Streamserve: Utilizing Its Strengths

One of my favorite things about being a Streamserve Consultant is sometimes I get to do short, high-value projects. Most often, these mini-projects—which take less than a day to complete—involve implementing a formatting remedy for the sloppiness of the earlier design work. So aside from being able to fix these issues from the comfort of my office chair, the greatest aspect is the high customer satisfaction achieved.

The one I just finished is a prime example. Using a function in the PageOut, I concatenated multiple lines pulled from a StreamIN input which comprised the Terms and Conditions text. Then when it is output in an field configured as "Auto-wrap", it looks like someone typed it in using Microsoft Word rather than piped it in from a legacy ERP. That was how it looked before because basically the implementer pulled it in a pushed it out "as-is". Here's the short StreamServe scripting statement I used to make it look professional:

$t_and_c_fmt = subStrRepl($t_and_c, HexStr("<0A>"), " ");

I set the variable $t_and_c_fmt up and suppressed the output of the one which had been pulled in ($t_and_c). The subStrRepl function substitutes a space for newline characters. And that is pretty much all it takes, other than resizing the box correctly which was another part of the request.

In the midst of this project, I was asked a common question by the client. "Should we change the formatting of the text as we are sending it?" My answer was emphatically negative. Always use StreamServe for what it does best! You paid for it, and chances are that at least one person in upper management groaned at the price tag. Must people don't use StreamServe for even one fourth of what it is capable of doing. A good example of that will probably be my next project which involves Streamserve SMS implementation. You did know Streamserve did text messages, didn't you?

Contact us for all your StreamServe Consulting needs.
Email: paul.fry@flexresourcing.com
Phone: 216-496-9915

Value Added Tax for the United States?

The possibility of the United States adopting a Value Added Tax is in the news as of late. Here's something from Reuters. Excerpt:

Hank Gutman, KPMG tax principal, director of the Tax Governance Institute, and former chief of staff of the U.S. Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation,will serve as moderator of the panel discussion.

"The realities of the U.S. fiscal situation—including an estimated $1.4 trillion deficit for Fiscal Year 09, projected deficits in excess of 5 percent of Gross Domestic Product and rising demands from entitlement programs—are leading tax policy makers to consider additional revenue sources," said Gutman. "A value-added tax, which taxes the transfer of goods and services, will clearly be on the table as a topic of increasing discussion," he added, pointing out that VAT is one of the world's most popular taxes and is in use in more than 130 countries.

Of course, my focus on the VAT has to do with selling consulting services. Obviously I haven't had to collect sales tax on my services since they are not taxable. I'm not sure this is the case with a value-added tax. Because I'm incorporated and have my corporation pay me for services, won't I have to pay VAT on the difference between my W2 compensation and what I bill per hour? In which case it would seem like increasing my W2 wages would be a good idea to avoid a large VAT. But that would naturally raise income taxes.

So I guess I'll go back to the old standby of raising my rates in case of a VAT. That ought to work. I guess that guy was right about death and taxes. Can't avoid either.


Here's an interesting paragraph from the somewhat shoddy yet nevertheless very informative VAT page on Wikipedia.

Revenues from a value added tax are frequently lower than expected because they are difficult and costly to administer and collect. In many countries, however, where collection of personal income taxes and corporate profit taxes has been historically weak, VAT collection has been more successful than other types of taxes. VAT has become more important in many jurisdictions as tariff levels have fallen worldwide due to trade liberalization, as VAT has essentially replaced lost tariff revenues. Whether the costs and distortions of value added taxes are lower than the economic inefficiencies and enforcement issues (e.g. smuggling) from high import tariffs is debated, but theory suggests value added taxes are far more efficient.

The page also discusses how massive accounting efforts are expended on enforcing a value-added tax, so net revenues from VATs are often lower than projected. Big surprise there. Also the regressive nature of the VAT is criticized, but it notes that the burden of any tax is shouldered most by the consumer except for a progressive income tax.

Third party deals are a mixed bag

I'm working through a consulting company right now and it has been a great experience so far. The staff is professional, they don't micromanage and they can deal with my rates, about which they never complain.

I received a call the other day from another consulting company and if my initial read is correct, dealing with them would be lousy. The account manager called me and talked to me for 20 minutes straight about how tough the sell was going to be to the particular customer. The entire conversation on his part was obliquely related to the expectation of hourly rates and how mine were higher than what they were hoping for.

My reaction to this is always the same: "OK. So?" In other words, what's the problem? If the number is too high, find somebody else. Well there's the problem. It's hard to find an independent consultant specializing in this particular niche technology. You can always call the software company who owns the technology we're talking about—they have consultants, too. Here's the catch: they want to score over 200% of my rate for their consultants.

So it's all relative to the market just like every service for sale. Here's the bottom line question for third parties: are they willing to tell the end client the "bad news"? Because I never hesitate.