Caroline is a Director at Digital Print Management, a leading print management company specialising in providing print and mailing solutions.
Having spent 25 years in the transpromo industry she is one of the UK's leading expert's in print and mail solutions.
I have often been asked the following questions when it comes to outsourcing:
Should I outsource or should I keep it in-house?
Is there a process or a mechanism to help me determine how I go about this process?
When or at what point should I view outsourcing as an achievable and realistic option for my business?
The following principles can be attributed to almost any business function that you are considering outsourcing from payroll, the Accounting function, corporate print to HR.
What is outsourcing?
A good place to start is to understand what the process of outsourcing is.
Outsourcing is the contracting out of a specific task such as payroll, invoice processing, billing, credit management to a third party provider often implemented as a cost saving measure for tasks that a company requires but is now finding onerous and time consuming to manage in-house.
SME’s to large companies turn to outsourcing to cut costs and streamline their operations.
What are the key points to bear in mind when you are considering the need to outsource some or all of a business process(s).
Key Points to Consider Before You Outsource?
Where are you in the outsourcing process? What does the outsourcing process conjure up in the minds of senior management? And what are the tangible benefits that can be derived from outsourcing?
What is your level of commitment to the process? i.e. Is it a fundamental part of your business plan to relinquish some if not all of a business function? How serious are you about outsourcing as a mechanism to streamline some of your business processes?
Have you decided how much time you are going to put aside to establish this as a project and move it forward?
Outsourcing some of your business processes can save you time and money!
Who or what person will “champion” the process and will take responsibility for steering the project to its conclusion? By this I mean having the authority to make the decision outright for your organisation to procure an outsource partner.
Have you determined what areas of the business might benefit from being removed to an external outsource partner?
What impact is the process (you are reviewing) currently having on your business? In other words is the business function now taking too much time away from your core business objective?
Is it costing or adding too much to your bottom line?
Is the process too manual intensive? Is it not cost effective to make the investment to automate or mechanise the function in-house?
How many people are involved in the process? In other words has the function outgrown that of the organisation to a point whereby externalising this particular business process is a realistic alternative?
Are you able to quantify the time taken to get payroll/invoice processing complete and on time?
Can you quantify the cost of doing it in-house?
Is cost the main factor in considering outsourcing? What I mean is, are you basing your decision to outsource purely in terms of what it is costing you to do it in house? Are there other factors that might influence your desire to outsource?
Coming Next: The Benefits of Outsourcing for Your Business.
Do you have any questions you’d like us to answer?
Any anecdotes or experiences you’ve had with outsourcing that you can share?
If so please leave a comment we’d love to hear from you and we will feature your question in one of our up and coming articles!
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A print management services company takes the P out of paperwork. By consolidating your suppliers and using a print partner saves you time and money because the print management company has access to solutions and services that can be personalised to fit your needs
“We are a print management services company, not a printing company. We help customers streamline their printing costs by outsourcing print and reduce costs through our expertise and access to an extensive network of suppliers/manufacturers. It is through this network coupled with our expertise that enables us to source the right product and/or solution at the right price for the customer”.
How can you reduce your print costs using a print management services company?
There are two distinct advantages of working with a print management company:
Experience
Versatility
A print management services company has the experience to manage the outsourcing of a simple print project to a full scale re-deployment of a company’s corporate print.
They are able to adapt to the evolution of a project and can source through its extensive network a manufacturer or supplier capable of delivering a highly customised cross media print solution, it’s what we call a best fit rather than a one size fits all.
Using long standing qualified and influential relationships ensures that the customer’s work is fulfilled at the right price with the right solution tailored to the customers needs.
Print management companies offer free and impartial advice from the design concept through to the completion of a project.
So how does this save a company money?
It’s not rocket science.
It’s all to do with the relationships that have been built up over many years, the sourcing of specific products and solutions dictated by an ever changing market place that enable the print manager to deliver a whole suite of print and electronic solutions impartially and independently without you, the company having to source, learn, understand and do-it-yourself!
An experienced independent print management company will make the customers needs a priority and offer solutions from a variety of vendors to meet those needs giving them a distinct advantage over an in-house solution/service provided by a manufacturer who are only committed to the expertise and equipment they have to sell, which, in some cases, is an oversold piece of kit or a managed service way in excess of what the customer needs.
8 main reasons why you should use a print management services company!
Time saved on sourcing print items and solutions
One supplier – one invoice
Print & production managed by one project manager
On-line print ordering and viewing system, web2print – customer can view and place orders online, see his order status and update
Skill and expertise not available in-house
Accessibility to 1,000’s of unique print, electronic and promotional products; secure managed print solutions
Continuity of service
Storage of printed material now housed remotely with no on-going cost to you.
These are just a few simple ways a business can benefit from removing itself from the task of buying print and related solutions by using a print management consultant.
For an independent discussion on how outsourcing can work for your company please call us.
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This is the second part in a series of articles that covers cheques, cheque printing and payment processing.
Outsourcing your payment processing to a Payments Bureau gives you the flexibility to remove the onerous task of managing a mix of cheque and electronic payments. Outsourcing the process gives you the flexibility to do regular and one off payments.
Why not combine your cheque and electronic payments and outsource to a payments bureau?
Why Use A Payments Bureau Service?
Bacs
Faster Payments
Cheques
Direct Debit
Payment Advices/Remittances.
Using a Payments Bureau allows you to automate payments and collections without going to the expense of purchasing or administering software. Outsourcing this process gives you peace of mind that payments are being made at the time of your choosing.
Optimising the facilities of a Bacs approved Bureau powered by Experian Payments UK Gateway is ideal for combining your cheque and electronic payments from a secure payments file. The Bureau will take care of all data files, exceptions and reporting.
Using an integrated payments solution your payments can be issued from a single platform and include Bacs, Direct Debit collections with cheques and remittance advice printing and posting.
By combining cheque and electronic payments, a payment bureau will save you time and money
With access and expertise to the following services, payment processing couldn’t be simpler:
Cheques
Cheque Printing Systems for In-House Use
Bacs Software
CHAPS
Pre-paid Cards
Credits & Deposit Slips and Books
Find out more about Cheques and Payment Solutions. By clicking here!
Pop a request in the box for a call and one of our experts will telephone for an impartial chat!
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Print-2-Mail solution straight from your desktop to doormat.
Even if you’re sending electronic PDFs via push or pull I guarantee you still have customers that either prefers a paper document or you send out statements?
Either way, it takes time to process, print and those few documents.
Do you have a multi-channel mechanism for example you post and email documents?
Do you have staff using their valuable time checking and reconciling matching documents and then manually inserting them into envelopes?
Do you have too few days at the end of your month?
If the answer is yes to some or all of the above then opting for a print mail service will help streamline some if not all of the above processes.
Optimising a managed print mail service will save staff time and yield big cost savings through automation.
Organisations that use multi-channel distribution which is a combination of mailing letters and emailing for will save money by outsourcing the mailing element.
Here’s a list of 10 reasons why you should use a print and mailing service to mail out those customer letters, invoices and remittances.
If you use multi-channel distribution for your documents then a print mail services company can reduce the cost of the documents you need to post out.
Why would I want to outsource my letters to an external supplier?
1/ Companies that regularly process documents ready for mailing will gain from outsourcing some if not all of the components that make up the process flow.
Working with a print mail services partner gives the company access to state of the art electronic design, printing, document management technologies and cloud-based computing. This means that you save money by not investing in the same technology. This saves an organisation time and money.
2/ Working with a reputable print and mailing company gives you access to their expertise. By maximising the advantages of document management, electronic despatch and print of transactional documents.
What are the advantages?
You get the flexibility to post out the letters you don’t want to process in-house.
3/ By accessing your paper trail you can evaluate what letters are being generated for who and why. This helps you rationalise what’s being printed. Are so many necessary? Do they convey the company branding effectively and do they communicate clearly and unambiguously?
It’s no good having a great-looking invoice if the customer can’t see what they owe and how to pay.
4/ Speed – one of the main factors affecting the mailing of your documents is speed. If you auto print overnight it saves time but what if it takes three days to collate the letters and mail them and another two days before they arrive on your customers’ doormat?
Mailing facilities by definition have faster production/automation, printing and despatch technology, the process is completely mechanised from receipt of the file to mailing out.
We never have problems printing in-house!
Great, but what happens when you’re ready to hit the print button and discover there’s a problem with the invoice file?
For a print and mailing company, it’s easy, you make the changes online and your documents will meet the mailing deadline.
5/ Sophisticated design technology means that documents can be variable and highly personalised.
Why would I want to personalise my invoice or statement?
Your documents usually have a name, address and department or destination for the intended document and so it is already personalised. A print and mailing company designs your documents with personalisation at the forefront.
You might give some of your customers’ specific discounts or you want to promote a new price on a product or range. Adding a marketing message to the invoice is a great way to promote more of what you do.
If there’s white space use it and promote it.
Highlighting messages in colour draws the customer’s attention and you show your customer how to pay or what action they need to take.
6/ Clean your customer invoice lists to ensure accuracy and delivery of invoices. What’s the point of sending out your invoices if half of the envelopes come back as “not known at this address” you’ve just duplicated the effort!
A print and mailing services company uses de-duplication software to manage duplicate addresses and generate reports that can be updated by your CRM team. Or duplicate invoices are extracted saving you postage and wasted stationery.
7/ Outsourcing offers the benefit of postal sortation and maximising postage discounts using downstream access reducing postage costs.
8/ Spot or highlight colour using laser technology we print and highlight specific areas of text in colour on your document.
Our invoices are already printed in two colours.
Using what we call spot or highlight colour on the amount column or to bring attention to amounts overdue or an important message is a powerful way of alerting your customer to speed up payment.
9/ One of the difficulties in managing the paper process in house is the maintenance of your corporate credibility. If different departments order from many print suppliers how do you ensure the company style is reflected across all transactional documents?
That’s easy by outsourcing your company style and branding are maintained and reinforced on every invoice, statement and document mailed.
10/ A print and mailing company offers an end to end service by using modern document management technologies and printing services making it easy for you to outsource the whole process.
To find out how our print and mailing services can save you time and money. Call us now.
As we approach 9/11 the ten year anniversary of a terrorist event that shook the hearts and minds of every normal peace loving and law abiding citizen. I wanted to reflect on that day just for a minute or two!
Why, because it was such a catastrophic event in our life’s that pretty much everyone I know remembers where they were and what they were doing.
In our time none of us have experienced such an attack in peacetime not on such an unprecedented scale.
Having studied the world wars at School and University as a historian I am well aware of the scale of conflicts and the human suffering that have been inflicted but I am remote from it, I haven’t lived or experienced a war first hand, I hope I’ll never have too!
Both my parents were evacuees, Dad ran away on evacuation day and chose to remain with his parents in Kent, Mum, being italian was sent to a convent in Pula (now Croatia) in the mountains so they have many interesting stories of their wartime experiences.
The only experience I have had of wars are what we have broadcasted into our rooms pretty much on a daily basis.
After all which continent doesn’t have some kind of conflict! We have become anaesthetised to some degree to the level of depravity human nature stoops.
So when 9/11 happened it was a wake up call to the world.
I recall the day well as I was oblivious to the morning events unfolding because I was working from home with my then 2 year old and getting ready for our trip to Italy the next morning. My husband having started early that day walked through the door somewhat bewildered that the TV wasn’t switched on!
He turned on the TV at the same time telling me what had happened this was a little after 2:30PM our time and what I saw unfolding before my eyes was representative of a Spielberg movie because my first thoughts initially were wow until the horror dawned on me that this was really happening and it was live!
The following days were a dissection of the events; the USA and the rest of the world began to take in the enormity of what had happened.
Many people in the road we lived in at the time wanted to talk about it and in the aftermath people were touched by that day; people knew someone who had been lost; a person you spoke to who re-countered how they knew someone who knew someone who worked in the Twin Towers and so the stories continued.
So what has changed in ten years? Have we learned from it?
If there is one thing we can all do on the tenth anniversary of this most grave event is to reflect on the number of human lives lost and that we should never forget what happened on this day, September 11th 2001.
Cheque printing and BAC’s payments are being used in vast quantities daily for payments to suppliers and customers alike.
The difficulty with combining both methods can be costly and labour intensive particularly when you are hand matching cheques and separate remittances factor in cheque distribution for various signatories and the task suddenly becomes cumbersome. A customer recently expressed his frustration at what seemed like an endless stream of cheques to sign; in reality that wasn’t the case, it just felt like it to him!
By using an end to end service for cheque printing and sign-writing the process becomes a completely automated, flexible outsourced fulfilment service for cheques and credit printing all prepared to C & CCC standards.
I am going to make the case here for why organisations should seriously consider outsourcing this process.
So here’s a list of tips to consider before cheque outsourcing!
1/ What do you hope to achieve by outsourcing your cheques? Is it cost reduction, time saving, automation of the process or a combination of all three?
2/ How many payments do you make monthly/weekly and is this inconvenient or difficult to manage?
Outsourcing enables a company to combine cheque and electronic payment transactions from one secure payments file, a bureau can take care of data separation and exceptions reporting too.
3/ Are you wanting to continue with a mix of cheque and BACS payments?
Using a payments bureau gives you the flexibility to outsource regular and one off payments and can be used for BACS, Cheques, DD Payments. You can automate payments without having to purchase or administer software.
Cheques are still needed to make payments to people and businesses.
4/ Does your system allow you to create cheque remittances? Or is it something you’ve never made the time do? By amalgamating a cheque with a remittance portion simplifies the printing and sending of cheques, no separate cheque and remittance run.
5/ Outsourcing cheques is not like asking your local printer down the road to print your stationery requirements; you need to ensure that the printer has APACS accreditation and C & CCC (Cheque & Credit Clearing Company) along with ISO27001 the information management accreditation which demonstrates a company’s process regarding the handling of your information and data.
This is critical in any outsourcing process but even more so for cheques and payments. A due diligence visit to the security printer is a must to authenticate process and procedures are in place for the handling of cheque data.
6/ Professional – Do your cheques currently convey your brand or they are simply bank standard issue?
By outsourcing your company cheques they can be personalised with your company image and design.
7/ Administration – How much time is it really taking to print and process cheques in-house?
Outsourcing cheques and payments will be done quickly, accurately and can be tailored to be processed daily, weekly or monthly.
8/ Security – what happens when cheques are distributed around the business for signing they can easily be mislaid or misappropriated and non infilled cheques pose a security risk.
Outsourcing gives you secure cheque design with additional security features UV, aqua-fugitive and holograms plus an audit trail for all cheques printed and not where’s that cheque I sent up to the 4th floor for signing gone?
9/ Do you have multiple sites?
If your organisation needs to manage stocks across a branch network or across many sites using a customer automated stocking or replenishment system will automatically manage and replenish stocks at each branch.
10/ And finally, do you need cheques for overseas banking?
Cheques can be printed in any format in any denomination – sterling £; euro € , dollars $ or even multi-currency options as A4 cut sheets, cheque books, continuous binder cheques or pressure seal mailers personalised using MICR printers, sign, fold, insert and post out.
Digital Print Management can offer independent expert advice on what kind of printed cheque a company should use and can advise you on the latest cheque formats and security cheque printing solutions.
Ok so that was the only title I could come up with as I sit here at Gibraltar Airport waiting the arrival of our Aircraft.
No, this time we are half an hour from supposedly getting on board to head back to the UK, in this broken down hell hole they call an Airport (new one being built as we speak, by the time its finished I’ll be dead!)
The one and only solitary X-ray machine has failed so the authorities with no contingency in evidence have resulted in a mass cry for assistance over the tanoy system for all service personnel to head toward the security area.
This is code for the damn X-ray machine has malfunctioned, broken down to you and me. The announcement says a “technical malfunction” and we need all hands to the deck to do a search of every piece of hand luggage, ruck sacks, sandwich bags, make up bags, nappy changing bags, persons, wheel chairs, push chairs, if it moves check it, you name it, it’s being searched.
I am asking myself as I look up at the flight departure board why have 4 flights arrived and are set to leave all at 12:00 midday so how does that work then? New game, musical airplanes!
How are you going to get 4 flights off the ground at the same time, worrying don’t you think!
Now the announcer is shouting for all passengers to Liverpool to get to the front of the queue as the plane is ready to depart, the british public once again are at the brunt of bad communication of flight information.
The typical British holiday maker, you know the one, flip flops, shorts, crazy hats not one of them appear to a have any regard for their safety on aircraft, a quick exit requires good robust trainers or shoes not flip flops great if we happen to have an emergency landing on the sand somewhere!
They are hot and bothered, flustered and fed up they cant go any faster through security control as they are reliant on the security men and women who are checking and frisking them! By the way did I mention that there are only 4 security people in attendance to check and frisk what 600 potential passengers groovy!!
You daren’t shout at the security people to get a move on for fear of being further frisked in an exploratory way if you get my drift especially as they are now all wearing rubber gloves.
It’s the power they wield over you they sense you are tense and in a hurry yet they couldn’t go any slower if they tried, at the same time you are screaming inside get a flipping move on, there is another word I feel I could insert here but for those who abhor swearing ( it’s the other appropriate word) that justifies the way you are feeling and makes you feel better, of course you don’t shout it out you just scream it in your head!
Once on the plane, the flight attendants shout at you to hurry up whilst smiling, for you to find your seats and sit down as “we will miss our flight slot” as if it was your fault you single handedly caused the plane to be delayed.
Once on the plane why is it I get stuck with the proverbial passenger from hell, oh he looks alright until he flashes his beaming “I had my teeth whitened especially for my holiday so I can pick up a bird and get laid” and he’s wearing flip flops too with feet that look like they’ve been through a mincer then I then get the story of his holiday.
He shuts up as I try to feign minimal interest with a faint smile, and says is that an ipad, no it’s a toaster I feel like saying what the heck do you think it is.
In front of me I have a family of 6, no I mean 6 kids and 2 adults, they are the kids from hell, 2 teenagers both boys who have clearly OD’d on coke and mini cheddars mega super-sized pack who are shouting at each other whilst Mum is doing her best to calm her clan down.
How do you get time to have 6 kids, I barely have time to manage 2 let alone 4 of the smiling monsters. Then she turns to look at me smiles and it’s the smile between 2 women the one that says sorry and I know that you know how I feel!
In the midst of all the shenanigans his lordship my beloved whom I might add is sitting with our boys in the next aisle seat thinks it’s sooo funny he’s wetting himself with laughter as its always me that appears to draw the short straw.
I’ll have the last laugh because the proverbial next to me passenger has alluded to the fact that he doesn’t like flying so when we hit clear air turbulence over the channel I’ll be the one screaming WE’RE GOING DOWN BRACE, BRACE!,
Let me set the scene, we are currently holidaying in Spain. We come to this particular destination on the Costa De La Luz, most school holidays and on a very clear day you can just about make out the Coast of North Africa some 65km away.
We love the people, the easiness with which they go about their everyday business, the way they make us feel so welcome and their genuine friendliness. We are reasonably well known here as we are the only english speaking people in the surrounding area.
Back in July, I started reading Kate McCann’s book “Madeleine”, I am not sure why I chose to download it onto my ipad but I did. I would counter that it is my subliminal conscience working, there are still the dog eared remains of the “Find Maddy Posters” on the walls of the old Gibraltar Airport, the campaign driven by the now defunct News of the World, it’s where we fly into before heading on into Spain.
As a mother I make a point of asking my boys to surreptitiously study the poster and familiarise themselves with her face, our brain has an enormous propensity to remember even the most inane details.
Often my husband and I talk about Maddy’s abduction even more so as I am still only two-thirds of the way through a very moving and detailed account of the night of Maddy’s abduction and all that the McCann’s have had too face over the ensuing four years.
I’m calmer now and those of you who know me KNOW that although I am half italian I am not prone to excessive forms of panic with hands flaying everywhere, nor do I rant and rave when things go wrong either in my personal or business life.
I am a fairly measured and fact based person I’ve learnt through age and experience that you should always get the facts first before making a judgement on a situation or person. This has always stood me in good stead with customers, suppliers, friends and employees alike.
But this morning an episode took place and we experienced first hand both as a mother and father some of what Kate and Gerry must have experienced that night Maddy was taken.
We have two beautiful boys Mickey who is 7 (8 in October)and Ollie who is 12 years old and this morning we watched a scene unfold in front of our eyes which may have possibly changed all of our lives forever, in the same way as it has for the McCann family.
I am sitting in the beach bar, it’s quiet, 11:30am, people are starting to arrive at the beach.
I love this time of day; time to read, watch people or just reflect; my husband Mark is sitting under a beach umbrella a little farther away from the boys from where they were sitting making some business calls. The boys were, as usual winding each other up and messing about.
Mickey my younger son had taken off his watch and left it on my sunbed despite numerous efforts of us reminding him that it is waterproof and he doesn’t need to take it off.
What can I tell you they are only kids!
I settled back into my writing and instinctively became aware that Mickey wasn’t there; you know, that feeling you get in the back of your neck that sets your hair on end; I looked around, he wasn’t sitting next to Ollie where I last saw them both together, it must have been less than a minute.
Mark was still on the phone and was looking out to the sea and although he was literally three metres away from the boys, his white t- shirt and the way he was sitting on the deck chair obscured him from the unwelcome visitor.
What I didn’t see was a strange man unknown to us; walking down the steps to our sun beds; he picked up Mickey’s watch that had been left on my sunbed; I should point out the watch is inexpensive. I can tell you there is no way on god’s earth you would be able to see a watch from the top of the steps or the main walkway.
He boldly walked over to Michael and I later learn’t how he stroked and carressed his cheek in an over familiar and affectionate way, showed Mickey his actual watch, turned and walked back toward the beach steps at the same time encouraging Michael to follow him which of course he did, it was his watch and he wanted it back.
Now you might be wondering what Ollie was doing at this point? He was watching what was going on and his initial instincts were this isn’t right but for a moment he thought it was either a friend of ours or Freddie, our lovely friend and sunbed attendant sounds plausible doesn’t it?
The man apparently smiled gently at Mickey as he coaxed him up the steps, Mickey was half way up before Ollie reacted instinctively and shook Dad from his mobile phone; Mark looked around and hastily walked toward the man with Ollie telling him about the the watch!
At that point Mark squared him in the eyes the man looked at him, smirked, returned the watch, turned around and walked off.
Mark recounted later to the Police that it was the look that chilled him, the one that says you got me, you caught me out!
If he could have spoken better spanish he probably should/would have followed him and questioned him as to what the hell he thought he was doing. Hindsight is a wonderful thing!
Straightaway we alerted the Police of the incident and Mark went to the Police Station to give a detailed description of the man. They were swift to send down a plain clothed Police Officer and tomorrow (Friday) Ollie and Mark will be going to the Police Station again to make a full statement with an interpreter.
Was a crime committed No, did this man cause any harm No.
It was the blatant audaciousness of this man, in his late 50’s to walk up to the boys. It is obvious now he didn’t spot Mark sitting on the sun bed nor did he see the watch. Was it a random incident; an opportune moment to do what?
If he wanted to steal the watch then why not just take it? Why go to Mickey stroke his cheek and then walk off? Is it because the natural instinct of a child when their ball has been taken away is to go after it?
After the incident we were calm and analysed the situation and we kept asking the same questions:
Are you sure we didn’t misjudge the situation? It’s easy to imagine someone behaving strangely in that kind of situation; easy to misinterpret an innocent act?
He was just being friendly surely, he saw 2 young kids on the beach alone, so he thought, spotted the watch; but then why did he walk off with the watch? Why did he seemingly lure Mickey up the steps? Why when stopped by my husband did his look make Mark shudder, instincts or just imagination?
We won’t know the truth behind this man’s actions.
The reason why I am writing about this?
Things often happen for a reason and strangely enough after I eventually finish reading “Madeleine” I was going to post something on twitter about missing and abducted children; too much of it is happening in the world and Mark later told me that the Police Officer said they have some problems with abductions and missing children in Spain, I knew this anyway from Kate and Gerry McCann’s book; it’s not just Spain, it’s Portugal, UK , USA and so on….
Since the boys have been old enough to comprehend not to go off with strangers we have done our best to instil in them the importance of taking care of each other and not to talk to strangers or take things from people whom they don’t know!
That said, a child instinctively goes after their possessions if it look’s like it’s being taken away from them.
We read about missing, abused, abducted children it’s a sad world and I cried later in the sea when I thought what could or might have happened had fate, god or my husband not intervened or if Ollie had just decided to wonder off to the beach toilet as 12 year old’s do. Mark is very vigilant I often accuse him of being too over zealous with security and his family’s welfare, he say’s it stems from his days as a youngster helping his Dad in the shop that made him street wise and savvy.
I am a typical italian Mummy in some respects maybe too over protective; the boys believe I really do have eyes in my butt!
Today could have turned out to be very different and my heart goes out to Gerry and Kate and so many other parents who have missing children; who are living in a permanent night mare!
I’m grateful for reading Kate’s book; because if this was a wake up call to be more vigilant with our children, not just ours, but yours too then it worked.
Please retweet and send this out to all you know as a reminder of all the missing children and to teach all our children the importance of being careful!
The Payments Council on the 12 July announced that cheques will continue for as long as the british customer need them and until such times a viable and a more effective alternative is found.
During their research, the Cheque and Credit Clearing Company found that over half of consumers with bank accounts were using cheques as a method of payment; although 60% of the consumers asked said they were writing fewer cheques compared to three years ago. The main reason for the consumer to write a cheque was to pay a bill by post this represented 36%; while paying tradesman in the home 24%; paying clubs/societies 14%; donations to charity 14%; as a gift 38% and finally as a refund 25%
The C & CCC reported that in business over 80% of companies at some point over the last year wrote and received a cheque.
32% of UK businesses sited that the reason cheques were written was to enable them to better manage their cash flow; compliance with the payee’s request to be paid by cheque represented some 25%; and finally, the ability to control which employees are allowed to make payments on behalf of the company was 23%.
But despite the good news for the continuance of the cheque scheme, figures show that there is a steady decline in cheque usage 11% for the 2010 compared to 13% in 2009. This has largely been attributed to retailers and petrol chains stopping the acceptance of cheques and moving to chip and pin from 2005 – 08.
If you compare the rise and fall of cheques; a total of 1.1 billion cheque payments were made in 2010 of which 620 million were written by consumers and 493 million by businesses. Cheque volumes were down by 72% from the peak of 4 billion transactions in 1990!
Although the general trend is downward for cheques it is still good news for the accredited cheque print suppliers in the UK and also for british industry and consumers generally.
Digital Print Management can provide cheques in any format – books, A4, cheque remittances. Our service also extends to providing a full outsource cheque printing and mailing solution and a fully automated payments bureau for regular payments.
In a recent article posed by smallbusiness.co.uk it was reported that British businesses were least optimistic in the world in the second quarter of 2011!
Hardly surprising!
It’s a simple fact that no matter how hard you work, you sell, you market your products, you do everything and more. If the companies you are marketing your products or services too have no budget to make the purchase even in the face of saying we love it we know it will work, yes I can see it will save us time, money etc; if they don’t have the capital then a sale can’t take place!
It sounds flippant to say this but the old adage that says “nothing in the world ever happens until a sale is made” is very true.
It’s tough out there and talking to the more experienced businessmen and women many of whom have commented that this is the worst recession or downturn they’ve experienced in 25-30 years of trading!
Unfortunately there is no magic wand to wave to make it go away. The interest rates are low with inflation running at 5.0% (RPI) and 4.4% (CPI) it’s difficult to see where it’s all going to end.
On the plus side, the numbers of start ups is on the rise for the second consecutive year up by 9.4% to 396,000 over the year to March 2011. I’d counter that if people are being made redundant or unemployed then they are looking at seizing this opportunity to go for it and set up their own business.
So where is your business headed?
There is a lot to worry about but there’s no point in panicking which is certainly not an effective business strategy the whole economy is not within our power to influence and the most important thing for us to worry about is to seek new opportunities that will help our businesses thrive.
My father now retired after having run a successful print company in the Midlands says it “takes a recession to weed out those companies that shouldn’t be in business, or in his own words, rubbish; the companies that survive are the ones that are doing something right!”
What are you doing to counter the effects of the recession?
What opportunities or ideas have helped you?
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