It’s never been more important to support small business. Customers are staying at home, suppliers are stretched and online sales can’t fully replace what’s being lost. Finances are tighter than ever. Small businesses are critical to our economy and a vital part of our community. They deserve our help.
Glasswall, a leading file-regeneration technology company, wants to play its part. The company is offering small businesses in UK and US a one-year subscription to its award-winning FileTrust for Email service. Powered by it’s patented deep-File Inspection, Remediation and Sanitisation Technology (d-FIRST™), FileTrust for Email provides complete protection against the greatest cyber threat businesses face today: Malicious email file attachments.
Glasswall will provide this service, along with setup and support, at no cost for a full year.
In addition, companies can also benefit from new products slated for release over the next few months, including Glasswall’s Mass File Scanner and Website File Scanner services. Mass File Scanner is a quick and simple way to conduct risk assessments on large quantities of files, while the Website File Scanner does the same for the file content of websites.
“Health professionals and key workers are all making sacrifices to help us get through the current crisis and at Glasswall, we feel our business also has to play its part.” said Danny Lopez, CEO of Glasswall.
“Small businesses are increasingly being targeted by cybercriminals seeking to exploit the current crisis for their own gain. The owners of these vital businesses are facing enough challenges. Malicious emails shouldn’t be one of them.”
Glasswall’s FileTrust for Email service is quick and easy to set up, works seamlessly with any email gateway and provides a valuable addition to other security products.
Glasswall disarms file-based malware without requiring signatures, behavioural analytics or machine learning. Glasswall regenerates totally clean, safe and visually identical versions of files in under a second, ensuring no disruption to productivity.
Swansea-based IT and communications firm, SA1 Solutions, has exerted an incredible effort to get an unprecedented number of businesses set up for remote-working, following government guidance for the majority of people to work from home, in order to slow the spread of COVID-19.
In just 15 days, the multi-award winning IT specialist has helped more than 50 companies and almost 1,000 staff from across the UK, and from every kind of business sector, get their staff set up with the equipment and software needed to ensure business continuity and service delivery with minimal impact.
The companies helped by SA1 Solutions range from international retailers to large engineering firms, well-known charitable organisations to electrical manufacturers, estate agents to chartered surveyors. Most of the businesses formerly lacked the basic IT infrastructure needed to home-locate their workforce at such short notice.
The mammoth task undertaken by SA1 Solutions included equipping businesses with laptops, PCs, printers, monitors, headsets, Wi-Fi dongles, mobile phones, audio-visual equipment and Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium licences. In order to keep their clients’ teams connected during this period of social distancing, they have installed Microsoft teams software and VoIP softphones, with training to ensure that employees working from home can communicate efficiently, maintain their business’s productivity and continue to deliver uninterrupted service.
Data security for all businesses was also a very important consideration, with vast amounts of new anti-virus software being issued alongside the setting up of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), which allow remote workers to access their office network safely by encrypting data and securing devices.
Simon Ahearne, Managing Director of SA1 Solutions, said:
“As soon as we became aware of the pending virus pandemic, we put in place a crisis plan to ensure that we were able to fully support all of our clients needing assistance through this difficult period. Our team of engineers have been working extended hours and over weekends to make sure there has been as little disruption to our customer’s business’s as possible, and that they have had full access to the support, hardware and software they required.
“We monitor all of our clients AV licenses and security daily, and in addition we have issued a vast number of new licenses to cover the new hardware that has been acquired by our clients. We have also set up VPNs to many of our client’s office networks. These tunnel their internet connection and encrypt data to ensure their devices, and any devices connected to them, are secured. We are also still performing essential site visits, but this is within the government guidelines, and we are safeguarding our engineers and customers by complying with government advice including social distancing regulations.”
Keysource, the data centre specialist, has been appointed to the North Eastern Universities Purchasing Consortium (NEUPC) Framework for the provision of Data Centre Management equipment and Infrastructure for a further four years. With a relationship which dates back to 2010, Keysource is now one of the most experienced companies on the framework and is able to offer its full range of its service from consultancy through to delivery and ongoing management as the top ranked framework supplier.
NEUPC is one of six UK Higher Education purchasing consortia established to deliver and manage a wide range of collaborative framework agreements within the higher education sector. NEUPC’s new Data Centre Management Framework offers a broad scope of equipment, infrastructure and consultancy. The framework was designed by IT and Telecoms procurement experts from Higher Education institutions to speed up the process of data centre procurement for members and provide a supplier benchmark for services.
Richard Clifford, Senior Consultant and Head of Innovation at Keysource, said:
“We have a long pedigree of providing high performance data centre facilities to the education sector and our clients include University of Leicester, University of Exeter and Bristol University. This is our tenth year of working with NEUPC as one of their trusted data centre companies that will support the Education sector in UK.”
Paul Eagleton, Framework Manager, said:
“Keysource have been a Data Centre framework supplier since 2010 and following a high quality bid submission we are delighted to have them on board once again to support our Universities during this time of unrivalled technological change.”
Edge Testing Solutions Ltd (Edge) has launched a new Performance Engineering service which combines two primary benefits to customers: finessing system design and capacity.
Fundamental aspects of system design can have a profound impact on the non-functional qualities of a system. For example, selecting an inefficient language or development platform can build-in overheads that will mean a business is paying too much for cloud services every day that a system is in use. By making the right choices from the very beginning of system specification and design an organisation can reduce operational costs throughout the lifetime of a system. Edge’s service advises on how to select the best technologies and configure them to design built-in efficiency and effectiveness.
Additionally, the new Performance Engineering service uses a unique and powerful combination of Machine Learning and pattern recognition to manage and model solution capacity. The algorithm behind the service is the result of years’ of research and practice, and provides the ability to accurately forecast capacity requirements in a wide range of environments and settings. This can yield significant resource savings in larger deployments, including test functions, and improve efficiency across the board.
Many enterprises have historically countered the obvious problem of under-provisioning hardware and cloud resources with the simple but inefficient tactic of over-provisioning. With Edge’s new Performance Engineering service this is no longer a risk that clients need to manage.
By creating actionable insights from existing provisioning and capacity data, the new service can predictably and automatically manage test capacity to much tighter tolerances, removing the guesswork from test capacity provisioning. The technique can be applied to all aspects of test capacity, from predicting cloud service requirements and scheduling them at the most cost-effective time, through to accurately specifying on-premise hardware requirements.
Performance Engineering offers a deeper view of the testing environment, delivering an early understanding of performance, making it a powerful complement to more traditional performance testing. Performance Engineering can enable earlier and more cost-effective interventions than traditional testing processes, although it should not be viewed as a replacement. Full solution, end-to-end load testing still brings value in terms of understanding the likely user experience. In combination with performance engineering the traditional performance test becomes more of a one-off acceptance test rather than an expensive late phase iterative activity. The resultant benefit of this combined approach being the reduction of the overall cost of quality.
Dan Martland, Head of Technical Testing at Edge said:
“We developed this solution for internal use originally, but the results were so startlingly strong that we began limited customer beta trials. In one case we reduced our client’s AWS annual hosting cost rate by £1 million, in another we saved a client £7.7 million by not over-specifying application servers. We believe that performance engineering will become a standard part of testing functions in the future.”
Edge’s Performance Engineering service can reduce business risk and create operational efficiencies in a vast range of applications and requirements, including:
Solution design for efficiency, including software, storage and network elements
Effective scaling of test environments, especially in a high volume context.
The Edge team has offered advice on:
Hyper-V and wider VM architectures
AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Oracle and IBM hosting
Today, Advanced announced it has acquired Tikit, a global legal, accounting and professional services software business, from BT Group plc (BT). This is the company’s fifth acquisition in twelve months – and reinforces Advanced’s ambition to become the number one provider of business software solutions in the UK while simultaneously extending its global footprint.
Tikit is a British-headquartered business that focuses its solutions around four key business challenges for professional services firms: Practice and Case Management; Time and Billing; Document Lifecycle; and Marketing and Business Development. Across each of these areas, Tikit provides a connected environment comprising its proprietary software complemented by applications from long-standing partners, to create integrated and specialised solutions.
Tikit broadens the market opportunity for Advanced solutions to include the top 100 to 200 UK law firms, being complementary to Advanced’s existing presence within small to medium sized firms. It also expands Advanced’s operations in North America, Australia and EMEA.
“The professional services sector, in particular the legal market, is a strategic growth priority for us,” comments Gordon Wilson, CEO of Advanced. “This sector is an increasingly enthusiastic adopter of sophisticated technology and we have worked hard to innovate and develop valuable solutions that they require.
“This acquisition will enhance our ability to provide innovative and specialist software solutions to meet clients’ needs – now and into the future. Tikit has a strong and growing customer base and is highly complementary to us, so we are thrilled to add its technology and people to the growing Advanced family.”
The divestment of Tikit aligns with BT’s ongoing transformation programme and strategy of focusing on converged connectivity and services, with further investments in both its fixed and mobile networks such as full fibre and 5G.
Gerry McQuade, CEO of BT’s Enterprise unit, said:
“With BT’s renewed focus on investing in our core business, the time is right for a new owner to maximise Tikit’s full potential. Our colleagues at Tikit have been a valued part of BT for the past seven years and I wish them every success for the future within Advanced. Today’s announcement is the next exciting chapter for Tikit, which is poised for further growth as part of Advanced given its extensive industry expertise and scale across enterprise software.”
Simon Hill, CEO of Tikit, said:
“We are excited to see Tikit enter a new phase as part of the Advanced family. As part of Advanced, Tikit will have access to software and development expertise together with extensive industry knowledge, taking the business to a new level of growth. The breadth of products and expertise that Advanced brings will provide a great opportunity for Tikit customers to gain access to a wider range of specialist technology, helping them to unlock their business potential.”
Qualtrics, the creator of the experience management category, today announced that it has been named a leader in Forrester’s report – The Forrester New Wave™: EX Management Platforms for Large Enterprises, Q1 2020. Qualtrics is the only Leader who received a Differentiated rating in seven of ten criteria.
“Forrester’s recognition of employee experience management platforms as an emerging category comes at a critical time when companies across industries and regions are listening more intentionally and more often to their employees to help them navigate workplace, health, and economic changes,” said Jay Choi, EVP and GM of EmployeeXM, Qualtrics.
“We’re delighted to be recognized by Forrester as a leader in Employee Experience Management as we invest aggressively to help companies transform daily listening into daily actions that unlock employee potential and improve wellbeing.”
Qualtrics EmployeeXM™ received the highest possible score for the following criteria:
● Vision
● Market approach
● Customization
● Recommendations and workflow
● Tooling and ease of use
● Validity and correlation
● Surveying methods
Forrester’s report noted that interviewed Qualtrics customers “praised [the Qualtrics EmployeeXM platform] for its flexibility, integration capabilities, text analytics, and dashboards — and [the company] for its general willingness to partner with them along the way.”
Martin Reed, Chief Executive at Incentive FM Group, explains why commercial security has evolved alongside the commercial landscape
The challenge of delivering commercial security has seen significant changes in recent years, with many providers now struggling to play catch up. Priorities around securing members of the public, staff, high profile buildings and large open spaces have irreversibly shifted with an increased threat of terrorism and violence.
Coupled with the constantly evolving environmental challenges, a tough economic backdrop is also forcing security providers to work within testing budgets. Big security decisions are being made in unchartered territories and a holistic approach is now imperative for a successful and safe operation.
How has the environment changed?
Historically, security solutions were driven by a main objective to stop theft and prevent damage to products and assets. Of course, for retail and public spaces, issues such as theft have not gone away, with organised retail crime (groups of criminals stealing merchandise, data or cash from retailers) accounting for £562m in commercial losses last year. However, the last decade has seen security strategies also having to incorporate and prioritise the wider safety and security of people and assets. The Institute of Economics and Peace has estimated that the direct cost of terrorism to the global economy in 2014 was $52.9 billion – a ten-fold increase since 2000 – with the indirect costs at $105 billion.
Currently the national level of terrorist threat is deemed ‘substantial’ by MI5, which has resulted in facilities management companies playing a vital role in planning and preparing for potential incidents. As a specialist facilities management provider, companies like Incentive FM Group are also tasked with preparing for a change in the threat level from ‘substantial’ to ‘critical’. As this threat of terrorism fluctuates, the stages of preparing and implementing security protocol in public spaces have to be agile enough to predict risk and adapt, with the sufficient technological capabilities to counteract any threat.
As security services face up to these new challenges, leadership teams are simultaneously having to decipher appropriate reductions to stay afloat. The balance between providing a holistic security service and remaining operationally effective has never been tighter. This is where recruiting smartly and investing wisely help steady the ship.
Building the right team
The relevant skillset for security professionals, like in any industry, changes with the landscape. New threats require new solutions and the private market has to respond accordingly. As the threat of terrorism and violence increases, it is vital for specialists to recruit professionals who have a focus on vigilance and negotiation skills over the historical security characteristics of physical ability alone. Technological insight, attention to changing details, identifying threats, decision making, mitigating risk, and the ability to continually review security measures are just some of the skills needed in the modern security environment. As is using the wider service team such as cleaning staff which, as an integrated service provider comes naturally to us, but can be a different way of working for single service security providers.
Finding the right balance between sustaining a no-nonsense presence that reduces threat, whilst also ensuring the customer experience is welcoming and positive, is a modern pressure. One of the key assets to holistic security methodology is the recruitment and appointment of an eclectic range of skilled people with different backgrounds. To tackle a diverse problem that is ever-changing, a diverse team is needed; both customer-facing and office-based.
Being part of wider industry bodies, such as the SIA Pacesetter group, can also help to share best practice and improve practices and methodologies for our current environment.
Mitigating the risk of rising knife-crime
There is no doubt that the risk to retail staff from knife attacks is on the rise. The recent ACS 2019 crime report revealed that a knife was used in 68% of violent shop incidents involving a weapon; up from 64% in 2018 and 32% in 2017. As knives also increasingly become a weapon of choice for terrorists, a security plan has to incorporate the different scenarios where a blade or sharp object can pose a threat to staff and/or customers. There is no one size fits all approach to a problem like knife-crime. Smart investment in both personnel and technology is what determines how successful security solutions are in the face of a rising knife-crime problem.
A proactive approach to the identification and management of risk now has to be the default security position over simply providing a reactive ‘body of service’. The relationship between the security provider and the client is more important than ever. Our approach is to position the relationship as a partnership from day one. This is the only way to fully address the unique risks to a business and provide comprehensive, bespoke and reliable security solutions in a tough and rapidly evolving environment.
Management and technology consultancy BearingPoint announced this week that full-year 2019 revenues hit a record €780 million, a 6% increase from the previous year, due in particular to new revenue streams and innovative business services. The firm delivered projects for clients in over 70 countries. Bookings for 2019 came in at €949 million, which was up 15% compared to the prior year. The substantial growth in bookings points to a strong 2020. BearingPoint said its Strategy 2025, launched last year, has created a solid foundation for sustainable growth. To support growth, BearingPoint hired 1,400 people last year.
“In 2019, we laid the foundation for the future of our firm by developing our Strategy 2025. Three major ambitions drive this strategy. One, we put people in the center. Two, we’re going to outperform the market every year. Three, we’re going to be within the top three players in selected areas we decide to play,” said Managing Partner Kiumars Hamidian. “Despite difficult market conditions in certain segments and market geographies, our firm proved to be resilient and able to grow. 2020 is all about the execution of our strategy. Our backlog is strong, the market conditions in most of our countries are promising, and team spirit is extremely high.”
Strategic growth and innovation
BearingPoint established Business Services as a separate unit at the beginning of 2019. Business Services provides IP-driven digital assets and managed services beyond SaaS. The firm also accelerated the growth of its software business by further verticalizing its two product lines: BearingPoint Beyond and BearingPoint RegTech. BearingPoint Beyond is a digital platform solution provider that helps organizations reinvent their business model and grow revenue by utilizing digital platforms and partner ecosystems. BearingPoint RegTech is a leading provider of innovative regulatory and risk technology solutions and launched an international “regulatory reporting factory” last year.
To support its overall growth objectives, BearingPoint also made a strategic move by acquiring Prederi, a leading consultancy focused on public services in the UK. With the acquisition, BearingPoint continued its growth strategy in selected markets with consultancies that are highly focused and strongly differentiated.
Once again, there was a strong focus on creating innovation. More than 130 ideas, startups, and initiatives were submitted to the firm’s “Hub of Innovation,” and over 20 minimum viable products (MVPs) were developed. Market observers again singled out BearingPoint in 2019 for its innovation and strengths, with 90 analyst recognitions and various awards.
Putting people in the center
As part of putting people at the center, one of the three core ambitions of its Strategy 2025, BearingPoint established a long-term incentive plan that rewards employee loyalty. The firm also established LGBTQ+ and All Inclusive communities and expanded its (Y)Our Ways program. BearingPoint’s (Y)Our Ways is about redesigning the way people work to achieve tangible business outcomes. It leverages IP, talent, and expertise. People-centric by design, (Y)Our Ways is transforming the way BearingPoint makes a difference for its people, clients, and ecosystems.
10 years of BearingPoint – 10 years of success
In 2019, BearingPoint celebrated 10 years of success as an independent, Partner-led management and technology consultancy by giving back to people, planet, and society in the biggest CSR campaign in the firm’s history. The #10DaysOfCaring campaign saw BearingPoint’s people across its offices worldwide participate in more than 150 different activities ranging from planting trees and cycling to work to donating blood and volunteering for local nonprofits. BearingPoint said that #10DaysOfCaring underlined the firm’s culture of teamwork, creativity, and a can-do attitude.
BearingPoint used the momentum from the campaign to start new initiatives, like launching new affinity networks. The firm also signed the UN Global Compact in 2019 and committed itself to the 10 underlying principles that include environmental and climate protection. One way BearingPoint showed its commitment was by making its business travel activities climate-neutral for all its business units globally.
Statista’s Luxury Goods Report states that online luxury sales are “projected to grow at twice the market rate” and to have captured “18% of all sales revenue by 2023”. An additional 40% of luxury purchases are in some way influenced by a digital experience but, while luxury consumers get convenience from ecommerce, retail stores aren’t going anywhere.
Traditionally, luxury items are bought after being seen and touched and tried on. Nowadays though luxury brands need to offer more authenticity and personality to engage new buyers, such as millennials (aged 23 to 36), who are reaching their peak spending age. Millennials are also waiting longer before starting families, so they can more easily cash in on their growing spending power.
Recent research by digital experience analytics platform Contentsquare revealed that the luxury watch and jewellery consumer is over 8% more mobile when compared to digital shoppers from a cross-section of industries.
The findings from Contentsquare, which boasts luxury brands including Harvey Nichols, Kurt Geiger, Clarins, L’Oreal, Belstaff and Tiffany as clients, took a closer look at user navigation and conversion to assess the behaviour of the watch and jewelry luxury shoppers.
With the lines between digital and bricks-and-mortar becoming blurred, unifying data sets from all different viewpoints is crucial in painting a thorough picture of the modern-day shopper, Contentsquare’s MD Duncan Keene commented:
“Our report aimed to shed light on the unique online behaviours of watch and jewelry luxury consumers, to help companies grasp a better understanding on how they could better convert insights into action. In order to get a more holistic picture of this unique consumer segment, our research was conducted with a 360-degree analysis approach in mind.”
Contentsquare’s resulting research data suggests that, on average, the luxury watch and jewelry consumer is over 8% more mobile when navigating websites, makes only 3.7 visits on mobile, compared to 6 on desktop, before making an online purchase, and on average views 10.5 pages per visit on mobile compared to 5.6 pages per visit on desktop.
Duncan continued:
“To boost engagement, you must create stories that resonate and motivate them to like your posts and respond through comments. On the other side of engagement, you should be responsive to direct messages or comments. Take advantage of the opportunity to show off your brand personality — be helpful, and highlight your appreciation for their business.
“Brands need to look at more than just mobile versus desktop data sets. They also need to assess the layout of their websites and which page types support ecommerce conversions most. How do these pages impact the overall site journey? By evaluating customer intent and experience, pages can be tailored to help the consumer achieve their end goals.”
A Euclid study revealed that “almost half (48%) of millennials shop in-store a least once per week.” But those in-person shopping sessions don’t always lead to the checkout counter. Instead, they spur online buying instead. This means that luxury brands should consider boosting their ecommerce investments to offer a seamless multi-channel shopping experience.
One of the best ways to stand out is in offering fast and free shipping. This may not seem revolutionary but it will mitigate the main reason shoppers abandon their shopping cart, as Contetnsquare’s research has revealed time and again.
Fast shipping and easy store returns are only a couple of ways to offer excellent customer service to millennial luxury fashion shoppers though as Duncan explains:
“In order to translate the in-store experience that luxury brands excel at into ecommerce success, personalisation is required to maximise customers’ online experiences. Offering your multi-country customer base the ability to shop in their local currency and providing them with custom-tailored shopping experiences are now essential elements to success.”
While many luxury brands tend to focus on the homepage as a key touch point for the ecommerce shopping experience, Contentsquare’s data indicates that this page is only viewed less than two times by luxury watch and jewelry consumers who make purchases, if at all.
Category, product and check-out pages benefit from significantly more views by both mobile and desktop users, compared to the homepage, editorial and information sections of websites, so the research found that it is more beneficial to invest in the checkout and payment and delivery pages.
The research also found that buyers click on the search bar 53% more than on the menu (13%) when they are on the homepage, so the interaction with the search bar seems to be a positive signal of the buyer’s intent.
While it may seem easy enough to treat all consumers equally, the proof is in the data which demands a stronger need for teams to go through specific trends regarding different user segments.
By assessing these insights from Contentsquare, luxury watch and jewelry brands are able to identify the most important online behaviors of their consumer and optimize their journey towards conversion.
To grow online, traditional luxury brands need to adapt and embrace millennial shopping trends. Gucci for example is just one old luxury brand that is proving the ecommerce opportunity is the way forward.
Adapting product offerings for a growing online and multi-channel customer base, and provide more experiential online shopping options, are key to future-proofing businesses.
Leading datacentre specialist Keysource has launched a new service designed to help companies to optimise the energy efficiency of their datacentres, saving money and reducing carbon. EOS (Energy Optimisation Study) will also provide relevant and accurate data that can be utilised for mandatory regulatory reporting requirements such as SECR (streamlined energy and carbon reporting) and help companies to avoid costly penalties.
The study will include an understanding of the facility utilisation and required operation along with an assessment of the power and cooling infrastructure. Opportunities to optimise will be identified along with their savings and return periods in order to identify recommendations which suit the lifecycle of the facility and the IT within it.
It follows a recent survey by the uptime institute that reported an industry average PUE for 2019 amongst respondents was 1.67 which suggests that improvements in datacentre facility energy efficiency have flattened out and even deteriorated slightly in the past two years. The survey suggests that making small low cost amendments and optimisation with certain infrastructure can in some cases achieve energy savings of up to 20-30%.
Jon Healy, Managing Executive at Keysource, said:
“At Keysource we are committed to supporting our clients’ sustainable goals, whatever their drivers. All eyes are on the corporate green agenda and it is imperative that businesses take the opportunity to reduce their carbon footprint, among other planet saving efforts. The Keysource EOS will give companies the information they need to make informed decisions and will identify real cost benefits, whist maintaining their business critical infrastructure.”
Business in the News – the latest UK Business news from NTSI
