Madonna and the Prince of Wales are two of an estimated 3000 select people who are being invited to join the world’s first private flight sharing club in an effort to reduce the environmental impact and cost of private jets that are currently flying empty 40% of the time.
The Flightshare Private Members Guild is the brainchild of Farnborough UK based David Lacy, an aviation veteran of 26 years who was the first to introduce carbon offsets to the European private jet industry last year.
Category: In Business
Advice on growing your small and medium sized business, SME, in the UK. Hiring and managing staff and finance plus marketing all on one website
Hilton London Euston
WHAT’S IT LIKE? The Hilton London Euston is made up of two Victorian town houses joined together. It has had a few previous incarnations: as a Cora Hotel it was burnt to the ground in 1989 and after a rebuild and refurbishment it became a Scandic Hotel in 1991 and Euston Plaza Hotel in 2001. Hilton took over the property in 2004 and a year later updated the public areas and guestrooms. It looks more like a contemporary town house inside than its exterior suggests.
WHERE IS IT? Off the main Euston road in Bloomsbury, the hotel is a five-minute walk to London Euston station and a 15-minute walk into Holborn and Covent Garden beyond. Week-night business is dominated by travellers coming from the north through Kings Cross and Euston.
Picking up the post
Struggling to cope with late deliveries is nothing new for smaller business. Three years ago, when the Royal Mail’s second post was scrapped as part of the continuing drive to cut costs, many members of the Forum of Private Business (FPB) complained that late deliveries were hindering their ability to do business.
However, the latest delay is in naming the UK’s 2,500 post offices that are to face closure. This has been postponed from September and has left countless owners of small businesses on tenterhooks. Post offices are vital links in their supply chain, and many communities face prolonged agony because the process of consultation will not be concluded until October 2008, in some areas.
Going it alone
At the end of the ‘90’s the air was thick with revolution. Offices, newspapers and gastropubs across the land were alive with rumours that the end of the workplace as we knew it was nigh. With just a mobile phone and a laptop, people could work from anywhere, anytime. For some, tomorrow’s working world was a freelancer’s haven. To others, it was all hype.
Whichever way you look at it, the UK’s freelance community is growing and it includes some of the country’s most experienced and talented workers who make up a highly skilled, highly mobile and flexible 21st century workforce.
Your own boss
Some of the common reasons cited for going freelance include being your own boss, making more money, having freedom and variety and striking the work/life balance.
No longer a great job
The directors of Britain’s companies are feeling the pressure from the growing risks and responsibilities they face – to the point where a majority are seriously questioning whether it is worth being a director at all – and those at small-to-medium sized enterprises are bearing the brunt.
These are the main findings of a major survey conducted in August by TakeLegalAdvice.com – an online service that matches businesses with law firms – which questioned 918 directors and senior managers at companies in the United Kingdom.
More than half of company directors polled – 55% – agreed that being a company director ‘is no longer a great job’, while 58% said that the risks and responsibilities of the role are increasingly outweighing the rewards. The proportions of SME directors – those at companies with between 2 and 249 staff – who say the same are higher still, especially those at companies with fewer than 10 employees, 61% of whose directors agreed with the statement.
Energy saving website launched
Opus Energy – a leading independent electricity supplier to businesses – have just launched Opus Evolution, a real-time online energy purchasing system that gives customers direct access to wholesale electricity markets.
The system, which, for the first time, gives smaller (non-half hourly) customers the chance to take advantage of pricing deals normally only offered to larger (half hourly) customers, is the first of its type in the UK.
Free relocation guide for UK businesses
Windsor Telecom Plc, UK’s 2nd largest provider of 0845 memorable phone numbers and inbound call solutions has published a free guide to relocation aimed at UK businesses of all sizes.
The two handy guides, for the corporate and SME markets, provide valuable information on how to make the right move, an essential ten step plan to successful moving , and a comprehensive directory of useful contacts.
Search for investment just got easier
A new website is set to provide an easy boost for anyone seeking venture capital or private equity funding.
Investor Search is a specialist search engine that will greatly simplify the task of identifying investors with interests or preferences that match a company’s investment needs. It is designed for trading companies that need capital to grow, for start-ups looking to get off the ground or potentially anyone in the investment community.
Standing out from the crowd
With an average annualised turnover of £25 million, The Commercial Group is the largest independently owned office services company in the UK. In its 17 years of business it has built a reputation based on exceptional customer service, superior consultancy and a quality product range.
Determined to continue to spearhead change within its market place, Commercial works tirelessly to innovate, promote best practice and, where necessary, instigate debate to ensure the standards it has set itself as a company challenges others to assess their own processes and systems.
With this dynamic background it may be surprising that the Directors have thrown all of their efforts into a campaign across the business to embrace a culture which is unashamedly green. But because the business is at the top of its game it is crucial that it continues to seek ways to further differentiate itself from its competitors and this is where the almost messianic drive for green credentials has been put at the heart of the corporate agenda. Naturally where there are leaders in industry there are followers and what once set you apart can eventually become a standard offering.
The ability to change
For Commercial its ability to anticipate change and ensure it can accommodate it, whether it is an e-commerce solution or software integration, has enabled the company to not only develop and grow but remain the supplier of choice to over 6000 companies.
The ‘It’s not easy being green’ myth
A belief, held by many, that ‘It’s not easy being green’, still seems to prevail for many small-to-medium sized businesses.
Reading’s new Novotel
WHAT’S IT LIKE? First impressions were good – the hotel felt bright, fresh and spotlessly clean, and the reception staff were welcoming and happy to help with queries such as searching the internet for directions to a shopping centre.
WHERE IS IT? Around five minutes’ walk from Reading mainline station. The hotel has a few parking spaces (£7 per day), and an agreement with the NCP car park for half-price parking for guests. Drivers should plan their route before they arrive though as the centre of Reading is a one-way maze – I pulled up at the front of the hotel, only to be directed on a ten-minute round-Reading trip to the car park entrance, about 50 yards from where I’d started.
Think big, stay local
It’s tough for would-be entrepreneurs carrying the tag “budding” in front of their career description. But it’s a stage they all go through – somewhere between having the idea to go it alone and taking delivery of the executive jet.
For most budding entrepreneurs it’s a familiar picture: you wake up at 6am to start your work day, only you aren’t heading into town to sit at some comfy corner corporate office suite. You might still put on a suit and tie, but you are in fact only headed as far away your home office, which is, in fact, a desk in the corner of the lounge. With the cat and dog as your only company, you begin to settle down to work for the day.
Breaking into the big city service
You might have thought car rental companies were just that: companies which offered you the chance to rent a car. They do that, of course, but in the 21st century they offer much more. With ever more demanding customers, the major rental companies could not sustain their infrastructures from simple car rental, so came up with the concept of "total mobility": cars, vans, trucks and even motorcyles if you need them, extended rental periods, full leasing, and contract hire to take care of long as well as short-term needs. They aim to offer a seamless system so integrated with the client that it is difficult to move to another rental company.
For larger companies this has enabled the replacement of the fleet department. Taking care of all transport, from a car to collect a visitor from the airport right up to providing executive saloons for the directors, as well as pre-contract vehicles, short-term leases for new recruits and even short-term high-performance cars as incentives for sales staff: all is well within the capability of the top car rental firms.
Buying’s easy, it’s getting value that’s difficult
The problem of purchasing within small and medium-sized businesses is that it has often developed as the business has grown with little or no discernable plan. Whilst there may have been some rational strategy regarding direct materials, with indirect costs (which although they account for a smaller proportion of the spending are necessary for the organisation to function), the result is often that of unplanned trial and error.
What’s the problem?
This is a consequence largely of the business owner focussing on the main function of the business with little or no time to spend on other matters. As employees are added, indirect purchasing is often delegated to secretarial, clerical, administration or perhaps IT personnel. This results in the loss of an overall view of the spending and responsibility in the hands of amateurs (albeit well-meaning amateurs!)
How to fight Climate change and boost your bottom line
In February last year, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report warned that climate change is the single biggest threat to businesses and societies globally. As efforts to increase awareness of climate change and carbon footprints continue, more businesses of all sizes are starting to think about how they can deal with the impact of their activities and the business benefits of doing so.
There are a number of reasons why it is increasingly important for businesses to be taking action on the environment. Regulation of carbon emissions and fiscal measures affecting business are scaling up – with new sectors being brought into the EU Emissions Trading Scheme in 2008, and the EU setting more stringent targets for carbon emissions from new cars, to the UK’s Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation and the Carbon Reduction Commitment in the UK Climate Change Bill from 2010.
One of the most important challenges for business is to get to grips with the size of the problem with a comprehensive audit and ongoing measurement, and to take a strategic approach to managing and reducing carbon footprints.
