November 15, 2011
Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 11:46 am
Booking a business trip at the last minute is something I tend to do rather a lot. Though with me, last minute really does mean last minute. On this particular occasion, the cab was on its way to whisk me to Luton airport, and there I was still browsing the web at some unearthly hour to compare car hire prices for a hatchback from Geneva airport.
It can all be a bit stressful, but I have to say that these kind of crazy, frenetic, last minute business trips are usually the best for me. For a start, you have no great expectations for the meetings ahead, so a half decent outcome actually feels a great deal better; and secondly, by the time you arrive, you feel absolutely shattered from all that nervous energy, so you tend to sleep like a log, which I find beneficial before any important meetings. Anyway, I digress.
By the time I’d sorted the car hire, the cab driver had been sitting outside for five minutes. For me, that’s not bad at all. I’ve been known to keep cabbies waiting for much longer.
No sooner than plonking myself into the back seat, the driver was off. And I’m not referring to the forward trajectory of his vehicle. No, I refer instead to his remarkable ability to talk rather articulately and incessantly.
Now, by and large, most cabbies I’ve come across either want to talk about football, their need for a holiday on the sun, or, of course, the number of famous people who had sat in the very seat that I now occupied. This chap was different.
“What do you make of those latest insolvency figures they’ve just issued then?” he asked. And then without waiting for an answer, he provided one. Well, actually he provided more than one.
“They reckon company insolvencies in England and Wales have gone up by 6.5% year on year. Do you know how many that adds up to?” And then again, without waiting for my response, “I’ll tell you what that adds up to: 4,242. That’s what. It’s a bloody disgrace.”
I made some kind of sympathetic grunt, and the driver continued.
“I tell you what that represents. It represents 1,203 compulsory liquidations and 3,039 voluntary liquidations. And that geezer. What’s his name, you know the big cheese economist?”
“George Osborne,” I proffered.
“Nah, not that pillock. No, that Howard Archer bloke, the chief UK economist. Now he says that this rise is down to the lack of growth in the economy, plus the rise in oil prices and commodities.
“Well, you don’t have to be Albert Einstein to work that one out, do you? I reckon I could do his job. But I can tell you this: it’s just the tip of the bloody iceberg. You wait and see. You mark my words, there’ll be loads of small companies in the public sector who are going to suffer from cut backs in government spending. And if the banks, who created this mess in the first place, don’t start lending and continue to make it difficult to access credit, we’re all going to be stuffed.”
It wasn’t perhaps how that nice Evan Davis would have put it on Radio 4. But essentially he was absolutely right. But then, cabbies, from my experience, usually are.
Alex Pearl is a freelance copywriter and author of ‘Sleeping with the Blackbirds’.
http://sleepingwiththeblackbirds.co.uk http://alexpearlmini.carbonmade.com
March 23, 2011
Filed under: Uncategorized — Alan @ 3:12 pm
In order to help more small businesses the Invest NI has undergone some radical changes because of recommendations on the Independent Review of Economic Policy as explained by Arlene Foster Enterprise Minister shifting the organisation to a partnership role to boost exports, from its original client based approach.
They will be able to fund more money to businesses that want to move into new markets and those that want to grow. This came at an event hosted by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) in Belfast.
Saying that a wider business base will enable Invest NI to do even more and helping the smaller business because when she first starting working in the department many small businesses felt they were not Invest NI clients so they could not get help because of the perception that Invest NI had adopted a hands off approach to small business.
The goal is to make Invest NI a place where one can get the advice and support needed. There will be business and telephone advisory centres established from working with councils and Local Enterprise Authorities to help back up the existing nibusinessinfo.co.uk site.
The belief is that these facilities are going to give many businesses throughout Northern Ireland advice and support needed and in turn will help to give the economy a needed boost. Over the past 12 months startups and SME’s in Belfast had created over 600 jobs and that the Invest NI announcement makes for further importance of the small business.
The minister also mentioned the small businesses were Northern Ireland’s economic backbone and had to be helped so they can further help the country by creating new jobs and boosting the local economies.
March 4, 2011
Filed under: Uncategorized — Alan @ 8:49 am
Retail businesses in Britain may be badly prepared for the future, according to a new report. The FileMaker Insight Awareness Report found that insight into risk management and strategic business planning featured lower in retailers’ priorities – twenty-three percent and twenty-two percent respectively – than for instance customer service and sales and marketing – sixty-five percent and sixty-two percent respectively.
The study focused on 100 retailers. One of the key findings was that retail businesses have much better access to information than 5 years ago, according to eighty-three percent of respondents. Sixty-five percent said that it was easy to get information relating to their key performance indicators (KPIs), however only fifty percent said that it was easy to translate that information into action.
Less than half said that insights help with their decision-making and that those insights were connected with their business strategy. Few were able to translate those insights into strategy. Exactly half said that they just did not have the time or that other priorities got in the way and a third lacked the necessary staff and/or skills set. A quarter felt they had too much information, so that much of it was not used effectively.
Maybe it really is a case of information overload for our retailers.
February 10, 2011
Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 7:33 pm
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Murielle Maupoint, Managing Director at Live It Publishing, said, “We coach each author from the initial writing stages through to publication, distribution and marketing. We tend to work with small business owners and self-employed professionals who, by writing a book, can further capitalise on their intellectual property, boost their professional credibility and enhance their business potential.”
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October 23, 2010
Filed under: Uncategorized — Alan @ 5:43 am
The new Comprehensive Spending Review has announced the largest government spending cuts since World War II. Chancellor George Osborne explained that the cuts were to help Britain step from the brink and heal itself from the damage imposed by nearly ten years of unchecked government spending. The total amount of cuts reach somewhere slightly above £80 billion.
In a further effort to cut expenses, the Chancellor announced the dismantling of publicly funded non-government agencies or quangos. Many of them will be cut at the Department of Business, Innovation, and Industry. Along with abolishing the quangos, the Train to Gain Programme, whose mission was to aid employers in getting training designed to uplift the skills of workers, will be cancelled.
He also broadcast plans to make 66 the new pension age and to cut half a million jobs in the public sector by the year 2015.
Despite the cuts, the private sector has responded with positive input. Representatives have described the chancellor’s moves as a call to action for small business and hope that such obvious reliance on the private sector to bail out the economy will make banks more cooperative with private sector lending.
To this end, they are still calling on the government to produce a Small Business Growth Program that would insist on help from banks and lenders for small business operators. While the private sector has been calling upon the government repeatedly for such a programme, the government, as of late, has made no mention of it.
October 8, 2010
Filed under: Uncategorized — Alan @ 3:59 am
Reports continue to show that the economic recovery is slowing, if it even ever really got started. A key indicator, the services industry, has experienced a reduction in new orders just at a time it was supposed that service sector businesses would begin to gain impetus.
The recent report has ignited concerns about another recession and slowed a small gain in employment. In August, service industry businesses hit a 16-month low. September’s numbers gained over that record low, but not as substantially as expected.
This slow in the service industry completely nullifies assertions that gains in private sector employment were about to begin offsetting public sector losses. The rate of increase from August to September could only be described as modest and the third quarter of 2010 reflects lows not experienced from the second quarter in 2009.
Mate this with a construction downturn and a fall off of export orders all through the same month, and you can hardly say you have recovery. Economists say these are all indicators of suppressed growth over the next several months, certainly not increased growth.
New business growth is nearly stagnant and confidence is at a level consistent with high economic stress. This lack of new business growth spurs reduced confidence, which indicates little business gains in the near future.
Economists and experts are also concerned that a lack of confidence, cancellation of government contracts, construction and export turndowns, and the service industry report add fuel to concerns that the recovery has lost momentum and negatively impacts the cycle of business inflow and employment.
September 19, 2010
Filed under: Uncategorized — Alan @ 8:26 am
The Office of Fair Trading has launched an investigation into hotel rooms that are sold online thought to be involved in price fixing.
The investigation is the result of a complaint from Skoosh.com, a discount website. The website reported that it was forced to offer certain rooms at a standard price. Skoosh stated that they opened wide discounts and as a result hotels would call them and threaten legal action against them if they did not charge more. An employee from the site stated that they were told to increase their prices or stop offering hotel rooms for each hotel that complained.
Internet sales of hotel rooms have blown up in the past few years dominated both by the websites that receive commissions when they sell rooms and by hotel businesses themselves. The result is customers can shop around and find the best price for certain hotel rooms.
September 5, 2010
Filed under: Uncategorized — Alan @ 3:51 am
When someone starts to talk about a business plan most people start to think about sitting down to right out an official business plan. A quick glance for reference material will reveal plenty of software, articles, books, and consultants that are prepared to aid you create your own business plan, but ironically there are little resources that will actually help you build a planning system that is continuous and able to evolve to meet today’s changing business environment.
Most business theory suggests that in order for a business to prosper and survive in the competitive environment it must be flexible and able to switch directions as conditions change. Therefore, a five year written plan of how things should progress hardly seems helpful in the long term. In actuality, trying to stick to a five year plan long term may actually hurt a business in the long run because it is a bit like trying to be flexible and follow a schedule- it’s impossible.
Ironically, even though it is almost universally accepted that a formal written business plan is the key to a successful business there are not any surveys or studies that actually show whether this is the truth.
After all, if business plans were truly a necessity there should be a clear discrepancy between businesses that have a plan and those that never bothered to craft a business plan. With this thought in mind, perhaps more focus should be shifted on how a business processes instead of how planners think it should before it actually is launched and tested in the business world.
August 28, 2010
Filed under: Uncategorized — Alan @ 2:09 am
Angel Investors are more likely to follow their intuition than most financial calculations when they decide whether a company would make a good investment or not. This is according to research done by Angels Den. Angels Investors are individuals with a very high net worth who put their money and their knowledge into companies who need funding.
In the Angels Den survey, over 70% of the 50 Angels that were asked said that they would mainly use their ‘gut feel’ to determine the value of a business in its early stage. Every single Angel questioned said they used their ‘gut feel’ to some extent. Lois Cook, the co-founder of Angels Den, said that using intuitive judgment when a company is just starting out and has nothing that a valuation can be based on.
Many Angels also take into account the management team of the company, and how likely they would be able to work with them effectively. But perhaps the most surprising result is that few of the Angels noted that they do not rely on their advisor or accountant to a great extent.
Angels Den co-founder Bill Morrow says that Angels tend to work with “entrepreneurs with passion”, and that personality can play a large role in judging companies. Angels Den, since it launched three years ago, has become one of the largest networks for Angels in Europe and the UK. There are currently several thousand Angels who are registered on the website.
July 16, 2010
Filed under: Uncategorized — Alan @ 8:20 pm
UK Health and Safety Consultants EDP encouraged SMEs to look over their health and safety policies. In doing so, they created the HSEasy which allows small business owners to stay complaint with all safety and health aspects within the workplace.
Included in the HSEasy package are safety and health solutions for SMEs available in three different levels that begin at £995.00 per year. The system allows for risk management, gives companies the tools for legal compliance with templates and forms, and comes in both digital and hard copy versions. Within each package is a step by step guide that helps SME owners through every situation that could arise concerning health and safety.
Among the guidance and services that are included in the HS Easy are Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations, Display Screen Equipment, Reporting of Injuries, Electrical Safety, First Aid, Plant & Equipment Regulations, Fire Safety, Risk Assessment and Health and Safety Training, and Reporting of Injuries.
EDP Chief Executive Officer, David Skews, stated that the HS Easy concept s focused on providing health and safety services that are usually required by SMEs. He continued to say that access to a website that lets companies request information on the packages is available at hs-easy.co.uk so that companies can make sure that all legal procedures are followed at any company that has more than five employees.
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