Outsourcing Contract Flaws Essay Example for Free

Outsourcing Contract Flaws Essay In any legal undertaking, contracts play a vital role in ensuring that the interests of both parties are served. Contracts serve as a binding agreement that the signatories should adhere to. In most cases, any violation of the provisions encompassed in a contract holds the erring party liable for breach of contract. When a contract is drafted, the lawyer or whoever is in charge of crafting it has the job of ensuring that both parties understand its provisions and making sure that the contents of the agreement are acceptable to both parties prior to signing the outsourcing agreement.   Ã‚   Consultation with the signatories is a vital requisite in developing a good contract. Outsourcing is one of the newest methods that firms utilize in order to hire personnel. Nowadays, one can easily find firms that specialize in outsourcing services. In this kind of business, an organization employs a service provider to handle various functions such as data entry, programming jobs, and others. Usually located in a foreign country, the outsourcing firm performs jobs that could otherwise be done by the employees of the organization. In a recent survey conducted internationally by the IT Governance Institute (ITGI), it was revealed that clients of outsourcing firms showed a great deal of dissatisfaction with the service provided by these firms. Because of this, the contracting organization made the crucial decision of prematurely severing their ties with the outsourcing firm (Simmonds Gilmour, 2005). In the study, it was further discovered that among the 76 percent of the survey participants providing at least one outsourcing service, only 25 percent have an established method in managing their contracts (Simmonds Gilmour, 2005). The Importance of Contracts in the Outsourcing Business Contracts play an important role in providing outsourcing services. It lays down the duties, roles, goals, and controls needed in anticipating change as well as in handling the development, maintenance, execution, pricing, and regulation of outsourced services(Simmonds Gilmour, 2005). In addition, outsourcing contracts contains provisions that the service provider must follow in order to ensure a general, consistent, and efficient means of handling the outsourcing agreement. Contracts ensure the proper governance of outsourcing (Simmonds Gilmour, 2005). Crafting a contract is by no means an easy job. In order to properly manage outsourcing services, the book entitled Governance of Outsourcing has laid down the following requisites of a good contract:   Outsourcing contracts should indicate what activities are exempted from outsourcing. It should clearly identify the type of service offered. Complicated and permanent outsourcing requirements may require a more integrated approach (Simmonds Gilmour, 2005). Once the outsourcing strategy has been determined, service provider contracts must clearly point out the methods and structures of the outsourcing agreement. It should clearly establish the responsibilities, goals, and roles of the parties involved. This can be formalized through the creation of a governance schedule. Defective approaches should be taken out of the picture. If management is unable to handle such processes, it is unlikely for the outsourcing provider to handle these processes as well (Simmonds Gilmour, 2005). Good outsourcing contracts must have provisions that will clearly evaluate the competence of the people who will be involved in providing outsourcing. Likewise, there should be provisions for checking the credibility and reliability of the chosen service provider (Simmonds Gilmour, 2005). After a year of offering outsourcing, the service provider should work out a re-negotiation of the contract. If the terms of agreement has a global scope and the service is provided to several components of an organization, there should be supporting contracts for every country involved. Contract re-negotiation should be included in the standard operating procedure of the outsourcing firm (Simmonds Gilmour, 2005). Proper channelling of information should be established as this will ensure improved control instead of drawing reactions. Every communication resource should be utilized in order to guarantee that any human resource personnel involved is properly informed (Simmonds Gilmour, 2005). Any transfer of service connected to the agreement must be accompanied by a formal plan and should be acknowledged by the two parties involved in the process. Benchmarking and measurement should likewise be provided in order to properly manage project costing. This is an important aspect in the total conduct of negotiating for a contract (Simmonds Gilmour, 2005). Aside from daily monitoring, the contract should likewise provide for regular benchmarking. Stable governance should be dynamic. Through periodic benchmarking, the service provider will remain valuable and will become the foundation of decisions whether to proceed with contract re-negotiations or abolish the contract (Simmonds Gilmour, 2005). The ITGI survey further revealed that among the organizations included in the study, the main reason why clients outsource is because there are not many people within the organization who have the expertise to perform such service. Forty eight percent of the surveyed organizations support this reason while the remaining 42 percent resort to outsourcing as a cost-reduction measure. However, minimizing costs is not as crucial as improving the value of the organization (Simmonds Gilmour, 2005). There are various benefits that can be derived from outsourcing service. One of the major benefits of this kind of process is better quality of service. Since the organization paid the service provider who specializes in such kind of roles, the firm would have an assurance that the finished product would not be haphazardly done. Another advantage of outsourcing is improved handling of risks. Since the service provider is trained and experienced with the line of work they are paid to do, the risks involved will be much lesser. The outsourcing firm are more equipped to handle possible risks than an employee of the organization who might not have the time to troubleshoot risks. Likewise, there is no need for the organization to select and utilize its own personnel. Instead, the staff of the organization can focus their energy on performing more important and worthwhile activities. The last advantage of outsourcing is scalability. If the organization is satisfied with the performance of the outsourcing firm, it could require its services to perform other needs. For example, a service provider providing data entry functions for a certain organization may be expanded to perform database management duties as well. More and more organizations are realizing the importance of outsourcing as an effective means of strengthening the quality of their business. In order to completely maximize the many advantages of this process, there is a need to ensure the proper governance of these processes.   By drafting stable outsourcing contracts, service providers would be able to address and remedy any possible loopholes that may arise from the outsourcing agreement.  Ã‚   Thus, assuring that their customers are satisfied with the service they provide lies on how effective the outsourcing agreement is crafted by the service provider.   Otherwise, it could lead to a short-term and dissatisfied client.

Leonardo Fibbonacis Famous Formulas :: essays research papers

Some people hate math and some love it. Other people devote their time to finding math patterns because they do not have a life. Leonardo Pisano Fibonacci, or Leonardo of Pisa, was one of those people. He was the "greatest European mathematician of the middle ages". Fibonacci was born 1175 AD in Pisa, Italy. His father was named Guilielmo, a member of the Bonacci Family and his mother Alessandra died when he was only nine years old. Fibonacci grew up with a North African Education because his father worked a trading post in that location. While there helping his father, he learned the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. Fibonacci traveled the Mediterranean world to study about Arab mathematicians of the time. Leonardo returned from his travels around 1200. In 1202, at age 32, he published what he had learned and introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals to Europe. His book was called Liber abaci. The book explained numeration with the digits 0?9 and place value. It also showed the importance of th e new numeral system. The book educated Europe and had an impact on European thought. However, the use of decimal numerals did not become widespread until much later. Liber Abaci also solved a problem involving the growth of a supposed population of rabbits. The solution was a series of numbers known as Fibonacci numbers. The number sequence was known to Indian mathematicians as early as the 6th century, but Fibonacci's Liber Abaci introduced it to the West. The Fibonacci numbers are a sequence of numbers that begin with 0, 1 ... and then calculated each number from the sum of the previous two. The equation for this method is . Another theory he studied was a sequence that has a flower like pattern. Fibonacci's second work was the Practica geometriae and was composed in 1220-1221. The Practica geometriae draws heavily on the works of the ancient Greek masters i.e. Plato. Fibonacci made a dent in mathematics history.

Godden and Baddeley (1975) Psychology Essay

Godden and Baddeley (1975) Godden and Baddeley under took a field experiment in which they investigated if being in the same environment when learning/remembering something affects their recall in appose to being in a different environment from where the words are learnt. They did using an independent group design. Godden and Baddeley found 18 deep-sea divers whom were given 38 unrelated two or three syllable words, they all had the same time to try and remember these words. They were then randomly allocated to 4 conditions, one being to learn and recall the words on the beach, the second being to learn and recall the words underwater, the third being learn on the beach and recall underwater and the last being learn under water and recall on the beach. The mean number of results recalled for dry land learning and recall were 13.5, the mean number of results recalled for underwater learning and recall was 11.4, the mean number of results recalled for under water learning and dry land recall was 8.4 and the mean number of results recalled for dry land learning and under water recall was 8.6. The results of this experiment resulted in proving that when learning something in a certain environment, that when recalling/being tested on in that same environment, the results will be better than recalling in a different environment. Godden and Baddeley’s experiment had many strengths, one being that the experiment had ecological validity, meaning the experiment can be generalised to real-life situations, another being that order effects are limited, as the participants are less likely to suffer boredom as they were each assigned 1 condition therefore the validity of the test is not affected, a final strength being that Godden and Baddeley randomly allocated the divers to their conditions making the experiment unbiased. With much strength, the experiment had a few limitations, these being that the participant variables may have affected the experiment as some divers may generally be more intelligent or have good memory, therefore their results would be better than most in either environment, also, when divers were travelling to a different environment from which they learnt their words, they may have been distracted causing them to forget. Finally, the results cannot be applied to the whole population, only divers as the test was specifically done on divers, and not average people.

Invention of Credit Cards

What is credit? And what is a credit card? Credit is a method of selling goods or services without the buyer having cash in hand. So a credit card is simply an automatic way of offering credit to a consumer. Today, every credit card carries an identification number that speeds up shopping transactions. Imagine what a credit purchase would be like without it.  The sales person would have to record your identity, billing address and terms of repayment. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the use of credit cards originated in the United States during the 1920s, when individual firms, such as oil companies and hotel chains, began issuing them to customers. However, references to credit cards have been made as far back as 1890 in Europe. Early credit cards involved sales directly between the merchant offering the credit and credit card and that merchants customer. Around 1938, companies started to accept each others cards. Today, credit cards allow you to make purchases with countless third parties. The Shape of Credit Cards Credit cards were not always been made of plastic. Throughout history, there have been credit tokens made from metal coins, metal plates, and celluloid, metal, fiber, paper and now mostly plastic cards. First Bank Credit Card The inventor of the first bank issued credit card was John Biggins of the Flatbush National Bank of Brooklyn in New York. In 1946, Biggins invented the Charge-It program between bank customers and local merchants. The way it worked was that merchants could deposit sales slips into the bank and the bank billed the customer who used the card. Diners Club Credit Card In 1950, the Diners Club issued their credit card in the United States. The Diners Club credit card was invented by Diners  Club founder Frank McNamara as a way to pay restaurant bills. A customer could eat without cash at any restaurant that would accept Diners Club credit cards. Diners Club would pay the restaurant and the credit card holder would repay Diners Club. The Diners Club card was at first technically a charge card rather than a credit card since the customer had to repay the entire amount when billed by Diners  Club. American Express issued their first credit card in 1958. Bank of America issued the BankAmericard (now Visa) bank credit card later in 1958. The Popularity of Credit Cards Credit cards were first promoted to traveling salesmen (they were more common in that era) for use on the road. By the early 1960s, more companies offered credit cards by advertising them as a time-saving device rather than a form of credit. American Express and MasterCard became huge successes overnight. By the mid-70s, the U.S. Congress begin regulating the credit card industry by banning practices such as the mass mailing of active credit cards to those who had not requested them. However, not all regulations have been as consumer friendly. In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court in case Smiley vs. Citibank lifted restrictions on the number of late penalty fees a credit card company could charge. Deregulation has also allowed very high-interest rates to be charged.