The Small Business Tax Help Blog

Archive for January, 2009

No skills needed to be a tax preparer

When the editors at the Post-Dispatch finally wise up and fire me, I think I’ll hang out my shingle as a tax preparer. What, you may ask, does an paunchy old newsie know about preparing taxes? To which I reply, “Who cares?” No training or experience is required. I got that word from the very top.

Sharron Jackson Fox 25 Interview – Free Business Classes

Insurance companies continue to face intense pressure to improve performance, increase profitability, deliver superior customer service, and increase shareholder returns. In recent years, Business Process Management (BPM) has emerged as a proven technology that helps insurers meet these business objectives and gain competitive advantage. Following are some of the key advantages delivered by BPM for insurance companies.

Benefits

Improve profitability & lower expense ratios

Process automation leads to significant cost savings due to reduction in manual effort, elimination of unnecessary tasks, and so an overall increase in operationalefficiencies. BPM deployed on an enterprise-wide scale helps companies increase profits and improve their business performance, thus making them potentialcandidates for better financial ratings.

Improve customer service and agent management

BPM allows insurance companies to automate flow of information, notifications, and alerts with agents and customers, thus allowing better and more up-to-dateaccess to information. BPM speeds up processes, reduces lag time, and ensures that tasks do not fall through the cracks.

Deliver superior underwriting results

BPM makes it possible for insurance companies to standardize on a common underwriting process. Each division can use different rules but access the commonprocess, thus allowing for better control and monitoring. Underwriting personnel can concentrate on knowledge-based functions of their roles and return better results.

Increase productivity

BPM software enables seamless integration of workflow tasks with back-end systems, thus removing the need for mundane tasks such as manual reconciliation, visual dataverification, and typing-based data entry. Process automation and integration also improves the agents’ productivity, giving them another reason to align with a carrier besides price or increased commissions.

First Midwest Bancorp, Inc. Announces 2009 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Results

Solid Core Operating Earnings — Proactively Addressing Credit — Improved Capital Position

Non-Profits And The Economy

The Media Consortium: Weekly Audit: Geithner, Bailouts, and the Financial Crisis

By Zach Carter, Media Consortium Blogger The AIG bailout is one of the largest redistributions of wealth from ordinary taxpayers to bigwig bankers in history,…

Van Helen – When Love Comes Walking In