Trying To Find Alternatives For Your Business Mail As The USPS Struggles

At one time, the entire country depended on the U.S. Postal Service to get messages around. Postal workers went about their rounds proud of how they practically held the country together delivering personal and business mail.

And then, the telephone became popular, FedEx and UPS became inexpensive and affordable and more dependable. Postal workers began to "go postal", the postal service began to lose money and salaries and benefits were cut. The worst came around Thanksgiving last year when they said they were closing down thousands of post offices and around the country and they began issuing pink slips to hundreds of thousands of postal workers.

How does all of this affect your business mail needs? If you are a small business owner, you are likely to see prices rise for for your postal needs. Perhaps it's time now to take a second look at your business mail needs and find cheaper, more reliable ways of getting your mail around.

The first thing you can do to help cut down on your business mail costs would be to review your mailing list and see how current it is. Perhaps there are people on there who are really not interested. You could send a postcard out to everyone on your mailing list and ask them to tell you whether they wish to stay on.

Whenever you need to send products to your customers over the mail, try not to use overnight delivery. It costs a lot of money. Instead, advertise longer delivery periods. Your customers will still only get their deliveries when they are told they will, and you'll save a bundle.

If you want to send brochures and flyers to your mailing list, you may consider sending virtual ones out instead of real physical ones. They'll help save the environment, too. All you need to do is sign up for MailChimp or AWeber for one of their e-mail marketing programs, and they will design a really attractive looking flyer or brochure for you and send it out. All you need to do is to send postcards out to your mailing list and ask everyone if they would like an e-mail opt-in.

It will be an added bonus that they'll give you their e-mail IDs, too.

Private electronic mail by companies like Zumbox is really taking off now. You get to send your promotional material to customers' virtual e-mail boxes, and it'll be cool.

Outsourcing Payroll Can Mean Major Cost Savings

There are any number of reasons why businesses choose to go with outsourcing payroll. Surveys have found one thing - that almost nine out of ten businesses, when they choose to outsource, do it to save on the cost of maintaining an in-house department. While they save considerably on the hassle, that doesn't really figure that high on their list.

So if you are considering outsourcing payroll at your company, chances are, that your company is interested in it for the cost savings, too. But is it possible that those kinds of savings will really not come your way? Are those cost savings real or illusory?

Well, outsourcing payroll, without doubt, can save a business money - up to 20%, by most accounts. But it really depends on the exact circumstances of the company in question. Not every company will stand to save as much.

Let's look at what those circumstances might involve.

The first circumstance to consider is the size of the business. The bigger the business, the more they're going to need to spend on maintaining a payroll department. They are likely to see huge savings in absolute terms. Small businesses are likely to see savings too even if they won't be much. For a small company though, the savings can truly mean a lot more.

Payroll usually falls within the HR department in most businesses. If outsourcing payroll becomes a point to consider, companies should begin to think about outsourcing the entire HR Department. They call it HR BPO, and the savings can be great. When a business decides to go the whole hogand outsources the entire department, they can expect savings of up to the third. That can mean quite a lot in these times of financial difficulty.

Companies might wonder - if they were to run an in-house payroll department, but if theyh equipped it with cloud computing software instead of on-premise software, would the savings achieved make outsourcing payroll unnecessary?

Not exactly. Major studies done on the matter say that while you can save something this way, it's nothing compared to completely outsourcing payroll and everything else.

The reason many businesses fail to consider outsourcing payroll for the cost savings seen therein is that they don't correctly calculate what it's costing them to maintain an in-house department. If theyy would only take everything into account, they would quickly see how spectacular the savings can be.

What Should The Medical Billing Companies Do Come 2015

Electronic health records are going to become mandatory by 2015. This will come amid resistance. The medical billing companies aren't happy at all. When electronic health records come online, the software will be able to automatically find out what insurance codes go where and it will look for submission errors. This is the kind of work that the medical billing companies are doing right now. When all of this is automated in the future, they'll be left without a job.

Most experts believe that there will be all kinds of opportunities for the medical billing companies. For instance, hospitals and other medical establishments will need a lot of help learning how to use electronic health records. This is a new area of business for the medical billing companies that they are eminently suited for.

There are a number of things that EHR cannot do, too. When a hospital gets the medical billing company on the line and begins to hem and haw about how their services aren't as useful as they once used to be, the billing company just needs to talk about all the things that EHR cannot do. For instance, how about collection calls from people who won't pay? Or how about attaining supporting documents or follow-ups? Software can just not replace this kind of thing.

Medical billing companies need to really work hard on preparing a sales pitch on how EHR cannot do everything. Once they get that through, there's another step. They need to tell their medical business clients that the transition to EHR isn't going to be easy, either. It could take years to make everyone become fluent its use. And who better to do it than the billing companies?

Seriously, those aren't even the oldest services that medical billing companies can provide hospitals that have EHR on the brain.

The EHR companies don't provide troubleshooting or tech support. They don't provide template customization. And even if they do, the medical billing companies can really go to town with it, providing personalized  high-quality service. That alone should keep them in business.

They have to help your client hospitals understand that it's a waste of time for them to invest themselves in learning about their EHR systems or finding out about tweaking them. It's not the kind of thing a medical professional is supposed to do. They're supposed outsource this to someone - like the medical billing companies.