According to the Book on Military Administration, “In battles, as verbal communication cannot be heard clearly, cymbals and drums are used as commands” As visual communication and eye contact are hampered, banners and flags are used as signals. Now the purpose of using cymbals, drums, flags and banners is to draw attention of the troops and focus them for combat under the direction of the commander. Once the troops are united as one body, the courageous ones will not advance forward by themselves and the cowardly ones will not retreat by themselves. This is the art of directing larges forces in battles. – Chapter Seven, Sun Zi Art of War

For battles at night, use more torches and drums. For battles in the day, use more banners and flags. These different means of communication can be designed to influence the judgement of the enemy. – Chapter Seven, Sun Zi Art of War

As mentioned above, during day operations more banners and flags should be used for communication and during night operations, drums and torches should be used instead. From here we can see how observant Sun Zi is. He even noted down what type of communication we should use during each battle, but of course the list of tools mentioned is not exhaustive, communication channels should depend on the terrain as well. For example, if you are in a flat terrain, a larger banner (daytime) or fireworks (night) should be used for communication because they can convey accurate messages, if you have explained accurately what each signals meant. But note here is that your signals, not tools, should be like your strategy, it should change with every battle. If you have a fixed form of communication signals, sooner or later, your enemy will be able to decipher them and that is would likely be the result of your defeat. This explains why Sun Zi said the means of communication can be used to influence the enemy.

Business Application

Communication is very important in business. Communication breakdown can be detrimental to a business, like losing a big client or slow reaction to a rival’s move. With a strong understanding of each communication tools weakness and strength would you then be able to use it to your advantage. Good communication system can grant a company great flexibility, shorter reaction time and faster response. It is similar to an irrigation system. With good proper control system of the flow, accurate amount of water, water flowing to the right place, the fields will flourish because of it. These are capabilities that are extremely valuable in this dynamic business environment. Some forms of communication channels are e-mail, letters, internet messenger, telephone, internet telephony or video conferencing and face to face. I shall talk about their usage within the company. Please take note that having the proper communication tools is only one aspect of a good communication system though.

E-mail

E-mail could be formal or informal, nowadays because of the corporate frauds that happened in US, companies are now required to keep a copy of all the e-mails that are sent out to within and outside the company. E-mails does not solicit fast response from the recipients. It can be secure if the security system’s guideline and usage is strictly adhere to. E-mail is a cheap way of sending information and documents within the company and these information can be stored electronically thus cost savings arise from these characteristic. But one downfall of communication is emotions are not properly conveyed out. E-mails would be suitable for clear cut instructions or information that does not require immediate attention and preferably within a department. Cheap because can transfer with least costs throughout company even if overseas. It is prone to technology risks.

Letter

What is described here are paper letters sent from one department to another. It is only needed when you want to formalize a request or a work order. But this kind of communication is slowly being taken over by e-mail. Letters are more concrete than e-mail because electronic files are usually subjected to suspicion of editing or changing. Letter has the same characteristics as that of the e-mail but since it is tangible, it is not like e-mail where you can deny you have received it.. Security wise, it could be better or worse than e-mail depending on situations. It could be costly if you need to send it overseas. It is more reliable than electronic mode of communication.

Internet Messenger (Instant Messaging)

With the popular use of internet, internet messenger like ICQ, MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger are being popularized, it allows fast relay of information and nowadays these messengers have the capabilities to help you know whether the person on the other end is around or not. But again, it lacks the transfer of emotions. The voice and tone of your message cannot be sent out through the messenger, even with emoticons, misunderstanding can still occur. What you sent out could be in a tone of offering help like “What do you want me to do?” But others after reading the message may interpret, you are angry with him for doing something. But Internet messenger has its pros as well, it could be used as a channel for informal discussion within the company because some of these messengers can allow multiple users in a single chat windows. And it is cheap since most of them are free and information can be transferred overseas cheaply. It is prone to technology risks.

Telephone

Compare to the other modes that are mentioned, it is a relatively better channel of communication. Because your tonality, voice qualities are also transmitted reducing the chance of your message being misunderstood. But it lacks another communication characteristic that is important and that is body language. It definitely solicits fast response because you can only communicate when the receiver is on the other side at the same time. But it can be very expensive if you need to communicate overseas. And reliability should be better than any electronic channel since this industry has been around for a very long time.

Internet Telephony & Video Conferencing

Internet telephony is slowly becoming very popular because SMEs and MNCs can make overseas call cheaply. This also includes video conferencing, which is made more popular with the prevalence of broadband. It has all the characteristics of telephone, with video conferencing being better because body language, to some extent, can be conveyed as well. But reliability could be a problem depending on the infrastructure and service provider available on both sides. Setting it up is cheap with a web camera and broadband connection.

Face to Face

Up till now, this is the best form of communication, the only downside is you although you can observe and receive the full signals from your conversation party, the same thing can be said for the other party as well.

So choose the proper communication tools to effectively bring your message across. The correct communication tools can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your communication system thus improving your business process.

PS Koo's interest lies in Business (especially strategy formulation & execution, corporate leadership) and China History & Military Works and is currently doing research on combining these two together.

In a previous installment of medical billing software, we covered the many nightmares that a programmer has to go through to get that medical billing software on the market. In this article, we're going to reveal what the poor QA tester has to go through when getting the module fixes from the programmer. In the world of major headaches, this ranks up there with the worst of them.

The QA tester basically takes what the programmer does and makes sure it works the way it is supposed to work. But that's not where it ends. The QA tester, in smaller companies, also has to write up the documentation to show the end user how the software is supposed to be used. Sometimes just one wrong instruction can mean the difference between zero support calls for the software and a hundred calls an hour. What follows is a typical example of how this happens.

The medical billing software company is making an electronic billing module. The module requires that the user use a particular kind of modem with certain settings. The programmer sends the module to the QA tester and the QA tester walks through the procedure. The QA tester determines that the module is working correctly. What he or she doesn't realize is that the modem being used for the test was the wrong kind of modem and would only work on Windows 95 machines and not on 98 or 2000 machines. So the documentation goes out telling users that the modem has to be set a certain way but doesn't mention that this won't work on Windows 98 or 2000 because of a com port problem.

The software gets shipped out and the customers start to install the software, many of them on Windows 98 and 2000 machines. Much to their surprise, they find out that the modems do not respond to the commands from the electronic billing module. The calls start coming in. The first thing support does is ask the QA department if they bothered testing the software. Of course the answer is yes. They then demonstrate and low and behold, they are using a modem that is not supported. Turns out that they discover that this will not work on Windows 98 and 2000 machines. So what now?

The module has to go back to programming and somehow they have to figure out how to make the software work on Windows 98 and 2000 machines because of the com port issue. They ultimate create a program to emulate Windows 95 protocol for com ports and everything is fine.

It turns out that all of this could have been avoided if the QA tester had tested this on both a Windows 95 operating system and a 98 and 2000 operating system. But the software was only tested on 95 on an old modem so of course it was going to work.

If you work in a medical billing company then you will get a good laugh out of this. What you are about to read is a true story of an incident at a medical billing company. The names of the people in the company and the company itself, as well as its location have been changed so as to protect the innocent and the guilty. For those of you who don't work in a medical billing company, you may not believe that something like this can possibly happen. It can.

It was just before the next HCPCS update. The company, we'll call them, XYZ Billing, needed to get the latest HCPCS codes from Medicare. They did not have a contract with the medical billing software company, which is why they had to get the update directly from Medicare and pay for it. However, in order to do this, they needed the networking department to set up a link to Medicare, since they didn't do electronic billing. The networking department needed access from the security administrator in order to access the Medicare site. Add to all this, the programmers had to come up with something to actually work the HCPCS codes into the system because they did manual HCPCS and never did an update before. This should be a lesson to make sure you get ALL the functionality from your software vendor when purchasing the software.

Well, it turns out that networking was having problems connecting to the Internet because of a firewall that was put up by the security department. In contacting the security department, networking was told that they would not be able to drop the firewall because of direct orders from the corporate office because of a recent attack on their network where they were the victim of hackers and a DOS (Denial Of Service) attack.

In the meantime, the medical billing department was falling terribly behind with their billing because they didn't have current HCPCS codes. So the manager of billing, we'll call him John Doe, calls up Jim Smith at networking and Joe Brown at security and reads them both the riot act. He then calls up the corporate office and tells them that if they don't want their medical billing company to be in chapter 11, they'll drop the stupid firewall and let us get our HCPCS update.

To make a long story short, the firewall was dropped, security gave networking the access to connect to Medicare and networking made it so that billing could download the latest HCPCS codes. The medical billing people downloaded the codes and programming found a way to get them into the system, though it wasn't easy. They then immediately called up the software company and asked them to give them the HCPCS update as part of the software package.

If your company is like most, a great deal of paperwork is passed from department supervisor to department supervisor in order to approve an order, a purchase, or even a departmental change. The expected chain of events is that the document is initiated by a departmental coordinator. The document is manually carried or mailed via intracompany mail for review and approval. The company may require reviews and approvals from a large number of departmental managers or supervisors. The paper trail of a hardcopy document is extremely hard to maintain and trace. In fact, there is a high possibility of misplacing the document. The anticipated end result is that the original document eventually receives all the required reviews and approval signatures. The proposal is then finally authorized for execution.

There are numerous factors that could break this workflow process, thus delaying the expected outcome of proper authorization. One obvious problem is that the document gets lost. If there is a deadline associated with the written proposal, there could be high consequences to pay and the company could suffer a setback.

How many supervisors have extra time on their hands? If the document is delivered to a supervisor for approval, it may sit on a desk or in a “to do” pile for an undetermined amount of time. This could delay the entire workflow approval process.

Companies where documents and procedures are contained in an electronic realm avoid most of these workflow problems. The review and approval of traditional paper documents is replaced with electronic document routing. Documents created in PDF format are emailed to the correct reviewers. Electronic approvals, rejections, and comments are applied to the workflow documents. Additionally, if an actual signature is required, the documents may be printed. After final approval, the documents are indexed and filed with the appropriate review notes, comments, signatures, and date stamps into the electronic records management system.

A few of the features available for reviewing and approving PDF documents are:

1. Important text may be highlighted.

2. An audio clip may be incorporated into the document.

3. Reviewed and Approved stamps with names, dates, and times may be applied.

4. An electronic sticky note may be added.

5. Barcode may be applied for automated indexing.

6. Rejections and reasons for rejections may be added.

7. Signatures may be added electronically.

There are many advantages to automating your workflow process. The electronic documents cannot be lost or misplaced. The documents are emailed which may speed up the approval process. The features available for PDF documents simplify document reviews. The electronic documents are filed and stored for future retrieval.

If you're just starting out as a medical billing company, one of the first decisions you have to make is what claims you're going to support. In other words, who are you going to bill? Because of all the complexities involved with medical billing procedures, we can't possibly cover all the pros and cons of billing each type of agency but we will cover the main points. This way, if you are just starting out, you can decide what kind of claims and carriers you want to support.

Let's start with billing Medicare. Medicare is one of the oldest carriers in the United States. It is run by the government but each region and office is independent and has slightly different rules. So you'll have to check for uniformity between them. That is one of the drawbacks of billing Medicare. They should all be the same, but subtle differences make them difficult to bill the same way.

Another drawback of billing Medicare is that they are run by the government. The US government is notorious for its red tape. The amount of time it could take to get a claim paid via Medicare is better measured in dog years than people years. In the case of a disputed claim, you may never see the money until you're old and gray.

The good part about billing Medicare is that because they are a government agency, they are non- profit. So whatever they are supposed to pay you for a claim, as long as it is in their pricing guide as such, they WILL pay you. No questions asked as long as it is a valid claim. In that respect, you can't beat Medicare as far as knowing what your income is going to be because you know what you will be paid up front.

With billing a private insurance company like Prudential, you pretty much have the opposite problem. Because Prudential is a profit making company, customer service is critical. So they will make every attempt to process a claim as quickly as possible. Of course, with the larger insurance companies, this isn't always true unless you are a very large account. The reason is because small accounts are looked at as insignificant and are treated as such by large companies. If you are a small company, you are better off going with a small insurance company.

Also, because a private insurance company like Prudential has to make a profit for its shareholders, you won't always get the money for a claim that you expect. In some cases, you may get anywhere from 75% all the way down to 35% of the original billing cost of the claim. Don't expect to fight these companies and win this. They'll pull out all sorts of statistics, backed by lawyers, as to why your claim is only worth so much money. So with the large insurance companies, it's pretty much be happy with what you get and be glad you got it.

Companies spend millions of dollars trying to decipher what’s behind the buying behaviors of retail consumers.

But, what about B2B decision-makers? According to Bryan Eisenberg in an article at ClickZ, most B2B business decision-makers fall into one of four preference categories -- methodical, spontaneous, humanistic or competitive. Depending on the style of decision-maker you are trying to reach, you will want to set up your Web pages in certain ways. Here are the four preference categories:

Methodical decision-makers: Most B2B sales efforts are designed for these individuals. They care about rules, organization and methods. They’re practical, analytical, conservative and devour information. They can also be too rigid.

Spontaneous decision-makers: These business people are high energy, poised, adventurous, responsive, flexible and value authenticity. They seek individual expression and attention. They can often be impatient.

Humanistic style decision-makers are people-oriented. They care about relationships, harmony, principles and big-picture outlooks. They’re creative, listeners and seek meaning in their work. However, they can be perfectionists and slow to make decisions.

Competitive decision-makers are aggressive and competitive. They’re no nonsense and want things to get done. They are driven to achieve success.

While this is helpful information, I am not sure how to predict which type of decision-maker will arrive on your Web page. To reach all four types, do you try to include something for each style of decision-maker? Or do you set up your pages to appeal to one particular type of decision-maker to the exclusion of other types? How do you determine to which type you direct your appeal? If one type is more prevalent in your industry, is that something peculiar to your industry, or is it just a by-chance occurrence of luck?

And, finally, do small business owners tend to fall into one preference category versus others? I don’t think so. In fact, there is danger in stereotyping. Small business owners run the gamut of all different types, depending on the industry they are in and their own particular personalities and backgrounds. They’re different. They’re unique. In fact, they sound a lot like retail consumers.

My name is Edwenia Blake and I am 34 years old, engaged to an awesome young man and have a beautiful 6month old baby girl, Ava Amelia. However, it occurred to me that the masses of people are experiencing a world separation, or rather, the world divide. For example, in the future, there will no longer be a middle class, that would have once existed on our social stratification. There will be, at best, the rich and the poor, so you will either have money, and live or have no money, and die. Is there a way out? Yes. Free-Enterprise, the best kept secret and one of the most powerful money making vehicles around. For example, you can work a job and earn a living or you can build an enterprise and create a legacy. I spent 10 years working for some of the greatest companies in the world. For example, IBM and Sprint Corporation, but I was still not satisfied. Because at the end of the day, I found that my time was truly not mine. Finally, I made a bold decision to take control of my life and began building a foundation for a new legacy.

In October 2006, I was introduced to a well respected organization, Wealth Masters International, a lifestyle design company. This entity is committed to providing everyday people with an opportunity to redesign their lives and truly live out their destiny. What I found to be unique in its design are the principles in which they use to shape your livelihoods. For example, Wealth, Health and Wisdom are the key factors in how your life is enriched and how using these key elements can create an ongoing legacy for you and your family. Also, the product and services that the company make available to you are income earning strategies that have been used since the 1920’s, but were only available to the most elite. For example, tax strategies for business professionals, choice of entity secrets revealed and living trusts. Now, you may say to yourself, “I know all about this”, but believe me, you don’t. I am pleased with what I have gained through this company. Further, some may say, why this company? Simple. Consider the ongoing economic crises, which includes, but are not limited to, job loss, 30 and 40 percent cuts in salaries, increase in job displacement, credit card debt at a 4% minimum payment, foreclosures at an all time high, increase in crime and the no health insurance epidemic. Here you have it. No fancy words, just straight in your face, real life. So, if not Wealth Masters International, it will be something else, but that’s only if you see this world for what it really is and not what you may perceive it to be.

Is there a paradigm shift? Yes, people are becoming more educated on life and changing every day. Are people willing to take control of their livelihoods independently? Yes, what other choice is there when you are released from a career or job of 10, 20 or 30 years. Will there ever be equality for all man kind? No, but many would have seen what could have been a life changing opportunity, but failed to take a chance. Will that be you?

Wealth Masters International is a lifestyle design company, founded in 2005. This organization is based out of Texas, with memberships throughout North America. Also, this company has partnered with approved alliances and experts to assist with enhancing the well-being of its members.

I finally arrived at Allentown, PA to attend a business school just a few days ago. The long drive from my home in Vermont wasn’t too bad because the view was wonderful and relaxing. I arrived at the Allentown business school just in time to have a good weekend to explore before my classes started on Monday, although I would have liked to visit this city a little bit earlier in the month. That would have given the opportunity to get to know the town of Allentown, Pennsylvania little bit better and explore the business MBA school before my classes begin.

Getting into the Allentown business school was a bit of a struggle for me. I’m not talking about an academic struggle because this college school wasn't that tough. I also had good grades and good work experience when it comes to business classes. The struggle I’m referring to is an internal kind. You see, I did not think that I need a business education to make it in the world of business. However, my dad tried to get me to go of the Allentown business school because he graduated at that school.

I was not concerned with getting an education in business because I was more interested in direct sales experience. The Allentown business school graduates I met seemed to have a good abstract grasp of things like economics and management. However, they did not seem to be the kind of practical people who really succeed in business. In my honest opinion, it would just be a waste of my time to attend a business school.

Anyway, I was finally convinced to go to Allentown business school after spending a few years of doing sales. Many people say that a person can advance quickly even without a college education, but my experience proved otherwise. I was getting nowhere even though I was one of the best salesmen on my whole team. You can only be good at sales for so long because you will lose your knack for it after a while. This experience convinced me that it would be good to go to the Allentown business school. I knew that the Allentown business school would give me the opportunity to do other things in business besides sales.