometimes they may adversely affect the performance of your system (e.g. an older version of a library may cause compatibility issues with newer applications). On the other hand, there are also programs that leave useless registry entries on your Windows registry that can cause similar problems.
A Registry cleaning program can be used to find and delete all registry keys, strings, files and folders that the program has left on your machine. This will result is a faster PC and a PC less Prone to errors.
For more information visit about registry cleaners visit http://www.yourpcprotection.com
Glenn Munn is an IT professional with many years of experinece with PC Threats. Qualifications include Microsoft Certified Professional Comptia A+ hardware Comptia A+ software Website: PC Protection
Microsoft Business Solutions main middle market ERP application - Microsoft Great Plains has multiple integration options: MS SQL Scripting (stored procedures and views), ADO.Net programming, Microsoft SQL Server DTS packages. You certainly can deploy such SDK tools as eConnect. However here we would like to show you how to program the simplest user friendly tool: Microsoft Great Plains Integration Manager.
Multiple times in our consulting practice we saw the need to integrate General Ledger transactions from one text file and here we give you this and even more complex case, when credit and debit amounts are present on the same line with their own account numbers. Let’s assume that we have tab delimited text file, GLSOURCE.txt. Here is how the line looks:
“11242004″ (date) “11020016000″ (debit account) 212446.68 (debit amount) “15260005400″ (credit account) 212446.68 (credit amount)
Pretty challenging, isn’t it?
Let’s begin
First of all and this is probably easy - you need ODBC DSN, use Microsoft Text Driver, change default directory, select the file and switch to tab delimited type.
Next, open Microsoft Great Plains Integration Manager and create two new queries - one will be for the Header and the second for distribution lines in GL transaction. In both cases use Advanced ODBC type of text queries.
GL Header should aggregate by date, so in its SQL window enter this:
select F1 from GLSOURCE.txt group by F1
Now the lines - here we need unionizing and checking if amount is not zero:
select F1, F2, F3, 0 from GLSOURCE.txt
where F3<>”
union
select F1 F4, 0,F5 from GLSOURCE.txt
where F5<>”
The one above is the most difficult part of this article. Please understand it - we are splitting line into two by union, first we create debit part and then we attach credit part, plus we are weeding out 0 amounts.
Next - we need to link two queries - simply link them by F1 field (date). Do it in query relationship. When you are done with linking, right click on the arrow, open properties and in Select Relationship Type window change to:
There can be 0 or more records in the child for each record in the master.
This is important - we’ll have more than one line in GL distribution.
The rest should be familiar for IM consultant.
Select destination as GL Journal, assign transaction date and batch ID as F1 from Header query, switch to entries and select them from debit and credit parts of the lines query.
As additional tools in filtering your text query you could use VBA scripting and even translation.
Translation is the way to go when you need to replace account numbers from the text file with different or translated accounts in Great Plains.
Happy integrating! if you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-630-961-5918 or 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com
Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies - USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving Chicago, California, Colorado, Arizona, New York, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Canada, UK, Russia, Europe and Australia and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.
OEComplete is a utility for managing the personal information of the user. It is designed to be flexible and affordable even for the home user. OEComplete allows setting up appointments and tasks, and creates notes for easy reference. Recurrence, reminders and attachment enhance the competence in addition to import and export facility.
For example, a weekly status meeting can be set to recur every Friday evening and remind you of the same any time before it, just by a single setting.
Users of Outlook Express particularly benefit from it, having an appointment scheduler and task manager along with their emails. OEComplete starts automatically when you start Outlook Express while Outlook Express can be opened from OEComplete also.
The Calendar option in OEComplete helps you set appointments for any day, and plan your task ahead of time. OEComplete allows scheduling of recurring appointments, such as a weekly status meeting that occurs on a regular basis
Experience the features:
Task Recurrence
Set up Appointments, Tasks
Create Notes
Set Alerts/ Reminders
Set up recurrence of appointments
Import and Export of Data
I never saw this coming.
Microsoft announced a couple of days ago that they were not going to release Windows Vista in the third or even fourth quarters of this year. As you may remember there was a freeze on features just a couple of weeks ago and I as well as many others were waiting to see the cleaning up of code in Windows Vista. Now that there was a slip in dates it seemed that maybe Microsoft was pulling their old trick of over promising a release date so that Windows Vista would be able to get the over hyped buzz that Microsoft has always relied on.
Now we are seeing rumors and stories coming out of Redmond that are more open than anyone has seen in past releases of either Microsoft Office or earlier versions of Microsoft Windows. Jim Allchin who has been running the Windows group at Microsoft and has overseen many many software releases for Microsoft had already announced that he would be leaving after Vista was released but now it seems that he has been kicked out early, there was a restructuring done at Microsoft today that was really large even for them with the live.com group and Windows groups being lined up and Steven Sinofsky is heading up the group.
Now later today I see that Smarthouse is reporting that a Microsoft insider is saying that up to 60% of the code in Windows Vista is going to have to be rewritten, 60%? This remor can not possibly be right one must hope as there are millions of lines of code in any modern operating system and Microsoft always reuses code form earlier versions of the operating system, ya ya I know, Vista was built from scratch from the ground up. I for one have never believed that this would possibly be true. Why would Microsoft just chuck away this huge archive of good code that they already have just to get rid of the bad code that was already there. I am sure that Vista just like any operating system before it has been audited as it went along and some code passes and some code fails.
Microsoft has fallen behind on a few fronts that they are hoping to catch up on:
• Legal issues with Windows Media player in Europe
• Firefox taking away market share
• No native RSS reader
• Lingering security problems
• No market penetration with IIS over Apache
• An eventual Linux Desktop
• Phishing scams that IE is letting though still
• Google Desktop Search
And this list is just off the top of my head. Microsoft needs Vista more than consumers really need Vista and that is a real change of attitude that Microsoft has not seen in the past.
In six months is Microsoft going to have to fight off more rumors of their demise on the web again or are we all going to be getting ready for the marketing machine to announce that Microsoft is going to be releasing Web 3.0.
Only time will tell.
Bill Nadraszky is a Systems Analyst and runs several websites. For more Computer information you can visit Computer News. To start a computer support business you can visit XP Tech Support
Are you tired of spam stealing your time, your money, your
bandwidth and your hard disc space?
The time you devote each day to sort and delete spam from
your inbox could be put to much better use. In the European
Union alone, the working hours employees are spending on
sorting and deleting spam is costing the companies and
estimated 10 billion euros every year! By manually sorting out
spam after it has reached your inbox you are loosing time and
money, as well as bandwidth and space. You are also putting
your computer at risk by allowing possibly hazardous content
to enter your server. Supportcave.com offers free intelligent
Spam Blockers, helping computer users to protect their
computers as well as reclaiming their time, money, bandwidth
and space from the spammers.
Every day - 365 days a year - more than 10 billion spam e-
mails are sent out to e-mail users all over the world. Despite
new laws and verdicts trying to strike down on the spammers,
the number of spam e-mails are expected to rise to 30 billion
a day by the end of 2005. Today spam constitutes 37% of all
e-mail traffic in the U.S.
Spam is not only annoying, it’s dangerous and it is causing
financial losses for companies as well as individuals. For
example, an estimated 10 billion euros are spent every year
by companies in the European Union to deal with spam. Spam
is sent out by fraudulent companies and individuals and can
often be infected with viruses, spy programs or other
undesired software. Studies show that 95% of all computer
viruses are sent through e-mail. Even virus free spam causes
problems since it consumes the users’ time as well as hard
disc space. Spam is however not only shunned by the users,
the Internet Service Providers abhor it as well since it chews
up a lot of bandwidth and disc space, and the non-stop
sending of e-mails uses a lot of system resources and
stresses the e-mail servers. This leads to a less effective
Internet and increased costs for everyone.
The best way to protect your self from spam and battle the
spammers is to use a Spam Blocker. The most basic forms of
Spam Blockers are software programs periodically checking
your e-mail for the best known types of spam and remove
them, or filter them into a special folder for you to remove.
There are however much more sophisticated Anti Spam
programs on the market. The Webroot Spam Shredder is a
Spam Filtering Software that lets you to remove spam e-mails
from the mail server without ever pulling them down into your
inbox. This means heavily increased security for your computer
and your network and is the most efficient and effortless way
of controlling your incoming e-mails. You will be given the
opportunity to accept or delete suspected e-mails while they
are still on the server. You can also choose to quarantine
them for later review.
The Webroot Spam Shredder is equipped with a smart
learning engine, which studies your decisions to keep or
delete spam. The longer you use the Webroot Spam
Shredder, the more effectively the program will sort your
incoming e-mail. The Webroot Spam Shredder Whitelist and
the Webroot Spam Shredder Blacklist features let you identify
e-mails that should be immediately delivered or instantly
deleted. If you use Outlook, Outlook Express or Eudora for
your e-mail, you can effortlessly import your contact list into
your Whitelist. When friends, family, colleagues etcetera send
you e-mail those letters while be instantly delivered to you
inbox and you won’t have to make any decisions regarding
them.
The Webroot Spam Shredder database is a frequently
updated to protect you from the latest known spam. You can
choose your desired level of protection and the type of
messages to scan with the Spam Shredder.
Are you tired of spam stealing your time, bandwidth and hard
disc space? Applying the Webroot Spam Shredder allows you
to determine up to 99.9% of the spam e-mails. Install the
Webroot Spam Shredder today and start safeguarding your
time as well as your money from the fraudulent spam
senders!
Supportcave.com offers new and enhanced Spam Blocker Software. Not only will these programs effectively check and clean your email from spam, once installed it identifies and diverts spam before it reaches your inbox, - freeing up your time and your system’s resources.
Need software to record your voice, streaming audio or musical instruments? There are dozens of great products on the market. Some cost up to five hundred dollars, but here are some of the low cost alternatives you might want to consider.
n-Track Studio
The program uses 24 bit (32 bit floats) resolution for mixing and effects processing. Various wave files formats are supported, mono & stereo tracks are can coexist in the same song and wave editing operations can be performed from within the program. MIDI tracks can be imported end exported to regular MIDI files, and edited using the built in piano-roll based MIDI editing. All the audio tracks are saved as standard wave files and mixed “on the fly” during playback. Volume and pan evolution can be programmed by drawing on the timeline window. When all the tracks have been recorded and all the settings are correct, it’s possible to mix-down all the tracks to a single wave file for recording it to a compact disk using a CD recorder or for distributing it through the Internet (using the built-in mp3 encoder).
More Information: http://www.deprice.com/ntrackstudio.htm
Audio Record Wizard 3
Audio Record Wizard is a real-time sound recorder, offering professional recording features with full mp3 support. The sound recorder program is designed to work directly with your sound card, so can record almost all audio from your sound card at near-perfect quality. You can record sound from a microphone, line-in, and just about any other programs (such as winamp, realplay, windows media player and others). Direct to disk feature allows you to record sound without running out of memory. Audio Record Wizard can also record directly to the mp3 format if you choose, saving you valuable disk space. You can select the different mp3 recording modes as required.
More Information: http://www.deprice.com/audiorecordwizard.htm
Cybercorder 2000
Cybercorder provides VCR-like recording for radio shows or any audio input. Recordings are stored on disk as WAV or MP3 files with optional audio compression to save disk space. Recordings can easily be played back by selecting the recording from the list of completed recordings. The customizable playback window allows to easily advance the recording forward and reverse various step sizes.
The program has a variety of features and options:
# Uses your own radio or stereo receiver. Connect the radio headphone or output jacks to the computer sound card line-in jack. Set to your favorite radio station, adjust the Windows mixer settings, and Cybercorder 2000 does the rest.
# Real-time audio compression - you can utilize any of the audio compression codecs installed on your system to save disk space.
# Record MP3 - you can record MP3 files with the MP3 file extension.
# Programmed or manual recording - you can schedule as many recordings as you like or instantly start a recording for the specified amount of time. The scheduled recordings can be scheduled for a single time or for selected days of the week such as Mon-Fri 9AM. Program descriptions can be given to the scheduled recordings to later identify the recordings.
# Program Internet Recordings - you can automatically launch an Internet URL prior to recording. You can set up Cybercorder 2000 to automatically hang up a modem connection and/or close the streaming player once the recording is complete.
# Automatically Run External Applications - you can automatically launch an external application prior to and/or after recording.
# Mixer Profiles Cybercorder can automatically activate a mixer profile containing preset Windows mixer settings prior to and/or after a recording. This ensures the recording will occur with the correct mixer settings every time.
# Supports long recordings - you can program a recording to be as long as 24 hours.
# Recordings list - all recordings made are shown in a list, and any recording can be played from this list. Recordings can be removed from the list or from disk, and can also be added back to the list if present on disk. Cybercorder 2000 supports saving and retrieving recording lists containing WAV and MP3 files.
# Player - allows you to easily advance the recording forward and reverse various step sizes, along with the slider control. The 6 sets of forward/reverse buttons can be customized to advance the recording the desired number of minutes or seconds.
More Information: http://www.deprice.com/cybercorder.htm
John Deprice is a music aficionado. His website is http://www.deprice.com/audio.htm
Are you a database professional? Do you work with a lot of databases? Do you use an SQL code? Do you want to connect to a new database to physically create its structure in no time and with ease? Are you tired of having to handle several client applications?
If your answer is “yes” to any of these questions, I recommend you to go on reading this article.
Let’s imagine you work with let’s say three databases. Whenever you feel the need to connect to the database and execute SQL code, you will probably have to use another third party software (also client software) that allows you to do it.
There are a lot of different client softwares in the market. However, they allow users either to connect to one certain database, e.g. MS SQL, or provide only one available connection, e.g. ODBC. However, what if you work with not only one database… So, there would be no wonder if you had to use three client applications for each of the databases to be able to communicate with them and simply do your job. In practice it also means that you have to get used to three different interfaces and learn how to deal with different features, which is, let’s face it, pretty far from being an ideal state (not speaking of expenses, time and your efficiency provided you are switching among three different environments. Thank goodness you work only with three databases and not five, seven or more!)
Nevertheless, today might be the last day for such headaches. CHARONWARE, s.r.o., a software company specializing in developing database modeling tools, has announced release of its perfectly new product Foxy SQL Pro version 1.0 - Database Script and Query Tool.
“Foxy SQL Pro is a useful database query tool allowing database professionals to execute SQL commands and queries against any database, see and store the results and much more. It is mainly focused on a possibility to parse complete SQL script into each individual commands that can be then executed according to the user’s selection,” introduces the product Vaclav Frolik, Charonware’s Sales and Marketing Manager.
Reading Charonware’s website, it seems like Foxy SQL Pro can replace many other client applications as it can “talk” to any database via ODBC, ADO or native connection very easily. That sounds great! One easy-to-use tool versus several client softwares and, moreover, “with a lot of timesaving and useful features that can make your work with databases and an SQL code highly effective and comfortable”. Is it all just a pie in the sky? - Well, let’s learn more about Foxy SQL Pro features.
Foxy SQL Pro allows you to:
* execute SQL commands and queries against any database,
* execute only chosen parts of an SQL script,
* create an Alias for often used connection parameters,
* browse data,
* define own types of comments, strings, terminators and keywords,
* record and save SQL scripts from and to a file,
* save the result of the SQL command SELECT to a TXT, CSV or XML file,
* and much more.
Foxy SQL Pro Main Benefits:
* Direct support for at least six databases
(Interbase,Firebird, MySQL, Oracle, PostgeSQL, MS SQL Server etc.)
* One query tool versus a lof of client/server applications
* Available connections: ODBC, ADO, Native
* User-friendly graphical Interface
* Wide range of useful and timesaving features
Furthermore, Charonware provides FREE email support for 6 months and FREE 30-day trial Foxy SQL Pro demo version. Moreover, a freeware version - Foxy SQL Free is also available. The freeware version has a different functionality in comparison with Foxy SQL Pro version.
Also, Foxy SQL Pro illustrative presentational movies are certainly worth mentioning. All visitors of Charonware’s website are allowed to browse them online and simply get some practical insight on the product.
“Foxy SQL Pro has been designed on the basis of rich experience with databases while developing CASE Studio 2 - database design tool and its support for a lot of databases. It is a fast-performing and easy-to-use database query tool that helps database professionals streamline their work with SQL scripts for various databases. I believe they will experience great comfort and ease while working with Foxy SQL Pro,” concludes Vaclav Frolik.
Well, Foxy SQL Pro is possibly just the product you have been looking for so long… So, do not hesitate to check it out…
Charonware’s website: http://www.charonware.com
Vladimira Sikorova is a member of CASE Studio 2 and Foxy SQL Pro Team. She works for Marketing Department of Charonware, a software company specializing in developing database modeling CASE tools.
