Backfile Document Scanning is scanning your recent and archived paper files, documents, blueprints or any other paper and converting them into an electronic format, giving you the ability to access them via your PC, network, or even online using the World Wide Web.

Most companies after some investigation find that the resources required to start their own backfile scanning processes are very costly in more ways then one, and that most times the lack of accuracy and the amount of time your staff will devote to the project is more costly to your business by pulling them away from their normal everyday tasks. Deciding to implement a 'paperless office' is very beneficial, and the day-forward aspect of scanning in all the new documents increases your productivity.

Most companies who decide to move towards a 'paperless office' face backfile scanning issues and this is very common.
What options are there? Which one is right for you?

In-House vs. Outsourcing: How to Choose

1. Purchase an in-house system and direct your staff in an on-site backfile scanning and conversion process.

2. Purchase an in-house system and direct a vendor's staff in doing the preparation, scanning, and indexing on-site.

3. Contract with a vendor to operate their system, using their staff at your site.

4. Send your files and documents off-site for scanning and indexing, making them available via CD, DVD, or on the Web.

Most organizations differ in their availability of staffing, resources, and goals. In a private study, a group examined the broad issue of electronic document management and backfile scanning. The group identified these four general combinations of in-house and outsourced services to consider. The first three required dedicating space in-house, the first two required purchasing and maintaining equipment, and the first required hiring more full-time employees.

Only the fourth option relieves all the burdens of the first three.

Article source: Free Management Articles.

Outside do team building with a difference - with a creative twist - with a sense of adventure - with a lot of fun and passion - with a real purpose -

Outside offer a wide variety of team building events and activities, all of which make the most of an exciting outdoor location.

Outside understand the importance of developing essential workplace skills and enhancing team development so the programmes are designed to drive positive change and bring the best out in your staff or team.

Outside events are not rigid and fixed but are highly flexible so that the day is always tailored and individualised to suit your requirements.

Outside's team building activities and venue are suitable for team building events, away days, conference breaks, product launches, staff reward incentives, facilitated training and development, corporate days & events, trade motivation days.

Below are Outside's latest team building activities.

Castle Treasure Hunt

Using a giant aerial photograph of the Eastnor Castle Grounds, teams need to organise themselves and act strategically to achieve their quest to find the Castle Booty.

The clues are to be found by completing a series of exciting tasks located within the Castle grounds including giant puzzles, physical challenges (including high and low ropes), and the Castle maze.

The teams will be equipped with all necessary gadgets such as radios and hand held GPS units to assist their hunt in finding the spoils!

To succeed in this team building event, each team must demonstrate an ability to organise and think strategically as well as working cohesively as a group. Over and above all the fun, the need to communicate clearly and think logically will win the day!

Assignment 8

Assignment 8 is a covert spy operation where teams are challenged to think and act tactically and strategically to achieve their given mission; be it defusing a bomb or recovering stolen bullion.

The team building activity itself covers a broad spectrum of tasks that require individuals to focus on group performance. Identifying individual skills within the group will enable the participant's to work more effectively together on the journey to the final destination.

Along the way there will be a blend of physical and mental challenges that can include pioneering, problem solving, navigation, mountain biking, abseiling, kayaking, all cemented by the need to act in a calculated and purposeful manner, carefully managing group performance (all without having to be a trained athlete!). These challenges lead the team to a number of stashes that ultimately allow them to achieve their mission.

ASSIGNMENT8 is born from the need to Communicate, Motivate, Assimilate, Delegate, Cooperate, Initiate, Navigate, and Coordinate.

Adventure Dynamics

Adventure Dynamics is an active and insightful series of programmes that provides a catalyst to make a real and lasting change in your organisation.

It represents a new concept in team building, learning, visioning and conferencing, bringing together all the fun, challenge and exhilaration of outdoor activities with ideas from workplace psychology, communication techniques and facilitation.

In conjunction with our associates Dimensional Performance Ltd (DPL) we utilise established techniques and uniquely combine them with specific outdoor activities that fully embed the learning, creating a stronger transformation in behaviour.

Whether you're amalgamating a new team; revitalising an existing one; dealing with conflict or disenchantment; even in creating a shared corporate vision we will work alongside you to develop a programme that is tailored to your specific goal.

Express Skills Train-ing

We are confident that by attending any one of our team building activities/management courses colleagues will develop a greater understanding of each other and build relationships on mutual respect and trust.

However, this often is not enough as in the increasingly competitive world without the skills to do the job staff and businesses will still fail. Our skills programmes address this gap in combining teambuilding with short focussed sessions on important business skills.

All of our sessions are run in an interactive and memorable fashion so that the skills can be easily transferred to the work environment.

The acquisition of the skills are embedded within the overall team building activities and are all based on our ethos that the classroom should be short and focused and that the learning usable in the workplace. (the aims, objectives and an overview of all the skills sessions can be provided on request)

Author: Outside Adventure

About the author:
Outside provide Team Building Activities at Eastnor Castle.

Article source: Free Management Articles.

When was the last time you had to deal with a difficult customer? It was probably and external customer but perhaps it was an internal customer, such as a member of your team, a colleague or even - your boss!

I'm sure that you always want to provide exceptional service to both your internal and external customers. However, in the real world, things go wrong and mistakes are made. These 'customers' will often judge your level of service based on how you respond to a mistake. Do it well and they'll probably forgive you and possibly even say positive things about your business or your abilities to other people.

The important thing to realise when dealing with an upset customer, be they internal or external, is that you must -deal with their feelings, then deal with their problem. Upset customers are liable to have strong feelings when you, your product or service lets them down and they'll probably want to 'dump' these feeling on you.

You don't deal with their feelings by concentrating on solving the problem, it takes more. Here are 5 action ideas that deal with the customers' human needs:

1 - Don't let them get to you - Stay out of it emotionally and concentrate on listening non-defensively and actively. Customers may make disparaging and emotional remarks - don't rise to the bait.

2 - Listen - listen - listen - Look and sound like your listening. The customer wants to know that you care and that you're interested in their problem.

3 - Stop saying sorry - Sorry is an overused word, everyone says it when something goes wrong and it's lost its value. How often have you heard - 'Sorry 'bout that, give me the details and I'll sort this out for you'. Far better to say 'I apologise for ......' And if you really need to use the sorry word, make sure to include it as part of a full sentence. 'I'm sorry you haven't received that information as promised Mr Smith'. (It's also good practise to use the customers name in a difficult situation).

4 - Empathise - Using empathy is an effective way to deal with the customers feelings. Empathy isn't about agreement, only acceptance of what the customer is saying and feeling. Basically the message is - 'I understand how you feel'. Obviously this has to be a genuine response, the customer will realise if you're insincere and they'll feel patronised. Examples of empathy responses would be - 'I can understand that you're angry', or 'I see what you mean'. Again, these responses need to be genuine.

5 - Build rapport - Sometimes it's useful to add another phrase to the empathy response, including yourself in the picture. - 'I can understand how you feel, I don't like it either when I'm kept waiting'. This has the effect of getting on the customer's side and builds rapport. Some customer service people get concerned with this response as they believe it'll lead to - 'Why don't you do something about it then'. The majority of people won't respond this way if they realise that you're a reasonable and caring person. If they do, then continue empathising and tell the customer what you'll do about the situation. 'I'll report this to my manager' or 'I'll do my best to ensure it doesn't happen in the future'.

Make no mistake about it; customers, be they internal or external, are primarily driven by their emotions. It's therefore important to use human responses in any interaction particularly when a customer is upset or angry. If customers like you and feel that you care, then they're more likely to accept what you say and forgive your mistakes.

Article source: Free Management Articles.

Managing a project can seem like an easy task. You write and get a project initiation document approved, calculate a budget, detail a plan, get hold of some resources and voila, you're on the easy road to delivery.

Well not quite, because in most projects the question of scope tends to rear it's ugly head with depressing frequency. There is no rational explanation for it other than that Business Stakeholders tend to suddenly become unclear on what exactly they want delivered as soon as the project starts.

One of the reasons for this occurring is because the project scope statement has not been carefully detailed in either the Project Charter or the Project Initiation Document. This coupled with the fact that Stakeholders suddenly start having second thoughts about the requirements they want delivered, and before long, the project is in the midst of the dreaded scope creep.

This often arrives completely unnoticed. Scope creep tends to starts with some 'blue sky' thinking by Business Stakeholders regarding how the deliverables can be improved by the addition of new functionality. Alternatively it starts when questions are raised at a more senior level over why certain specified functionality is being delivered. This often leads to panic and a sudden desire to change the scope, or add in new functionality.

Now of course if enough contingency was already defined in the plan at the beginning this can to some extent be managed. However this is rarely the case. The result is that too many project manager's find themselves forced to desperately try to find a way to deliver additional or changed requirements within the same timeframes and to the same budget, usually it has to be said, with little success.

If not stemmed immediately this desire to change scope can all too quickly lead to deliverables spiralling out of control. This is particularly the case when utilising SCRUM as a software development methodology since it is harder to contain badly defined scope on these types of projects.

Before long something has to give. Either the budget and timeframes need to be increased substantially or the requirements finally nailed down. However in numerous cases, the Organisation simply throws in the towel and decides to scrap the project altogether.

This is why ensuring a detailed project initiation document or charter is written and adhered to is absolutely vital for successful delivery and launch. Otherwise allowing scope creep to take hold simply leads to the project manager fighting a losing battle. This usually only ends when finally the project is beyond recovery.

It is for this reason that Scope Creep not only destroys projects, but also reputations and careers as well. Ignore it at your peril!

Author: Susan de Sousa

About the author:
www.My-Project-Management-Expert.com provides further information on the Causes of Scope Creep as well as providing vital tips on Managing and Controlling Scope Creep.

Article source: Free Management Articles.

The catch phrase of the 1990s, Customer relationship management, was an instant darling of large and medium business houses, which in theory promised to develop and manage a happy and cordial relationship with customers. Now a decade and more into customer relationship management, organizations are slowly realizing that the unwieldy process is no longer easy to handle easily, as they initially thought, and forging a relationship forever is not gaining ground.

The reasons for the slow progress of this magnificent management tool are not very difficult to understand, although it has taken years to dawn on the organizations. However, fundamentally, the theory of CRM, customer relationship management, is still the wonderful formula for insuring your customer base. Let us see the two biggest stumbling blocks on the road to successful customer management relationship.

Two of the Biggest Stumbling Blocks to CRM

1.The success of customer relationship management depends on whether each interaction of customers with the organization was satisfying enough.

2.The cumbersome process is cost ineffective and unfriendly to maintain and track product and user data accurately

However, software managed databases are coming close to inject efficiency with advanced features to track have changed the face of CRM vastly. Nevertheless, the recent advent of internet technology has proven to take CRM to an altogether different plane wherein customer can instantaneously interact with automated answer banks and/or a customer support executive.

So, What Is the Basic Structure of Automated CRM?

To make things simple, let's take the three core structural elements of an automated CRM. These three can be enumerated as: 1) Operational structure, to automate the fundamental business processes like marketing, sales, and service;

2) Implementing analytical technology to support customer behavior analysis and finally,
3) Cooperative approach to ensuring customer contact through media such as web, phone, SMS etc.

Software based CRM brings in certain cutting edge advantages.

1. Round the clock and 365 days information delivery on products/services, usage, problem solving over the web.
2. Automated scheduling of sales and service calls
3. Automatic guidance to typical problems
4. Interactive web tools allow customer define quality and/or problems
5. Easy tracking of repeat customers facilitate quicker identification

Still There Is Shadow beneath the Lamp

As business world is moving towards ironing out lacunae, there still remains lot of things to attend to. Not all the customers who emailed to customer departments are satisfied. The general complaint is the quality of service remained the same despite interactive websites. Whosoever is answering the emails still has the traditional supportive back office works to do. Another point that could be sighted here is the bane of automated email reply.

The bottom line, however is, come what may, CRM is here to stay.

Article source: Free Management Articles.

Most people who start out on a job are looking for ways that they can get ahead. Whether you are looking for a job for only a few years, or a lifelong career you likely are interested in climbing the career ladder as well. For the average person, staying the lowest person in the building is not really interesting and can lead to a very unrewarding job. In order to bypass this problem of staying stuck you need to be actively looking for ways to be promoted within a restaurant.

Your first task should be people skills. All restaurants are based around 2 major things, food and people. Within the realm of food, there is the entire basic product stock, ready to serve dishes, the menu and so forth. Within the people, there are employees, superiors, customers and even people who work with the restaurant suppliers. If you do not know how to deal with these people, you have to learn. Being a manager entails learning and discovering how to effectively manage people, which means interacting with them on a level that is appropriate for the situation without upsetting someone.

Training is another place where you should focus. You need to become an expert within the store. If you do not know how to actually cook then where would you be if a cook did not show up on time? How would you still ensure that customers are served? Because of this it is important to learn every aspect of the restaurant possible. From stock placement, to cooking and preparing the food to even serving customers. Knowing all of these skills makes you not only a valuable member of the team, but also shows your superiors that you are serious about your job and ready to take the steps necessary to become a manager.

Showing up on time might sound like a given, but you would be surprised at just how many people who are interested in management never actually manage to do this. Yet it should be something that is quite obvious. Ensuring that you get yourself to work on time not only shows professional behavior to your superiors, but also ensures that customer needs are handled properly as well.

A correct uniform is another area where you should be very careful. Working in a restaurant you have no doubt noticed just how unhappy the management is when employees show up for work without the proper uniform. It gives not only a bad impression for the business itself, but also the manager who is on duty at the time. Making absolutely certain that you have the proper uniform on will allow you to prove that you do not have to be micromanaged in terms of your appearance at work.

Author: Josh Stone

About the author:
Best Buy Uniforms offers the lowest prices and highest quality discount restaurant uniforms chef uniforms, restaurant server uniforms and womens restaurant uniforms.

Article source: Free Management Articles.