Errors and Omissions claims only involve claims of professional negligence. For this reason, it is vitally important that management consultants carry this coverage continuously. Since the majority of the work that management consultants provide falls under the category of “professional consultation,” it is errors and omissions claims that will make up the bulk of any suits brought against you or your consultancy.

As a consultant, you must also pay close attention to the factors under your control that can reduce your risk of being charged with an E&O claim.

It is important to note that errors and omissions coverage is not a part of your general liability insurance policy. Failure to make this distinction could result in a lack of coverage, leaving you open to legal suits. No matter how thoroughly and professionally you conduct your management consultancy, there is always the risk of an errors or omissions claim being brought against you.

For more information regarding errors and omissions insurance for management consultants, please visit Business Insurance Now or the TechInsurance Small Business Center.

Many small business owners are confused about the coverage they get from their general liability insurance policy. While this is the most basic of all business insurance policies, there are quite a few things that it will not cover you for. It is important to understand what you’re not covered for (commonly referred to as “exclusions”) and take necessary precautions to mitigate the probability of one of these excluded claims arising.

The most common exclusion on your general liability insurance policy is claims of professional negligence or errors and omissions. If the damage resulting from negligence on you or your employee’s behalf resulted in non-physical damage, your general liability insurance will not cover the suit.

If your employees claim that you treated them unfairly or discriminatively, your general liability insurance will not be able to cover you. This exclusion can be covered by purchasing employers practice liability insurance or EPLI.

The last major exclusion deals with your subcontractors. Any subcontracted work that you bring through your doors is not covered by your general liability policy. This means that you should get separate coverage for your subcontractors, or ensure that the subcontractors you use are utilizing their own coverage policies.

For more information on general liability insurance and how it pertains to your small business, please visit the TechInsurance Small Business Center.

Every day, TechInsurance, the nation’s leading online provider of errors and omissions insurance, fields hundreds of questions from IT Project managers who need to know the basics of liability insurance. Some of them are unsure why they need it, others have questions specific to their active policies.

For the first time, TechInsurance has provided a central location where answers to these common questions, and more, can be discovered. Although you can always speak with a qualified insurance agent at TechInsurance, if you are looking for a quick answer to a common professional liability based question, the TechInsurance Small Business Center has you covered.

TechInsurance has been providing the resources that allow IT Project managers, whether they work for a firm or operate as an independent contractor, the tools to succeed at their jobs while remaining worry-free.

Contact TechInsurance today to get a free, no obligation quote on errors and omissions insurance. Our representatives are standing by to answer your questions.

The best way to avoid lapses in your errors and omissions insurance policies is to know the specific dates that your policy started and the definitive date of when it ends. There may be some nuances that determine whether your policy covers prior events in which case your inception date might be pushed back, but your insurance agent will be able to help you understand that better.

You must also remember to file the claim while the policy is still active. Even if the event occurred while the policy was active, if you let your coverage lapse and then you try to file a claim, in most cases, you will NOT be covered. A supplement to errors & omissions insurance is what is called “tail coverage.” This allows you to still make claims on a policy even if your coverage has lapsed. There are very few circumstances where you will ever want your policy to lapse, but if you do fall into that category, it will be essential that you append tail coverage to your policy. You can generally purchase this addition to last for anywhere between 1 and 5 years – speak to your insurance agent about the specifics.

For more information about avoiding lapses in your errors and omissions insurance policy, please visit the TechInsurance Small Business Center. Here you can find valuable information that will help with operating your small business, hiring contractors, & managing risk.

In today’s small business insurance environment, not everything that puts your company at risk is insurable. There are many things that your business owner’s policy just won’t cover and it is important to recognize these risks. There is usually a way to cover these risks, but they might fall outside of your existing policy. Often times, an umbrella policy might help to cover some of these outlying risks.

The first step is identifying what your current business insurance policy DOES cover. It is easier to work backwards by obtaining extra coverage for what your current policy doesn’t cover. Did you recently start using outside contractors to help your business get some work done? You might need some extra insurance to help cover you professionally for the work that was performed by the contractor but still presented to your client. There are a handful of other scenarios that I could rattle off, but it will be best to sit down with your insurance agent and discuss your specific coverage.

Sometimes there are certain occurrences that cannot be covered no matter what. It will be important to pay attention to these areas when interacting with clients and conducting every day business at the office. Just because a risk cannot be covered does not mean that the risk cannot be reduced.

Don’t get caught thinking that you are covered for a certain risk when in reality, you aren’t. Avoid surprises and contact your business insurance agent today!

The higher you move up the management ladder, the fewer people you have to answer to. If gone unchecked, this can be a bad thing and the company might suffer because of it. One way to gauge the success of a managed project is to ask the client for whom the project was created. Nobody knows better than the client how effective you and your team were at delivering the desired results in the desired time frame.

When the project first begins, you obviously want to get the client’s input on many things. You want to know in what medium they like to receive correspondence. Do they like email? Do they prefer in-person meetings? And also, how often do they like these check-ins to take place? All of these questions should be asked and answered at the launch of the project. But how often do companies go back to those original specifications and grade themselves? Not very often.

Post project reviews allow you to revisit your original project plan and determine how well you and your team delivered on those promises. Ask the client where your team can improve, as well as what areas you succeeded in. Make sure that you take the suggestions and criticisms to heart. Even if you have had a trouble client for the past 6 months who disliked everything you did for them, you can still learn from their input and possibly sort out the root of the issue and prevent this from happening with other clients in the future.

For more information about post project reviews, visit the Small Business Center on TechInsurance.com. Here you can find tips on how to effectively manage projects from start to finish as well as templates for timelines, scope changes and much more.

As you work your way through yet another IT Project, you might be wondering how to make this one more special, meaningful, or just more productive.

Keeping your client happy throughout the process is one of the biggest ways to have a fulfilling project – both in your eyes and the client’s eyes. Just because you think that the project was a success doesn’t necessarily mean that the client will see things the same way. Managing client expectations starts from the beginning of the project, when the timelines, goals, and budgets are laid out. If at this point, the client expects something that your team cannot deliver, then the project is already off to a bad start. As a project manager, it is your job to wrangle the client back in and get them to see the project from a more realistic standpoint, based on what your team’s capabilities are. Ideally, you would want to meet all of your client’s expectations, but in the case that you cannot, you must get them to buy in to what you and your team can actually accomplish.

You can do this a few different ways. You can provide regular project updates so the client always has a structured expectation in front of them. Also, you can provide regular reporting on the goals of the project. If the client sees that the project is producing meaningful results, they will be less likely to ask for something outside of the original project scope since what you and your team is doing has been working.

Overall, the key is constant communication. As soon as you stop communicating with the client, the project begins to get off track. The client might begin to worry and confidence in your team will be lost.

Don’t let this happen to your IT projects. Use the tips and resources available at TechInsurance’s Small Business Center. You will find tips and tricks on running a successful IT project from start to finish, as well as templates and resources for creating reports and project updates.

As a firm that offers candidates for either permanent or temporary positions within IT companies, it is very important that the companies who use your services are completely happy with the employees you provide. The best way to ensure that your client is happy is to be completely honest with them.

Do not tell a company that your candidate has 10 years of experience in a particular field if in reality they do not. If the client expects that they are getting a certified expert in a particular industry, you must deliver that candidate – you can’t deliver a candidate that does not meet their expectations. By being upfront about what types of candidates your staffing firm can present, you will end up with happier, more fulfilled clients. They will be getting exactly what they need and what they expect. In order to make sure that they are completely satisfied, it is important to have a standard follow-up procedure after one of your candidates has been selected. Follow up with the client to ensure that the candidate is working out and performing well.

By getting feedback from the client, you will be better able to refine your selection and placement process. You might be able to see holes or gaps in your interview process that are leading to unqualified candidates being placed in the wrong positions.

For more tips on successfully operating an IT Staffing firm, visit the Small Business Center from TechInsurance. Here you will find tips on selecting the right types of liability insurance, tips on interviewing candidates, and ideas on how to better manage your clients and their expectations.

Now that your project is done, how do you measure its success? Well hopefully you have compiled data on sales, leads, impressions, or whatever you were tracking throughout the extent of your marketing campaign, but was the client happy? To find out, you need to conduct a post project review.

Your review should consist of a series of questions targeted at discovering where you as a project manager or company can improve your services. Discuss items like the effectiveness of meetings, time, and resources spent. Discuss how satisfied the client was with your response times. You should discuss anything and everything that took place during the course of the engagement and have the client give you a score or grade on it.

You can conduct the same testing with your own team to discover any loopholes or gaps in the project management plan. These reviews will show the client that you are dedicated to improving your services, as well as show your team and company some places where services can be improved overall. If you see any trends with any of the answers provided by the client, you might need to take an in depth look at your team and its strategies.

For more information regarding project reviews or other tips for marketing managers, please visit the Small Business Center from TechInsurance.

As any project manager knows, as a project progresses, the client asks more questions about the status, expected benefits, and budget. Managing what your clients expect and actually delivering a project that matches up with what they want/need is a very difficult task. Often times, as a client’s budget increases, so do their expectations, and who can blame them. It is your job as the project manager to make sure that the project stays on budget, but that the client receives the value he was promised from the beginning.

If you aren’t careful, there can, and will be, a disconnect between the delivered value of the project and the perceived value from the client. Often times this is caused by a shift in project scope and in the end, the client sees something different than was originally planned and must now be assured that what he has in his hand was worth the money he paid for it.

A good way to do this is with regularly scheduled updates. If your client is constantly kept in the loop as to the status of their project, budget, and deliverables; there will be fewer questions once the project is completed and at the very minimum, you have documentation to cover all of the steps of the project.

Keeping your client assured and on board with the project is the best way to manage their expectations when it comes to the project.