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Very few businesses can claim to be prepared for the loss of key staff. Quite often it is an unexpected and unplanned for event that causes quite a bit of disruption to business as usual.

It is quite a gut wrenching experience to see someone you have worked with over a period of time leaving your business. Even if the parting of ways is on good terms with a period of handover, you just know that there is so much information walking out the door with your former employee and there is nothing you can do about it.

And this is only just the beginning

While labouring through a period of being understaffed and overworked you are then faced with the task of recruiting a new employee to fill the vacant position. This is followed by the inevitable probation and training period where, hopefully the new recruit comes up to speed and is able to pick up where the former employee left off.

The problem is: What exactly was it that the former employee really did? They always seemed to be busy and on the rare occasion that they were absent due to illness, there were those problems that arose that were only truly resolved when they returned and took control and ‘cleaned things up’.

There has to be a better way

Fortunately quite a bit can be done to minimize the impact of situations like this in our businesses. And like most truly worthwhile solutions the steps required to complete this part of your businesses development do take some effort on your part.

There is an established path that you can follow to get your business in order and the benefits to you and your people are much farther reaching than just minimizing the impact of key staff leaving you.

The following is by no means a definitive list of what is required. But it does give you some idea of the steps required.

- Create a flexible forward thinking Organization Chart defining the positions you require in your business.

- Determine what the responsibilities are for the positions in your business.
- Document key information that is critical to your business and make it available to your employees.
- Work with your people to define what it is they do, how they do it and most importantly how it could be done better. Record, optimize then implement the business systems you have identified.
- Assign the business systems to the relevant positions and monitor their use.

By consistently following these steps for all positions in your business you will insulate yourself from some of the problems that occur when key employees leave your business.

Copyright 2006 Business Systems Manager

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The Internet has connected translation technologies with consumers at a pace that feels threatening to many of the million plus linguists around the world. Will they lose their role in globalization?

Imagine a world in which you speak or write your language, and the rest of the globe could instantly understand you in theirs.

While linguists tremble at the thought, perfect software-performed translation (known as “machine translation”) would save governments and businesses many billions of dollars a year. With enough platforms and distribution, it would increase productivity and add perhaps trillions more of value to worldwide GDP.

Some even believe that frictionless communication across languages would help different cultures and religions to see eye to eye, helping to bring about peace on earth (i.e., read as “no more war in Iraq”).

So the first key question on the minds of many is whether or not technology will ever replace human translation services?

The short answer isdrum roll please…not in our lifetime, if ever.

Why? Because software can only produce perfect output when it receives perfect input; and humans almost never communicate with perfect usage of the rules of grammar and terminology upon which software relies to translate one language into another.

The job of building and updating a database of literally billions of exceptions to the rules of language, and then matching them between hundreds of languages and thousands of dialects, would require more humans than will ever be economically feasible. And, let’s not forget the countless new words and expressions that we invent every single day.

I suggest that you carefully read this paragraph and imagine how software, which is rigid and pitiful in the face of human subtley, could possibly translate it with both figurative and literal accuracy. You see, language is not a science, but an art. As is translation. And art is a human endeavor.

Okay, so we are all relieved to know that the livelihood of individual linguists and translation services is not at risk. But what about our second question…

Will translation technology increase the ROI on globalization and produce social benefits that we only dare imagine in today’s rocky world?

My friends, I am happy to say that cultures, businesses, lovers and even religions are already being brought together by these technologies. The effects in our lifetime will be monumental.

And, in my subsequent two columns, I will tell you how. Hasta luego amigos!

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The old types of post-paid telephone bills, printed in fixed formats and delivered through postal services, are fast yielding way to prepaid billing and online payment options. With advancements taking place in various modes of telecommunication and the voice, data or wireless technologies coming with new features, telecom service providers have to keep pace with the rapidly changing technologies and thereby coordinate the printing, designing, formatting and the delivery of the bills.

The telecom services vendors are providing new Telecom Billing solutions to their customers, with easy-to-understand formats and deliveries in tune with the type of service. Non-usage charges like equipment, line charges and one-time fees can also be allocated through the use of billing. Various types of billing software are available in the market, and you can use them to collect data from different telecom sources for centralized presentation. This data may include call details from various telephone systems, wireless carriers and calling card vendors. Efforts are made to minimize waste by identifying abuse and misuse of the services.

There are wizards available to produce thousands of wholesale or retail bills in a matter of minutes. These wizards can also configure the bill cycles for each customer and create the bills automatically whenever required, and further customize them to suit the needs of the company.

The bills are prepared and delivered in form of PDF documents that are suitable for envelopes also. They can include many other customer-friendly features and include the details of previous balances, credits, discounts and taxes. They can further contain memo boxes and customized notices for customer invoices.

Your customers can also receive their telecom bills online through e-mails, or they can download them in print versions. All these online procedures mean great savings in time and money, which obviously add to your savings and increase the profits and productivity month after month.

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