Direct Marketing Support Services and Lettershop Services: A Key Role in Your Marketing Campaign

Most marketing firms do a lot of direct marketing. One might even suggest it’s traditionally the bread and butter of a marketing firm’s income. However, in order to properly manage a direct marketing campaign your firm will need to have adequate direct marketing support services, including lettershop services.

Keywords:
direct marketing support services, distribution logistics, database management, mailing list database management, marketing,

Most marketing firms do a lot of direct marketing. One might even suggest it’s traditionally the bread and butter of a marketing firm’s income. However, in order to properly manage a direct marketing campaign your firm will need to have adequate direct marketing support services, including lettershop services. These support elements will do the grunt work in your direct marketing campaign.

Direct marketing support services many involve such things as printing, mailings database management, and campaign management. While lettershop services handle issues tied to the distribution of your direct marketing campaign. This includes many mundane tasks such as labeling, presorting, folding, tracking and so on. However, as mundane as these tasks may be they are critical to the completion of a successful direct marketing campaign.
In most direct marketing campaigns, direct marketing support services, and lettershop services are handled by an outside vendor. As with the selection of any outside vendor, we suggest you do your research. But there’s a problem with this. Obviously, competitive marketing firms may be loathing giving you any information about the companies they use for direct marketing support services, and lettershop services. But we have found a way around that one, and it may sound silly but it actually works.

Call your congressman.
Stop laughing. We are serious.
Why, you may ask, we are not trying to get a bill passed? We are just looking for some good vendors for direct marketing support services and lettershop services, how could our congressmen help with that? Well, it is quite simple, political candidate do a lot of direct mailings, and they usually use local companies. Also, you are a small business in your congressman’s district; he will have a reason to help you.

Okay, so now you have found a good company to handing your direct marketing support services and lettershop services. Are there any other pitfalls? Of course there are. As with many other outside vendors, those dealing with direct marketing support services and lettershop services make money on volume. Meaning that quality control, though a priority, may not be their top priority. So you need to be especially carefully that all printed material, databases and instructions are given both verbally and in writing.

In our experience, if you have never worked with the vendor, we suggest you do this in person. Although thanks to digital printing a lot may be done via phone, FTP and email, we still feel that these initial contacts should be done in person. And do not give this job to a new hire or an intern. That is just asking for trouble. This needs to be done by someone who has been at your firm for at least a year. Someone who can think on his or her feet.

Another important thing about vendors who offer direct marketing supports services and lettershop services is that they see direct marketing campaigns every day. They have a sense of what works and what does not. If they question some aspect of your campaign, listen to them. They probably know what they are talking about. And, as you and vendor build trust; you may find them giving you pointers that they only share with valued customers. We might add that the referral from you congressman, might also help grease the early client vendor relations. And you thought that was a crazy suggestion, right?

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Flyer that says “Get Me”

Whether you are promoting an event, advertising a product or service, at one point you are might probably be tempted to advertise with the use of flyers.

Keywords:
flyer printing

Whether you are promoting an event, advertising a product or service, at one point you are might probably be tempted to advertise with the use of flyers.

Flyers are handy. You can mail it, leave it or hand it out. In addition it is the easiest to make and produce. It is also the most affordable marketing tool. Nonetheless, these features did not make it a lesser marketing tool.

How do you secure its effectiveness? Well, there are two points to consider – the artistic and the technical side.

First things first, let us tackle about the artistic side of it. The first step is to formulate a creative concept – a concept that will both catch the eye and the heart. You can use photographs to tell a story and sell your ads. Make sure that your concept is eye-catching that the moment an individual stare at it, he will surely grab it. Establish a center-attention. Choose the most important image or phrase to put emphasis to. You can play with the size, density, brightness and position in order to give it the right prominence. Bear in mind that you only have limited space. Moreover, use images that can say what the words can’t at the given circumstance.

Do not create false claims. Your selling point is to say the truth. That way, your company can yield trust and loyalty from the readers. Be enthusiastic, tickle their fancy in a positive light but do not overdo it by uttering statements of make-believe.

Organize your page. You can use boxes and borders. However, maintain the flyers simplicity. It need not be complicated to be catchy, right? Illustration need not amount to ornamentation. Simplicity is still preferred by many so stick with it.

Spend time on wordings. Proof-read it for several times. Also ask other people to read and proof-read your contents. It will be a waste of money to print an erroneous flyer. Thus, before printing the same, be sure that there are no flaws and errors.

Let us come to the technical side of flyers – the flyer printing. Be sure to get a reputable and skilled printer to secure quality printing results. Also, choose the right printing technique to complement your design.

Now, you are ready to create a flyer that shrieks “Get Me”. No need to offer it. For sure, your flyer can manage even without your initiative.

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Is Your Organization at Risk Without a Sufficient Backup and Recovery System?

It is essential to securing and preserving core business operations. The smart business choice is a solid backup and recovery plan.

Keywords:
staffing software,recruiting software

What if you lost physical access to your office? Could you be back in business at another location within a couple of days? If not, you should explore cost-effective, reliable backup choices.

No one ever thinks it could happen to them. Yet, we have all seen and possibly experienced the devastation that can be caused from natural disasters, accidental file destruction or even terrorist attacks. Everyone needs to think about what would happen if all business operations suddenly came to a halt. Could your business recover if you lost all of your data?

Data backups is a subject so overdone that it has become “incidental”. Today, everyone knows that they need to be taking backups of their system data and the big issue today is that everyone “assumes” that this is being done at their companies. Network people are hired to install the network and “everybody” naturally assumes that this was part of the set-up and that somehow this is magically being taken care of. This is a big mistake.

All companies, large and small, need to have a secure backup and recovery plan in place. The key word here is perhaps “recovery”. Having been in the software business for over 20 years, I am no longer amazed when companies routinely perform backups and yet never test them to see if they are actually working. When it comes time to restore, it’s an unpleasant surprise to find out that the backup wasn’t really backing anything up or it was not backing up the correct files.

Having a sound plan in place extends farther than simply running a tape every night (which by the way is mandatory step one in the process). In addition, tapes need to be rotated each night so that the same tape is not being used over and over again. One never knows when one may need to recover data from a couple of days ago because the current data is not good. A tape should exist for each day of the week that the system gets backed up (minimum 5 days). Besides the rotation, copies should be kept off site, preferably in a safety deposit box and/or another secure location that is not in the immediate area of the office. It should be a site that can be accessed quickly if data needs to be retrieved. Ideally, the off-site copy should be refreshed at least once a month.

Besides the daily backup tapes, backups should be taken at the end of the month, quarter and year. These backups should never be used again and should be clearly labeled in the event that you need to access the data. If you are doing payroll, the government can call at anytime, even in several years. You want to be prepared. Not being able to produce the data can mean penalties, legal and accounting fees.

Running a backup tape and keeping it off site is just the beginning of the process. Backups need to be periodically tested to ensure that data is being copied. A knowledgeable, technical person should be in charge of this task. The line, “you can never have enough backups” is very true. However, testing that the backup you are taking is “good” is equally important.

Having a good routine for taking, testing and storing backups is critical. If your data is protected, even if you do not have access to your office and even if your server is destroyed, you can always restore on another system at another site. We had customers that had offices near ground zero and were unable to return to their buildings for quite some time. In a couple of days, with good backup tapes, they were able to restore to new hardware at another location and were back in business within a couple of days. Being prepared is the difference between business recovery and business failure.

In addition to the physical backup plan, every company should have a plan in writing that outlines the steps that the company will take to recover and resume work at locations other than the office. The plan should encompass not only the steps that will be taken to restore the data, but how and where the employees will access the data. If remote access is possible how would that option work? Would multiple offices be blended into one temporary central location? Several possibilities and solutions should be available so that most situations can be addressed without a last minute appeal for a solution.

A disaster represents many challenges, most of which cannot be prepared for. Restoration of data and resumption of use of the data is one thing that can be arranged. Unfortunately, this type of plan is traditionally not a top priority and considered secondary to the core business operations. The primary point to keep in mind, however, is that it is essential to securing and preserving core business operations. The smart business choice is a solid backup and recovery plan.

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Managing Registrations And Payments For An Event

In a company of 25 people; putting on a marketing event and charging an entry fee could give the event administrator a severe headache. Patricia Thomson was in this position only last week. Her “normal” job of Marketing Assistant still had to run while she organized the seminars and she realized she could be handling hundreds of enquiries over the period. This was their first venture into this type of event and the company’s accounts department was not really set up for a mas…

Keywords:
online booking, event managment,booking mananger, booking, registration

In a company of 25 people; putting on a marketing event and charging an entry fee could give the event administrator a severe headache. Patricia Thomson was in this position only last week. Her “normal” job of Marketing Assistant still had to run while she organized the seminars and she realized she could be handling hundreds of enquiries over the period. This was their first venture into this type of event and the company’s accounts department was not really set up for a mass influx of small payments.

The registration and payment procedure that you use should be as professional as you can make it. This fairly small part of the overall event paints a very vivid picture to your delegates of your capability and will be their first evidence of how the whole event experience is likely to be. If you handle this phase flawlessly, you may be excused small hiccups along the way. Make a mess of things here and your delegates will start marking your report card with red ink.
The registration procedure

Take some time with your administrative staff to draw up a detailed process that should be followed consistently by anyone who takes a booking. Please don’t just hand them a procedure that you have designed because you will end up shouldering the responsibility for any mistakes that are made down the line. If the process is co-owned by everyone involved, they will feel more motivated to change the process to ensure that the same mistakes are not repeated.

A typical procedure will consider all of the following:

• How will bookings be taken?

• By mail

• By phone

• By Email

• Online

• What type of database will the administrators use?

• Spreadsheet

• Paper based system

• Relational database

• If an online booking system is to be used, will it be in-house or outsourced to an organization like mybookingmanager.com?

• If an outsourced online booking system is used how will you synchronize the data and how frequently will you do this?

• Will payments be accepted using bank transfer, credit card, business and/or personal check?

• How frequently will the event managers and the event caterers require updates on booking statistics and delegate details?

Patricia took one look at the checklist and started researching online booking agents immediately. She reasoned that the workload necessary to do a first class job would probably entail bringing in a temp and training him/her to do the job that the online booking agent could handle easily. The cost of having a temp in their already cramped office and the thought of designing a system, training them to use it and finding work for them to do when the phone wasn’t ringing was already giving her that headache. She also decided that the cach й of being able to offer round-the-clock facilities for credit card booking and also a 24 hour telephone answering service would impress their intended delegates.

This week the bookings are rolling in.

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Monsters in Meetings – Part 7, Personal Attacks

An effective meeting depends upon the participants treating each other with respect. Here’s how to respond if someone insults another participant. (This is the seventh of a seven part article on Managing Monsters in Meetings.)

Keywords:
effective meetings, bad meetings, business meeting, monsters in meetings, problem participants, facilitation, steve kaye, facilitator, leadership, one great meeting

You remember these people for the wrong reasons.

They are the monsters who hurt others with insults, ridicule, and sarcasm. They bully. They threaten. They attack.

And that ruins your meeting.

Personal attacks are unacceptable because if one person is being hurt in your meeting, everyone else feels it. As a result, the participants retreat into making safe and generally useless contributions.

So, how do you respond to attacks?

First, take a big breath. Grab your courage. And then use one of the following approaches.

Approach 1: Speak to the group

Respond to a hostile remark by making a general comment. Look at the middle of the group and say:

“Just a moment. Let’s pause here to calm down. I can tell we’re upset about this. And we want to find a fair solution for everyone.” (Take slow deep breaths and relax to model calming down.)

After saying this, pause a moment to let the group respond. Often, someone else will support your request. Then continue as if everything were normal.

Avoid looking at the attacker when speaking to the group. Making eye contact acknowledges and returns power to the attacker.

Approach 2: Explore for the cause

Sometimes people throw insults from behind an illusion of presumed distance. You can respond by calling for an explanation. In this case say:

“Pat, you seem upset with that.”

“Tony, you seem to disagree.”

“You seem to have reservations about this.”

I realize these statements may sound like naive responses to an insult. However, such understated responses improve the situation because they sound less threatening, feel easier to deliver, and preserve the other person’s self-esteem. Realize the attacker may have viewed the attack less seriously than it sounded.

These statements also transfer the focus from the target to the attacker’s feelings. And this is what you need to talk about in order to resolve the dispute.

After you speak wait for the attacker to talk about what caused the attack.

If the attacker continues with hostile remarks, interrupt with:

“Excuse me, we need to respect each other. And I wonder what makes you feel upset over this.”

“Excuse me, we heard that. Now, what makes you feel that way?”

“Excuse me, I’m interested in hearing what your concerns are.”

Approach 3: Call a break

If the first two approaches fail to end the attacks, then call a break or end the meeting. This will give you a chance to meet privately with the attacker, rewrite the agenda, rebuild communication, and (if appropriate) schedule another meeting without the attacker.

You could say,

“We seem to be at an impasse. I want to take a break so we can calm down.”

“This hostility makes it impossible to get any work done. So, I’m adjourning the meetings. We’ll work on this later and then reconvene at another time.”

“We need to work on this outside of the meeting. So let’s adjourn.”

Note that some people use anger to intimidate others into cooperating with them. If you adjourn the meeting, you will have to meet with the attacker to resolve the conflict.

Meetings are a forum for finding solutions, making decisions, and reaching agreements. When you apply these approaches to disruptions, you will maintain the productive environment necessary to accomplish your goals.

This is the seventh of a seven part article on Monsters in Meetings.

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Video Sharing Sites

Are you interested in uploading any videos that you may have made to the YouTube website? YouTube is a website that is often referred to as a video sharing website. It allows internet users, like you, to upload and share any videos that they have made. With a large number of members and site visitors, having your video or videos displayed on YouTube is likely to get your videos thousands of views!

Keywords:
video sharing sites

Are you interested in uploading any videos that you may have made to the YouTube website? YouTube is a website that is often referred to as a video sharing website. It allows internet users, like you, to upload and share any videos that they have made. With a large number of members and site visitors, having your video or videos displayed on YouTube is likely to get your videos thousands of views!If this is your first time uploading a video to the YouTube website, you may be wondering exactly how you can go about doing so. The good news is that uploading videos to YouTube is a relatively easy process. YouTube not only gives you step-by-step instructions on how to upload your videos, but they also provide you with video uploading tips; tips that will not only make it possible for your videos to be uploaded, but tips that will also help to improve their quality.If you have used YouTube before, even just to watch videos, you likely already know that you need to have a YouTube account before you can start uploading and sharing your videos. Registering for you a YouTube account is not only free, but it is also easy. You only need to answer a few personal questions. For instance, you are asked your name, your zip code, the country you live in, your email address, your birth date, and your gender. Once you submit the registration form, you will be sent a verification email. Once you have followed the instructions in that email, you should be able to start uploading videos to YouTube right away.Before uploading your video to the YouTube website, you will need to get it on your computer. Once you have done so, you will want to review it. This can be done with a movie editing software program. Should you wish to edit your video before submitting it to YouTube, now is the time to do so. When editing your YouTube video or saving it, YouTube encourages to you save it as a .Divx or .Xvid file. They also suggest making sure that your audio is in the .mp3 format. Once you have officially saved your video on your computer, you can begin to upload it to the YouTube website.The first step is to make sure that you are signed into your YouTube account. Once you are, you will need to click on the Upload Videos, link, which can be found at the top of the YouTube website. You will then be brought to a page where you will be asked to describe your video. YouTube requests that you are descriptive as possible. Once you have entered in as much information about your video as you can, you will then need to click on the Go Upload a File, link. This will allow you to select a file from your computer; the file that contains your recently saved video. Once you have selected the right video, your video will automatically start uploading, after have confirmed your actions.Speaking of the uploading process, you will find that the amount of time it takes for your video to upload to the YouTube website will vary. The larger your video file size is, the longer it will take for your video to upload to the YouTube website. In all honesty, YouTube states that it could only take a few minutes, but that it could also take as long as an hour. In addition to the size of your video file, the type of internet connection you have will also have an impact on your upload times. For instance, if you have a dialup internet connection, it will take longer for your videos to upload than it would if you had DSL or cable internet.YouTube states that within twenty-four hours of your video being uploaded, your video should appear listed under the correct category, as well as appear in YouTube video searches. This is when your videos will start seeing the most views, as many internet users search for videos that meet their interests.

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What A Geek-Thing Taught Me Can Send Your Sales Response Through The Roof

Who is best qualified to prove your product works? Who has the credibility and the believability to talk about the benefits of using your product? Who will tell your customers and clients it’s a good decision to buy?

It’s you, right? Perhaps you’d better keep reading…

Keywords:
marketing,advertising,testimonials,sales letter

Who is best qualified to prove your product works? Who has the credibility and the believability to talk about the benefits of using your product? Who will tell your customers and clients it’s a good decision to buy?

It’s you, right? Perhaps you’d better keep reading…

The answer is – your own customers.

Your customers have the experience of using your product. They’ve used the features, and experienced the benefits. Speaking from this familiarity your customers will relate with your prospects in a way you will not.

Your words are seen as claims when you talk about your product. But when your customer talks, their words are seen as truth.

When you’re selling a product or service, all internet marketers know there’s nothing like the power of testimonials. Testimonials are the social proof – the “Show me I’m not alone” evidence – from customers that have already bought from you and enjoyed your product.

I’ve seen salesletters written by top marketers that are composed of nothing but testimonials. We’ve all seen salesletters filled with so many testimonials that if printed out, it would drain your printer of it’s ink.

The testimonials in such letters contain nearly all of the elements a good salesletter must have: the features and the benefits (especially the benefits!) of the product; the stories supporting the use of the product; and novel ideas on how your product has been put to use. (Wow, it’s like an ‘open source’ method for sales-letter development!) Just add an attention-grabbing headline (and a link to the order page) and you’re done.

So how do you get authentic, sales-pulling, kick-butt testimonials that practically write your sales letter for you? Well, how about asking for them? The way that you ask, though, is the difference between asking and getting little, and asking and getting a tremendous response.

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Putting Professionalism back in Management Consulting

There has been a change in business change consulting. Professionals who did things their own way were replaced by inexperienced staff who faithfully followed a methodology to produce contract-satisfying deliverables. We need a new consulting model so that consultants can work in partnership with the enterprise to leverage enterprise capabilities and put professionalism back in management consulting.

Keywords:
enterprise,management,improvement,consultants,change,capability,risk,implementation,system,ERP,methodologies,practice,professionalism,partnership,analytical,develop,applications,conventional,strategic

I have seen many changes in my forty years as a professional management consultant, particularly in the business change and management improvement practices. My specialty is applying information technology for the benefit of the business. In the 1960s and 1970s, we developed information systems from the ground up to satisfy user requirements. It was clear that users could not envisage how IT could really benefit the business. So much of our value was in helping users define and understand the main results the business had to produce and then in designing the full man-machine solution to produce better results. We did not implement the system, we implemented the methods and procedures to improve results using the system.

Then in the 1980s, things began to change. Application packages quickly replaced custom development. This lowered the cost of a quality system, but it also created a gap between the system and the business.

Since he no longer developed the system, the professional, who understood the business, had to dig deep to understand the functionality of the package to apply the advanced features that enabled the business to improve. The professional who understood the package did not understand the business and saw his role as explaining use of system.

For consultants, employing the application package to improve the business was difficult and risky. The risk had to be contained, so the approach became system implementation to convert a defined portion of the existing business over the new system.

So consultants chased the new business opportunity in packaged system implementation. It started with the big audit consultants, whose approach to consulting tended to parallel the approach to auditing-use junior staff to follow methodologies and produce deliverables.

Consulting firms developed methodologies for system planning, system evaluation and acquisition, and system implementation. The methods were executed by junior consultants, who no longer needed the analytical capabilities and business knowledge of past professionals.

Methodologies began to spread to other facets of consulting like strategic planning, etc. In the 1990’s a new wave came in business process re-engineering, producing new business transformation methodologies. These methodologies concentrated on the business, but avoided IT, since business change could be executed quickly, and IT change was notoriously slow. This created a gap the other way between the business and the system.

Then integrated applications systems were relabeled as ERP systems and proclaimed to employ industry “best practices” that would automatically solve the problem. Many consultants supported a particular ERP package implementation, so then system planning and system evaluation and acquisition methodologies favored that package to bring in the enormous implementation revenues.

But, ERP system implementation employed the same implementation methodologies that concentrated on conversion of existing data, business rules, and practices. Employing industry best practices required strong user effort beyond what the consultants provided.

In recent years, there have been exposes of the problems with management consulting. Books have been written about the bad practice that also developed within management consulting firms.

Much of the professionalism has gone out of management consulting. What do we have to do the bring professionalism back into consulting, particularly for business change and management improvement consulting.
This is one of the issues we have been discussing at the Business Change Forum, in order to define problems with conventional methods and discover breakthroughs in enterprise management.

We need to employ a new management consulting model that requires change by both the enterprise employing consultants and the management consultants and consulting firms. The enterprise must have the capability to manage its own development and manage the achievement of benefits. The consultants must get away from employing rote methodologies, and return to professionalism to work in partnership with the enterprise.

The new consulting model involves the following elements on the part of the enterprise:

o Structure the enterprise to define and manage precisely what the enterprise must do to be successful

o Structure enterprise capital to manage all capital utilized to produce enterprise success

o Install a professional capability to manage enterprise investments and development programs

The new consulting model involves the following on the part of consultants:

o Help the enterprise understand and plan the value to be created by change and improvement to provide the return on the investment

o Work with the enterprise in partnership to create precisely-defined value

o Provide proven professionals with analytical capabilities and specialty experience

o Leverage the enterprise teams to produce enterprise products and improvements. Do not do anything that the enterprise can do itself

o Work with the enterprise through to utilization of improvements for benefit and return on investment

o Do not implement information systems, implement the improved process that incorporates the system

o Do not provide consultant deliverables for review. All documents are accepted enterprise knowledge and records. There is one consultant deliverable, shared enterprise success

Management consultants need the new model to eliminate the old problems and risk in gaining benefit from business change and management improvement. Only when we have a way for the enterprise and their consultants to work together in partnership for measured success, will we have a way for consultants to return to the professionalism of old.

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Invoice Factoring Basics

Are you looking to get business financing? Read this article to learn about factoring financing. Factoring is easy to obtain and can help many businesses.

Keywords:
factoring, invoice factoring, factoring company

Can’t afford to wait 30 to 60 days to get paid by your clients? If you are like most business owners, waiting to be paid can be very challenging. In some cases it can mean lost opportunities. It can mean that you don’t bid for big sales because you know you won’t be able to play the waiting game. At its worst, it can spell disaster. It can mean that you need to delay payroll. It may mean that you don’t pay rent or taxes. It may force you to shut down your business.

If you are like most business owners, your first reaction will be to call your banker. Unfortunately, banks will not lend money to businesses that are new, have no hard assets or don’t have three years worth of profitable financial statements. At this point, most business owners give up, thinking that they don’t have any other options. However, they do.

If your company sells products or services to large credit worthy companies, you could qualify for invoice factoring financing. Invoice factoring reduces the time it takes for you to get your money to one day. How quickly could you grow your business if your invoices were paid in 24 hours?

As opposed to bank loans, factoring companies do not require hard collateral. The only requirement is that you have invoices form credit worthy clients. Factoring companies work differently than banks. A factoring company will provide you with financing based specifically on your invoices. This means that if your invoicing grows, your financing also grows.

Factoring is very simple:

1. You generate invoices for your products or services

2. You submit the invoices to your clients and to the factoring company

3. The factoring company advances you up to 85% of the gross value of your invoices (the remaining is kept as a reserve to offset disputes)

4. Once the invoice is paid by your client, the factoring company releases the 15% reserve and charges their fee

Factoring financing is easy to qualify for and can virtually eliminate the 30 to 60 days it takes for your customers to pay. It provides you with the necessary working capital to grow your company and take new opportunities.

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Offshore IT Enabled Services from Pakistan

Pakistan has been unable to produce software developers in increasing numbers, but does possess skilled workers in reasonable numbers in other fields that can provide services to clients all over the developed world through the Internet. These services range from data entry to telemarketing to insurance claims processing to payroll management to computer-aided designing to financial analysis and forecasting.

Keywords:
outsourcing,ITES

The IT revolution can still change the destiny of Pakistan, but will require a readjustment of the sights. This readjustment will require her to work with what she has, and not what she currently doesn’t!

Pakistan has been unable to produce software developers in increasing numbers, but does possess skilled workers in reasonable numbers in other fields that can provide services to clients all over the developed world through the Internet. These services range from data entry to telemarketing to insurance claims processing to payroll management to computer-aided designing to financial analysis and forecasting.

Pakistan’s doctors can be employed for medical data analysis; lawyers can provide legal advice over the Web; graphic designers can produce animations. The possibilities are numerous and the opportunities lucrative. The Internal Rate of Return (IRR) and Net Present Value (NPV) numbers for many of these opportunities are similar to those for the software export business.

As an example, look at the function of an insurance claims processing company. Say an automobile accident takes place in New York City. The claimant fills a paper form describing the incident and providing his particulars and submits the form to the insurance company’s office in New York. The company scans the form and sends it to the offshore company in Lahore, Pakistan. That form will be automatically routed to the computer terminal of a claims examiner. The examiner goes through the form and (using some simple business rules) determines the validity of the claim and sends his decision to the insurance company in New York. End result: the New York-based company saves 50 per cent of the processing cost!

The customers for such IT-Enabled Services (ITES) are looking for more than one benefit: on the one hand, they want to achieve cost reductions of around 50 per cent, and on the other, they want an improvement in the current level of their services. By outsourcing the non-critical tasks, they also want to focus all their energies on the processes that form the core of their businesses.

Canada is the easiest market to get ITES work from, as it has the highest percentage of businesses that use outsourcing services. Number two on the list is Australia, followed by the US. A higher percentage of companies in the energy sector outsource, followed by the financial services and then, technology companies.

Companies that outsource look for service level guarantees, a proven track record and specialization in the business process of interest from the providers. Many outsourcing relationships fail because of organizational resistance in the client company, unclear performance metrics, or the client’s loss of control over the outsourced business process.

The primary advantage that Pakistan’s ITES businesses enjoy is the relatively low cost of labor. Secondary advantages are zero corporate taxes and low-cost infrastructure. The time zone difference between Pakistan and the US can also be an advantage in certain ITES businesses.

The key challenges that an ITES entrepreneur faces is marketing the service that he or she is striving to provide and ensuring the confidentiality and security of the client’s data. Another challenge is ensuring the quality of the service that can only be achieved by having a clear and continuous organizational focus on the training of the service providers.

Pakistan-based ITES businesses face three types of competitors. The most significant competition comes from prospective clients carrying out the non-core tasks themselves. However, if clients focus on non-core tasks, they suffer from higher costs and lower efficiencies. Hence, they can be enticed by offering high-quality service at a lower, fixed cost.

The second type of competition comes from developed-countries-based outsourcing operators. They run very efficient businesses but are hampered by higher labor costs. The final type of competition comes from outsourcing operators based in low-labor-cost countries like India and Philippines. Pakistan-based ITES businesses don’t really have any advantage over them, but can ignore that competition for now as the demand clearly exceeds the supply.

In summary, ITES is Pakistan’s irresistible value proposition because of the availability of the trained human resource in reasonable numbers. Moreover, increasing the size of this human resource is easier as compared with what is required for software development.

ITES is a lucrative opportunity for forward-looking entrepreneurs. While selecting an ITES sector, they should look for human resource-intensive business processes in which the difference in the cost of labor between Pakistan and the target market is the largest. They should focus on utilizing their existing strengths and should also try to develop contacts with Pakistan-origin expatriates for marketing purposes. To achieve long-term success, they should look for value-adding partnerships with international companies and focus on organizational excellence and customer satisfaction.

The US economy as a whole is depressed, resulting in squeezed revenues for almost all companies. To meet their profitability targets, most companies have no option but to cut costs. Pakistan’s companies can benefit from this situation by offering IT enabled services and software development services at attractive rates. These should be the best of times for Pakistan’s companies.

The economic downturn in the US is an opportunity for Pakistan’s ITES and software development companies, not a setback!

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