The most recent Comment from Incisive Media

Making the most of vendor partnerships

Andy Horn — 2009-11-11T13:09:00.000Z

Andy Horn, CRN, Wednesday 11 November 2009 at 13:09:00

Teaming up means success in a rapidly evolving industry, says Andy Horn

Margins on many traditional products are eroding, and resellers must expand their portfolios across value-added, contracted and managed services, which offer higher margins and meet various modern business needs.

We are increasingly working with many of our resellers to provide hosted and managed IT services for their end customers in the small, medium and even corporate segments.

In this context, partnership is more important than ever. We are finding that resellers want vendor reassurance that they are open to proper, long-term partnerships with closer and collaborative working practices.

Vendors need to provide resellers with innovative marketing programmes that help the two companies collaborate on, for example, defining processes for prospect registration and joint bids.

Transparency around active sales opportunities can increase trust and qualified prospects. This maximises time and effort and ensures we all get a measurable return on investment.

Joint marketing development funds and vendor-driven sales leads help partners use marketing tools such as "campaigns in a box" and co-branding opportunities.

Also, we believe resellers should look for vendors and suppliers with a defined product roadmap and team up to research new offerings – especially if there are potential opportunities to expand into higher margin offerings and managed services.

There is a definite opportunity in helping businesses cut their operating costs while improving their efficiency and processes. The most successful resellers will be those that integrate technologies that help businesses achieve these things.

Also, being easy to do business with is important. Resellers need to ensure their own business processes are as simple and efficient as possible for customers and prospects alike, and that they work with vendors that have the same philosophy and offer, for example, well-designed online portals and other tools.

Winning new customers takes resources, so another priority will be increasing share of wallet in established customer accounts. This requires an in-depth understanding of customers’ businesses, from their tactical business drivers to their company goals and overall organisational strategy.

ICT budgets are squeezed at the momen, so IT departments are getting quotes from multiple vendors. This means that account management will be a real differentiator.

We want to succeed with our partners, particularly within the SME market.

Andy Horn is head of SME business at Colt

Comment: Information overload is a price worth paying if it helps the planet

Simon Perry — 2009-11-11T11:47:00.000Z

Simon Perry, V3.co.uk, Wednesday 11 November 2009 at 11:47:00

Analyst Simon Perry argues that the data deluge doesn't have to be bad for the environment

If you listen to the words used the world over by experts and (some) politicians as they call for action on climate change, there is a phrase that is repeatedly dropped in among the carefully crafted sound bites: "We need a joined-up approach."

While it is easy to dismiss this as yet another meaningless piece of speech filler flapping habitually from a spokesperson's lips, in actual fact it reflects well on the multi-disciplinary nature of both the problems of climate change and other environmental challenges, and the necessary social and business changes required in response.

Meanwhile, the pressure to re-establish global, national and corporate economic growth is inexorable. Green is good, but green growth appeals to a broader set of constituents along with having a more natural fit to the typical strategic business agenda. The question is, how to balance the seemingly conflicting agendas of the two goals.

The need for joined-up thinking on climate change in the context of economic growth is easier to identify than to deliver. One of the problems we have is that multi-disciplinary problems and solutions are by nature fantastically complex. The sources of information relied on to provide insight are numerously threaded and comprised of a wide diversity of data types. It is one thing to say, "We must reduce the ecological footprint of humanity's activities", and another thing altogether to actually draw up a successful plan for achieving the goal, virtuous as it may be.

In the datacentre all these challenges play out in the microcosm. The hard-headed business pressure to cut costs, along with the increasingly regulated need to reduce energy usage and trim emissions is balanced against an appetite for continual service delivery improvements and expansion in proc essing capacity. Meanwhile, most of the improvements facilities and IT managers have managed to achieve in datacentre operations in the past two years have really just been the harvesting of the low-hanging fruit. Further gains will require more than server virtualisation and datacentre thermo-optimisation.

IT's role in a low carbon economy is transitioning from being one focused on tweaking the electricity usage requirements of hardware and tackling the question of the embodied carbon in the components, toward providing the means to identify and navigate the strategic green direction for the business as a whole. Being a processing platform for the applications that enable effective governance of business efforts toward sustainability may become one of the mot important contributions of IT in the context of 'green'.

Looking back, the engine of economic growth throughout and since the 1990s has been one driven by phenomenal growth in business intelligence derived from information technology, fuelled by cheap energy and access to a globalised labour pool. Looking forward, to a world where we are counting and considering the cost of the emissions related to profligate energy consumption, the intelligence derived from an ever-increasing data set will help organisations identify the most sustainable path ahead, enabling effectively balanced growth against green.

The continued greening of the datacentre lies thus not in its net energy usage, but rather in its gross contribution to the overall reduction in resource utilisation and emissions of the business as a whole.

Struggle as they may today with information overload, datacentres face more of the same. Emissions cap and trading schemes such as the UK's CRC, the EU ETS, the hotly debated proposed American and Australian schemes and others will all require new data to be collected and reported.

In the past businesses have paid scant consideration toward the details of energy usage, and none toward the associated emissions. Gaining a detailed awareness of energy and emissions requires granular measurements of such things as what specific equipment and processes are using what resources.

IT will continue to find itself the collector and cruncher of ever larger and more diverse sets of performance data. As with financial and corporate performance hand-in-hand with the generation of new data will be the need to deliver reporting for internal and (regulated) external audiences under the requirements of the emissions trading schemes.

Information growth is therefore not a bad thing. Data collection and reporting is entirely with merit from the point of view of the environment if it enables a net reduction in emissions across the business by providing insight and enabling effective governance of sustainability efforts. Drown in data we may, but when it enables a more verdant set of decisions to be made for the business, "green screen" will perhaps mean something more forward looking than it does today.

Simon Perry is a sustainability expert and is part of the ThinkingString thought leader community.

Visit our dedicated Summit web site for more breaking news, views, analysis and video on the topic of Information Overload.

Comment: Three steps to a social media strategy

Dirk Singer — 2009-11-10T16:25:00.000Z

Dirk Singer, V3.co.uk, Tuesday 10 November 2009 at 16:25:00

Monitor, register and engage, says communications adviser Dirk Singer

When it comes to social media in general and Twitter in particular, there are two things you can be sure of.

One, people will be talking about themselves. Two, in addition to talking about themselves they will be talking about brands – possibly even yours. That’s a potent cocktail that can wreck your brand's reputation, or perhaps enhance it.

Both these assertions are supported by recent research.

First of all, Oxford University Press did an analysis of 1.5 million words used on Twitter. 'I' was the most popular world after 'the'.

By comparison, in everyday speech 'I' is the 10th most used word, meaning it’s five times more popular on the micro-blogging service.

Secondly, Penn State in the US did research involving half a million tweets. Twenty per cent were about brands in some shape or form. Added to this is the results of another study, this time by Perfomics Marketing, showing that 44 per cent had recommended a product on Twitter and 39 per cent had discussed one.

What does this mean? Brands and products are part of our everyday lives. And as Twitter is a personal broadcasting system, people will be quick to pass on their experiences with them.

One example involving London Underground should give any customer-facing organisation, and that means pretty much any organisation, food for thought.

The other week blogger Jonathan MacDonald filmed a London Underground staff member verbally abusing an elderly passenger who’d had the misfortune of having his arm caught in a tube train door. That was on a Thursday afternoon.

By Friday morning it was on his blog and on Twitter. By Friday afternoon it was on the front page of the Evening Standard. The staff member in question, apparently a peace-loving 'Jedi', has since resigned.

The cycle from it hitting Twitter and it reaching the mainstream media was around four hours. How many organisations would even spot that something was happening online in that time frame?

Indeed, one of the misconceptions about Twitter is that it’s a place for people to exchange various inane comments. There is some of that, but its user base is disproportionately made up of bloggers, social media influencers and – yes, journalists (Sky News now has a Twitter correspondent).

These are people who spot things on Twitter and take them somewhere else. Twitter is effectively the bridge to other media.

So what can you do about it? At its most basic, a social media programme should involve three stages, the first two essential and the third highly recommended: monitor, register and engage.

1 Monitor – People are going to be talking about you whether you are present or not. You might as well know what they are saying about you! More to the point, you need to be able to head off any negative comment before it snowballs.

There are plenty of tools that allow you to do the job, many free. A good list is the wiki maintained by Ken Burbarry

2 Register - If you haven’t registered your brand profile on social media sites, you leave yourself open to anyone with an axe to grind doing so and poking fun at you.

For example, take a look at what’s been done with the Twitter profile of London commuter train service South West Trains (I’ve used them as a case study several times in the past and I’m amazed they haven’t yet done anything about this).

As a result, even if you do nothing else with them, at the very least register your brand profiles. It’s free, and namechk will show you where your brand identity is still available.

3 Engage – This is the more difficult, and also potentially more rewarding, bit. As we’ve already said, people will be talking about you online whether you like it or not, so you might as well be present to shape the conversation.

Fortunately, there are plenty of case studies of companies that have got it right online to guide you, thanks in part to social media pundit Peter Kim, who has created a wiki with examples of what a stack of brands have done online. Take a look, draw your own conclusions and plans, and dive in.

Or…ignore this space completely, wait for a crisis to blow up online, miss it completely, and be left to firefight when the mainstream media gets hold of it several hours later.

Dirk Singer heads up the digital division of brand communications agency Cow. He additionally blogs at liesdamnedliesstatistics.com and is on Twitter.

Singer was talking to V3.co.uk as part of its Information Overload Summit event, running from 10 - 12 November. Visit our dedicated Summit web site for more breaking news, views, analysis and video on the topic of Information Overload.

Winning business data gambles with the channel

Ged Simmons — 2009-11-10T15:16:00.000Z

Ged Simmons, CRN, Tuesday 10 November 2009 at 15:16:00

Business intelligence is coming to the fore for the mid-market, claims Ged Simmons

Too many mid-market organisations are basing critical long-term business decisions on inaccurate or poor-quality data. Sometimes, the gamble can pay off, with errors going unnoticed or financial losses kept to a minimum. But, as with every game of chance, there are winners and losers.

A survey IBM carried out among board-level decision makers in mid-market organisations found that nearly 70 per cent still used spreadsheets as the staple support of business decisions.

Thirty-five per cent of respondents said they provided data only on request, rather than proactively, in rolling reports that executives can view to gain visibility across the whole organisation at any time.

Nearly half of all respondents admitted they were concerned about the overall integrity of the information they used to make critical business decisions. About a third of companies said that spreadsheet use had a detrimental impact on their business.

There are numerous problems with data duplication and inaccurate information in spreadsheet-based systems.

But mid-market organisations are suffering from both a lack of confidence and the fallacy that achieving first-class business intelligence is too expensive.

Spreadsheet systems also often restrict access to information across the business. Around 60 per cent of mid-market businesses are coping with increased data volumes.

You'd think they would be making smarter use of it – but this is not the case. Manual aggregation of information and sharing of vital data via email remains widespread and must be stamped out.

Yet cost-effective business intelligence products exist that are tailored to suit mid-market organisations. With the right tool, businesses can perform first-class reporting, analysis, planning, budgeting and forecasting at an affordable price.

Channel players can make their mark here. Alongside specialist consultancy and advice, smaller organisations can now benefit from the reliable reporting and planning previously only enjoyed by larger companies.

With a consistent and reliable system, answers to previously tough questions such as ‘how are we doing?’, ‘why are we doing what we do?’ and ‘what should we be doing?’ can become clear.

This allows managers to make faster, smarter decisions to reduce cost and minimise risk. Mid-market organisations no longer need to gamble on their data.

Ged Simmons is country manager at IBM Cognos

How direct debits may bolster budgets

Georgia Leybourne — 2009-11-09T15:09:00.000Z

Georgia Leybourne, CRN, Monday 9 November 2009 at 15:09:00

Crediting key suppliers via corporate direct debit can help organisations to cut the cost of managing credit while freeing up valuable staff resources for more business-critical tasks

As the recession deepened, payment delays increased and SMEs now spend more time on credit control and managing cash flow.

The Faster Payments banking initiative offers real-time, provable bank transfers, putting pressure on organisations to use this approach to pay suppliers, and incur a £3-£4 per transaction fee.

With the cost of weekly and monthly payment cycles, cheque processing fees wrapped up in the overall bank charges, and Bankers’ Automated Clearing Services (BACS) fees, it has become very difficult to assess the true cost of payments.

When you add in Faster Payments, extended overdraft facilities where available, administrative costs associated with manual payment processes and finance staff dedicating more time to credit control, the business cost of making payments dramatically expands.

There is a pressing need for firms to address the rising costs of making payments and their associated processes.

One option is the use of commercial direct debits. These already account for the vast majority of consumer-to-business payment transactions. However, direct debits have yet to catch on among many businesses and organisations.

Since direct debits offer the payee huge advantages through guaranteed on-time payments and associated cash flow control, the resistance can only come from the payer community.

Yet direct debits also benefit the payer notably in reducing the administrative process of preparing and making payments. When the payment is due, it is scheduled and happens automatically.

The cash is debited from the bank account at a set time as expected unlike cheques, which can take days to arrive and are not always immediately cashed, putting further pressure on the cash flow management process.

Replacing traditional payment methods such as cheques with direct debits also reduces the risk of fraud, which is a growing concern in the economy.

Cheques being phased out

Furthermore, the banking industry and the Payment Council are expected to make it increasingly difficult and expensive to use cheques over the coming years in the build-up to phasing out cheques for business use by 2018. The early adoption

of direct debit ensures firms already have an alternative payment solution in place.

For the payer the transaction has no associated cost since the fee is paid by the direct debit originator. With guaranteed payments lined up, in-bound calls from creditors will significantly reduce, freeing up your finance team.

In the consumer marketplace, most organisations are actually charging more to those customers not paying with direct debits, to offset the additional credit control and administrative costs associated with cheques or over-the-counter cash.

While this approach is unlikely to be replicated in the business market in the short term, payer organisations can certainly take advantage of the guaranteed direct debit process to negotiate better payment terms from percentage

discounts to extending the traditional 30 days to 45.

This approach eliminates the need to impose Late Payment of Commercial Debt Act penalties, which only put greater pressure on struggling organisations that are forced to devote more and often senior staff resources to credit control.

With guaranteed payments, better relationships can be developed between payer and payee and settlements negotiated that are more favourable to both.

SME struggles

According to recent research by BACS Payments Schemes, UK SMEs are now owed about £30.4bn.

This is a direct result of an overdue payments blow-out of about 40 per cent in the past year. And that figure is up from £18.6bn in the previous 12-month period.

The impact of this late-payment trend may increase, with organisations forced to delay payments as they wait for key debts to be paid. This must contribute to the downfall of firms, as cash flow escapes their control and the costs of managing credit escalate.

Direct debit is a guaranteed route to payment that ensures better cash flow visibility and management and slashes the cost of supplier payments. It may also ease the renegotiation of payment terms adding value and creating a domino effect for more timely payments to be made across the board.

Georgia Leybourne is sales and marketing director at Albany Software

Opening up the public sector

Sara Yirrell — 2009-11-09T15:01:00.000Z

Sara Yirrell , CRN, Monday 9 November 2009 at 15:01:00

The public sector bidding process is one that prompts differing reactions from the channel.

Some love it because they have managed to get into the ‘inner circle’ of Catalyst and G-Cat, and others hate it because they feel it is an ‘old boys club’-style setup that just slams the door in smaller players’ faces without even giving them a chance.

This week Viglen has revealed how it beat the likes of Dell, HP and IBM to a lucrative Office of Government Commerce (OGC) deal -- OGC 11 -- proving that the smaller players in the market do get a look-in and that the business does not always go

to multi-national giants.

But more often than not we hear how the public sector contracts tend to go to the same old players, which eventually throws up the same old problems usually extra costs, delayed completion dates and increasingly complex technical issues.

Even Sir Peter Rigby, founder of SCH, has thrown his hat into the ring, claiming the process is unfair and far too costly for smaller UK players.

However, everyone I speak with lately is hopeful that a change of government will bring a much needed breath of fresh air to the public sector tender process.

One thing is for sure -- the situation can’t get any worse. Or can it?

Sara Yirrell is editor of CRN. Contact her at sara.yirrell@incisivemedia.com

Second-hand tape storage security risk

Anna Liden — 2009-11-09T14:55:00.000Z

Anna Liden, CRN, Monday 9 November 2009 at 14:55:00

While used tapes may offer budget benefits to IT departments, the security risks could cost firms in the long haul

In the market, there are more Linear Tape-Open (LTO), Digital Linear Tapes (DLT) and 9x40 cartridges circulating that are not as new as the shiny and perfect packaging leads customers to believe.

These tapes have had their ‘mileages’ reversed; they have been on the road for some time and then been recycled as new.

This tape recycling phenomenon is encouraged by the need of organisations to destroy their old tapes. The limited budgets endured by IT departments also give malicious used-tape sellers the upper hand. Such dealers can offer their ‘branded tapes’ for just one Euro below the market price.

At first glance, the low price offers a breath of fresh air to IT managers and their departments. However, such an offer is probably too good to be true.

Selling used tapes to be re-certified and resold to another organisation is a practice some IT departments have begun to employ. But selling used tapes may only produce a small amount of revenue and the competitive and security risks of this practice far outweigh any benefits.

Selling used tapes can also put a company at risk of violating regulations around privacy and records compliance.

When we examined four LTO Ultrium 1 re-certified tape cartridges bought on the open market, the results were shocking. Considerable residual customer data in the form of detectable signals was discovered on three of the four cartridges.

Of the hundreds of thousands of possible data sets, a random sample of eight data samples was reviewed. Remnants of an SQL database were discovered. A subsequent web search led to a database of DNA sequences.

A second study analysed a sample lot of 40 9840 recertified cartridges that we had procured from two different suppliers. In most of the cartridges, the directory was completely intact and, in some cases, the data map had not been erased.

Further analysis also revealed that suppliers had only performed a minimal write test of approximately 10MB on some cartridges. Shortcuts like this are appealing to the re-certifier because it takes so long to rewrite the full length of a 9840 cartridge.

Finally, some permanent errors appeared when we tested the used cartridges. We also performed a detailed analysis of one cartridge. A look at the Media Information Record showed that the last action taken by a user was a full read of the data. This was most likely done by the firm selling it.

What is worse is that the re-certifier did not attempt to erase the data, and neither the customer nor the re-certifier executed a data-security erase. Firms that buy such recycled, ‘good as new’ tapes may expose themselves to significant risk.

The US Sarbanes-Oxley legislation requires companies to store their valuable data for at least 10 years. Tapes are still considered as an inexpensive and reliable medium to comply with such legislative compliance requirements.

However, if a company is not aware of how much a cartridge has been used, there is a risk that the valuable back-up may be lost. Re-certified tape’s archival life expectancy is unknown because no reliable information is available on the condition of each cartridge.

And while new tape has an expected archival life of 15 to 30 years, re-certified tape does not. IT dealers and managers just like in the used vehicle industry must beware of hand-me-downs with the clocks wound back.

Anna Lidén is product manager of magnetic and commercial storage for Imation Europe

Time to come online

Danny Brooks — 2009-11-09T11:06:00.000Z

Danny Brooks, Accountancy Age, Monday 9 November 2009 at 11:06:00

The profession is missing out by ignoring the growing importance of online advertising

Q: Which recession growth industry is the accountancy profession missing out on? A: The digital communications business.

The remarkable growth of internet (or digital, or online, depending on the jargon) advertising is underlined by the latest figures just released by the Internet Advertising Bureau. They show that this medium has now overtaken TV advertising to become the leading above-the-line communicator. But professional services expenditure, which includes accountancy firms, has actually dipped in the last year while budgets for other sectors marketing goods and services to the public rose sharply.

The soaring figures for digital are all the more remarkable for the tough economic background within which they multiply. In the first half of 2009 alone, internet advertising grew by 4.6% to £1,752m, despite the entire advertising sector contracting by nearly 17% over the same period, making the UK world leaders in market share for online.

So canny advertisers are taking advantage of a huge shift in public use of the internet in order to reach buying audiences. But not, apparently, accounting practices.

So why do accountancy firms back away from the most modern method of reaching consumers?

Well, according to Stephen Fox, managing director of marketing specialists Fox Kalomaski: “Marketing budgets are down overall, dragging digital with them. And, let’s face it, a lot of marketers also find the new online methodology difficult to understand and evaluate. It’s a bit of a culture shock and therefore a barrier to development.

“But it seems to me that a more professional approach would be to examine seriously those parts of the marketing budget that deliver the best value and concentrate financial resources accordingly. With its recently improved direct response tools, an increase in accounting firms’ online spend would then be inevitable,” Fox concludes.

In fact, home internet use is three times that of the work place, so who are all these millions of online visitors? Well, the internet user population is spread roughly equally across all social-economic and age groups, including a significant and rising number of over-55s. But it’s worth advertisers exploiting specific phenomena such as the fact that women aged 24 to 35 spend more time online than men, for example.

And attitudes towards advertising encountered on the internet are pretty positive, resulting in £46bn spent by consumers via the medium in 2007.Also, in practical terms, they reveal that what prompts the purchases that produced this enormous figure are promotional emails and online advertising.

Moreover, online users also say that the biggest motivator for all this activity and expenditure is to research information, with the greatest use of the internet being visits to sites where the public can buy.

So you could actually say that for accountancy firms to advertise online is to push at an open door.

Danny Brooks is project director at brik digital

Carbon management strategies and offsetting – are you on trend?

Lisa Ashford — 2009-11-06T00:15:00.000Z

Lisa Ashford, BusinessGreen, Friday 6 November 2009 at 00:15:00

Lisa Ashford of EcoSecurities takes the temperature of the carbon offsetting sector and finds it in remarkably rude health despite the recession

Despite the somewhat doom-and-gloom outlook for the world's economy in 2009, EcoSecurities' recent Carbon Management and Offsetting Trends Survey showed that green issues have remained high on the agenda for both senior management and the board.

Many companies have calculated their carbon footprint and are taking action to reduce it, by implementing energy efficiency measures (85 per cent of respondents), recycling activities (79 per cent), and waste reduction (68 per cent). This makes sound economical sense and represents some of the easiest actions that companies can take.

Companies are also showing a strong interest in offsetting; with over two thirds claiming they had already bought offsets or would consider doing so before 2012. This is likely to increase as companies work hard to meet compulsory carbon neutrality targets. Of those that did buy offsets in the last two years, there seemed to be an equal split between those that were carbon neutral (14 per cent) and those that had offset flights (13 per cent) or specific services or products (11 per cent).

There was only a very small sample of companies that stopped offsetting despite the expectation at the start of the year that the voluntary market was facing a crisis of confidence with the economic downturn. Although, of those that had chosen not to offset yet, budget concerns (11 per cent) and consolidation of standards (47 per cent) were the main factors.

However, the fact that 30 per cent of respondents showed a lack of understanding of offsets, demonstrates that the industry clearly has more work to do and is a reminder that whilst offsetting firms may already see a clear movement to backing standards such as VCS, CDM and Gold Standard, the trickledown effect to consumers and corporates is perhaps yet to happen.

In addition, regulatory uncertainty was claimed to be a reason why companies chose not to offset yet, which could reflect a very strong "wait and see" policy with companies, mirroring some of the early days in Europe before the EU emissions trading scheme was created.

Alternatives to carbon offsetting were clearly represented. Companies chose both internal emission reductions and investing in community projects, followed by contributions to adaptation projects. Interestingly, when broken down by region, the Rest of World was clearly strongly in favour of adaptation where the effects of climate change are often felt most.

In all geographic samples, the majority (69 per cent) of respondents have positive attitudes towards offsetting. When considering whether companies have changed their views towards offsetting, the trend has shown that views have either remained the same or grown more positive, with less than 10 per cent per region stating that it has worsened. This is a good sign that the voluntary carbon market is gaining more credibility and that recent development with registries is having a positive effect.

Businesses' reasons for offsetting are clear - environmental benefits, with carbon neutrality and marketing, and CSR commitments also proving to be important motivating factors. This is in contrast to pressure from customers, which scored much lower. It is perhaps more important to think about how companies believe these green activities will result in increasing their brand strength rather than having a direct push from customers.

In terms of what buyers want, the voice is loud and clear. Over 50 per cent of buyers show a clear preference for renewable energy projects, specifically solar and wind. As outlined in our previous Forestry Offsetting survey, interest is growing in forestry projects, with Avoided Deforestation in particular being cited as highly desirable over other technologies.

The most desirable location for emission reduction projects in general was the US, followed by Africa and South America. These results obviously change significantly when looking at the results from individual regions as the preference for domestic based offsets or those "close to home" become prevalent. North American support was demonstrated for domestic offsets followed by those in Canada and Central America. This trend was mirrored in the Australasian responses that also look close to home and ties in with their strong interest in local community projects. Those in Europe bucked the trend with the majority of respondents finding India, Africa and South America the most desirable.

As previously noted there is greater recognition of some key standards, specifically VCS, GS and CDM. There were very few negative responses echoing the notion that standards are good for the sector. This sentiment is reiterated in the responses to the question - important factors considered when purchasing carbon offsets.

However, there were some regional preferences. In Europe, the responses showed a stronger preference for the Gold Standard, followed by the CDM and then the VCS. In terms of standard preferences by region, the North America responses favoured the VCS and Gold Standard, followed closely by CAR and interest in RECs. CDM also received strong support, which is interesting in the context of future regulations and the use of offsets within the US.

As carbon management strategies become must-haves for companies, we will continue to provide insights into the market trends to show what's in and what's out.

Lisa Ashford is the Global Head of Voluntary & New Markets at carbon offsetting specialist EcoSecurities

Making a killing on the markets

Mark Freebairn — 2009-11-05T10:33:00.000Z

Mark Freebairn, Accountancy Age, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 10:33:00

AS other funding options fall by the wayside, IPOs are coming back in fashion

Virginia Bottomley chairs our board practice. I mention this not because I'm showing off the circles in which I move, but because she is well known and is therefore asked to speak at a number of conferences.

As a result, I have a pretty good idea of what's coming up on the rails as critical for the next six months. And the topic of the day is flotations, or initial public offerings (IPOs).

Indeed, a very well known and influential City figure ran a conference last week on this very subject, and the main thrust of the day was that they are coming back. Private equity is going to struggle to offload businesses, while the leveraged model is out of favour. The wealthy are not quite so wealthy any more and their ability to fund substantial purchases has been reduced.

And so, finally, the market is turning full circle, and public ownership is back in vogue.

Now this is all very interesting - but exactly what relevance does it have to you? Well, it's simple. Who tends to do most of the work in the run-up to a public offering? The CEO, the FD, the chairman, the finance function and the audit chair.

On this basis, there is a decent chance that the readers of this magazine fall into at least four of those five groups.

However, my point is much wider-ranging than this. Involvement in an IPO is incredibly useful experience to obtain. At whatever level you work, the chance to help take an organisation through an event like this has far-reaching consequences.

The challenge, the network you develop, the change management exercise, the exposure to investors, the governance aspect - I could go on. All of these are excellent areas

in which to gain exposure.

Any business going through an IPO is going to need people within its finance function to step up to provide support. It is going to need an FD that can lead the business through it; and it is going to need an audit chairman, and a chairman.

All of these create opportunities for the finance community - opportunities that will reward you in several ways. You will gain great

experience, but you will also be able to market yourself to businesses that are planning to go through an IPO

in the future.

For opportunities like that,

experience in that space is worth its weight in ... well ... share options.

Mark Freebairn is a partner at Odgers Berndtson

Leader: The Power to make an early call

Accountancy Age — 2009-11-05T10:24:00.000Z

Accountancy Age, Accountancy Age, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 10:24:00

Accountancy Age Leader

The institutes are content to allow the AADB to investigate cases they believe are of public interest, but they don't trust it enough to make its own judgments about possible investigations from an early stage.

If the AADB is to take cases to court it needs to be able to take its own view on possible evidence, witnesses, documentation and other essential ingredients that all contribute to successful prosecutions.

It seems to be a basic power, which many investigative bodies possess, to conduct preliminary enquiries so they know what they are getting themselves involved in and can commit the requisite resources to the case.

The power to conduct preliminary investigations seems like a natural fit for the body.

In successfully frustrating the AADBÕs requests, the institutes have perhaps safeguarded their relevancy in the investigation process, but they have also raised a question

as to whether the two sides are serving cross purposes. And possibly, perhaps, planted the seed of what may eventually become a lingering animosity between the groups.

Leader: A hiding to nothing and a VAT ruling

Accountancy Age — 2009-11-05T10:21:00.000Z

Accountancy Age, Accountancy Age, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 10:21:00

Accountancy Age Leader

And so the taxman faces yet another attack on its attempts to protect the Treasury's coffers. Ironically, it's companies near

to collapse that are looking to claim back VAT on fees paid for advice they received to help them stay afloat - when on previous occasions, during better times, the taxman had fought to hold on to VAT linked with advice for M&A deals.

While its loss to MyTravel put HM Revenue & Customs out of pocket to the tune of £1m, it's potentially just the tip of the iceberg.

With the taxman trying to do its bit by offering time-to-pay arrangements to struggling businesses, this might well feel like a kick in the proverbials. If the taxman does challenge the MyTravel case then it would become clear that it is worried of the implications of the result and its impact on future cases.

If you take an even broader view on this, then the biggest concern would be whether the recession gives rise to other types of tax claim based around companies threatened with collapse that puts the government under even further pressure. With such a huge public deficit, HMRC, and Mr Darling, could be fighting a losing battle.

Get ready for the next 40 years

Computing — 2009-11-05T08:00:00.000Z

Computing, Computing, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 08:00:00

IT leaders would do well to reflect on the innovations that they, as the corporate enablers of internet business, must adopt

When it comes to birthdays, the internet is a bit like the Queen – it is fortunate enough to have two.

For some purists, the birth of the internet came on 2 September 1969 when a connection was first established between two computers on the US Arpanet network. But for populists, the 40th birthday came last week, on 29 October, the anniversary of the first exchange of data between those two systems.

For most of us, 40 is a milestone that generates much reflection, and a redefinition of what we always meant by “middle age”.

For the internet, 40 is certainly a marker of a growing maturity, but any mid-life crisis is felt far more acutely by those established industries that have seen their business models radically changed by the online revolution.

While downloads – both legal and illegal – transform the entertainment industry, and online advertising decimates areas of publishing, every other sector should be assessing the pace of change and wondering how it will affect them.

There will be no getting away from it – 40 years is just a passing moment in a revolution that will yet transform business and public life more than even the industrial revolution.

As more big public sector IT projects struggle, there can be little doubt that the fragmented, open, collaborative nature of the web is the likely architecture that must and will underpin public service delivery through technology.

And as the financial services sector tries to avoid the scale of change that many of its recession-hit consumers demand, you can be sure that at some point, new models of banking that provide greater transparency will emerge, enabled by the opportunities and experiences of the internet.

It is almost a cliché already to say that when it comes to the internet revolution, you ain’t seen nothing yet. IT leaders would do well to reflect on the innovations that they, as the corporate enablers of internet business, must adopt to keep their organisations at the forefront of inevitable change.

How to use IT to enable innovation

Colin Ashurst — 2009-11-05T08:00:00.000Z

Colin Ashurst, Computing, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 08:00:00

IT must thrust itself into the spotlight to prove it can drive profitable business change

IT as an enabler of business innovation? The chief information officer (CIO) as entrepreneur? Is it aspiration or reality?

If you approach the world positively, a downturn is a good time for innovation. The shortage of people and money can create the pressure that leads to creativity.

There are three areas where action will help organisations succeed in exploiting IT to enable business innovation:

Kick out Prince2

What more is there to say about innovation and Prince2? The focus of the Prince2 project management methodology on organisation and control, and defining what to deliver before you have begun is death to innovation.

It is a bad solution trying to solve the wrong problem. It takes the IT profession in the wrong direction if we want to contribute to business innovation. It has to go. The agile development movement provides much stronger foundations for succeeding with projects that result in business innovation.

Move from support to exploitation

Innovation is not just about new technology and spending more money. What about all the technology we already have in place and have barely begun to exploit? Why not start with Word, the rest of Microsoft Office, SharePoint or even your ERP system? Without a doubt you can quickly find innovations that make a real difference to individuals, teams or your wider organisation and perhaps start a bigger process of building a climate where innovation happens.

For most organisations, these opportunities just fall through the gaps between the helpdesk, which fixes problems, and the investment of technical skills in major projects. It is important to free up some resources to enable exploitation of existing IT investments.

Shift the focus from governance to relationships

IT people like to talk about governance. We put a lot of effort into setting up structures and processes. It is important to remember that outside the IT bunker this is not how real organisations work, at least not at the top level. Too much focus on formal structures indicates that the CIO is not part of the top team.

Governance structures are a means to an end getting the right people together to take decisions. It is far better to take a different approach and focus on building relationships person to person. It is out of these relationships, not the IT governance committee, that innovation will grow.

The CIO or the chief executive or any other leader is not going to be the one who has all the good ideas. We need to get much broader involvement in innovation. Our staff, customers, suppliers, competitors, perhaps even the local business school and university should all contribute.

The CIO needs to go out and find innovators and learn from their ideas. They also need to provide opportunities for sharing resources to enable people to put their ideas into practice.

There are opportunities for quick wins in each of these areas. There are also opportunities for longer-term changes to structures and processes that will deliver value through business innovation. Now is not the time to retreat into the IT bunker. Get out there and take some risks. The world does not stand still.

Colin Ashurst is a senior teaching fellow in management information systems at Durham Business School

IT should not bend to the prevailing winds of fashion

Chris Barling — 2009-11-05T08:00:00.000Z

Chris Barling, Computing, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 08:00:00

Technologies should be assessed on their business merits, not their trendiness, says Chris Barling

In IT we may sneer at the fashion industry where experts pontificate about what’s in and what’s out. But should we be so smug?

The IT industry is guilty of similar crimes. Anyone who dares query the latest trend is called a luddite, even when the panacea in question has been tried and found wanting.

One of the presentations at the recent Future of Web Apps conference was on cloud computing. It noted that this trend was predicted 40 years ago, and has existed in some form for years. In fact, time sharing from the 1970s has a list of benefits that sound remarkably like those of cloud computing you could access time-sharing computers from anywhere with a phone, and someone else worried about the technology. All you had to do was plug in your modem and dumb terminal, and pay the bill.

Developments since have seen time sharing replaced by in-house mini-computers that were in turn replaced by PCs. Each move was heralded as reducing costs and providing more control. Now we are centralising into the cloud, based again on cost savings and convenience.

This centralisation or decentralisation debate is not unique to IT. It is like the cyclical argument in large organisations: centralise so that duplication is eliminated and waste is reduced, then later decentralise to get closer to customers. And so it goes on.

There have been steady advances in software engineering techniques, but these have been smaller than any experts would care to admit. The fundamental ideas of formal project stages, being responsive to user requirements, prototyping, developing modular and reusable code, and applying appropriate project management controls have been around since the computer was invented. So has paying monthly for hardware, software or services.

The truth is, the IT industry is driven by fashion. Whether to go with the latest fashion is a critical decision for an IT manager, especially when resisting the flow can limit a career. But assessing trends on their business me rits, not their “hipness”, is a professional imperative. It’s what we are paid to do.

Chris Barling is a BCS contributor