Biz Net - Business News

96% of employers now offer flexi time according to new research

Alan — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:58:04 +0000

Since flexible working was first introduced nearly ten years ago, only a small minority of employers have had problems complying with regulations surrounding flexible working arrangements. Research carried out by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has found that 96% of employers provide some sort of flexible working to their employees and that it benefits both of them.

Nearly two thirds of employers think that flexible working helps with recruiting staff and a half of the employers surveyed thought that it reduced absence and enhanced productivity. Over two thirds thought that it was an aid to employee retention and motivation.

The most common types of flexible working are part-time with 32%, flexi-time with 25%, home workers with 20% and mobile workers 14%. Less common are job share, school term-time workers and compressed hours workers. Large and medium sized companies have less flexi-workers, percentage wise, than small companies.

The Head of Public Policy at the CIPD, Ben Willmott, said that fears raised a decade ago about flexible working had on the whole proved to be groundless no matter what the size of the company. The CIPD wants more extensions to the rights of employees with regards to flexible working although some people claim this will just add more burdens to businesses. The CIPD say the Government should go ahead with the extensions proposed.

The CIPD say that the smaller firms manage their flexible working arrangements less formally than larger firms. Although by necessity, larger firms need a proper HR support system in place and need to have more formal policies due to the number of employees they may have working for them.

The research found that employees who were happy with their work/life balance were more productive, more engaged and under less stress. This showed, as well, in the results of industrial tribunals generated by flexible working problems. Most of the disputes were settled either privately between the two parties, by ACAS or were withdrawn altogether. The CIPD are sure that the new extensions will have no adverse effects on businesses.

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Digital Dawn for Promotional Marketing

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:32:48 +0000

The marketing landscape has changed dramatically over recent years, and continues to do so at a lightning rate. Traditional marketing is increasingly integrated and in some places has been replaced by digital marketing practices. Digital can be more direct, more tailored and more able follow a consumer’s behaviour online – who would have thought that advertisers could use a consumers web browsing history to present ads from websites that they have recently visited?

Thanks to smartphones and the diversification of social media, digital marketing is only going to get more remarkable. So how has the promotional marketing world embraced digital?

It’s no secret that businesses and agencies are using platforms such as Facebook pages and Twitter to engage with their audiences; a practice that serves as an effective vehicle for promotional marketing such as offering exclusive coupon codes to Twitter followers or the hosting of a competition on Facebook.

Another advantage of using social media for a promotional campaign is that that any business can do it, as the costs to set up and manage a social media account are practically zero. It doesn’t matter if you have only the fraction of the marketing budget of a huge corporation; you can still reach your audience with equal or more effect if your social media promotional messages hit the right note.

Smartphone campaigns are also popular; with no physical materials needed to get a message out, overheads can be greatly reduced with the added bonus of directly interacting with an audience through a medium that they are always likely to have on their person. Companies need to be careful here as people do not like to be spammed, especially on such a personal level; if you are going to run a mobile campaign, make sure you are offering real value and not just a standard marketing messages.

Ofcom’s 2011 Communications Market report outlined the importance of social networking sites when it comes to getting a message out and ensuring a project goes viral. Successfully promoting a campaign through social media will have a greater impact due to the ‘word of mouse’ effect where people will see that their friends have taken part in a particular campaign, greatly increasing the credibility of the message. All it takes is a ‘like’ or a ’retweet’ and a promotion can organically spread throughout individual friend networks with more impact than some of the larger advertising campaigns. An example of this can be Old Spice; following an immensely popular television advertisement, social media followers could pitch ideas for the actor to carry out; total views reached 40,000,000 in just a week and a 107% increase in short-term sales.

Henry Walker of NDL Group, a promotional marketing agency in London said “This does not mean that traditional media such as print and television are redundant; far from it. As part of a wider promotional campaign digital media fits in perfectly alongside other methods as part of an overall integrated campaign as seen with Old Spice. A television advert can show the product with an invitation to follow a specific Twitter or Facebook account in exchange for a chance to win exclusive deals. Print advertisements in a paper can have QR codes for people to scan in with their smartphones. One thing for sure is that as the Internet and smartphones continue their development into smaller, faster and more capable communications vehicles, prize promotions will always be there to use them to their fullest.”

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Welcome

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 03:02:05 +0000

Welcome Biz Net the Business News blog.

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Spiceworks reports that SME’s prefer traditional computing

Alan — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:11:47 +0000

Network management software firm, Spiceworks, has reported that traditional client computing is still tops for small to medium businesses. Their research has found that the SMB budgets for IT went up by 15 % in the first six months of 2012, and desktops, laptops and tablets were still the most popular with SME’s Firms spent, on average, £94000 on IT.

The survey, quizzing 1500 companies worldwide also revealed that 30% of SME’s are still actively recruiting IT professionals and 56% are maintaining the status quo with their IT staff. It did report, however, that over 60% of companies will invest in tablets in the next few months and that IT staff are unsure on the best way to manage the BYOD trend.

One fifth of the SME’s surveyed are totally behind BYOD but over a third think that this works alright for some devices but is not as good for others. And a quarter of SME’s think that technology owned by an employee is not worth the hassle for their company. At the moment about 75% of firms help in managing employee-owned devices. i-phones are the most popular platform for this.

Hardware will take most of the IT budget for the SME’s with around 40% being spent on, firstly, desktop computers, then, second on the list is laptops. About 34% of the IT budget will then go on software. Anti-virus and anti-spam software takes top priority here with back up and recovery coming second.

So according to this survey at least, the trend will continue for the same old client compute platforms for the foreseeable future anyway. And there doesn’t seem to be any let up in the amount SME’s will be spending on their IT equipment and staff.

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Shop Direct to close two UK call centres

Alan — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:54:34 +0000

Shop Direct, one of the UK’s leading home shopping retailers, has said it is planning to close two of their call centres, which will probably mean job losses. Chief executive of Shop Direct, Mark Newton-Jones, has said that this is because of the way consumers have changed in their approach to online shopping due to advances in technology and that consequently there is a need for fewer staff in direct contact with customers.

The two centres marked for closure are Worcester and Preston. Shop Direct will transfer some 1800 staff to the services company Serco. It is thought that Serco will then move some of the work overseas. Shop Direct have chosen to work with Serco on this as they have the necessary expertise and technology to adapt to the continually changing world of online consumerism.

Chief executive of Serco, Christopher Hyman, said that they are very pleased to be working with Shop Direct and will deliver a customer contact programme that will continue to improve the customers experience with Shop Direct with increased efficiency and investment in new technologies.

Shop Direct has moved from being a catalogue business, in the last ten years, to now having 75% of its’ business online. However, with calls to the call centres falling drastically, something had to give. The company has said that the two call centres will remain open for another year at least and that before any decisions are made, there will time for plenty of detailed consultations.

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Belfast to be the home of BT’s troubleshooting team

Alan — Wed, 09 May 2012 11:57:12 +0000

BT has chosen Belfast as the base for a team of 120 crack troubleshooters to help solve problems in their worldwide call centres. The BT Innovate and Design team, with strength of 220 personnel, is already located in Northern Ireland and this latest injection of staff will bring the number of people working for the company in the Province to around 2,600. This means BT will now have four more centres in Northern Ireland.

The Innovate and Design team are currently working on BT Vision 2 to bring us the most up-to-date systems in home entertainment and the internet. It is due to be launched later in the year. BT is recruiting now and hopes to fill the posts within the next 6 months. It is worth £2.9 million per year in salaries to the Northern Ireland’s economy.

Recruitment will be conducted by telephone interviews and successful candidates will then attend an assessment centre. Those that are chosen will then have 5 weeks training which will begin in July. The new centre is set to open in August. The centre will be answering calls for the whole BT network thus easing the pressure on other centres.

Arlene Foster, the Enterprise Minister says that it will be much more than a call centre, and £568,000 worth of funds have been put forward by the Jobs Fund of Invest NI as well as over £108,000 beingcontributed by the Assured Skills Programme of the Department for Employment and Learning.

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Weetabix look at possible deal with Chinese food company

Alan — Tue, 08 May 2012 11:52:10 +0000

In a possible deal that could make the private equity owners of Weetabix worth 1 billion pounds, Lion Capital is looking into a deal with Chinese state-backed company, Bright Food. The makers of the famous British breakfast cereal, as well as Ready Brek and Alpen, have been talking with the company, based in Shanghai, for a few weeks now.

It is uncertain at what stage the talks are or if they will reach a successful conclusion but it is a known fact that Lion Capital will only sell the business for a high price. The recent talks started after Lion Capital re-financed their debt of £900 million, at the end of last year. Thanks to several dividend payouts, they have already trebled their initial investment from when they bought the brand eight years ago.

With a yearly turnover of more than £4 billion, Bright Food is one of the largest food groups in China. Their takeover success rate is not that good, however. Two years ago, talks broke down between them and United Biscuits when they attempted to buy the British makers of Jaffa Cakes.

Two years ago, Bright Food made an attempt to buy the sugar and biofuels section of CSR, Sucrogen. The talks again broke down with the Australian company. Then last year, when trying to buy a stake in Yoplait, the French yoghurt producers, they were beaten to the post by General Mills. They had one success last year, though, when they managed to attain 75% of the Australian company, Manassen foods.

The Weetabix brand is responsible for 7% of the UK’s cereal sales and is the second largest producer of branded cereals and cereal bars in the country. Based in Kettering, Northants., they manufacture 70 million Weetabix biscuits every week.

They export to over eighty countries worldwide and also have operations in Germany, Spain, the US and South Africa. Their pre-tax profits were £ 20.4 million in 2010 a rise from £4.3 million the previous year. They have a workforce of two thousand people in the United Kingdom.

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More big names found to be involved in the Eclipse 35 programme

Alan — Sat, 05 May 2012 15:59:15 +0000

It has been found that the vast majority of participants in a tax avoidance scheme that was just shut down by the taxman were actually chief executives and many overpaid City bankers.

The Revenue service shut down a scheme called the Eclipse 35 film investment partnership and now it has been found that it had big business representatives such as Alain Grisay the F&C Asset Management chief executive and Markit’s Lance Uggla.

Up until now the coverage of the Eclipse 35 scheme has been mostly focused on football stars and their bosses. Previously, the tax tribunal has attacked Sven Goran Eriksson the England boss, Sir Alex Ferguson the Manchester United manager, and former Newcastle United player Nobby Solano. In addition a few more football stars including Graham Kavanagh and Jussi Jaaskelainen have been implicated in the scheme.

However, it is becoming clear now that most of the list is composed of hedge fund managers, City traders, and private equity advisers which offers a very rare glimpse into how some of the richest people in the world choose to hide their money away from Revenue services in an attempt of course to become more rich.

Out of the names that are traceable n the Eclipse 35 list there are 11 managers from Deutsche Bank, ten people who are or were bankers at Goldman Sachs, 25 hedge fund managers from a variety of large firms, and eight traders from UBS. Most of the bankers seem to be heads of departments or traders but those that are named would not comment on the situation.

Also included on the list of names were Magid Shenouda from Goldman Sachs, Raymond Key from Deutsche, Stefan Tsonev from KP Morgan, and Philippa Rose one of the most well known headhunters in London.

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Vodafone deal to share network BT could be rocky in the future

Alan — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:03:54 +0000

Vodafone and BT have struck deals to use each other’s networks, but the purchase of CWW by Vodafone will likely fill in some of their gaps, making it less likely that are going to need BT in the future. This is also going to make it easier for Vodafone to go after larger customers over BT because they are going to have farther coverage which likely is going to make the relationship between the two providers a bit strained in the future.

Calao stated that there is no reason why the partnership would dissolve, but Livingston may have a different opinion.BT is in a different position from Vodafone, given the fact that they sold off their mobile arm quite a few years ago so now when it needs to offer a wireless connection it does so by piggy backing on Vodafone’s network.

Vodafone gets back the favour by plugging into BT’s Wi-FI network and also utilising some of the 21CN network when it needs it for backhaul. However, while this arrangement has worked for the last few years the new CWW acquisition makes it clear that Vodafone may be ready to try it out on their own.

Over the last few years Vodafone has lost a lot of its domestic market ground as it saw O2 rise up and then losing out when T-Mobile and Orange merged together. Vodafone stated that the CWW business will allow it to move back up to second place coming in right behind BT.

This is due to the fact that adding CWW networks will allow it to almost double the size of its enterprise and offer the firm another seven billion pounds of profit each year allowing its turnover to come in much closer to BT’s.

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The prospects of a gloomy summer loom for Speedy Hire

Alan — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 11:34:02 +0000

Speedy Hire is an equipment rental company who is going to be taking a blow to their profits because of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the Olympic Games that are taking place this summer.

It is expected that because of these events the demand for equipment in the capital city is going to be reduced as construction projects go on hold while the Games take place. It is estimated that the company are going to lose around £2.5 million because of the summer festivities.

These figures come out of the firm, Investec Securities. An analyst from the company, Andrew Gibbons has commented, “The business still remains in good shape and is going to meet its forecasts for next year. However, they are going to have to work very hard in order to reduce the impact that they are going to be feeling as projects go on hold over the summer.”

The stockbrokers, Panmure Gordon have recently cut their estimates for profit figures for the company from nearly £20 million to £16 million. They suggest that the majority of the lost profits are going to be associated with the Olympics. An analyst for the stockbrokers has commented, “Because so many roads are going to be closed in London for the Olympic Games, we are expecting this company to be seriously affected.”

The company has 300 sites across the country and shares have not been particularly badly affected by the announcement by these analysts that the profit figures could fall. The company has many strong contracts which will continue long into the future and are only going to be temporarily affected.

This is going to be a short-term problem that the company will recover from after the busy summer. Despite that, analysts are remaining cautious about the company’s profit predictions.

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