Tags:
Innovation,
Entrepreneur,
Growth
Catch a rising star
Quick: what’s one of the most frustrating aspects of running a medium-sized business? IT must rate pretty high. Successful growth creates a serious dependence upon IT in every mid-sized business. But the likelihood is that your IT infrastructure is –...
more...
Tags:
Innovation,
Entrepreneur,
Strategy,
Growth,
Data management
Ask the right question
Taken literally, "thinking outside the box" could mean saving serious money. Or at least, it can if you ask the right questions of the right people. Take all those hundreds – if not thousands – of separate bits of information that your business...
more...
Tags:
Innovation,
Data management,
Strategy,
Change
The little shop that could
Time for full disclosure: when asked to write about The White Company, I jumped at the chance. Our household is filled with the company’s stuff. We like what it sells, how it markets itself and, living in the wilds of Wales, its mail-order...
more...
Tags:
Innovation,
Entrepreneur,
Communication,
Strategy
The rise of the answering machines
Does anybody like calling a helpline? Probably not, but businesses still need them. After all, if customers are going to spend their money on a product or service, they want a line of communication with the companies providing them. But many...
more...
Tags:
Change,
Growth,
Strategy,
Data management,
Innovation
Charity begins at home
Here’s something you may not have realised: charities are in one of the most competitive industries in the world. They have to fight tooth and nail for every bit of money that enters their books. Here’s another: they are among the most regulated and...
more...
Tags:
Change,
Innovation,
Entrepreneur
Future tech
What’s the next killer app that’s going to change business forever? Tough call – there were those that claimed Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) software was going to run the telecoms into the ground and change the whole business comms landscape fo...
more...
Tags:
Entrepreneur,
Know-how,
Communication,
Innovation
1,000,000 users can’t be wrong – can they?
Here’s a challenge: how do you collect the sum of all human knowledge? And keep it accurate? And make sure that everyone can consult it in a simple and accessible way? If you’re an ancient Greek, Roman or Spanish thinker (Aristotle, Pliny the Elder,...
more...
Tags:
Innovation,
Strategy,
Data management,
Risk Compliance Governance (GRC)
Looking for answers in all the right places
We’re all familiar with the pain involved in hunting through piles of bank statements and phone bills, searching for a particular transaction. Multiply that task by several million, and you have some idea of the difficulties many businesses face in...
more...
Tags:
Innovation,
Strategy,
Change,
Bottom Line
All change?
“Every company is under pressure to continuously develop in modern retail,” says James Gurd, Home Shopping manager for UK-based houseware and hardware retailer, Robert Dyas.“You want to stay faithful to the values of the organisation but you can't...
more...
Tags:
Entrepreneur,
Data management,
Innovation
Turn data into gold
How much have you invested in gathering and storing data about your customers, products and employees? Probably a lot more money and manpower than you care to think about. And what’s your return on investment from all those pieces of data, which are...
more...
Tags:
Strategy,
Growth,
Innovation
The way we work tomorrow
Like the paperless office, the demise of the book is one of those future scenarios that was widely-prophesied a few years ago on the strength of IT and internet expansion, but hasn’t exactly come about as predicted.Instead, some of the more heartenin...
more...
Tags:
Entrepreneur,
Innovation,
Know-how
Living free and uneasy
The Renaissance represented unprecedented activity in the arts and sciences across Europe. New ideas erupted, disrupted, inspired and cross-pollinated across a range of disciplines. Media flourished under the influence of the latest technology (eg...
more...
Tags:
Strategy,
Security,
Risk Compliance Governance (GRC),
Innovation
Top security for an insecure world
Heard the one about the man who walked into an Israeli bank and stole £400,000 without anyone noticing? For Graham Jones, chief operating officer of business security experts Integralis, the story is a powerful reminder of why his company exists....
more...
Tags:
Strategy,
Know-how,
Innovation
An old model for success
There’s a memorable passage in The Living Company, by Arie de Geus: “When I entered my first place of work [in the fifties]... I felt a slight level of discomfort. The theories back at business school had mentioned labour, but there had been no talk...
more...
Tags:
Health & Safety,
Innovation,
Risk Compliance Governance (GRC)
Man of steel
When Daniel Doncaster began using the crucible steel-making process to manufacture hand tools in Sheffield back in 1778, health and safety wasn't exactly top of his agenda. His main focus was on expertise and innovation, which partly explains why...
more...
Tags:
Bottom Line,
Innovation,
Communication
Back to school
There’s something strangely comforting about a blackboard. The endless chalk dust, the hours spent staring at them in a classroom, even nails being scraped across them can evoke fond memories of our childhood. But, like pretty much everything else,...
more...