Inspirational travel website, TravelBeginsAt40.com, has signed up to be a Climeworks ‘Discoverer Pioneer’ and have an amount of its CO₂ emissions captured from the atmosphere every month to ensure the website is climate neutral.

TravelBeginsAt40.com was founded by travel journalist Mark Bibby Jackson and, through a combination of articles and reviews, aims to help those aged 40+ find the best destinations and experiences on offer.

However, wonderful as travel is, it does come with a carbon load, which is why the website has chosen to work with Climeworks to have some of its carbon dioxide permanently removed from the atmosphere every month.

Climeworks has developed a process called direct air capture which filters historic CO₂ out of the atmosphere and then stores it underground where it is turned to stone thanks to a natural reaction with the surrounding basaltic rock

“Travelling helps us relax, meet different people, learn about cultures unlike our own, try new experiences and foods, and it makes a huge contribution to the economy of many, many countries. So, on the one hand, it’s important we continue to travel, but on the other, travelling does pump a large amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – and we need to reduce this dramatically if we are to have any chance of slowing climate change. Doing as much as we can to reduce our emissions while travelling, and then using technology like Climeworks’ direct air capture, to help suck up the unavoidable emissions is something we all need to consider. Which is why we want to inspire our readers and all travel fans to do what they can to reduce their carbon footprint.” said founder Mark Bibby Jackson.

“We’ll be using Climeworks to capture our general website emissions initially and then the non-flight parts of the editorial team’s travel. We’ll use Trees4Travel for specific flights. We hope that by combining the two we can have the biggest impact.”

Despite a huge decline in the last year thanks to the pandemic, the total contribution of travel and tourism to the global GDP in 2020 was approximately 4,671 billion U.S. dollars. (Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/233223/travel-and-tourism–total-economic-contribution-worldwide/ )

In 2019, globally 10% of jobs and GDP were in travel and tourism. Caribbean islands, for example, rely heavily on tourism for employment. More than 90% of jobs in Antigua and Barbuda in 2019 were in the sector. In 2019 one in 10 people worked in travel and tourism-related jobs, contributing $8.9 trillion, or around 10.3%, to the global economy. In the five years to 2019, the sector was responsible for one in four of all net new jobs created globally. (Source: https://wttc.org/Research/Economic-Impact )

Climeworks offers an accessible subscription service that enables individuals and companies to sign-up to have an amount of carbon dioxide removed from the air on their behalf each month. See: https://climeworks.com/subscriptions

Cactus Communications (CACTUS), a technology company accelerating scientific advancement, has announced its transition to become a remote-first company for all its 1,200 employees across nine locations globally. It is one of the first companies in India to join a small but growing list of firms across the globe embracing remote-first — referring to companies that have office locations but do not require their employees to work from them. The move will see CACTUS expand its recruitment reach globally and pioneer new, post-pandemic working practices including virtual whiteboards, asynchronous communication and more.

“320 people from across the world joined CACTUS in the seven months leading up to October 2021, and 50 per cent of our new hires were from locations where we don’t have physical offices,” said Yashmi Pujara, Chief Human Resources Officer at CACTUS. “Remote-first does not mean we will not have offices or that our people can’t work from an office. It means that in everything we do at work, we will adopt a remote-first mindset, making sure everyone regardless of where they are working from has equal voice and visibility in the organization.

“Becoming remote-first opens us up to a global talent pool,” continued Pujara. “We are no longer restricted to a specific geographic location, and we can provide opportunities wherever we find the right talent. In fact, our people are spread across 14 countries and 165 different cities.”

“While the world was forced into an 18-month experiment with remote work, we’ve been thinking about embracing remote-first for a long time,” said CACTUS CEO and Co-founder, Abhishek Goel. “Our primary reason behind the adoption of a remote-first culture is our evolution as a global company. When too many people are concentrated in a specific office location, the loudest voices are the ones closest to you. With customers in over 160 countries, we want to be close to them and responsive to their needs. We also want all employees across the globe to equally contribute to the direction of the company.”

To develop a remote-first model, the company surveyed employees to better understand their work preferences and challenges. Leaders found that 86 per cent of employees wanted flexibility in how and where they worked, with 38 per cent wanting full-time remote work. A core team then benchmarked other remote-first companies and spoke with industry thought-leaders to learn best practices.

Several pilots on various work practices were introduced to gain insight on what would work best for the company. This covered everything from the introduction of a virtual water cooler and virtual whiteboards to a communications charter, the use of remote champions, asynchronous communication and a remote-first handbook. The company also created a new role for Head of Remote-First, hiring Jason Morwick to lead the company’s transition.

“For many people, working remotely during the pandemic has highlighted just how much of a rethink working practices need going forward,” said Jason Morwick, Head of Remote-First at CACTUS. “Businesses cannot replicate what they used to do face-to-face over a video call. Take brainstorming, for example. It used to be that people would gather in a room in front of a whiteboard, but that rarely works over a video call. Instead, if everyone comes up with their own ideas first, they can then meet with the team online and share them in real-time, perhaps with the help of a virtual whiteboard. Not only is this more efficient, it also improves the quality of ideas and of those shortlisted, accelerating innovation.”

To find out more, visit www.cactusglobal.com

The Association of Professional Declutters and Organisers (APDO) has announced the dates for its next annual conference (11 and 12 May 2022), and at the same time has revealed the opportunities available for brands wanting to raise their profile at this highly-regarded event.

A two-day learning opportunity for APDO members and the general public, this year’s conference topic is ‘Time for a Change’ – driven by the many adaptations needed to be made over the last two years not only in business but in people’s personal lives, and constant discussions over sustainability. Also, a fitting theme as the association moves its conference out of London and to the North West (Manchester) for the first time.

Despite the global situation, the organisation and decluttering industry has continued to grow; APDO has seen its membership almost double in size over the past couple of years and there are now over 420 members including an increasing international presence that ranges from the Cayman Islands to Hong Kong, to Estonia. APDO’s last face-to-face annual conference held in 2019 was a sold-out event attracting 120 delegates and speakers from the UK around the world, and in May 2021 the virtual conference attracted 150 delegates.

In previous years, APDO has operated a highly-effective partnership programme with sponsors making valuable connections with members, who in turn welcome the opportunity to find out more about the services that the company offers. APDO is now inviting likeminded brands to collaborate for sponsorship opportunities for its 2022 conference, with very affordable bronze, silver and gold packages available.

The association is also offering exhibition stand packages for a nominal fee of only £50 + VAT.

Sian Pelleschi, APDO’s Conference Director commented, “We have all experienced significant changes both in our home and working lives over the last 24 months, with further adaptations likely to be made. Our homes have become our offices, our businesses have had to change direction and our lives have been hugely impacted.

“A key focus for a lot of businesses is to become more sustainable and eco-friendly moving forward, looking at how we can impact our world in a positive way. This year’s conference theme aligns well with the ambitions of many companies, and we look forward to partnering with relevant brands who share our aims to further boost this motion.”

To enquire about sponsorship and exhibition opportunities, likeminded businesses can email: conference@apdo.co.uk

APDO, the UK’s membership association for decluttering and organising professionals, sets standards, provides professional development and supports the growth of the industry. Founded in 2004, APDO is a non-profit organisation and belongs to a global community of professional organising associations which foster collaboration to advance the industry through sharing information and ideas.

Last year saw the emergence of the so-called “new normal”, as virtual and remote communication tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams redefined our relationships and modes of interaction.

Equity release brand Key has also experienced an interesting 18 months or so, as the company saw its customers use 10,333 plans to release £1.05 billion worth of housing equity in Q3 2021.

Interestingly, we’re also seeing a clear trend for people gifting a raft of alternative assets with their equity release. We’ve broken this trend down below, while asking what this tells us about how families are redistributing their wealth.

What are Families Gifting With Their Equity Release

The concept of ‘gifting’ has been discussed in estate planning and wealth management for years now, as assets that are gifted to loved ones at least seven years before your death aren’t subject to inheritance tax (IHT).

While gifting is largely viewed from the perspective of IHT mitigation, however, it also does a great deal of social and economic good for families.

The reason for this is simple; as it can provide financial support to loved ones at a time when they need it the most, which has arguably never been more important than it is in the current economic climate.

According to data collated by Key, some 21% of people have used their equity release mortgage for estate planning purposes, with a total of £241 million gifted to friends and families through these means in Q3 alone this year.

Equity release mortgage

So what exactly were people gifting through their equity release? Well 61% of respondents did this purely to gift elements of their estate, equating to 36% of the total equity released in such instances.

A further 40% acted to provide assistance with a house deposit, with this equating to 43% of a particular estate or account.

In terms of smaller items, some 3% deployed 1% of their equity release to help fund the purchase of a new car. Another 4% leveraged 2% of their equity release to fund university fees, while a further 4% did so to contribute to a daughter’s wedding.

What Can We Draw From These Trends?

 Perhaps the key takeaway here is the support provided for housing aspirations among beneficiaries.

After all, while 43% of the equity released in Q3 2021 was used directly for house deposits, the 36% deployed as an early inheritance is also thought to provide support for the buying and securing of property.

This is likely to continue given the rapid and sustained growth of the housing market in the UK (the average property saw its value increase £16k during a record-breaking 2021), which is pricing most younger buyers out of the market and making it hard for them to get their foot on the property ladder.

So, while the SDLT holiday has now come to an end, this trend and the wider promotion of intergenerational fairness by recycling housing equity will continue through 2022 and beyond.

Revolutionary community platform Disciple Media has leveraged Sisense to unlock deeper customer data and insights to open fresh opportunities to scale creator economy

Sisense, the leading AI-driven platform for infusing analytics everywhere, today announced that Digital community platform, Disciple Media, has chosen to unlock deeper insights into its sales and marketing functions to help fast-track business growth and supercharge customer lifetime value.

With the creator economy valued at over £78.1 billion, the market is ripe for disruption as more creators look for innovative ways to engage with their communities. Disciple Media provides a cloud solution that offers a custom online community space outside of mainstream social media channels. Unlike conventional social media, the platform encourages more direct engagement and targeted communication between hosts, community members and peers.

Founded by then electronic musician and label owner, Benji Vaughan, Disciple was initially created in 2015 for Benji to directly reach and engage his fans and audience digitally. Disciple has since evolved into a platform that enables and empowers community managers, business owners, influencers, coaches (and more) to build and own a private community platform.

Creators like photography tutor Emma Davies, country music star Luke Bryan and fitness instructor Jasmine Mays are some of Disciple Media’s 600+ creator base.

Read the case study here: https://www.sisense.com/case-studies/disciple-drives-growth-triples-customer-lifetime-value-in-2-years/

As a fast-growing community platform, in 2019, Disciple Media was on the hunt for a solution that would enable them to rapidly evaluate sales performance, assess funnel stage conversion rates and cost per lead, spot trends and identify fresh opportunities.

Additionally, they were looking for a solution that would help their customer success team scale to manage the increased demand for their service.

Sisense was selected as the business intelligence solution of choice because it could provide the ‘semantic layer’ on top of the company’s new Google BigQuery data warehouse.  Immediately after deploying Sisense, Disciple Media was able to connect to all their data sources like Hubspot, Google AdWords, Google Analytics and Facebook Ads, and visualize the data through interactive dashboards.

With Sisense, trends surfaced quickly, and the teams could drill down into the data with filters for insights to more targeted marketing strategies that would reduce cost per lead and increase conversion rates. Disciple Media also discovered that with Sisense Fusion, they could perform sophisticated data analysis, filtering by location, demographics and behaviour to hone in on the ideal customer profile.

This innovative data-driven strategy resulted in Disciple Media attracting and retaining six times more customers, driving 75% improvement in their customer churn rate and tripling customer lifetime in only two years. Customer churn rate also reduced significantly from the pre-Sisense era when Disciple Media ran broader campaigns.

With Sisense analytics, the company has also been able to show increased return-on-investment (ROI), driving 100% business growth by attracting and retaining more customers. It has also enhanced the quality of customer success management without needing to hire additional staff.

Mark Downey, COO, Disciple Media said the Customer Success Manager and their Community Team now check the customised Sisense dashboard every day for insights into community performance metrics. It helps the team answer questions like new member registrations, engagement levels and posts that are trending up or down. It also helps them explore the data further to answer their own data questions.

“Sisense helps us slice and dice the data in the sales funnel quickly, without needing somebody to help me. Before we deployed Sisense, we were running a duct-taped system of exporting/importing CSVs, homebrew scripts and overly complex spreadsheets,” he said.

“These slices have helped us define what our ideal customer looks like and how early in the funnel we can identify them. Being able to chop, slice and pivot the data quickly and easily at scale helps us adapt the ICP over time. So we know who the product is resonating with over the last six months.

“I can’t imagine going back to the old ways of working now. The benefits of having a consistent and reliable source of truth reporting all of our key performance metrics have been a huge factor in Disciple’s rapid growth,” Mark said.

Frankie Feast, Finance Director at Disciple Media said, “It was a big commitment for Disciple to deploy a data tool due to the initial cost involved. As a result of the time-to-value and the ROI we have received since using Sisense, it has been a great investment.”

Paul Scholey, Vice President of International Sales at Sisense says it is powerful to see Disciple Media unlock the value of infused analytics to revolutionise such an innovative creator marketplace.

“Disciple Media’s growth in customers, lifetime value and ROI is fantastic to see. These results are a testament to the power of infused analytics and how the power of Sisense can help transform businesses inside and out. We are thrilled to be on this journey with Disciple Media and cannot wait to see what the next 12 months bring,” Paul said.

Disciple Media is beginning to explore premium pricing and monetisation opportunities with potential value-add services with Sisense. They are also looking to provide customers with direct access to their community performance metrics within the Disciple Media platform which will offer more insight and actions.  There is also the potential to become even more AI-driven and further embed the Sisense solution into the Disciple Media platform in the future.

About Disciple

Founded by then electronic musician and label owner, Benji Vaughan, Disciple was initially created in 2015 for Benji to directly reach and engage his fans and audience digitally. Disciple has since evolved into a platform that enables and empowers community managers, business owners, influencers, coaches (and more) to build and own a private community platform. Disciple exists to create a level of freedom, control, community focus and creativity among ambitious individuals. Having worked with community leaders ranging from the likes of world-famous music artists to aspirational fitness instructors, there is no limit. As an industry leader in the Creator Economy, Disciple aims to educate on the power of building true connections led by excitement and adoration for each individual’s community focus.

About Sisense

Sisense goes beyond traditional business intelligence by providing organisations with the ability to infuse analytics everywhere, embedded in both customer and employee applications and workflows. Sisense customers are breaking through the barriers of analytics adoption by going beyond the dashboard with Sisense Fusion – the highly customisable, AI-driven analytics cloud platform, that infuses intelligence at the right place and the right time, every time. More than 2,000 global companies rely on Sisense to innovate, disrupt markets and drive meaningful change in the world. Ranked as the No. 1 Business Intelligence company in terms of customer success, Sisense has also been named one of the Forbes’ Cloud 100, The World’s Best Cloud Companies, six years in a row. Visit us at www.sisense.com.

In the summer and autumn, a shortage of HGV drivers was widely reported, sparking concerns about fuel, food deliveries and other supplies in the lead up to Christmas.

At the height of the crisis the Road Haulage Association estimated that the sector was short of 100,000 drivers, exacerbated by a backlog of tests for prospective drivers, EU drivers returning to Europe and drivers entering retirement. Since the DVSA reopened, it is believed that the shortage has now been reduced to approximately 80,000.

Businesses across Wales have been impacted. In Chambers Wales South East, South West and Mid’s recent Quarterly Economic Survey, 50% of SMEs in Wales stated that they had been impacted by supply chain issues caused by a lack of HGV drivers.

The survey shows that 85% of businesses are experiencing delays and 70% of businesses face increased costs receiving or sending goods. These results reflect those of a BDO survey of 500 businesses which suggested that two thirds of mid-sized firms are expecting supply chain strains, rising costs and pandemic related restrictions to hamper trade in the next month.

For many sectors, the HGV driver shortage is one of many challenges that they have faced in recent years. Other supply chain issues have included the global shipping crisis, energy costs and inflationary pressure on raw materials, while the Welsh Automotive Forum has indicated that a shortage of semiconductors in the automotive sector is making production schedules unpredictable.

One of the businesses that has been affected is Spectrum Technologies. The company manufactures a range of industrial laser systems used in the global aerospace and electronics industries, with over 95% of sales going to export markets. Their products contain a wide range of components sourced from around the world and from mid-autumn, they began to see strains developing in their supply chains.

Peter Dickinson, Managing Director of Spectrum Technologies, said: “The issues we experienced were firstly to do with the global shortage of semiconductors and this also impacted the supply of electronic PLC controllers. Since then, we have seen Covid related issues cause problems and delays across the supply chain, including with our local suppliers.

“Although we have not been directly affected by Brexit or driver related problems, we have seen air freight costs doubling and are looking into solutions to lessen issues for the end customer and reduce our carbon footprint.”

Paul Slevin, President of Chambers Wales South East, South West and Mid, said: “The HGV driver shortage is a small part of a larger problem and contributes to a triangulation of challenges businesses face on a day-to-day basis – skill set, tension in the supply chain and the cost of raw materials – so we need to look at the issue in a wider context.”

In the short-term, the UK Government has introduced measures to support the HGV sector, investing in training, infrastructure and improvements for facilities.

50% of businesses in the Chamber’s Quarterly Economic Survey support this, believing that governments should improve access to HGV driver training, licensing and longer-term commitments such as apprenticeships.

Paul continues: “Recruitment and how the sector presents itself will be important going forward as the current average age of the workforce is 56. HGV driving needs to be regarded as a well-respected career path with opportunities to progress, particularly if it is to attract younger workers and apprentices.”