Posts in month: February, 2008

If your small business were a grocery store or automotive mechanic shop, most every lender in the U.S. would immediately understand your business model. If you were to approach them looking for a line of credit, they would be able to rather quickly determine if your business is able to receive some small business financing from them or not. However, as the owner of a telecommunications company you know that this is not always the case for your industry. Traditional lenders just simply do not understand how telecom companies do business and the intracacies of telecommunications funding.

If you are a large multi-national telecom company, funding abounds for you just simply because of the huge amount of revenue your business generates month after month. However, if you are a small telecom business, obtaining that line of credit can be much more difficult. When you approach a traditional lender for funding, you will likely find that they do not understand your business model and telecommunications financing in general. It is not in the traditional banker’s interest to work with telecommunications businesses with receivables that are all small amounts with many customers. Generally, your receivables take 45 or more days to receive after delivery of services. Because these billing issues are unique to the telecom industry, traditional lenders do not fully comprehend the fine details and tend to choose to deal with businesses in more traditional roles.

Once your small telecommunications business is on solid ground, and you are looking to expand your market base, there are three options readily availablec to you for obtaining small business financing. These three options are: factoring, asset based solutions, and investment capital. Let’s take a quick look at each of these options:

Factoring: Factoring is a financing process which allows your company to borrow money against its receivables; your receivables are used as the collateral for the loan. The down side to traditional factoring is that this type of funding generally comes with high interest rates. By finding a lender with telecommunications financing experience, you can sometimes find a lower rate. This makes factoring a strong consideration only if you are able to locate a specialized lender with telecommunications financing experience.

Asset Based Solutions: Asset based funding solutions involve using your existing contracts, equipment, and other assets, as the collateral for your funding. This can be a good option to consider if you have a lot of assets or large contracts to leverage. However, if you own a very small local telecom company, your company may not have the assets or contracts to make this form of funding work. In that case, investment capital may be a good option to consider.

Investment Capital: If your business is open to the idea of investment capital, versus a traditional line of credit, investment capital can be a win-win situation for everyone.

While finding small business financing can be challenging in the telecommunications industry, it is not impossible. When it is time for your small telecom company to expand you should consider factoring, asset based solutions, and investment capital as possible options. Whatever your decision may be, as long as it fits within your long-term business plans, then you are sure to succeed.

For those of us who can’t leave the office behind, the new range of smart phones for business are making it increasingly easy to be a workaholic. For telecommunications the two models are fairly evenly matched, you can make and receive calls but with these multimedia devices you’ll want to be doing a lot more than that. Both are capable of email, web browsing and of course text messaging. However the Blackberry’s original support of push email gets one up on the iPhone, which doesn’t employ an LED to notify the user he or she has a new message and requires that the owner actively check themselves. This is obviously time consuming and translates into wasted battery life.

The iPhone is probably more fashionable than its competitor but in a corporate sense which is the superior piece of kit? The touch screen capabilities of Apples multimedia phone does indeed make it a joy to use but it has been agued that Blackberry’s physical keyboard is more user friendly regarding typing text messages and email, compared to the iPhone’s virtual on screen keyboard.

It has been regularly reported that the Internet loading time on the Blackberry can be slow and frustrating but once it’s connected to a wireless network online navigation is pretty smooth. Due to the touch screen interface of the iPhone browsing the internet is a more enjoyable and profitable experience. Dragging your finger down the screen to scroll through a page is more intuitive than the buttons on the Blackberry, as is the pinch and reverse pinch motion to zoom in and out. For these reasons extracting information from web pages is often easier on the iPhone. With the new Blackberry Bold which boasts a 624MHz processor you can now download email attachments faster than before which is a significant improvement. But in early July Apple’s reaction to this was to announce the iPhone on the 3G network advancing the smart phone’s connectivity and it also includes satellite navigation. Similarly the Blackberry Bold incorporates GPS as standard.

With the iPhone you obviously get 8G or 16G (depending on which model you choose) worth of memory on which to download music from iTunes, but that’s not going to help you get those reports done by Monday morning. It is going to lighten the load in your pockets though as you won’t need to carry your iPod around with you as well. Since Steve Jobs has released the SDK (iPhone software developer kit) and Microsoft Exchange support for the iPhone he has covered two major areas that required development and therefore as a corporate utility the iPhone is vastly improved.

At the end of the fruit salad Mac users are a loyal folk and will probably continue to invest in the Apple family. Equally, those that are now familiar with the Blackberry will most likely stick by Research In Motion. It is very much down to personal preference and the specific requirements of the user and so when all’s said and done, the choice is yours.

Like nearly all other industries and practices, IT outsourcing also has had its portion of myths . While these misconceptions haven’t been able to end the flow of outsourcing, they have inflicted some damage to small commercial enterprises that sought to gain from the numerous advantages of subcontracting information technology tasks. In this article, we will view some popular myths and will learn why they are misconceptions merely.

Firstly, people believe outsourcing is doing damage to the local economic system. One can’t deny the diminishing the jobs in the information technology industry, but to state that the gross effect on the economy is damaging won’t be appropriate. If subcontracting your IT projects allows you to trim costs and enjoy more earnings, doesn’t that mean more profit for the shareholders. Then, most of the tech products from fiber optic cables to internet telephony are made up by western states. So it’s rather evident that if IT subcontracting reduces jobs in one sector, it also brings profit to other sectors.

Moreover, some firms hold the misconception that outsourcing to offshore workforce is a shameful act. This, I think, is because of constant propaganda by some media that subcontracting damages economy and is unpatriotic to do. But it’s true that numerous international companies have subcontracted their IT tasks to India and some other Asian countries, as it also allows them to cut managerial burden and target core aims. In fact, the main doctrine behind a business enterprise is to increment earnings and to flourish. IT subcontracting allows US firms to benefit from talented folks living miles apart, so we actually employ some untapped brains that certainly contribute more innovation to the entire world.

Some think that subcontracting can result in high expenses after you count all the intangible costs linked with it. Yet, if you compare the hourly wages of employees in Asian nations like Indonesia, you will realize that there are huge saving potentials. Moreover, having a larger internal workforce means you acquire all the office supplies from chairs to UPS for all of them. So by reducing fixed expenses, subcontracting permits SMEs to control their variable expenditures. So subcontracting is not just for larger corporations and can significantly help smaller businesses looking to launch with low budget.

Finally, a couple misconceptions come up due to incompetent management by firms who go for outsourcing. A lot of us fail to follow best practices when subcontracting out IT tasks and later come up with baseless justifications. Many a times, we hear managers complaining that outsourced workers overlook deadlines. This is usually the result of inappropriate selection. There are lots of providers in our own country who are always late.

Then, several managers face communication problems while dealing with overseas workers. These problems usually arise when you choose outsourcing providers who grab more projects than they can manage. So employ dedicated workers who would work only for you.

Many wonder what exactly does someone with an information technology degree do in the real world. Despite the fact that many of us regularly work with information technology specialists, a significant number of people don’t really know what this job is all about. They just know that they need to call the IT guy when something goes wrong with the computer. But having a degree in information technology provides you with more skills than just being the computer fixer-upper. With this degree, you could work in areas of the computer business as diverse as technology engineering, database specialization and consulting. Alternatively, you could opt to stick with the traditional IT job of maintaining and repairing computer systems for businesses of all sizes.

One of the most common jobs for someone with an information technology degree to get is an engineering job. There are engineers for both software and hardware, allowing people with interests in different aspects of computers to find their niche. Engineers assist in the development and design of software applications or hardware systems. This is a highly creative position, which lets people explore innovative technologies while making use of their specialized computer knowledge. One of the greatest rewards for engineers is to see something they’ve created gain widespread use among average computer users. To hear people talking about how great your new software program works is an ego boost to any engineer. The best of them will not be satisfied with this alone, though; they’ll continue to push the boundaries of their work to create better systems.

Some people prefer to work on areas of computer technology that apply more to businesses than individuals. Although engineers can do this, a more common area of work for someone with this desire is to use their information technology degree to work in database specialization. Through this position, the individual creates and re-designs database systems to assist businesses in running more smoothly. This area of information technology is highly specialized and tends to be favored by people with an information technology degree who don’t ever want to be bored with their work. They can spend hours each day tinkering with the merging of different systems and the design of new database applications, allowing them to create a product uniquely suited to the development of a client’s business.

Of course, not all people who get an information technology degree want to work just with computers. Some want to do more work with people than they do with machines. Whereas engineers and database specialists primarily work alone with their equipment, computer consultants work primarily with people. They explore some of the same aspects of those people in other IT positions but instead of doing the actual work of designing and developing systems and software, they assist others in understanding the utilization of that software. They may make suggestions to companies for systems that could make operations run more smoothly or consult on large purchases made by small businesses.

The Internet is expanding rapidly. As it does, the information technology degree becomes applicable to an increasing number of jobs. However, some folks like to keep things simple. If you’d like to just be the person who fixes computer problems as they arise, you can still use your information technology degree to get that type of job. Generally known as a network administrator, this job is usually a full-time position, which involves fixing daily computer problems, checking the system for errors and assisting with regular updates to the technology. As important as computer function is to most businesses, this remains one of the most important positions available to information technology specialists.