Services Books

For anyone who enjoys fast action thrillers, political intrigue set in our modern world, with a touch of Cold War history thrown in, then you should buy this book. The author has an easy-going style which is instantly readable, and never slow.

Original, fast-paced, thrilling, reminded me of James Bond ala Ian Fleming (not the movies). A gripping, must-read.

Very good. I preferred The Secret Policeman, but this was well up to standard. One of the reasons I loved this book was the pure audacity of linking the Stasi to Al-Qaeda. But it's done in such a clever, believable way, that it can't but make you wonder, because it all rung true. There's a nice juxtaposition of the old, cold war world, and the new war on terror with Jackson and his former employers as the bridge between the two. For all that I liked about it, I would also say that I thought it was a bit too short, and could have benefited from additional chapters. The pace, however, was breakneck, and this made it go by all too quickly. I enjoyed seeing Jackson back in the sun in the last few chapters. As a portrait of a retired spy, he is excellent, and I wonder if Mr. McGregor has any plans to look at the adventures Jackson had when he was in the secret service.

Although it might be a cliché to say that a book is a page turner these days, when I put this book down for any time at all I found myself questioning the motives of every character. I couldn't wait to see what happened next and before I knew it, I had finished the novella in one day. The story is well-crafted, the theme interesting, and the action gripping. It has everything you could look for in a thriller, and a literary style all its own into the bargain. The plot is complex and brilliantly handled, weaving together what at first seem like unrelated events, the murder of an American army colonel, the disappearance of a former KGB man, and the death of a secret policeman and his family in a car accident. A fantastic read, completely different to The Secret Policeman, and even better. Thrilling page-turner.

The Secret Service is an outstanding sequel. This book is an excellent novel, with a believable plot, characters with depth, and a very quick pace, skipping from one location to the next. Unlike so many books I have read, I couldn't foresee the ending. A great read, exciting and realistic.

This book has been very helpful. I reads quickly and easily, and the CD provides great templates. Within a week I was able to stndardize my existing contracts and reduce the need for customization with each new client. Great Work Karl!!!

Nice work on this book Karl. After I finished it our general manager read it and could not believe the resources contained within. It is not only a book about service agreements for the SMB consulting space but a great tool relating to all aspects of your business practices. We are now in the process of having our lawyer (as you suggest) reviewing our new contracts. Keep putting out these little gems!!

It's hard to find good information on the business side of IT consulting.

We started a year ago with decent technical skills but not much in the way of business training. Since then we've built a company which is supporting us, but couldn't see how to take it to the next level.

I purchased Managed Services in a Month and a week later had converted two break/fix customers over to managed services contracts worth thousands every year in recurring income.

This book is not cheap, but it is extraordinarily good value. It's cost is still less than one billable hour (at least if you're pricing yourself reasonably, something this book teaches you to do) and you'll make it back tenfold with the first contract (included with the book) that you get signed.

If you're an independent IT pro dealing with small business networks or servers then this book will help you take your business to the next level.

Highly recommended, and I'll be buying other books from Great Little Book Publishing very soon.

This is the book to have on your shelf. Karl will walk you through how his contracts are setup, what the parts mean, and the basic structure of delivering managed services via a contract vehicle. You can't get this kind of consulting help this easily, and Karl will give you everything you need. I highly recommend it.

If you want to offer service agreements to your IT customers, or are not sure of the value of selling service agreements, buy and read this book. When you are finished, you will be able to start offering service agreements - it's as simple as that. Thanks to Karl, I'm in the process of proposing 4 service agreements. The $50.00 for the book will be paid for by the first one so it's definitely money well-spent. On that note, I appreciate the short, concise format because that made it that much easier and faster to read. Technology books with hundreds of pages are more often than not nothing but "fat." Not with Karl's book - lean and right to the point.

Whether you know nothing, something, or a lot about IT service agreements, this book is an excellent resource. It will show you nearly everything you need to know about service agreements, from the perspective of someone who is obviously very adept at running his own IT business.

In the past when I tried to come up with something on my own, I just stared at a blank screen. Although I could come up with a handful of bullets of what should be included in a service agreement, Karl points out many things I hadn't thought of, including what not to cover. He also provides actual frameworks and examples of the agreement language. I really like his practice of having more than one type of agreement.

This is a must have for any manager or owner who wants to drive sells in there restaurant. you need this book if you care about what you do for a living.

This is by far the best book out there on service, buy it you wont be disappointed!

I bought this book for my management teams and went through it chapter by chapter every week and created action plans for implementation. It is an easy read and gets everyone on the same page very quickly. Strongly recommended for casual dining environments.

This book it is exactly what it says it is. Easy tips that can help you to run your restaurant and improve the service you offer to your customers. It is more for the owner or the manager but it can be usefull to everybody who is working there even the barmen. I recomend it because of the easy language it uses and because it offers practical solutions to everyday problems.

My manager recommended this book to me. I started using the tips inside before I even finished the book. I saw a difference in my wallet immediately! This book makes your job as a waiter/waitress easier and more profitable. It pays for itself in the first night. I recommend it to all our new hires.

This book presents a solid foundation for what IBM is calling "Services Science" and SAP "Business Process Platforms."

The basic argument is that if you are thinking "outside-in" about creating a customer-centric business then you need to think about services. Customers buy services.

Making the linkage between services that customers (or employees) use and the business processes that companies actually automate using enterprise applications is the fundamental contribution of this book. The authors use numerous case studies to illustrate how services-centric business go about architecting their blueprints.

Highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in understand the architecture of a services driven business.

The authors have done a fantastic job of illustrating how to design and implement digital business processes in the post dot-com era. This is one of the first books that truly gets into the concept of multi-channel business process design.

The most useful part of this book was how it ties together the online digitial business strategy, composite business processes, and the emerging business process management platforms/systems areas. The book uses the concept of services to link the strategy side to the process side. This is emerging strategy being followed by SAP, Siebel, Peoplesoft, Oracle, IBM, HP and even Microsoft.

The other good aspect of this book are the variety of best-practice case studies that truly illustrate what business problems, web services and services oriented architecture is meant to support. The case studies on J.C. Penney, Eastman Chemical, Nike, Wal-Mart, GM, McDonalds, New York Times Digital, Georgia Pacific, IBM were quite interesting.

The audience for this book is defintely marketing, operations and IT managers who are trying to figure out what to do with their organization's different first generation portals. Most of the customer facing, employee facing and supplier facing portals built during the dot-com boom are out-dated and need to be completely overhauled. For those who are facing this problem, this book will be very useful.

Highly recommend this book. It is thought provoking and insightful.

Despite contrived terminology, such as "digitization", this book truly lives up to its title because the authors provide both a blueprint for services in today's economy, and a roadmap for making it happen. The authors stay focused on business instead of technology. More importantly, they show how to shed outmoded thinking about business processes and supporting systems, and highlights how you should be viewing the marriage of services and processes to be successful.

The essence of this book is in the authors' equation, Services Blueprint = Focal Point + Services + Processes + Applications. The ten core focal points given in this book clarify one or more critical success factors to any business, and the clear advice for executing to achieve objectives associated with focal points is invaluable.

I like the way the authors distill a set of complex, interrelated elements into a coherent approach. For example, they breakdown service blueprints into types (three major ones); provide execution methods that aligned to organizational goals, and reinforce these using case studies from well known corporations. In addition, the discussions of processes, application integration, and how to tie everything together into a coherent view and execution strategy is among the most realistic and clearly articulated I've come across. I also like the way the authors support Six Sigma in the design and implementation of processes. If you are not familiar with Six Sigma, the clear and succinct treatment in the book will provide everything you need to know to understand its value. Of course, it will not teach the associated techniques to the point where you can effectively apply them.

Overall, this book is cuts to the key issues and challenges to align a business to today's economy. The approach is not only sensible and realistic, but the only one I've come across that 'gets it'.

I bought this book after reading the Darwin Magazine excerpt and having the read the authors previous best seller "e-business: raodmap for sucess". This book is really very insightful about the changes talking place in the e-business and business process management space. The book is a very clear exposition about what is being termed BPMS.

Design of an process integration framework....The book is a must read if you are a consultant who is following some of the latest moves by SAP, Siebel, Oracle, Peoplesoft and others like Tibco. The book ties together rather nicely the business objectives with business processes and enterprise apps.

Design of self-service apps... The authors take an outside in (customer or employee) perspective to the design of business processes. The authors argue that customers interact with services rather than processes. For instance, you go to Amazon.com because they are the best at digitizing the book selling service and making it easy to use.

Design of business process management... The ability to translate services into underlying business processes is the critical aspect of next generation self-service applications. The authors systematically illustrate the different types of BPM platforms that are emerging in SCM, CRM, PLM and Spend Management.

In sum, this book is worth reading for consultants, MBA students and others interested in knowing where e-business is headed. The authors have done a fantastic job of synthesizing the fragmented bodies of information and presenting a framework that ties everything together.

This was an interesting book to be sure. However, as I read the book, I felt like I'd read it before from the continued use of tired buzzwords such as "digitization." Enough on DIGITIZATION! I enjoyed the process templates provided by the authors, but they clearly do not understand some of the foundational technology concepts they mentioned, such as Web Services and Services Oriented Architectures (SOA). The Authors equated application servers with SOA, which is at best a massive oversimplication, and at worst, innacurate. This led me to believe that the authors are buzzword compliant but do not really understand Web Services. Also, reducing the entire world to PORTALS as the ultimate killer app is also a massive oversimplication as well. Portals are mainstream technology now and to be honest not that exciting anymore. Everyone offers it or uses it one way or another.

So, this book started out with a good premise but didn't deliver in the end. The process templates are good baselines for process understanding for those unfamiliar with business processes. This is a nice try by the authors, but I felt a little bit shortchanged by the book...

This by far, was an amazing SIDS book. It's been almost a year since we lost Jacob to SIDS, and I still go back and re-read the book. It's so hard to find people that could relate to your SIDS loss, and this book is full of them. I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend this book.

I've been through this loss. Chances are, if you're searching for this book, you have just experienced your own loss. READ this book.

If you have lost a child to sids then you must get this. It was recommended to me and it has been a valuable tool. It is fully of case studies, answers to questions you wont have thought of and usefull information on how to try and get through this.

Horchler and Rice give comfort, encouragement, and insight to the issues that surround Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and Infant Death. Families who have suffered the devastating loss of a baby will find many questions they may have answered among the pages. The topics covered bring a sense of normalcy and healing to the bereaved as the authors guide the reader down the path of surviving their loss and again finding joy in living.

The SIDS Survival Guide was my beacon of light during the darkest part of my life. My son, Dominic, passed away from SIDS on April 10, 2001, at only 4 1/2 months young. I began to reach out and search for all the information I could find on SIDS, drinking it all in by the bucket. A few months after he died, I found "The SIDS Survival Guide", and am so incredibly thankful. There was so much information, so many stories so like my own. I shed many tears while reading it for the first time, and even now, when I go back to read sections, I still cry. I am now expecting our second child in June 2002, and am scared to death. But knowing that I am informed about SIDS is somewhat of a comfort to me; in a way, I am as prepared as I can ever be. I would recommend this book to anyone expecting a child, who has a young baby, or knows someone who is or does.

My husband and I lost our son to SIDS in September of 2000. Our souls have been torn. The grieving process over his death has been draining. I recall little over the past 4+ months since his death. The one thing I do recall is thinking I was going crazy. I had wished their was another SIDS survivor I could speak with. Someone who could possibly relate to what my husband and I were going through. Someone who could understand our emotions. I searched under the keyword SIDS and found this book. I have not read the book in its entirety. I have read the sections I have needed at the particular times in my grieving. This book has helped me confirm that I am not going crazy. What I am feeling, though very personal, is normal. I feel this book is a neccesity for any parent who has to suffer this terrible tragedy. I have placed an order of these books in my babies memory to send to my state SIDS Coordinator in hopes that other parents may find comfort in its contents. Thank you Joani and Robin.

Within these pages lies the truth about good and evil. As you read this book be prepared to be amazed at the volumes of information that is related to the reader in such a short time. This is the most compelling compact book of the century being around one hundred pages, but within those pages are inspired words that will touch the very heart of any reader. This is an awesome book and a must have for any library.

This is one of the best Biblically-based books that I have read on the lift of Jesus! I absolutely love it and would highly recommend it to anyone who would like to learn more about Jesus Christ. It's a must buy, in my opinion.

Of Ellen G. White's many astounding books, this is probably her best seller. Literally in the tens-of-millions. A beautiful guide to understanding and personally accepting Jesus Christ and His Grace. The perfect gift for anyone even considering following the Son of God. And despite false accusations from many, after reading her inspired works you'll better understand why she is America's all-time best selling female author, and most widely translated of any gender. A beautiful light to the real Biblical Jesus.

"Steps to Christ" is a wonderful book! If you could just read one book, this would definitely be the best one to read indeed! It brings God's love closer to you than you could ever imagine. It opens your eyes to just how much God really loves you, a love that none of us deserve. This is a must-read classic! I would highly encourage anyone to get this book and read it and pass it on! You'll never be the same. It opens to the heart the great impact of the Gospel and shows the way, the only Way, to salvation-Jesus Christ.

This is by far the best book on religion I have ever read. The case for Christianity is stated in simple language and the basics of this religion are explained very well. Everyone should own this book.

This book makes a teacher out of every one who reads it. Whether you are a parent, guardian, relative, teacher of a child with special needs, this book will give you the tools to teach essential skills and enable you to use them effectively.
This book was recommended to me and I recommend it to every else.

This book is a must have for parents struggling with training there children independence skills. It ofter so many easy to do exercise to get your little or big one independence. My 3 year old is finally bushing his teeth, because this book showed easy to do steps to get him going. I highly recommend this book to any parent struggling with training there children independence. It offers easy steps by step solutions in teaching your child what you have been trying to teach them for months . Try it, its a great training tool for independence.

No parent OR special education teacher should be without this book! Easy to read, and the content is excellent! Step-by-step approaches to teaching everyday skills to children with special needs, but would be just as valuable to ANY parent! After reading this book, I have found it easier to establish goals for my students and everyone is using the same approach to teaching everyday living skills (play, toileting, self-help, PLUS behavior management)! It is working fabulous! The students are learning more with less frustration! A must-have for your resource library!

The book is formatted very well. It has helped me approach my child in a new manner with excellent results. Some of the tasks we take for granted are broken into smaller steps that can be overlooked. This book helps you identify missing steps and provides multiple methods of application. It isn't a "one size fits all" approach. It gives good ideas for praise and correction if consistently followed.

The page layouts are easy to read and the cartoons are cute. Everything addressed in this book has samples to serve as a guide for you. The appendices has more ideas for aiding with independence. Overall, the application of this book, used in a routine, is great for any age and any skill level.

I've been looking for a book like this for quite some time. Here's what it covers:
Chapter 1: Setting Out
Chapter 2: Targeting a Skill
Chapter 3: Establishing Steps
Chapter 4: Picking Rewards
Chapter 5: Setting the Stage
Chapter 6: Teaching
Chapter 7: Observing Progress and Troubleshooting
Chapter 8: Get Ready Skills
Chapter 9: Self-Help Skills
Chapter 10: Toilet Training
Chapter 11: Play Skills
Chapter 12: Independent Living: Self-Care Skills
Chapter 13: Independent Living: Home-Care Skills
Chapter 14: Independent Living: Information Skills
Chapter 15: Plugging into the Personal Computer Revolution
Chapter 16: Behavior Problems
Chapter 17: Initiating a Behavior Management Program
Appendix A: Get Ready Skills
Appendix B: Self-Help Skills Inventory
Appendix C: Self-Help Skills Programs
Appendix D: Play Skills Programs
Appendix E: Information Skills Programs
Index

This is a great book. Very witty and the pictures are fab. My 18 mo old daughter and I love to read it together, we never tire of it!!

I can't recommend this book enough. It is, without a doubt one of the best books for children that I've ever come across. My kids love it, and so do I. The story is cute, the artwork is great and the verse is written in rhyme. Rhyming books can be difficult to write. The words have to be appropriate and make sense without bogging down the plot and characters. This book is almost genius.

The clever rhymes make this story a true delight to read. My 4 year old daughter loved reading this story multiple times.

This book is so cute ! I am a librarian and use it as a read aloud at our tea party every year! I just love it

Bill is not your average bull, for instead of being rough and tumble, Bill is a sensitive soul who has a marvelous collection of china cups. However, Bill doesn't do well when he's around fragile items, so when he begins browsing antique and china shops, searching for one more perfect cup, he is plagued by one very big problem: getting in the front door. For most china shops don't allow bulls entry. But then Bill comes across a china shop that permits entry to bulls, and suddenly all bets are off.

BILL IN A CHINA SHOP is an adorable new children's book that will be loved by the whole family. Bill is a cute character, who is plagued by prejudice just because of his size. However, his wonderful outlook on life, and the people and things surrounding him is admirable, and will teach children that they should be happy in their own skin, whether big or small, black or white. A wonderful addition to the children's picture book genre!

Erika Sorocco
Book Review Columnist for The Community Bugle Newspaper

After reading "Don't Ever Tell"-Kathy's Story by Kathy O'Beirne and "The God Squad" by Paddy Doyle, I felt the need to inform myself further on the subject of absolute corruption and power in the Industrial Schools in Ireland. "Suffer the Little Children" gave me all the information, and more, on the shocking, shameful, collective sadism practiced in Industrial Schools, orphanages, convents and reformatory schools where different religious orders carried out dehumanising brutality and savagery on innocent little children who were placed in the institutions either through the Courts or the parents themselves to be looked after by the religious and to receive an education.
This book gives us the history of such institutions in the UK and Eire but concentrates on the Irish scene where they continued to exist up to the 1970's. It is well written and a most revealing exposé of a very dark, sick side of Irish history. It also includes personal testimonies which make the book even more gripping as they exemplify and confirm vividly the revelations of such an appaling system.
It also discloses the indifference and conspiracy of silence on an official level which brings to mind Molière's words "It's not what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable". And for bad history not to repeat itself, we must keep informed. This book is a must read.

Ever since the movie .."The Magdalene Sisters" and Frank McCourt's book..."Angela's Ashes", Plus the fact that I am a quarter Irish and love Ireland and her people, I find I want to know more and more about her people and the TRUTH of how they have suffered yet have remained strong and vital and are proud and have given much to our world today!(England should be ashamed of what they have done for far too long, too!)
This book tells an awful story about the horrors of little children treated so badly for years and years. I know sadly that these wrongs can never really be righted for these victims or the words, "I am sorry" will erase the pain in their hearts, but I do hope eyes are open now and this cannot happen ever again to anyone....especially to children...no matter what country they come from and no matter what their color or race. Bless the children and keep them safe!! God bless Ireland...
Linda Steffey

This book presents a portrait of 20th century Ireland that will debunk any nostalgic or sentimental view of the so called 'Emerald Isle'. No shamrocks and leprecauns in this book, but a history of cruelty, abuse and power. It tells the story of how Irish children were incarcerated in huge numbers throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in reformatory and industrial schools which were managed by the Catholic Church. Based on detailed historical research and interspersed with gut-wrenching first hand accounts of survivors of these institutions, it shows how an alliance between a power hungry Catholic Church and an indifferent Irish State resulted in the incarceration of the children of the poor. Rather than helping poor families, Church and State removed these children to bleak institutions where large numbers were sexually and physically abused and tortured by their Christian carers. I don't think that I will ever think about the Catholic Church and Ireland in the same way ever again. Anger, saddness, frustration, disbelief, but above all anger - why did this happen? I experienced all these emotions when reading this book. If you want to really understand Irish society, this book is essential and harrowing reading.

This book is one of true meaning an excellent written book, which show's the through Ireland. This books explains the mentality of the religious and states minds. Truly deeply sad book but very much worth the read. This book is excellent in the sense of giving true awareness to the Irish state.
Highly recommended.

This book is comprehensive and deeply moving. I could not put it down. I was disgusted and angry by the end of it. I am ashamed to be Irish and ashamed to be Catholic. How this could have gone on for so long with no help for these children is beyond words. If there is a hell, then open arms to all those sick and sadistic Brothers and Nuns, all of whom were operating in the name of God....! How dare they call themselves charitable and merciful. They are some of the most vile human beings in existence. Between that and the sex scandal in America, the Catholic Church owes many people an apology and some sort of restitution. For shame the Church still chooses to cover up it's misuse of power. If the Nuns and Priests and Brothers were not so sexually frustrated, maybe they wouldn't be so evil. Sorry to vent so strongly. After reading this book, you will feel the same way. Also read Do Penance or Perish, but not as good as this book. Thank you.

From the Presidential Suite to the mailroom, and all the levels in between, the customer service aptitude of employees can make or break the success of a business. In his book, Superior Customer Service, Blacharski provides a fresh primer to reinforce the power that customer services has in the compettive world of business. Old conventional widom is shined up with new and fresh perspectives that make the informational, accessible and practical information provided a MUST for every employee. It is my opinion that this is the perfect text to build a customer service in-house training program around. Alternatively, it should be distributed as required reading at new employee orientation with the name badges and insurance information. It really is that good.

So you have a business, and you have customers; what now? "Superior Customer Service" is a one-stop-shop for all of your customer service needs.

Blacharski provides business owners with a fool-proof guide to keeping customers happy and business booming. With easy to read large type and bulleted checklists, finding the solution you need to any customer service issue could not be easier.

I would recommend this book for anyone who wants to run a successful business. In fact, buy this book for your employees and keep the "Ten Commandments for Employers/Employees" on hand too keep things running smoothly.

I bought this book because I wanted to increase my conversion ratios. I wanted to know how to generate business and keep my costumers coming back. There are tried and true tricks for building consumer loyalty, and many of them are revealed in Blacharski's manual.

If you're a follower of the author's, you'll really appreciate this book. It's past-paced and, like it says, a ready-made step-by-step costumer service training manual. His "Ten Commandments for Managers" and then "...Employees" are great checklists/tools.

Blacharski also covers ethical ways to effectively collect client information and outsource. Superior Customer Service is also an entertaining read. There's a section that shows when to put on specific kinds of customer service "hats." My favorite description is of "The Spelunker's Helmet." It makes perfect sense. So does explanation of "The Mind Reader's Turban."

With so many stores retail and online selling the same products at nearly the same prices, what makes consumers decide to shop at one place over another? SUPERIOR CUSTOMER SERVICE is the answer - and a book that tells both brick n mortar and online stores how to win over the competition. Chapters detail innovations, tips and tricks which are easy to implement and that drive customer attention and interest.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Author Dan Blacharski has done it well. He's written a book about one facet of business that has not been dealt with much recently, despite its critical importance to business success. Blacharski discusses all aspects of customer service for both web-based and conventional businesses, and he defines guidelines for establishing a business whose employees have the "customer service mindset" that, undoubtedly, leads to increased sales and profitability.

This book is chock full of advice and specific steps and procedures to follow to create a customer service-oriented environment that will set a business apart from the competition. It is an excellent treatment of the subject and will be invaluable to business owners, customer service managers and personnel, and sales personnel.

When you pick up this book, jump right to "The Ten Commandments of Customer Service for Managers" and "The Ten Commandments of Customer Service for Employees" (pages 252-254), read them, and then start at the beginning.