Work From Home

Work From Home

There are many broad interpretations of work from home in today's society. Granted, a great number of people are employed in telecommuting jobs of one form or another. Its cost effective, good for the environment and makes people feel better and at ease to work from home, rather than drive miles to a conventional work place. Working from home also includes people that are searching for online businesses, rather than trying to fit into today's work world. Admittedly, online business is more risky, but the rewards are greater, and the satisfaction is second to none, for those lucky enough to learn the process. A few details first about conventional telecommuting.

Telecommuting, e-commuting, e-work, telework, working from home (WFH), or working at home (WAH) is a work arrangement in which employees enjoy flexibility in working location and hours. In other words, the daily commute to a central place of work is replaced by telecommunication links. Many work from home, while others, occasionally also referred to as nomad workers or web commuters utilize mobile telecommunications technology to work typically from coffee shops or myriad other locations. Telework is a broader term, referring to substituting telecommunications for any form of work-related travel, thereby eliminating the distance restrictions of telecommuting. All telecommuters are teleworkers but not all teleworkers are telecommuters. A frequently repeated motto is that "work is something you do, not something you travel to". A successful telecommuting program requires a management style which is based on results and not on close scrutiny of individual employees. This is referred to as management by objectives as opposed to management by observation. The terms telecommuting and telework were coined by Jack Nilles in 1973.

Educated as a physicist and engineer at Lawrence University, Ohio State University and UCLA, Jack Nilles began his professional career as an officer in the US Air Force at the Aerial Reconnaissance Laboratory of Wright Air Development Center in Ohio. After leaving active duty he continued his "rocket scientist" activities by heading the preliminary design of several remote sensing spacecraft and communications systems for the US Air Force and NASA. He was a consultant to President Kennedy's and Johnson's Science Advisory Council, the National Science Foundation and other federal departments. He also led the preliminary design project for the EROS Data Center, which provides remote sensing output to the general public.

In 1972 he joined the University of Southern California as Director for Interdisciplinary Research and began his formal research on telecommuting and teleworking, terms he coined in 1973. With USC's Center for Futures Research he led a number of studies of the present and future impacts of information technology and created the standards by which major telecommuting projects are judged. Now known internationally as "the father of telecommuting/teleworking," he founded the management consulting firm, JALA International, Inc., in 1980. He retired from USC in 1989 to devote full time to JALA.

He has developed and/or evaluated telecommuting projects for a variety of Fortune 100 companies, the state governments of California, Arizona and Washington, the city of Los Angeles, and other companies and organizations in the US, Europe, and South America. He is Past President of the International Telework Association & Council (ITAC) and was a member of the Management Group of the European Community Telework/Telematics Forum. In 1993, he received the Environmental Pride Award for his contributions toward improving the air quality of Los Angeles, and in 1994 received an award for his work in environmental sustainability from Renew America. In 1997 the Board of Supervisors of Los Angeles County presented him with a commendation for his work in reducing traffic and improving the environment in the region.

He is the author of five books, including The Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff, the original book on telecommuting, as well as dozens of chapters of books, professional papers and articles. His book, Making Telecommuting Happen, published in 1994, is a complete how-to-do-it manual for telework program development and management. Its sequel, Managing Telework: Strategies for Managing the Virtual Workforce, was published in the US and Canada in 1998. His books have been translated into Japanese, French, and Portuguese. The Polish edition of Managing Telework was released in 2003. The Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff has been reprinted and is available from on-line vendors.

JALA, an international group of consultants, helps business and government organizations in three main areas:

Telework, telecommuting, and virtual organizations. We support telework program strategy development, program planning, teleworker and technology selection, training, program implementation and evaluation—including cost-benefit analysis.
From inspiration through implementation.
Advice to organizations and teleworkers.
Applied futures research, including telework, climate change and energy use forecasting.
Technology assessment. Investigating the potential impacts of new technologies.

Online or E-Business

Electronic business, commonly referred to as "eBusiness" or "e-business", may be defined as the application of information and communication technologies (ICT) in support of all the activities of business. Commerce constitutes the exchange of products and services between businesses, groups and individuals and can be seen as one of the essential activities of any business. Electronic commerce focuses on the use of ICT to enable the external activities and relationships of the business with individuals, groups and other businesses.

Louis Gerstner, the former CEO of IBM, in his book, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? attributes the term "e-Business" to IBM's marketing and Internet teams in 1996.

Electronic business methods enable companies to link their internal and external data processing systems more efficiently and flexibly, to work more closely with suppliers and partners, and to better satisfy the needs and expectations of their customers.

In practice, e-business is more than just e-commerce. While e-business refers to more strategic focus with an emphasis on the functions that occur using electronic capabilities, e-commerce is a subset of an overall e-business strategy. E-commerce seeks to add revenue streams using the World Wide Web or the Internet to build and enhance relationships with clients and partners and to improve efficiency using the Empty Vessel strategy. Often, e-commerce involves the application of knowledge management systems.

E-business involves business processes spanning the entire value chain: electronic purchasing and supply chain management, processing orders electronically, handling customer service, and cooperating with business partners. Special technical standards for e-business facilitate the exchange of data between companies. E-business software solutions allow the integration of intra and inter firm business processes. E-business can be conducted using the Web, the Internet, intranets, extranets, or some combination of these.

Basically, electronic commerce (EC) is the process of buying, transferring, or exchanging products, services, and/or information via computer networks, including the Internet. EC can also be benefited from many perspective including business process, service, learning, collaborative, community. EC is often confused with e-business.

Working from Home

The very core of this article is this. People are looking for a good way to earn money from home without the usual restrictions and binds found in the common work place. The journey towards success in a work from home business is somewhat risky, and its very advisable for those looking, to be aware that most advertisements seen about making money online, working from home, home based businesses and the like, are literally going to be filled with nonsense and lies about the income generating possibility. There are online businesses that are very stable, and when the business model is correctly built, will lead to a modicum of success.

Learn More Here Being able to distinguish the good, from the bad work from home opportunity, will lead to success for those willing to work the business.