TWIS.org March 3, 2009

Justin: Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

While the following hour of our programming is not intended to be offensive, if you feel yourself in any way provoked, you should be provoked into thinking not to anger.

The content is for mature audiences. Though, by mature audiences, we mean to include five-year olds with the love and interest in science. The show itself well about science and employing scientific means to get science-y news to your ears, does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of California at Davis, KDVS or its sponsors.

And though the world is strange enough as it is, each week here we seem to discover that it can stranger still. “What can be stranger than ants raised by butterflies or see-through frogs?” One might ask. The answers await us in This Week in Science, coming up next.

Good morning, Kirsten!

Kirsten: Oh, great morning.

Justin: Yeah.

Kirsten: Do you know what today is?

Justin: Tuesday, right?

Kirsten: Besides that, what’s the date today?

Justin: No idea.

Kirsten: Today is the third month – the third day of the third month of the ninth year of 2000, whatever.

Justin: What? You’re – now what?

Kirsten: And I’m rambling. No I’m not. Today is Square Root Day.

Justin: Oh yeah, 03-03-09, yeah.

Continue reading “TWIS.org March 3, 2009”

Monitoring Promo at 135 SGD per Device

In keeping with the tough times, Futuregen is offering a promotion on its Global Network Monitoring Service. The benefits are explained on a previous article on Global Network Monitoring Service.

Our service works by polling (talking to) your network devices every 5 minutes using SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol). SNMP gathers data about your device and stores it in our Database. This enables us to do baseline analysis on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis.

Some of the most common causes of downtimes that we can identify and notify include:
– Lease Line disruptions and bit errors
– Network Routing Issues
– Abnormal resource utilization for bandwidth, cpu, memory, disk usage

The details of the promotions are as follows:

1. Affordable per device pricing.
You can avail of the service by enrolling as little as one device (router, server or switch) to our service. The Per Device Per month fee is only 135 SGD.

2. Device attributes monitored:
Each device that is enrolled in the promo will have its cpu, memory, and bandwidth monitored.

For SNMP enabled servers, we can also monitor the disk usage and create alerts if these get past 80% utilized.

For routers with upstream links, we also monitor the bit error rates and create alerts for situations where the line quality deteriorates–even before users feel the ‘sluggishness’ of the line.

3. Notification within 10 minutes
When a device or link goes down, our service level agreement is to contact you or your designated officer to inform you of the event. This proactive alert enables you to accelerate the recovery from downtimes.

The following optional service/deliverables can be added:
1. Syslog server..where network or device events can be posted automatically for review (10 SGD per device per month)
2. Graphs and charts for executive briefing (15 SGD per report)

To enroll in the program, kindly email marketing[at]futuregen.sg. Related documents: Network Offering Brochure Scope of Work , Network Device Details Form

Transcription Feedback From Singapore Corporation

We would like to thank Futuregen for the efficient help and excellent customer service. We found Wilson to be very responsive and helpful throughout the entire period.

We look forward to doing business with you in the future.

Thank you for all the assistance rendered.

Juwita K.
Trainee Producer – Multimedia and Event Support
Singapore

Outsourcing to Maximize Business Efficiency

Event Date: Feb 12, 2009, 9:0am to 5:00pm
Location: Hilton Hotel, Singapore,
Price: 695.00 SGD/ 795.00 After Jan 23, 2009

With the current economic downturn, many companies are actively reviewing business strategies to reduce costs. Outsourcing is one of the forms in which businesses can leverage to gain efficiency. Learn how your business can increase profits. minimise risk and positively exploit all the advantages of a strategic outsourcing plan. Outsourcing to Maximise Business Efficiency is a full-day conference where leading outsourcing experts share important advice and insights.

  • Get updates on some of the global sourcing best practices
  • Identify and reduce the risks and concerns wl’len outsourcing
  • Evaluate process developments and competitive advantage
  • Learn to Design effective outsourcing agreements
  • Assess the challenges when negotiating outsourcing agreements
  • No additional information was given as to WHERE to register.
    Participating Org: Armstrong, Ernst & Young, Rajah and Tann, Infineon, ALB

    Contingent Workforce Option

    Try our instant, on-demand contact center services that engages anywhere from 2 agents to 20 agents with campaign durations from 1 week to over a year.

    In today’s tough business environment, a contact center or business process outsourcing company COULD be relied upon as potential partner/contingent workforce –one that could be relied upon to provide extra manpower for sudden surges in business activities.

    The availability of contingent workforce providers like outsourcing companies enables companies to hold off on increasing headcount while maintaining a back up plan for hopefully, higher business acitivities. Lower fixed overheads allow companies to be nimble and respond quicker to changes in business environment.

    We want our clients to save on capex (Capital Expenditures) by using our contact center facilities (computers, internet infrastructure). This also saves on space and on rent. Our clients are attracted to our low rates, innovative solutions and flexible resources.  This flexibility to activate contact center services on demand is a key strategy in these times of recession. You reduce your overhead.

    Here is an excerpt from a somewhat similar train of thought from BT as published in Telecoms Asia, December 2008 Edition:

    Outsourcing versus in-house ownership has clearly become more topical given the current developments in the global economy.

    Businesses are actively looking at ways to reduce costs for longer term sustainability. The recent actions of some banks to sell non-strategic business units provide a clear example of how businesses recognize the need to delineate between what are core and what are non-core competencies when delivering to their business objectives.

    Outsourcing should be about realizing assets that do not add value to core competencies but in fact detract or dilute focus from business differentiation. Outsourcing needs to be focused on enabling businesses to leverage the benefits of freeing up these non-core assets to invest back into their core competencies or leverage additional business cost reductions.

    The outsourcing of IT support and communications services will be increasingly common next year in the context of freeing up non-core assets, however, not in the sense of full end-to-end ownership of a business unit, rather the shift to a managed service type outsourcing. The managed service we traditionally know of meant that for a fixed term and a fixed service, there was a fixed price hence a business knew what to expect.

    However, in the current economic climate we are seeing that businesses require greater flexibility or a degree of compromise to grow as and when the business requires it, but also to be able to trim down when business¬es no longer flourish as in the current market context.

    The concept of outsourcing has matured over the years, and its latest evolution will be a non-capex, flexible, scalable solution that is customer specific while leveraging common platforms.

    This allows businesses to increasingly focus on growth or cost reduction requirements relating to business processes rather than what will increasingly be regarded as overhead, such as IT and communications.

    This approach is best defined as a partnership, with shared risk and shared rewards, recognizing the need to balance long-term sustainable growth with short-term profitability.
    Source: Telecom Asia -Nathan Bell, BT’s general manager for portfolio and.partnerships, Asia Pacific

     

    Call Center Directory is the No. 1 online resource for information regarding call center industry

    Recruitment Process Outsourcing?

    RPO AssociationTough times calls for radical new ways of doing business. Have you considered RPO? RPO stands for Recruitment Process Outsourcing. This is a new approach to attracting and maintaining top talent that leverages the expertise of specialized HR companies.

    An RPO provider can augment your current recruiting activities through new methods such as job fairs, radio programs, social networking sites and innovative direct mail campaigns. These avenues are also excellent opportunities to promote information about company milestones, new product/service offerings and your overall competitive edge. The goal of the marketing campaigns is to elevate your differentiators, grab the attention of the modern Millennials and to specifically distinguish your organization from the rest of the media storm.

    Entering into an RPO relationship is no doubt a big step, but the benefits will certainly far outweigh any initial start-up challenges. And as the current talent war shows no signs of relenting, RPO is sure to be one of your best kept weapons. An RPO provider’s specialization on recruitment will expose you to new sourcing techniques and overall help you to attract and retain the best people. RPO is a new trend, but it is a solution that will certainly make a lasting and positive impact on your organization.

    According to “ROI of RPO” article published in the RPO Association, there are 4 major benefits of RPO.

    These include: Streamlining of the Recruitment Process, Offering Best Practices recommendations, Developing an Employment Brand, and Using Recruitment Marketing.

    1. Get more stuff done!
    Especially for an HR team that already has too much on its plate, RPO can serve as a highly specialized support network to share the load. In fact, one of the main reasons that RPO has gained popularity in the last decade is the simple fact that most HR departments have more work than they know what to do with. An overburdened HR group struggles to meet the increasing demands of today’s human resource management needs, not to mention the daily work of hiring, talent development, performance assessments, and succession planning.
    Larger FORTUNE 500 companies are hiring talent acquisition directors to meet these needs, often with a blended or hybrid model mixing internal recruitment teams with RPOs. But for others without vast internal resources, RPO partnering directly with HR can be a very competitive solution. That’s because RPOs, as true recruiting experts, can take the recruiting tasks right off that HR team’s full plate. No matter how many positions need to be filled, the RPO uses a powerful toolbox of recruiting processes, specialized knowledge and a wealth of cutting-edge technology to find not just more candidates but better candidates. RPO brings an entire network of people and resources working together to find the best match for each position.

    2. Get smart by tapping into the highly-specialized knowledge of true recruiting experts
    The RPO’s highly specialized network means they can provide tremendous economies of scale. Companies don’t need to invest in a seemingly ever growing list of job-posting resources, resume databases, Web 2.0 recruitment tools, testing and screening tools and expensive high-tech tracking system that they’ll need to evaluate and maintain year after year. They can simply “rent” it from an RPO.

    It’s more than tools, though. RPOs, thanks to their intense study of hiring trends, practices and real-world case studies, bring expert knowledge of effective and efficient recruitment resources. Because this is all they do, RPOs can commit serious time to researching what works and what doesn’t. This time commitment is a luxury most HR pros just don’t have.

    3. Find good answers to tough questions about budgets and hiring costs
    Cost reduction is a major reason companies look to outsource non-core jobs in their company. Recruitment outsourcing often is no different – but what makes recruitment outsourcing unique is its outsourcing of a non-transactional function. Because of this, getting savings and results requires some patience and vision.

    Why is that? Hiring by traditional means, with an HR staff, means that many expenses get buried-in overhead allocations, technology investments, etc. It’s difficult to tell exactly what is being spent on hiring alone. When companies choose to outsource, however, they’re forced to go through the due diligence needed for this change and, along the way, they start to uncover all the ways in which hiring costs them money.

    An RPO uncovers those hidden costs, and then offsets many of them through economies of scale, reduced hiring cycles or fewer fees paid to staffing agencies and recruiters. Regardless of how much money an RPO saves the company, the process itself gives the business a much clearer understanding of the true cost of recruiting. That transparency is especially valuable in a tight economy, when every team’s budget gets scrutinized more closely. HR leaders, just like everyone else, have to be able to justify their decisions, budgets and practices. They have to give their leaders real, usable numbers. And they have to be ready with good answers to tough questions. Without real data, good answers are hard to come by.

    4. Make yourself a strategic partner
    So, while it’s natural to fear that an RPO might expose HR’s recruiting practices as weak or ineffective – it can actually greatly improve the department’s visibility. Think about it: an HR team that partners with a highly specialized expert to successfully execute the all-important task of hiring top talent is likely to appear progressive, strategic and just plain smart.

    And if you tap into the RPO’s employer-branding capabilities, you’re making another strategic move. By infusing your company’s culture and image into your recruiting efforts, you’re doing a lot more than just filling positions. You’re cultivating a relationship. RPO has the time and resources to “ABR” (always be recruiting) and driving your employer branding.

    The stronger your employer brand, the more candidates are drawn to the company. Recruiting comes more easily when the candidates know who you are and what you’re about. As a result, you’re likely to get applicants that are already in tune with your company culture. In other words, they’re a good fit.

    5. Increase your value and visibility
    If your RPO partnership helps you accomplish these things, the HR department is suddenly much more visible – and considerably more valuable, especially to stakeholders. Furthermore, if that partnership also means that HR has more time to devote to increasingly crucial tasks like talent management and succession planning, executives will be forced to sit up and take notice.

    The RPO partnership has the power to transform HR for the better. Thanks to the tangible advantages it offers, what was once seen as the cost center of the company is quickly becoming a highly valuable, strategic team with the power to impact the bottom line.

    Transcript: TWIS.org August 21, 2007

    Justin: Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

    Drenched, burning up, hyperventilating, laughing and crying at the same time in public with potential for delirium and seizures. These are the symptoms reported by a UK teenager after overdosing on too much coffee.

    Strangely, we have been hearing reports with a similar symptoms from listening to too much of the following hour of programming. Mocking moderation, one show at a time, we persist with This Week In Science, coming up next.
    Continue reading “Transcript: TWIS.org August 21, 2007”