News & Updates

eThink Education Partners with ASI to Bring LMS and Content Services Together

eThink Education, a world-class LMS solutions provider, announces a new partnership with Absolute Service Inc. (ASI), a market leader in production and content development support services for publishers and content providers. ASI provides clients and partners with a full-service production package that includes traditional production services like copyediting, proofreading, and page layout; content development support services like data/content uploads and meta-tagging for LMS/CMS systems, online research, and project management; art creation and revisions for both print and digital; HTML/XML tagging; ADA-compliancy production; QA/QC services; and much more. With over 20 years of experience, ASI has been helping clients and partners with low-cost, high-quality solutions for all their production and content support needs. [Read more...]

Eye of the Beholder: The Cost of Creating Beautiful Art

One of the most costly and time-consuming tasks in publishing is the creation of high-end art. Whether it’s art for the education market or scientific art to be used in journals and books, publishers struggle to manage art budgets and find the right resources. While some may look at licensing images, this solution is far more viable for photographic images as opposed to actual figures and art, where the content often requires a piece of art to be created to illustrate a particular process or to visually represent specific content presented to the reader or user. And, with content now available through both traditional print and digital media, the need for art has grown even more. [Read more...]

Keeping Up With Compliance: Ensuring Your Content Reaches Everybody!

With over 20 years of experience, Absolute Service, Inc. has provided a variety of services to the education, publishing, printing, and healthcare markets. Over the years, these markets have evolved and the communication needs for both have grown. As the target audiences have changed, what were once primarily print-centric deliveries now include a host of digital deliverables. No longer can the focus solely be on a printed book, catalog, or directory, but content has to be delivered electronically to reach a wider audience. With this evolution, more than ever, companies must consider their audience and take into account disabilities, special needs, and other constraints that could prevent their audiences and users from receiving this content. [Read more...]

What does your data mean to you?

How many times have you started a reporting project, an analysis project, or any project, for that matter, only to discover the data you were planning to use is just not in the greatest shape? In this world of big data, bad data is becoming more and more common. As we all strive to be more on-demand and personalized, we embrace the cloud, mobile technology, and of course, social collaboration and media. All the data we collect all day long is very valuable. But, unfortunately, we have let the quality of our data decline. [Read more...]

Opposites Attract: Marrying Print & Digital in Perfect Harmony

Several years ago, with the growth of digital media, many declared that print delivery was dead. Ebooks, audiobooks, online content, e-learning, and podcasts were poised to replace traditional books, magazines, textbooks, workbooks, and other print products. Some “experts” even went so far as to predict that print products would be gone within the next decade and digital products alone would pave the path of the future. [Read more...]

Initial Questions to Ask About Outsourcing

As more and more companies are beginning to look at ways to reduce internal costs and manage the level of onsite staff, the idea of outsourcing has become a more popular management strategy in today’s business world. We see many companies sending their customer service phone support offshore, the increased use of subcontractors and freelancers to complete a variety of different tasks, and third party support of a variety of different office administrative tasks such as IT support, accounting and billing management, and HR/payroll oversight—just to name a few. Within the publishing industry, outsourcing has been a widely used practice for the last decade as the price of production and demand of the market to find more cost-effective solutions have been the center of budgetary discussions among publishers and content providers. Oftentimes, however, this discussion has not included the hidden costs involved in outsourcing and the all-important keys to ensuring a successful strategy when employing this approach. [Read more...]

The Keys to Successful Outsourcing

As mentioned in the article “Initial Questions to Ask About Outsourcing,” whenever a company is looking for ways to cut internal costs, they often look at employing an outsourcing strategy to meet this need. Before embarking on such an endeavor, key decision-makers must ask themselves a series of initial questions to understand their goals and the different options available. As previously discussed, the answers you develop will serve as a guide to help you evaluate and gauge the different options that are available. The next step is to explore the different options available to you. While investigating available resources, there are some important points to keep in mind that will help ensure you are successful with your new initiative. Let’s take a look at some of these initial “keys” to establishing a successful outsourcing strategy: [Read more...]

What did you say? Outsourcing? I’m not sure if that’s a fit for my company?

There seems to be a certain negative connotation surrounding the word “outsourcing” and what it means for companies. We believe that is in part due to the fact that a company’s employees want to “own” something and if you “outsource” it then the fear is that you no longer “own” it. In the past if you mentioned the word “outsource” in a meeting, typically the staff or team members get very defensive and believe this means you will be replacing them with easier and cheaper-to-manage staff through a third party. [Read more...]

A Brave New World: Successfully Navigating the Print Industry Landscape

Over the past two decades, the print industry has undergone a level of change few other industries have had to face. From print-on-demand to the digital delivery of content to commoditized pricing, printers have had to adapt at every turn to remain competitive and be successful. Today’s clients simply expect more, and printers have responded by offering a wider array of products and services, in hope of winning more project opportunities, increasing revenue, and solidifying relationships. This includes such services as data processing; appending, updating, merging, and purging records for more effective mailings; producing e-books and other digital content; content creation services, and much more. However, as with all shrinking markets, price challengers continue to close in on printers, forcing the survivors to find more cost-effective ways to offer these ancillary services to remain competitive, while meeting evolving client expectations. [Read more...]

Lowering Operational Expenses

As companies look to plan their annual budgets and expenses, they are faced with many challenges when balancing operational costs vs. sales and revenue. One challenge that all companies face is how to lower their operational expenses to accomplish all of their goals and tasks within limited budgets. At Absolute Service, Inc., we work with our clients to provide a wide variety of staff optimization services that enable them to allocate resources to higher-end tasks while utilizing ASI’s cost-effective solutions for crucial tasks and services in order to meet overall goals and expectations. A few examples of this include: [Read more...]

Staff Optimization

What does that really mean?

As companies continue to grow and expand their services, maximizing staff and looking for staffing efficiencies has become more critical than ever. This is where “Staff Optimization” comes into play. [Read more...]

 

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eThink Education Partners with ASI to Bring LMS and Content Services Together

eThink Education, a world-class LMS solutions provider, announces a new partnership with Absolute Service Inc. (ASI), a market leader in production and content development support services for publishers and content providers.

ASI provides clients and partners with a full-service production package that includes traditional production services like copyediting, proofreading, and page layout; content development support services like data/content uploads and meta-tagging for LMS/CMS systems, online research, and project management; art creation and revisions for both print and digital; HTML/XML tagging; ADA-compliancy production; QA/QC services; and much more. With over 20 years of experience, ASI has been helping clients and partners with low-cost, high-quality solutions for all their production and content support needs.

eThink’s fully-managed LMS solution provides a dynamic and customizable platform that is tailored to meet specific educational and business goals for all types and sizes of organizations and institutions. eThink takes a comprehensive approach to eLearning management by offering unlimited AWS cloud hosting, implementation, integration, customization, consultation, training, and management services, as well as content offerings through a network of valued partners like ASI.

Through this partnership, ASI can offer eThink’s clients access to a variety of hybrid solutions and resources. Having offered editorial and production services for more than two decades, ASI proudly serves publishing, editorial, and digital firms by assisting with their content creation and processing needs. In addition, ASI offers a variety of outsourcing solutions to markets where fast data processing can improve profitability, including data capture solutions, programming and file conversion services, content development support solutions, and much more. All of the content created by ASI can be seamlessly integrated into LMS instances created by eThink to create a best-of-breed learning ecosystem.

“We are excited about the opportunity to partner with a cutting-edge company like eThink,” ASI’s President and CEO Marty Ostendorf said. “We have continuously responded to changes in our business environment and have embraced the benefits and challenges of technological advancements, and we look to this partnership with eThink as another way both our companies can maintain a strategic edge in a highly competitive market.”

“eThink strives to continuously improve our clients’ experiences when it comes to building their ideal learning ecosystem,” said CEO & Co-Founder of eThink Education, Brian Carlson. “Partnering with ASI provides our clients with an integrated learning platform and content development solution that can help their specific learning and business goals.”

About eThink Education

eThink Education provides a fully-managed eLearning solution including cloud hosting, implementation, integration, consultation, and management services for open-source Moodle and Totara. Managed by experts, eThink’s total solution provides a dynamic and customizable platform to meet specific institutional and organizational needs for clients in various industries including Healthcare, Education, Nonprofit, Government, and Corporate. eThink also offers LMS and eLearning trainings through eThink Academy, as well as custom content solutions.

To learn more about eThink Education, please visit www.ethinkeducation.com

About Absolute Service Inc.

Established in 1994, Absolute Service, Inc. (ASI) is a quality provider of full-service content creation and preparation, from content development support to page make-up and digital output. ASI is a U.S.-based company with a production facility in the Philippines, offering a hybrid development model with expertise in both the United States and the Philippines. This model affords their clients excellent quality and service delivered at market competitive prices. Their primary markets are educational content providers (both K-12 and higher ed), medical and scientific publishers, and healthcare service providers.

To learn more, please reach out to us to discuss how we can help your company. We’re available by phone (410-830-6022) or email (asi.info@absoluteserv.com) and we’d love to talk with you about how we can help you and your company. [Back to Top]

 

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Eye of the Beholder: The Cost of Creating Beautiful Art

One of the most costly and time-consuming tasks in publishing is the creation of high-end art. Whether it’s art for the education market or scientific art to be used in journals and books, publishers struggle to manage art budgets and find the right resources. While some may look at licensing images, this solution is far more viable for photographic images as opposed to actual figures and art, where the content often requires a piece of art to be created to illustrate a particular process or to visually represent specific content presented to the reader or user. And, with content now available through both traditional print and digital media, the need for art has grown even more.

Many years ago, Absolute Service Inc. invested in creating a world-class art team to help publishers manage their art programs. Our artists have been working side-by-side with content teams to help create art that is driven by the specs writers and editors provide to create the art they desire. This includes the following:

• Tech art for math and math-based science content.
• Illustrative art for subject matter such as history, language arts, reading, and other nonscientific content.
• Scientific art for biology, chemistry, anatomy, and more.
• Infographics combining content and images to present data and text in a visually engaging manner.
• Maps and other complex art requiring large amounts of detail.
• Basic image conversion services such as resizing, reformatting, etc.

We have created art for both print and digital deliveries, ranging from simple to the most complex art. We are accustomed to working with written specs or instructions that detail the type of art needed, implementing the feedback of artists and writers to create a final piece of art. And, with a team of artists in the Philippines, we can offer lower costs to help any publisher or content provider build a library of art that truly complements their content.

To learn more, please reach out to us to discuss how we can help your company. We’re available by phone (410-830-6022) or email (asi.info@absoluteserv.com) and we’d love to talk with you about how we can help you and your company. [Back to Top]

 

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Keeping Up With Compliance: Ensuring Your Content Reaches Everybody!

With over 20 years of experience, Absolute Service, Inc. has provided a variety of services to the education, publishing, printing, and healthcare markets. Over the years, these markets have evolved and the communication needs for both have grown. As the target audiences have changed, what were once primarily print-centric deliveries now include a host of digital deliverables. No longer can the focus solely be on a printed book, catalog, or directory, but content has to be delivered electronically to reach a wider audience. With this evolution, more than ever, companies must consider their audience and take into account disabilities, special needs, and other constraints that could prevent their audiences and users from receiving this content.

In order to meet the needs of wider and everchanging audiences, companies must adhere to Section 508 and the requirements around compliance. This includes ensuring that documents are presented in a format so that screen readers can read the text correctly, charts/graphs/images have descriptive text to explain what is presented, and documents provide links for easy navigation. As users are now receiving information through various media (from digital documents and email to websites and online portals and learning management systems), companies must look beyond the printed material and ensure that they can provide digital communication that meets these new accessibility standards.

To find out more about 508 compliance, and to ensure that your content meets ADA requirements, contact us to learn how we can help. The ASI team can work with you to create needed 508-compliant PDFs and documents to deliver to your customers, users, and students. ASI can review your content and work with your team to structure your content for 508 compliance (defining reading order in documents, creation of alt-text for images/photos/graphics/tables, etc.). We also offer translation services to present your content in different languages to meet the needs of an ever-growing global customer base. We can even help you with the production of ebooks and web PDFs.

To learn more, please reach out to us to discuss how we can help your company. We’re available by phone (410-830-6022) or email (asi.info@absoluteserv.com) and we’d love to talk with you about how we can help you and your company. [Back to Top]

 

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What does your data mean to you?

How many times have you started a reporting project, an analysis project, or any project, for that matter, only to discover the data you were planning to use is just not in the greatest shape? In this world of big data, bad data is becoming more and more common. As we all strive to be more on-demand and personalized, we embrace the cloud, mobile technology, and of course, social collaboration and media. All the data we collect all day long is very valuable. But, unfortunately, we have let the quality of our data decline.

Knowing your data is bad is only half the battle, but it needs to be an immediate focus. We suggest spending time tracking the data entry point back and resolving that issue first. So many things can affect your data coming in, but fixing it from the start will help prevent the stream of bad data from continuing. The other half of the battle, after you have tracked down the input issue and found a solution, is fixing the existing data in your system. Data correction is only one specialty at Absolute Service Inc. (ASI), and we would be happy to lend a helping hand. Often, we can use one of many scripts we have developed to run against your exported data, correct the issues quickly, and provide you with clean results. But, as we all know, sometimes the biggest issue is either that the data was never collected to begin with or questions exist about the validity and integrity of the existing data. ASI has a large team of resources who work on these types of opportunities every day. Here are just a couple of examples of what we have done for customers recently:

• One of our customers had phone numbers for a 20,000+ set of data all stored in one single data field and we broke these out into separate fields (e.g. fax, main, mobile, other, etc.). Our team used the tools and pure manpower to go line-by-line and break data out into separate fields.
• Customer just completed an acquisition and was in the stages of integrating the data from the acquired company into their system. Unfortunately, information formats can vary between companies. Our staff researched these to find out who at each company should be receiving invoices, we captured their email addresses, and finally we provided our customer with the data in the format needed to update their systems.
• Customer received written and/or printed responses from their clients that included new and updated data. This info had to be confirmed and/or entered into an online system to ensure client data (e.g. name, address, phone, email, etc.) was up-to-date and current. ASI received these hard copies and made the data updates directly into the online system.

Data is vital, and as we move increasingly toward data-driven decisions with artificial intelligence and machine learning initiatives, it becomes even more important that the data we capture and store is clean and consistent! At ASI, we pride ourselves on being data specialists, and we partner with our customers to help with these opportunities and so much more!

To learn more, please reach out to us to discuss how we can help your company. We’re available by phone (410-830-6022) or email (asi.info@absoluteserv.com) and we’d love to talk with you about how we can help you and your company. [Back to Top]

 

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Opposites Attract: Marrying Print & Digital in Perfect Harmony

Several years ago, with the growth of digital media, many declared that print delivery was dead. Ebooks, audiobooks, online content, e-learning, and podcasts were poised to replace traditional books, magazines, textbooks, workbooks, and other print products. Some “experts” even went so far as to predict that print products would be gone within the next decade and digital products alone would pave the path of the future.

While it’s true that digital delivery has grown by leaps and bounds, the reports of print’s death were an exaggeration (to paraphrase Mark Twain), and there is still a large audience for more traditional content delivery. Publishers and content providers found that segments of their target markets still preferred or required print delivery. Educational content, while expanding new digital horizons in instructional design, still needed to be accessible in schools and districts where funding is low or technology is limited. Small publishers still had an audience that embraced the idea of reading content in print, and self-publishers built their businesses around the idea of authors and “average Joes” creating books as keepsakes for their family or their legacy. Conversely, the opposite also held true, as publishers who were traditional content providers needed to embrace the new digital media to complement or enhance their print products. The notion of digital’s dominance over print has become increasingly blurred, and it’s becoming evident that the two need to coexist—and in many ways form a harmonious union—to deliver content to a diverse and wide range of readers and users.

With clients and partners whose products span the full spectrum, Absolute Service Inc. has been instrumental in helping publishers and printers marry the two sides and deliver content through both digital media and traditional print. This includes:

• Publishers with a large catalog of legacy titles who need to digitize their content through such digital formats as XML tagging, ebooks, web/interactive PDFs, etc.
• Publishers who have delivered their content through print and are now looking to produce ebooks and web/interactive PDFs.
• Educational publishers with online content who now need to convert from digital to print in order to meet market demands or adoption requirements for specific states.
• Printers looking to offer competitive options (e.g., ebooks, web PDFs) that accompany the print services they already offer their clients.
• Publishers with LMS/CMS systems or online platforms who need help uploading or digitizing content into these systems.
• Educational publishers who have digital ancillary products that accompany either their print products or their online content.
• Companies with content that must be made accessible to all and need ADA-compliant formats.

These are just a few examples. With services that span both print and digital, and everything in between, ASI can assist you and your team to reduce costs and help drive higher revenue and increase profit margins.

To learn more, please reach out to us to discuss how we can help your company. We’re available by phone (410-830-6022) or email (asi.info@absoluteserv.com) and we’d love to talk with you about how we can help you and your company. [Back to Top]

 

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Initial Questions to Ask About Outsourcing

As more and more companies are beginning to look at ways to reduce internal costs and manage the level of onsite staff, the idea of outsourcing has become a more popular management strategy in today’s business world. We see many companies sending their customer service phone support offshore, the increased use of subcontractors and freelancers to complete a variety of different tasks, and third party support of a variety of different office administrative tasks such as IT support, accounting and billing management, and HR/payroll oversight—just to name a few. Within the publishing industry, outsourcing has been a widely used practice for the last decade as the price of production and demand of the market to find more cost-effective solutions have been the center of budgetary discussions among publishers and content providers. Oftentimes, however, this discussion has not included the hidden costs involved in outsourcing and the all-important keys to ensuring a successful strategy when employing this approach.

The first thing to remember about outsourcing is that, contrary to popular belief, it is not simply sending work offshore. Outsourcing can include a host of different resources, including offshore companies, U.S. companies with an offshore division, subcontractors that are solely based in the U.S., or freelancers (independently employed individuals, either onshore of offshore, which offer a host of different services). The first step to a successful outsourcing strategy is determining which of these types of resources best fit your needs. Ask yourself the following initial questions:

1. Why am I looking to outsource? Do I have too many internal costs to my level of revenue? Do I need to increase my capacity/production in order to meet growing sales and revenue? Do I need to expand my hours of production by employing resources that will work when my internal resources are not? Are there other reasons?
2. What are the determining factors that I will use to gauge the success of my outsourcing initiative? Am I strictly looking at the bottom line of costs vs. sales and my profit margins? What other factors do I want to consider? Reduced employee costs? Ability to better utilize and maximize internal resources? Ability to meet increased sales and requirements for more capacity/volume? Others?
3. Is price the sole determining factor in my decision-making process? Do I want to solely explore offshore options based on this? If so, what is available and do these companies offer the services required to meet my needs? What is the trade-off with engaging these types of companies, and am I prepared to accept these?
4. Do I want to look at a balance of price and quality by exploring those companies that offer hybrid solutions, with services both within the U.S. and offshore? Again, what trade-offs exist and how do these companies stack up with those companies that are completely offshore?
5. For the services that I require, are they limited to only U.S. resources? Are their confidential or sensitive material/information/accounts that automatically limit my search to those resources based in the U.S.? If so, do I want to explore actual companies or freelance independent contractors to complete these tasks?

By answering these questions, you will be establishing some loose guidelines that you can refer back to as your start to evaluate resources and outsourcing options. This high level discussion is just the starting point and hopefully provides you with some initial ideas and tips on outsourcing. Always keep in mind your overall goals, and hopefully this advice will assist you in achieving these.

Absolute Service, Inc. is a U.S. company with its own production branch in the Philippines. We also utilize a network of freelancers and subcontractors, along with offshore resources, to offer a hybrid solution that meets our customers’ needs. We provide high-quality and cost effective services to a wide range of publishers, associations, and clients all over the world. If we can be of any assistance in helping you with your outsourcing needs, including initial planning and deployment of an outsourcing strategy, please contact us at asi.info@absoluteserv.com. [Back to Top]

 

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The Keys to Successful Outsourcing

As mentioned in the article “Initial Questions to Ask About Outsourcing,” whenever a company is looking for ways to cut internal costs, they often look at employing an outsourcing strategy to meet this need. Before embarking on such an endeavor, key decision-makers must ask themselves a series of initial questions to understand their goals and the different options available. As previously discussed, the answers you develop will serve as a guide to help you evaluate and gauge the different options that are available. The next step is to explore the different options available to you. While investigating available resources, there are some important points to keep in mind that will help ensure you are successful with your new initiative. Let’s take a look at some of these initial “keys” to establishing a successful outsourcing strategy:

1. Many times we continue to keep work in-house because it’s “easier and our internal resources already know how to do it.” As soon as this excuse is given, we should ask ourselves the following: Could we not better utilize our internal staff to handle more complex or higher level tasks, thus taking advantage of their strengths, experience, and knowledge, while also offering them the opportunity to be more engaged and more productive employees?
2. Look at several different options based on the initial questions and narrow down a couple that you want to test and further vet. Start by interviewing different resources and getting information about the services they offer, their company structure and size (if applicable), their experience, and their current customers. What are their goals in working with you and how do they view this business relationship? What are their operating hours? How will they interact with you? In addition to pricing and services offered, you have to dig a little deeper to better understand what they bring to the table.
3. Understand that there is an upfront investment required when establishing a successful relationship with any resource you choose. Invest in establishing clear procedures and directions that document your requirements, the tasks you need completed, and your expectations to gauging success. This is not an overnight process; your current team will need to be committed to seeing this through and ensuring that your goals, as well as the goals of the resource(s) you have selected (which should be one of your determining factors) are met. Make sure both sides have bought into this and invest the time in establishing this upfront.
4. Lather . . . rinse . . . repeat. When first establishing the outsource relationship and the processes associated with this, you should always begin with a testing period where you have the resource(s) perform certain tasks/projects and then you evaluate them. Provide clear and concise feedback and then test it again. Did the resource improve or address your recommendations/feedback? This is key, as you will need to evaluate if any improvement was shown and how the feedback was addressed. Look at critical determining factors such as communication, timely response or delivery of items, overall understanding of the needed tasks/deliverables, and overall quality. How did your vendor rate in these different categories? You can’t expect perfection after the first try, and if they show promise in these areas then you should continue testing and fine-tuning. If there are major flaws after the initial testing, then it might be time to investigate a different resource.
5. Outsourcing is an ongoing endeavor in which you don’t simply “flip a switch” and then let it go. You have to view this relationship as a true partnership with both sides contributing to its success. You have to constantly work with your resource(s) to ensure that they continue to meet your expectations. You also have to ensure that, as your business evolves and practices/procedures change, you update and evolve your relationship with your outsourcing partner. If you have found a true “partner” to meet your needs, engage with them on ways to improve the relationship, look for measures to improve cost and efficiency, and work with them to establish new processes as you fine-tune existing ones to meet the ultimate goal of success.

These different discussion items are not the only “keys” to successful outsourcing, but they are certainly a good starting point. Always keep in mind your overall goals, and hopefully this advice will assist you in achieving these by providing you with some initial ideas and tips on outsourcing.

Absolute Service, Inc. is a U.S. company with its own production branch in the Philippines. We also utilize a network of freelancers and subcontractors, along with offshore resources, to offer a hybrid solution that meets our customers’ needs. We provide high-quality and cost effective services to a wide range of publishers, associations, and client all over the world. If we can be of any assistance in helping you with your outsourcing needs, including initial planning and deployment of an outsourcing strategy, please contact us at asi.info@absoluteserv.com. [Back to Top]

 

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What did you say? Outsourcing? I’m not sure if that’s a fit for my company?

There seems to be a certain negative connotation surrounding the word “outsourcing” and what it means for companies. We believe that is in part due to the fact that a company’s employees want to “own” something and if you “outsource” it then the fear is that you no longer “own” it. In the past if you mentioned the word “outsource” in a meeting, typically the staff or team members get very defensive and believe this means you will be replacing them with easier and cheaper-to-manage staff through a third party.

Well, that’s not the case! Staff augmentation is a form of outsourcing that allows you to “augment” or “add” to your existing team. Staff Augmentation allows companies to add staff to their teams based on the additional skills required to support their initiatives. Here are just a few of the benefits provided by staff augmentation:

• By adding new skillsets to the team, you can take advantage of your existing resources by leveraging their skills and adding external skills that compliment them.
• The employer’s burden is reduced substantially by avoiding costs and liabilities of direct employees
• If you need something done quickly that will require a lot of resources, then this is the ideal approach. You can find a team quickly and typically get started much quicker than the weeks and months needed to recruit and hire additional headcount that you might not even need in a few months when the project is over.

At ASI (Absolute Services Inc.), not only can we provide you outsourcing and staff augmentation solutions through a hybrid approach. If you use a hybrid outsourcing/staff augmentation with offshore resources, you will get the same results for your project at a quarter of the costs sometimes. Here are just a few ways we have recently helped some companies:

1. ASI has multiple clients that have found it difficult to keep accounts payable and data entry folks on staff. These staffing woes are happening all the while their workload was increasing. The quality and quantity that is provided by the internal staff is not consistent from team member to team member and management has to turn focus on measuring and maintaining KPI’s. We have provided these companies with both local and offshore resources that can be trained quickly to jump in and help with reviewing, coding, and documenting all the accounts payable duties. This way a company can utilize these internal accounting resources on higher level tasks and duties. We have local US project managers that keep an eye on daily progress and work directly with these companies to assure we are meeting their expectations. We typically provide a resource that completes a quality assurance step after the work is done. By providing resources across multiple shifts, we can help companies get caught up quickly. This increases quality and quantity while decreasing cost.
2. We had a client that needed someone to review and record the quality of phone calls. Our client recorded the calls, but needed someone to listen to each one and make sure that their staff was following standards and completing everything that needed to be completed all the while keeping a smile on their face with a friendly voice. This project turned out to be a huge success and ultimately helped increase customer satisfaction and sales.
3. We had another client that going through a project that required certain pieces of data in the system to be gathered and cleaned. The client exported the data, provided our team with the rules to update the data, and we provided the data back completed and cleaned for them to import back into their system.

ASI has a local team of project managers and consultants that can help you find solutions to your company’s challenges. To learn more, please reach out to us to discuss how we can help your company. We’re available by phone (410-830-6022) or email (asi.info@absoluteserv.com) and we’d love to talk with you about how we can help you and your company. [Back to Top]

 

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A Brave New World: Successfully Navigating the Print Industry Landscape

Over the past two decades, the print industry has undergone a level of change few other industries have had to face. From print-on-demand to the digital delivery of content to commoditized pricing, printers have had to adapt at every turn to remain competitive and be successful. Today’s clients simply expect more, and printers have responded by offering a wider array of products and services, in hope of winning more project opportunities, increasing revenue, and solidifying relationships. This includes such services as data processing; appending, updating, merging, and purging records for more effective mailings; producing e-books and other digital content; content creation services, and much more. However, as with all shrinking markets, price challengers continue to close in on printers, forcing the survivors to find more cost-effective ways to offer these ancillary services to remain competitive, while meeting evolving client expectations.

Just as the market has changed over the past 20 years, ASI has evolved to meet the ever-changing needs of printers and publishers. In addition to offering traditional composition services, we’ve grown our business to include a variety of prepress, production, and additional support services. And it doesn’t end there . . . ASI now offers a full line of business process outsourcing (BPO) services specialized for the printing industry. By offering this variety of services, we’re able to help printers nationwide expand their offerings and improve their bottom lines.

What does this mean to you? Our services provide the following benefits:

• We offer global resources at much lower rates than typical U.S. companies.
• Saving on prepress costs allows printers to offer more competitive pricing, which in turn drives more bottom-line revenue.
• This allows your team to focus on higher-end/higher-profit tasks that better utilize their skillsets and initiative.
• With ASI, you can offer your customers more services beyond just printing — from data processing to digital content that accompanies print components.
• Your company can truly become a “one-stop shop” for your clients.

To learn more about how ASI can assist you and your team to reduce costs and help drive higher revenue and increase profit margins, please reach out to us to discuss how we can help your company. We’re available by phone (410-830-6022) or email (asi.info@absoluteserv.com) and we’d love to talk with you about how we can help you and your company. Don’t steer away from these new demands and expectations — embrace them head-on and learn how ASI can help you navigate these new uncharted waters! [Back to Top]

 

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Lowering Operational Expenses

As companies look to plan their annual budgets and expenses, they are faced with many challenges when balancing operational costs vs. sales and revenue. One challenge that all companies face is how to lower their operational expenses to accomplish all of their goals and tasks within limited budgets. At Absolute Service, Inc., we work with our clients to provide a wide variety of staff optimization services that enable them to allocate resources to higher-end tasks while utilizing ASI’s cost-effective solutions for crucial tasks and services in order to meet overall goals and expectations. A few examples of this include:

• Data entry—everything from contact info to invoices and purchase orders to forms and project paperwork.
• Online research for potential sales leads, resources, contact info, company info, and more.
• Management and organization of company email accounts used for invoices/billing, customer inquiries, and more.
• Conversion of content and information from formats like Word into more data-friendly forms like Excel or CSV.
• Entry of content into online platforms or content repositories.
• Copyediting and proofreading of company content and information.

Companies are constantly looking for ways to improve the efficiency and output of their team members without sacrificing required daily tasks like those listed above. Providing this support allows team members to focus on the highest and best use of their time while still accomplishing tasks in a cost-effective and timely manner. This helps reduce operational expenses and increases profitability.

ASI’s team allows companies to have access to external resources that run three shifts during the week (24/7) and additional shifts on weekends. This way, ASI’s team can “queue up” work to be ready for a company’s internal team to tackle the very next day. This also ensures that a steady flow of work is ready and waiting (e.g., having a repository of sales leads for the sales team or invoices/paperwork entered and ready for the accounting team’s review) to maintain a continuous flow and keep tasks moving and progressing.

If you would like to discuss ways to increase efficiency and enhance your resources through staff optimization, or to learn more about the services that ASI offers, please reach out to us to discuss how we can help your company. We’re available by phone (410-830-6022) or email (asi.info@absoluteserv.com) and we’d love to talk with you about how we can help you and your company. [Back to Top]

 

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Staff Optimization

What does that really mean?

As companies continue to grow and expand their services, maximizing staff and looking for staffing efficiencies has become more critical than ever. This is where “Staff Optimization” comes into play.

Staff optimization is where companies look for ways to make the best use of their resources in the following ways:

• Create value by identifying the highest and best uses (HBUs) of their employees, and having staff members focus on these.
• Optimize time of current employees through the utilization of virtual employees, whose cost are lower and variable based on volume.
• Delegate more work by identifying the tasks that detract your employees from their HBUs and utilize virtual employees to supplement these “lower” value tasks.
• Reduce the need to hire additional staff to meet the demand of company growth, as staff optimization provided additional virtual employees and increases employee productivity.
• Increase successful hiring practices by finding the “right” people for the “right” jobs doing the “right” tasks.
• Establish a connection between staff efforts and company success by linking them to the higher end tasks and creating an objective platform for personnel evaluation.

The Results

How does “Staff Optimization” help?

The results of staff optimization yield tremendous benefits for your company’s growth and efficiency:

• Greater individual and organizational productivity
• More efficient (and profitable) use of your employees’ time
• Increased employee morale and job satisfaction
• Decreased turnover
• Higher customer satisfaction and greater profitability

Absolute Service Inc. provides “Staff Optimization” services. If you would like to strategize ways to increase efficiency and optimize your resources through staff optimization, please reach out to us to discuss how we can help your company. We’re available by phone (410-830-6022) or email (asi.info@absoluteserv.com) and we’d love to talk with you about how we can help you and your company. [Back to Top]

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