Posts in month: August, 2008

There are many trends in healthcare information technology to cover. With the US government’s economic stimulus package geared to improve heathcare IT, there will be areas were expertise will be greatly needed.

Outlined below will touch on 5 hot trends that will be need qualified professionals to help implement the large efforts of the healthcare industry:

1. EMR (electronic medical records) or EHR (electronic health records) - This is going to a huge effort on the part of many medical establishments. This system will take the “health history” of an individual and create a so called electronic medical record that will follow a patient anywhere for patient safety and more accurate treatments. All of the is over a huge network and storage systems along with integrating several applications.

Job Title Examples: Developers, Programmers, Project Managers, Billing and Coding specialists, systems analysts but most will say EMR or EHR.

2. Informatics -  Informatics as it related to healthcare will include using medical information from clinical, nursing, medical, biotechnology and similar disciplines into an electronic format to be either stored, retrieved, shared, analyzed to help make informative medical decisions.

Job Title Examples: Clinical informatics analyst, Informatics consultants, medical informatics – employers may seek specific degrees in the discipline (ie. RN, BSN, Biotechnology )

3. Enterprise Architecture -  Enterprise architecture with work within a healthcare organization like in other institutions. It is most commonly used to better outline a method of business and uses tools to understand and best document the structure of an organization. Very much strategic in nature.

Job Title Examples: Almost always will have the terms “enterprise architecture” or “data architecture” or “data modeler” in the title. Usually a mix of SOA, data warehousing, ER modeling, Diagram modeling, frameworks, and strategy.

4. Patient Safety related systems & Quality - This area of healthcare will use systems and applications to reduce with the goal to eliminate medical errors in and efforts to drastically increase healthcare quality and communication.

Job Title Examples: Quality and patient safety will usually be part of the title and are non technical. The technical positions will be developers/programmers or applications tester of these types of applications.

5. Interoperability - Overall this area covers bringing together healthcare information technology systems together and integrating them in order for them to work together across locations and then have the ability to deliver quality useful information to service it’s end user.

Job Title Examples: Project management, software engineer, sometimes within informatics, architect and, analysts.

There is so much to know within each of these 5 but there is much opportunity for one with technical skills to seek out so many facets of healthcare.

Are you a technology junkie? Do you have all of the newest gizmos and the most modern cell phone? Do you shake with excitement and anticipation every time a new game system is released? Are you the one your friends call when they have problems with their new laptops? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, it is time put your love of technology into a fun and rewarding career. Don’t you think it’s time you received an information technology degree?

An information technology degree will give you the opportunity to turn your hobby into an exciting career. Computer programming, network security, and network engineering are just the tip of the IT iceberg. With an associate’s degree in information technology, a successful, not to mention fun filled, future is practically guaranteed.

So what are your options? Your career selection is almost limitless. There is an IT job for all individuals who want to have a fun career, as well as earn a substantial living.

The career title Webmaster has a nice ring to it. The Internet is hotter than ever. Everyone wants to be online. Whether you own a small business, such as a pet boutique, looking to expand your clientele by advertising your unique wares online, or a huge international non profit association seeking to explain your mission statement in order to solicit more donations from the tech savvy crowd, you need a web site.

As a Webmaster, you will always be in demand. This is why an information technology degree will guarantee you a gratifying career. It’s really that simple. With an IT degree as an Internet Webmaster, you will be qualified to build, fix, and expand sites on the Web.

Graphic designers are artists who use mostly computer technology to design marketing materials, magazine layouts, websites, logos for businesses, and much more. So, as long as there are magazines, newspapers and web sites, graphic designers will be in demand. In fact, according to some researches, graphic designers are among the five design professionals that are anticipated to have the newest positions available through 2014.

Some individuals are employed as graphic designers after receiving their bachelor’s degree, but to receive the best paying, more technical jobs, an information technology degree is necessary. By attending a school that offers an IT track, you will receive all of the software certification necessary to become proficient graphic designer.

Do you love playing video games? Why not use your imagination and skills to create your own games? With an IT associate’s degree you could concentrate on designing your own video games. When you choose this field, your will be offered a well rounded curriculum that teaches the basics of artist design, project management, digital content creation as well as the more advanced courses in 3D modeling and character design. Imagine playing video games as a career. It is definitely possible when you assert yourself and earn your IT degree.

As fun and exciting as all of these fields of information technology are, earning your degree is hard work. You need to be dedicated to the world of IT because there are always going to be other people fighting for the same jobs you will be striving for. However, the IT world is expanding daily, and more and more jobs are becoming available. Be a part of the web and earn your information technology degree today.

Thinking of taking your information technology company to the next level with a major marketing campaign or by hiring additional sales resources? These are decisions that can impact your company’s future. It might be time to consider the alternative of selling your business.

We are often approached by software company or information technology business owners at a crossroads of taking the company to the next level. The decision in most cases is whether they should bring on the one or two hot shot sales people or channel development people necessary to bring the company sales to a level that will allow the company to reach critical mass. For a smaller company with sales below $5 million this can be a critical decision.

For frame of reference, prior to embarking on my merger and acquisition advisor career, I spent my prior 20 years in various sales capacities in primarily information technology and computer industry related companies from bag carrying salesman to district, regional, to national sales manager and finally Chief Marketing Officer. So when I look at a company, it is from the sales and marketing perspective first and foremost. I am sure that if I had a public accounting background, I would look at my clients through those lenses.

So with that backdrop, let’s look at what might be a typical situation. The soft ware company is doing $3.5 million in sales, has a good group of loyal customers, produces a nice income for its owner or owners, and has a lot more potential for sales growth in the opinion of the owner. Some light bulb has been lit that suggests that they need to step this up to the next level after relying on word of mouth and the passion and energy of the owner to get to this stage.

I have either spoken with more than 30, primarily technology based companies over the years that have faced this exact situation and can count on one hand the ones that had a successful outcome. The natural inclination is to bite the bullet and bring on that expensive resource and hope your staff can keep up with the big influx of orders. The reality is that in most cases the execution was a very expensive failure. Below are several factors that you should consider when you are at this crossroads:

1. The 80 20 rule of salesmen. You know this one. 80% of sales are produced by 20% of the salespeople. If you are only hiring one or two, the likelihood is that you will not get a top performer.

2. The president of the company and decision maker has no sales background so the odds of him making the right hiring decision are greatly diminished. He will not understand how to properly set milestones, judge progress, evaluate performance objectively, or coach the new hire.

3. To hire a good salesman that can handle a complex sale requires a base salary and a draw for at least 6 months that puts him in a better economic condition than he was in on his last job. So you are probably looking at $150,000 annual run rate for a decent candidate.

4. If you have not had a formalized sales effort before, you are probably lacking the sales infrastructure that your new hire is used to. Proper contact management systems, customer and prospect databases, developed collateral materials and sales presentations, sales cycle timeframes and critical milestones and developed competition feature benefit matrixes will need to be developed.

5. Current customers are most likely the early adapters, risk takers, pioneers, etc. and are not afraid of making the buying decision with a small more risky company. These early adaptors, however, are not viewed as good references for the more conservative majority that needs the security of a big company backing their product selection decision.

6. Your new hire is most likely someone that came from a bigger information technology company and may be comfortable performing in an established sales department. It is the rare salesman that can transform from that environment to developing the environment while trying to meet a sales quota. Throw on top of that the objection that he has never had to deal with before, the small company risk factor, and the odds of success diminish. Finally, this transformation from a core group of early adapters to now selling to the conservative majority elongates the sales cycle by 25% to as much as double his prior experience. If you don’t fire him first, he will probably quit when his draw runs out.

With all this going against the business owner, most of them go ahead and make the hire and then I hear something like this, “Yes, we brought on a sales guy two years ago who said he had all the industry contacts and in nine months after he hadn’t sold a thing and cost us a lot of money, we fired him. That really hurt the company and we have just now recovered. We won’t do that again.”

What are the alternatives? Certainly strategic alliances, channel partnerships, value added resellers are options, but again the success rate for these arrangements are suspect without the sales background in the executive suite. A lower risk approach is to outsource your VP of Sales or Chief Marketing Officer function. There are a number of highly experienced and talented free lancers that you can hire on a consulting basis that can help you establish a sales and marketing infrastructure and guide you through the staffing process. That may be the best way to go.

An option that one of our clients chose when faced with the six points to consider from above was to sell his company. This is a very difficult decision for an entrepreneur who by nature is very optimistic about the future and feels like he can clear any hurdle. This client had no sales background but was a very smart subject matter expert with an outstanding background as a former consultant with a Big 5 accounting firm. He did not make the hiring mistake, but instead went the outsourcing of VP of Sales function as step 1. When their firm wanted to make the transition from the early adapters to the conservative majority, the sales cycle slowed to a crawl. Meanwhile their technology advantage was being eroded by a well funded venture backed competitor that had struck an alliance with a big vendor.

They engaged our firm to find them a buyer, but then we encountered the valuation gap. Our business seller thought his company was worth a great deal and that he should be paid with cash at close for all the future potential his product could deliver. The buyer, on the other hand, wanted to pay based on a trailing twelve months historical perspective and if anything was paid for potential, that would be in the form of an earn out based on post acquisition sales performance.

With a well structured earn out agreement and the right buyer, our client will reach his transaction value goals. His earn out is based on future sales, but his effective sales force has been increased from one (himself) to 27 reps. His install base has been increased from 14 to 800. Every one of the buyer’s current customers is a candidate for this product. The small company risk has been removed going from a little known start-up with $500 K in revenues to a well known industry player, publicly traded stock with a market cap of $2.5 billion.

He avoided the big cash drain that a bad sales person hiring decision would have created and he sold his company before a competitor dominated the market and made his technology irrelevant and of minimal value.

My professional contacts sometimes tease me and suggest that I think every company should be sold. That may be a slight exaggeration, but in many instances, a company sale is the best route. When a information technology business owner is faced with that crossroads decision of bringing on a significant sales resource that will be faced with a complex sale and the executive suite does not have the sales background, a company sale may be the best outcome.

Telecommunication market has been witnessing an unprecedented boom in some recent years. With the technological advancement, the mobile phone users are exposed to plethora of high end gadgets. The leading mobile phone manufacturers have played a crucial role to imbibe the cutting edge technology in the day to day lives of mobile phone users. In all this, how can we forget network service providers? A right kind of deal by the network service provider can make telecommunication a pocket friendly affair for the users. Three is a well known mobile phone network service provider in the UK. If you are also looking for a handset and tariff plan, then World Wide Web is the perfect place to find one. There you can find lucrative tariff plans at competitive deals.

The increased demand of mobile phone gadgets has invited a number of new mobile phone manufacturers in the telecommunication market, contributing to the equilibrium existing today. The latest handsets from the leading mobile phone manufacturers like Nokia, Samsung, LG, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and so on are easily available through online mode. Apart from this, you can also find very many tariff deals from 3 like pay as you go deals, contract deals, pay monthly deals and free line rental deals. You can enjoy full liberty to opt for a mobile phone handset of your choice and line it up with a deal most befitting to your needs.

With some tariff plans from 3, you may get exposed to innumerable plans and may find it confusing to find the right one for you. A little contemplation in advance can be beneficial. First and foremost, you have to closely understand your own mobile phone usage patterns. Broadly speaking, you can consider whether you are a heavy user of mobile phone, need to send more text messages, frequent visitor and so on. Choosing a plan on such basis would land you with the most appropriate deals. Explore World Wide Web, draw comparisons among various available options and make mobile telephony affordable for you.

From the beginning of time, communicating while on the move has been a difficult task. Whether moving armies or products, the ability to communicate during travel is a pressing need. Travel has always meant a loss of personal contact during a journey, at stopovers, and even during a period of readjustment after reaching the final destination. It is not surprising then that developing techniques for communicating at all times would be of such critical importance. And with the advent of wireless technology, people have begun to discover ways to fulfill this need.

The first telecommunications devices with mobile capability came around the turn of the 20th Century with the invention of the wireless telegraph. Mobile technology boomed again in the period between World War I and World War II, with the invention of the radio telephone. But until the creation of the first rudimentary transistor, the technology was hampered by bulky hardware and outrageous costs. One downfall of this was that the new technology could only be utilized by the military, specifically in the areas of sea and air transport.

Technicians figured out that by spreading out frequencies, low enough to achieve extensive coverage, they could provide easier and cheaper mobile communications. But still the technology could only allow only for a limited number of simultaneous transmissions, and the quality of those transmissions was not all that great. Only advances in microelectronics and especially in microwave integrated and hybrid circuits, made it possible to move the frequency up. This opened the door to cellular telecommunications systems, which require the help of powerful computer programming.

Today, cellular phones offer general access to communication in practically any type of vehicle. Although coverage areas may vary greatly, the cell phone has become an indispensable device for travelers looking to stay in contact. The 21st Century has seen the proliferation of the mobile telephone, as well as the development of a range of personal communication devices.

More time is spent by people traveling, whether for business or personal reasons, than almost any other activity except sleeping. In previous times, this was simply wasted time. Now, this travel time is made incredibly productive by the use of mobile communications technology. How many hours were wasted in traffic jams, airport waits, or other commuting headaches? Now, that time can be put to good use thanks to mobile telecommunications, which allow these moments to become productive. Now that high-performance mobility technology is available and relatively affordable to a substantial section of the population.