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How to make a Decision between Building up and Building out?

Lack of adequate space can make coming back to your home a dreadful task. No one likes a crammed space. When you feel that your home is bursting at the seams, a home addition project can come to your rescue.

Building Up or Out: Find an Answer to the Home Addition Dilemma

Before beginning with the project, there is one important thing that deserves your attention. Do you want to increase the size of your home vertically or horizontally? Would you like a second story addition or is a simple bump out sufficient for you? Here’s how you can make a choice between building up and building out.

Does it solve the Space Problem?

If you have additional space around your home and there are no zoning restrictions, homeowners consider building out to be the best solution. But, remember that the right decision comes with the right understanding of your requirements. Think about the current floor plan of your home. Do you think that a simple room addition will solve your space problems? Will a rear addition make the home spacious? Or is a garage conversion the best solution for you? Home addition will make everlasting changes to your home. So, don’t forget to consider your future needs as well.

Does it require more Efforts?

Building out or ground floor additions are easier than adding a second story to your home. It is because they cause less disruption. And, you may not need to alter the entire floor plan of your home. You can use an existing doorway or window to add a new room, saving you the efforts of tearing down the walls. On the other hand, if you are adding a whole new floor with bathrooms, you will need to extend the power lines as well as the drainage lines.

Time is the Key

If you want to add space to a kitchen, it will not be a time-consuming task. It is because a small bump out doesn’t involve putting additional weight on the existing foundation. The home additions contractor will dig out the required area in the yard and lay a foundation to build the walls. It is as simple as that. But, a building up project will require him to make the foundation capable of bearing extra weight.

The Burden of Money

When the home addition is complicated and time-consuming, your expenses will be high. But, it doesn’t mean that building out will be less expensive than a second-story home addition. If the access to the construction area is constrained or you need to install HVAC for the new room, the cost can increase. Even specific plumbing requirements can add to the cost. So, it is essential that you discuss the different cost centers before making the decision.

The Final Decision

When it comes to choosing between building out and building up, it all comes down to making optimum use of available sources. Consider your preferences, the zoning laws of your area and choose the option that is the simplest, in terms of efforts, time and money.

Remember that making the right decision is essential because it has the potential to put a permanent end to your space constraints. So, take your time and decide whether building up or building out is the right choice for your home.

Whether it is building up or building out, having a reliable Toronto-based home additions contractor at your beck and call can make things simpler for you. An experienced contractor can undertake complicated second-story additions as well as quick kitchen additions to give you the home you desire.

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Choosing Cool Baby Clothes for Your Friends Baby Shower

I think my biggest fear is being invited to a baby shower for a close friend or relative. Deciding what to buy without breaking the bank isn’t an easy task. When it comes to newborn gifts, there are so many choices available from clothing to toys and all the way to essential items such as bottles and dummies.

The Choices

A few years ago a friend of mine was expecting triplets. Yes that is three babies all due at once, and so deciding what to buy for her was so difficult. All we knew is that it was two girls and one boy.

The baby shower was planned and we were all ready with our plans when I got a call from her husband to say she was in hospital and they were trying to delay the labour. Well as you can imagine, all our planning had gone out of the window.

Anyway, the babies arrived early and spent a month in hospital because they were so small and weak. So we held the baby shower without them and a little late.

The difficult task came when deciding what to buy them. The first thing we all did was buy a bag of disposable nappies each, she was going to need these and lots of them.

The next task was buying the newborn gifts. I chose three personalised new baby gifts and it worked out fantastically. Ichose really cool baby clothes, three baby grows, two pink and one blue and each one was personalised with the baby’s name.

Delighted

My friend was over the moon when she opened up the personalised gifts for baby. They were special, different and something that could be kept even when they had grown up to remember how small they once were.

This became a habit and when they turned six months I did it again, I bought them all cool baby clothes with their names on, but this time it was t-shirts. What I loved is that I could give these wonderful triplets something special; they were gifts just for them and they were always well accepted and appreciated.

My friend has kept these personalised new baby gifts to remind her later on how precious they all were, all lined up in the cot next to each other with their names printed on their chests.

What I loved is that each baby grow and t-shirt that I bought for them was made from organic materials, they were made to the highest quality and best of all the printing I chose was hand printed, this meant no peeling after a few washes. As you know the cheaper printing on clothes always peels away after a couple of washes, these are still stuck in place a few years down the line, even though they are now carefully stored in a box as a memory.

Cool baby clothes make fantastic gifts for newborns; you can add your own message, turning them into personalised gifts for a baby who deserves something so unique and special.

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Positive Takeaways That SMBs Leverage from Robotic Process Automation

A mid-sized financial company in China used to fill the Excel templates manually every month for filing VAT returns for 250+ entities. This being a time-consuming and tedious task, it led to many manual errors many a times. This was not only risky for the company but also became demoralizing for the staff. This company approached a Robotic Process Automation solution provider for automating their VAT return process. The solution provider developed a customized software for them. They also developed a central storage function and built-in data analysis tool for easy data access and organization. As a result, the in-house process time of this financial company drastically reduced from 1,400 hours to 280 hours in a year. Along with the elimination of human errors, this also resulted in a more productive workforce and improved the turnover of the company.

Robotic Process Automation is a powerful technology and confidence in the results it delivers has significantly grown over the last few years.

RPA has significantly influenced not only giants but also small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). Talking about the SMBs, it becomes challenging for them to manage all the workflows in the limited resources and budgets they have. They greatly depend on efficient processes and systems for operations like data entry, email processing, clerical tasks, etc. Such no brain operations consume the vital time of the employees thereby reducing the productivity.

For such highly data centric organizations, RPA has come up as an outstanding solution to automate everyday data operations while improving cost-effectiveness. Using RPA, many SMBs are now experiencing flawless and streamlined processes.

Examples of RPA Applications in Different SMBs:

Order processing in the retail industry
Resume screening, candidate shortlisting, validating the employee data, etc. in human resource departments
Migrating order-data of an e-commerce site to the dispatch center
Record patient data, streamline the claims process, etc. in hospitals, clinics and individual practices
Reducing errors in Bill of Materials (BOM) in small manufacturing firms
Shipment tracking and scheduling in the transportation industry
Significant Benefits that RPA Offers to SMBs:

This technology has brought a revolutionary change in the automaton of business processes. We have already heard a lot about how RPA is automating mundane, repetitive and error-prone clerical tasks that are usually carried out by human workers. Let us now understand what benefits can the SMBs avail by deploying RPA techniques:

Data Management and Intelligent Insights for Decision-making

Keeping track of every single detail in a business is quite improbable, especially when the processes are manual. RPA technology is a smart solution to store vital data at every step and improve the data quality. When robots work on data collection and analytics, there are lesser risks of incorrect analytics, data leakages, obsolete information, etc. This data can be used for making precise and predictive decisions in the SMBs using advanced analytics that RPA provides and ensure the right actions for improving the workflows.

Reduced Manual Errors and Higher Accuracy

Succumbed to boredom, humans tend to make silly mistakes while doing repetitive tasks. Robotic Process Automation applies standardized processes to streamline operations and improve accuracy in SMBs. RPA solutions don’t miss tracking any data and thus, eliminate costly mistakes from processes that could lead to false analytics and bad decision-making.

Redeployment of Workforce to Higher Value Tasks

RPA for business can take care of the low-importance manual and repetitive tasks that consume a lot of time of the staff. The workforce can be employed on higher-value and complex activities which will ultimately result in enhanced business metrics. RPA also improves employee satisfaction to a greater extent.

Enhanced Productivity and Higher Customer Satisfaction

It is estimated by RPA vendors that automation of processes improves the cost-efficiency by 25-60% approximately. So employing software to automate manual processes improves the overall productivity and efficiency of the SMBs. It improves the quality of the end products which ultimately resulting in customer satisfaction.

Final Verdict:

Advanced RPA solutions have brought a paradigm shift in the operations of SMBs as well as large businesses.

As per a report generated by Gartner, the global Robotic Process Automation market grew 63% in the year 2018 and reached $846 million. In 2019, revenue has touched $1.3 billion.

Another renowned online research portal, Statista, forecasts that RPA market revenues could reach 3 billion by the year 2022.

These statistics indicate that RPA is becoming the fastest-growing segment of the global software market.

Hope this read was helpful to you. I would like to know your comments and hear your views about how RPA solutions are influencing different businesses?

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