WILLIAM G. SMITH & ASSOCIATES INFORMATION RESOURCE MANAGEMENT SEMINARS AND CONSULTING "CLEANING UP THE WORLD'S DATA MESSES"

SCAM / IMPOSTOR NOTICE: Scam artist(s) claiming to be "William Smith, owners of William G. Smith & Associates " have been attempting to defraud buyers/sellers on various auction and classified ad websites, using the "we'll send you a money order in advance" scam. He/they have used various names, addresses, and email addresses which have "williamsmith" in the address. English is clearly not the scammer's first language, and there will be obvious grammar, spelling and punctuation errors in their messages. THIS/THESE PERSON(S) ARE NOT WILLIAM G. SMITH, AND HAVE NO ASSOCIATION WHATSOEVER WITH WILLIAM G. SMITH & ASSOCIATES!

The scam is a version of the Nigerian Cashiers' Check Scam. A scam "buyer" (posing as "William Smith owners of WILLIAM G. SMITH & ASSOCIATES") will want to send you a cashiers' check or money order in payment for some item you have for sale, and have you deposit it into your account. They will pay you more than your asking price, and ask that you urgently send them - or someone - money from your account for the difference. The scammer's cashiers' check or money order will eventually turn out to be worthless, and you will have lost whatever money you sent to them - and possibly more. There are a lot of middlemen involved receiving and passing along the money orders, etc.

In a more recent incident, a person reported to us that a small charge was made against their debit card on the internet from "William G. Smith & Associates" in Barnstead, WA. William G. Smith & Associates has no presence in the State of Washington, and we do not charge anything against anyone's debit or credit cards. If you do see such a charge, it is fradulent; dispute it with your card carrier, and close the account immediately. Either your account number has become known to these scammers, or they're randomly trying large numbers of account numbers to see which will accept the charges. If you let this slide, it's likely they'll make a larger charge to your card.

The FBI and local law enforcement in several states have been notified, so please contact us (use CONTACT US link above) if you encounter this/these person(s) in your dealings on the Internet. Please capture all contact and identity information (name(s), email address(es), phone number(s), etc.) that you can on this/these person(s), or forward their entire email message to us (with subject, sender, and full header information intact) so that we can assist law enforcement with apprehension and prosecution. We are trying to obtain true identity and location for these persons, and any help will be very welcome. Buyer and seller beware.

NOW, ABOUT THE REAL WILLIAM G. SMITH & ASSOCIATES...

Founded in 1986, William G. Smith & Associates (WGS&A) offers seminars and consulting services to assist companies and government agencies to better manage their information resources (stored data, application program code, and computer technology) so that they are much simpler, less expensive, can be changed more flexibly, quickly and affordably, and enable the enterprise to function far faster, cheaper, and better than is presently possible.

In most companies/government agencies (enterprises) today, the IS/IT organization functions very earnestly and competently, but in perpetual react-mode, building (or installing) more and more program code and data stores as fast as possible with no overarching architectures or plan for what is actually needed. While this seems pragmatic and productive, the resulting mess can become astonishingly expensive, unmanageable, and very difficult to change when needed (which is frequently in today's fast-paced business arena). Most enterprises today function at a fraction of their potential productivity because of an extremely dis-integrated array of application systems which overlay a vast amount of undocumented, redundant, inconsistent, untimely, and often poor-quality data. The ironic and tragic fact is that most enterprises would function far faster, cheaper, better, and more flexibly with less than 10% of the data that they currently store, less than 10% of the application program code they've purchased or built, and a fraction of the computer hardware currently on hand! This is a profound case where less is more.

The key concept is an integrated information environment - called an "Information Resource Management (IRM) Environment" on this website. A truly integrated information (IRM) environment is one in which any business person, organization, process, etc. can know the same thing at the same time as any other business person, organization, process. Huge amounts of labor and time are consumed simply because different parts of an enterprise can't know the same thing at the same time - even though we've had the technology to achieve this for almost three decades. Collapsing "information float" in any enterprise is the absolute key to making the enterprise operate much faster, cheaper, better, and more flexibly.

The old saw "It is insanity to keep doing the same thing, but to expect different results," is very pertinent when considering today's information messes, how they got that way, and how to set a better course for the future. There are no silver bullets here; behavior must change from the executive level down to the technicians in the IS/IT organization in order to achieve the significant benefits of a simpler, cheaper, but much more integrated and productive information environment. Executive management must play the key role in changing the gradecards, the behavior, and the haphazard, react-mode approach which leads to massive data messes. WGS&A has worked with outstanding clients who have broken this vicious cycle, and knows exactly what must be done, and how to do it.

WGS&A offers executive-level seminars and consulting to communicate the extent and nature of the information problems, and to give a proven path from the dis-integrated information environment to the IRM environment. We also offer a full array of technical seminars targeting the CIO, IS/IT managers, Data Modelers, DBAs, Process Analysts/Modelers, and Project Managers within the IS/IT organization to build the skills necessary to build integrated information resources for the enterprise. All of the techniques we teach are beautifully synchronized and complementary so that builders (and managers) of information resources are always working in concert, not in opposition.

Using the links above or following, you can access: detailed descriptions, outlines, and pricing of the seminars we currently offer on an in-house basis; consulting services we offer; schedules of upcoming public seminars; detailed resumes and qualifications of our consultants and instructors; and ways to contact us by email or other means. We'd be honored to help your enterprise manage its information resources much more productively so that it works much faster, cheaper, better, and more flexibly!

If you're an appreciator of art, you might want to also visit Bill's art website.