Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) is something that encompasses a multitude of industries – from pharmaceutical products to foods. These are obviously the sorts of industries which require careful monitoring and supervision and GMP consulting is on the increase as companies look to garner the information that will keep their manufacturing processes running smoothly.

GMP consulting will help manufacturers of medical products, supplements and pharmaceuticals ensure that they are carrying out their actions responsibly and in line with industry regulations. Generally speaking, Good Manufacturing Practice guidelines will vary from country to country and it is the USA, UK and Europe that most companies seek the use of GMP consulting firms.

The Importance of Quality Control

It is obviously of vital importance that quality control is a primary concern when it comes to the pharmaceutical industry – and the use of GMP consulting firms can help companies understand the steps that they need to take to make sure there products, whether they be supplements, medical devices or food, are of a suitably high standard.

Pharmaceutical products, such as dietary supplements, are being increasingly scrutinised than ever and, as such, it is imperative that those companies who are involved in their manufacture are well positioned to comply with all the regulations that are imposed by watchdogs and regulatory bodies.

The Element of Surprise

It is prudent for pharmaceutical goods companies to realise that regulatory bodies are well within their rights to make unannounced visits to their manufacturing plants to ensure compliance with guidelines. As such, using Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) consulting professionals is advisable so that they can be safe in the knowledge that their plant adheres to the requisite stipulations and guidelines of the regulatory bodies.

The processes behind Good Manufacturing Practices are not strict instructions of how products must be manufactured – but rather a set of guidelines which must be followed during the manufacturing process.

Using GMP consulting experts will help manufacturers of medical devices, supplements and pharmaceutical goods understand exactly what it is their responsibility to know whilst they are manufacturing their goods – whether this is in the UK, USA or throughout the world.

To operate profitably, today’s Independent Computer Consultant must function on a Managed Service Model, providing proactive monitoring and remote support for a flat-monthly fee. But when so many of today’s small businesses are still accustomed to the outdated model of hourly support, it can be a challenge to convince them that preventing downtime through daily monitoring is less expensive in the long run than only having the consultant in whenever a problem occurs.

How do you make your case to your prospective (or current) small business customer that moving to a flat-fee, proactive model makes sense? Convert downtime into dollars and your point becomes easy to see.

According to a recent survey from International Data Corporation (IDC), the average small business generates a revenue of approximately $3.6 million dollars annually. As we Independent Computer Consultants tend to serve clients on the smaller side, let’s round that number down to $2 million to be safe.

If the client has 10 employees, we can estimate that each employee generates $200,000 of revenue per year. With 260 working days in a year and 8 hours per day, that breaks down to approximately $96/hr. per employee. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a tremendous amount on the surface, but add up the total number of service calls that might be made over the course of the year, and then couple that with the cost of doing repairs at an hourly rate, and the expense can really add up.

But let’s take a look at the big picture and consider the type of firm-wide problems that can be prevented. What if a hard-drive in the server were to fail and the backup hasn’t run in weeks, or a virus spreads across the network, or a hacker hijacks the server and sets it up as a spam relay. Issues like these affect millions of small businesses every day and can bring the entire company to a halt. With the cost of downtime for the entire company for a day being approximately $7680, plus the cost of repair at an hourly rate being approximately the same (assuming an average rate of $100/hr.), the true cost of a day of downtime is almost $16,000.

That doesn’t take into account the possibility of lost sales, lost data and lost time required to recreate lost data, damages to customer relations, etc, which could multiply that cost even more and in some cases be financially devastating to the small business.

Considering that a Managed Service Plan for a small company costs on average $1200/mo. or $14,400 annually and that any one of the above mentioned potential problems could easily be prevented with your included system monitoring, it becomes very easy to see how your Managed Service can provide a much greater value to a small business than an hourly support computer consultant who’s simply standing by waiting for a problem to occur.

Now tack on the benefit of being able to provide instant customer response through your remote support utilities (rather than having the customer wait for hours for their computer consultant to arrive), the increased productivity that will be gained by keeping the systems current, and the overall peace of mind that’s gained by knowing the network is being monitored around the clock, and it can be very difficult for a responsible small business owner to not switch to your Managed Service Plan.

Making the case for why switching to a managed service is a financially wise decision is an excellent foundation for getting a client to convert, but to guarantee your ability to seal the deal, you’re going to need to use tried and true sales techniques to combat any other objections that your client may try to raise. These techniques, along with tons of proven sales and marketing materials can be found at the author’s website.

Do you have a talent for disassembling and reassembling things? Are you good at figuring out how things work? Or maybe you have a knack for math, or physical sciences. If so, engineering might be a great way to make your living. Either way, if you’re reading this article, you’ve probably already decided to look at a career as a consulting design engineer.

What’s a consulting design engineer? That’s an engineer who’s been contracted to design a new complex system, whether it’s the wiring for an office building, a new fire suppression system for an aging school, or a new set of interdependent factory machines. Usually, a contracting firm or a municipality will hire a consulting design engineer whenever a major engineering project needs to be done.

If you’re looking at a career as a consulting design engineer, you’ll likely need to specialize in an engineering sub-discipline, like mechanical, electrical or communications design engineering. Here’s a quick primer on what you’ll need to do in order to become an engineering consultant.

Learn the basics. If you’re in high school, now might be the time to choose the elective classes that’ll help you learn the scientific basics necessary to learn the skills fundamental to becoming a consulting design engineer. Take advanced math and physics classes, as well as chemistry and biology as well. Also helpful will be art classes — drawing and drafting are essential skills. And don’t downplay shop classes; vocational-technical schools have great resources for budding engineers.

Pick the right college. This is where you make a list. Find all the colleges and universities with great engineering programs. Visit campuses. Make appointments to meet professors. Look at facilities. List your top schools, and your safety schools. The top engineering schools in the US are Cal Tech, UC-Berkeley, MIT and Stanford. Other great schools: Penn State and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In Canada try McGill University, The University of Waterloo or the University of Toronto. If you can’t get into a top school, think about whether it’s worth waiting a year to try again, or contacting the admissions office to see how you could do better on a second try. You can take classes at a local community college in the meantime, or try for an internship at a local engineering firm.

Get an Internship. Just because you’re in college doesn’t mean you can’t get great work experience. Visit your college internship or career counseling office to find out about local engineering firms that offer internships. These are a great way to get onto a staff as soon as you graduate.

Work! You won’t become a consulting design engineer right out of college. You’ll have to spend a long time working in your chosen field before your command of the trade is strong enough to strike out on your own as a consultant. Don’t worry, though — it’s very rewarding work.

A few years ago I suddenly found myself without a job. This came as a bit of a shock since I had just completed my MBA degree, resigned from the government, and moved to a new city to take a senior management position with an international training agency. It had looked like my future was all set. I seemed to be on the threshold of an international career path for the remaining 15 to 20 years of my working life.

Unfortunately — or perhaps fortunately, as it turned out — when I took that new job it quickly became apparent that I had jumped aboard a sinking ship. In a matter of 17 short and hectic months, my brief career with that agency ended. Not long after, that organization lost its funding and disappeared into the sunset.

Starting Over Isn’t Always Easy

Finding myself unemployed for the first time in my 25-year working life, my initial impulse was to launch into reaction-mode and immediately start searching for another regular position, or a “job-job”, as I now call those conventional types of jobs. After all, that’s all I had really known up to that point in my life.

A few times over the years I had gotten close to escaping the bureaucracy, but fear and life circumstances always conspired against me. I invariably chose the “easier, softer way”. After all, there’s nothing much more secure than a predictable paycheck coming in every two weeks, automatically, like clockwork, for a lifetime. (Yawn… wake me up when it’s over!). As it turned out, I didn’t even have to make the decision for myself; a board of directors made it for me when it decided to eliminate my job.

Fortunately for me, before I panicked and jumped into serious job-hunting mode, I came to the realization that more than 25 years of living from paycheck-to-paycheck and achieving very little, in a lasting sense, was more than enough. It occurred to me that it was my opportunity to do something different. I reasoned that working for a large company wouldn’t be much different from the government scenario I had already endured. It’s just a function of size more than anything else. I could see that with a large company I would just be another one of thousands of “cubby-hole dwellers” waiting for retirement to eventually arrive. I cringe now, just thinking about such a fate!

Not long after that I hung out my shingle as a private business consultant and business writer. Sounds easy enough, but it wasn’t. Like everything else in life, I had to pay my dues and learn a lot of things the hard way. Because I have always been an “experiential” learner it took me almost two full years to become completely disillusioned with business consulting and copy writing. Actually, I was genuinely surprised to find out the many negative aspects of what I had always seen from the outside as “freedom”.

The Downsides of Consulting

* I soon realized that there were only so many hours in a day that I could be working as a consultant, thus limiting me to a fixed income, just like when I worked for the government — except there were no fringe benefits. Not to mention, no income between contracts or while preparing proposals.

* My previous corporate “bosses” had simply been replaced by demanding and often ungrateful “clients”. At least those bosses had a direct interest in keeping me happy as an employee by providing decent pay and working conditions. Clients had no stake whatsoever in the success or well-being of me or my business.

* I was frequently short-changed by clients. Many of them “used” their option to switch to a competitor as leverage to squeeze me down to the lowest possible per diem rate, forcing me to work for fees much lower than what I was worth.

* The only time I ever received feedback from clients was when they wanted more, or when there was a problem. No matter how hard I might have worked to produce a high quality product that I was proud of, it was rare to receive any kind of positive feedback from a client. Their attitude always seemed to be, “after all we paid for it.”

* Each time I got a new client I had to prove myself all over again from scratch. Since the new client does not know you, and you haven’t worked with them before, one often has to spend a lot of time and effort just showing them that you are indeed qualified for the job.

Transitioning Online

So, as I learned during that period, life as an independent consultant wasn’t necessarily all it was cracked up to be. Nevertheless, I am thankful for that false start in consulting, since it was that real-life experience which led me directly to my current career path of the past decade, in which I have been making my living entirely online.

In fact, it was during my time as a consultant that I had noticed that a certain group of individuals, some of them in situations similar to mine, were actually making their living online. It appeared that a few of these online entrepreneurs were doing very well.

Now that I’ve been successfully earning my living online for the past decade as an independent webmaster, I realize that my period as a consultant was a necessary transition phase on my way to becoming an online entrepreneur. I don’t regret my time as a consultant but I have to admit that the numerous downsides of that lifestyle had never occurred to me before I tried it myself. I would much rather be making my living as an independent online entrepreneur.

Since the horrifying images of 9/11 and the constantly haunting terrorist alarms on daily news, the security consulting sector has multiplied in its size and its market demands. The positive aspect of inquiring security companies to analyze your workplace and give you effective tools for advance security, are priceless. Nonetheless, there is also another side to the coin, the negative aspect of acquiring security firms, that which many say overrides the positive.

There are numerous unimaginable amounts of security firms in the international market, and each security consulting company operates differently. Who then should you chooses and trusts to do the right job? Well, the first step is to try to check their client history. What type of projects do they seem to specialize in? Moreover, check the accountability of the security consulting project reference; it would be smart to call those clients and check if indeed these projects were performed by the security firm. In addition, while you are already calling to check if the security consultancy company false advertised, try to also check if their clients came back to acquire more services from the same security company; if yes, this would indicate that this security consulting firm offers satisfying services, and is not all talk no game.

Moreover, oftentimes if you acquire services from a security consulting firm, you will be required to share important and secured information with the security personnel. Can you trust that the company would not abuse these privileges?

Security consulting personnel are professionals in the field of counter security threats, and therefore they are experts in hacking and breaching procedures. Not only do security personnel know the procedure to abuse the system, but they also know how to avoid counter measures.

Yet, behind all these scaring and threatening aspects of security firms, there is a large positive attribution these companies provide. Putting trust issues aside, most security consulting personnel have held major positions in the security field and can provide priceless experience and real-life knowledge and personal expertise to their clients. Secondly, security consultants say up to date on security measures and techniques, they are experts in this field and can therefore provide the best solutions to threatening situation and security problems.

Overall, the positive aspect and large benefit of acquiring security consulting firms to help your company with security problems, overrides the threat of an untrustworthy consulting company abusing the project or your workplace. The trick is, just be wary… that’s all.

Basically, the role of a tax consultant is to give advices, to prepare, and to assist individuals or companies in tax filing or returns. They are also known as tax preparers. They also have to suggest steps which would help companies save more money. Moreover, they are experts on matters related to tax. Tax consultants, or tax advisors, are financial experts that are familiar with all the tax laws. Because companies and individuals pay high taxes to the government, they need a tax consultant to minimize their taxation exposure by using effective tax management strategies.

Tax consultants are expected to fulfill certain responsibilities. One, it is his/her responsibility to keeps his/her client’s tax to the minimum, keep track of the latest schemes provided by different companies, banks and organizations, and provide suggestions which are according to the financial ability of the clients. It is their responsibility to give suggestions which are of their best policy. And finally, they also must provide the necessary information to ensure that the client is following all the legalities.

Additionally, there are also certain duties that tax consultants must understand and keep in mind. First and foremost, they have to act fairly, but at the same time with a higher degree responsibility with the Internal Revenue Service. They’ve got to have knowledge regarding all prevailing tax laws. In addition to that, when they advise their clients, it must always be in regard with the accuracy of the client’s documents and related penalties. On the preparation and submission of documents to the Internal Revenue Service, the advice on the best practice. They check for the standard of practice of the company or the individual’s tax documents. It is their duty to evaluate the reasonableness of the assumptions made in tax calculations, to determining the relevant facts, and to arrive at a conclusion supported by the laws. And most importantly, they are able to build clear communication with their client regarding the terms of the engagement, etc.

It is then clear that this is a professional area where you will need specific professional qualifications to be successful. However, despite all these professional qualifications, it is still important for the tax advisor to be equipped with enough experiences. Also, it is important to have very good knowledge regarding the environmental factors as well. Such as change in tax rules and change in other government rules that might affect the client or the client’s business.

A Professional SEO Consultant knows their job and that’s to drive free traffic to your business website…or you may here them refer to the web traffic as organic…which means free website traffic. During your consultation with your SEO Consultant, you may also here the phrase search engine optimization many times which is the process that’s used to get more visitors and increase search engine rankings.

Search engine optimization, also known by the acronym SEO, has become an extremely important skill that is being sought after by more and more businesses. When someone goes to their favorite search engine and types in a word or phrase, the results that are returned by the search engine are known as the search engine results page. If you’re a business that sells knitted scarves, it makes sense that you’d want to show up on the first page of search engine results when someone types in the phrase “knitted scarves.” The process of optimizing your website so that it has a higher likelihood of showing up on the first page of results is called search engine optimization. Here are 3 tips that will help you choose a professional SEO consultant.

1) Come Up With A Clear Game Plan

It’s incredibly important that you know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish. In other words, merely saying you want “better search engine ranking” is too vague. You want to create parameters that will help guide the conversations that you have with prospective SEO consultants. They’ll appreciate working with someone who has measurable goals and who appears to be prepared. The process of coming up with a clear game plan will also be immensely beneficial to you because it will help you better understand what you’re seeking, thereby helping you be more organized.

2) Pay For Results, Not Promises

You will more than likely have to pay your SEO consultant some money upfront — which is perfectly understandable. Assuming you and your consultant can agree to a clearly defined goal, the ideal payment plan would include a provision whereby a portion of the payment you owe is due when the results you achieve are reached. This aligns your interests with those of your search engine optimization consultant. This is not a strict requirement, but something for you to consider.

3) Work With Someone Experienced – You Can Trust

Work with an SEO Expert that’s not looking for a one hit wonder. Optimizing your website is not an even it’s a marathon. Look for someone that practice what they preach. A good way to check. Google search the search term – in this case it’s search engine optimization your City and State and see who’s first, second, third etc…. Then check other keywords like increase web traffic add your State. If you get the same person…especially with multiple listing on the first page…obvious they are a professional SEO strategist.

Search engine optimization is becoming a household word. More and more businesses are trying to find the best SEO services available on or offline, mainly because it’s getting harder and more expensive to compete using the same old advertising tactics that were used years ago. Keep in mind if you don’t hire a professional consultant your competition more than likely will. If you implement the aforementioned 3 tips when choosing a professional SEO consultant, you’re more likely to be happy with your selection and with the results you get from working with the individual or company that you’ve chosen.