Suddenly, Videoconferencing Does Not Seem So Expensive After All

Sunday 18th April 2010

Unlike air travel, meetings conducted over the Internet are not vulnerable to clouds of ash spewed out by volcanoes in Iceland, or anywhere else for that matter

Business-class videoconferencing has traditionally been beyond the reach of all but the largest multinational companies.  However, that is no longer the case.

Although young people are will happily videoconference all day long with their friends over MSN or Skype using a £10 webcam, it is hardly acceptable for business meetings to be conducted in that way.

The next level up is to use a commercial videoconferencing service, such as that available from Cisco's Webex at http://www.webex.com.  This service costs about £30 a month, plus the cost of a good quality webcam, microphone and speaker.  Clearly, conducting even only one meeting a month by videoconference rather than face-to-face will more than cover the outlay and monthly charge, given the costs of travel nowadays.  As a bonus, the participants can make more profitable use of the time which they would otherwise have spent travelling.

At the top end, full "telepresence" is certainly available, but at a price.  At this level, large screens and custom-designed rooms are set up, in order to foster the impression among the participants that they are really meeting each other "face-to-face".  Due to the cost, this solution is usually viable only where highly-paid staff are concerned or travel costs are substantial.  However, it does incur an unusual additional cost.

It is essential that proper records are kept of exactly how much the expensive facility is used, together with details of the participants, in order to enable a proper cost/benefit analysis to be performed.  The results may well be surprising, often revealing a much greater level of usage and, therefore, potential savings than had been expected.

No matter what level of videoconferencing sophistication is employed, there is always one common factor - the almost complete lack of vulnerability to natural disasters, traffic jams, transport strikes and the
like.

Retailers Must Make A Profit On What They Sell, Obviously

Sunday 11th April 2010

Otherwise, they will very soon go out of business!

If a store's product range is very small, it is quite easy to make sure that every product is offered for sale at an appropriate price.  Once there are several thousand lines or more, a good EPoS system becomes absolutely essential to avoid costly mistakes.

Apart from retail grocery, the "profit margin" on products is usually calculated as "markup".  Here, a percentage increase is applied against the wholesale cost, excluding any VAT element, of a single retail unit of the item.  The appropriate rate of VAT is then applied and the result is rounded up or down as may be required.  The formula is basically "Sell Price minus Cost Price, divided by Cost Price".  This technique is usually known as "Profit on Cost" and intuitively seems "right" to most people.  For example, assume an item costs £1.00 each and sells for £1.15.  Further assume, for the sake of simplicity, that it is zer-rated for VAT.  Clearly, there is a profit of 15p, or 15%, on each item sold.

Almost without exception, the retail grocery trade uses an entirely different mechanism.  Here, the formula is "Sell Price minus Cost Price, divided by Sell Price".  In the example above, there is still a profit of 15p, but the percentage becomes 13.04%.  This is called "Profit on Return" and is practically unknown outside retail grocery.

Since the two methods cannot co-exist, any given business must use either one or the other.  It is important to note that neither is "right" or "wrong".  They are merely different ways of expressing the same underlying data, rather like metric and imperial measurements for volume, length etc.

Happy Birthday, Spot!

Sunday 4th April 2010

Spot, the lovable puppy, has been enchanting children of all ages for 30 years now

Almost everyone who has brought up children in the last 30 years, or are themselves under about 35, remembers Spot and his friends with affection.  Books with titles such as "Spot's Hospital Visit" and "Spot Looks at Colours" are to be found in almost every house where there are young children.

Spot's enduring popularity is due only in part to clever marketing and brand development.  The books actually have two separate lives.  For very young children, they provide the perfect bedtime story.  By the time they reach the age of four, however, most children have dismissed their former favourite as being "Only for babies".  However, the wise parent merely puts the books away in a safe place, knowing that very soon the children will be starting school, where they will learn to read and write.  As adults, most of us take our ability to read and write more-or-less for granted, forgetting the immense efforts that we made, as children, to gain that ability.  What better than the "baby" books to help children learn to read?  They have plenty of colourful pictures, the language is simple, the print large and they are not too long.

Although it is usual to scrap items which appear to have no further use, it is wise not to be in too much of a hurry to do so.  If an item is still serviceable, it may well be useful to someone else.  One possibility is to advertise it on eBay.  This is really easy and cheap, as well as being fun.  It is essential to set the starting price and carriage charges at sensible levels, as potential buyers excel at detecting greedy sellers and avoiding them.

Alternatively, why not just give it away?  There are local "Freecycle" groups throughout the country and around the world, whose sole purpose is to reduce the amount of useful items which end up in landfill.  Their main restrictions are that everything must be free and that offering livestock, including children and family members, is not allowed.  Otherwise, pretty much anything goes.  The easiest way to find your local group is to visit the Recycling Group Finder website at http://recyclinggroupfinder.com and enter the name of your local town.  A map of the local area will immediately appear, with details of all the nearest groups.

Have you bought a new computer but your old one still works fine, albeit a little more slowly than you would like?  Offer it on your local Freecycle group, then sit back and see just how many people would love to come and take it off your hands!

Price Comparison Websites Are Here To Stay

Sunday 28th March 2010

What makes them so universally popular? Surely it is not just their television advertisements?

At first, they were a novelty and generally regarded with suspicion.  Nowadays, just try a search for "Cheap insurance" on Google - it will report that it has found over 57 million results!  Well-known sites such as moneysupermarket.com, confused.com, comparethemarket.com and gocompare.com all appear on the first page.  Subsequent pages carry the names of other, perhaps less well-known competitors.

The advertising strategies vary among the different sites.  Confused.com emphasises how much money it saves its clients.  Comparethemarket.com uses a terrible pun on "comparethemeerkat.com", complete with a lovable furry puppet character.  Gocompare.com ensures its memorability by using an operatic tenor in full evening dress, complete with choral accompaniment.  They are all desperately trying to ensure that, when the next car/house/travel/etc insurance will premium renewal notice arrives, theirs will be the site you choose.

Ultimately, their great advantage is somewhat similar to that of mass production.  It is quite expensive to set up a milling machine to make say, a particular car part.  However, once the machine is set up, it can churn out massive quantities of that part at very little cost.  Using an insurance price comparison site for for the first time will require some effort, due to the sheer amount of information it will have to obtain from you.  However, that information will then be used over and over again to obtain quotes from the participating insurers.  The alternative?  Filling in the same details by hand, over and over again, at every Insurer's website.

Ultimately, price comparison sites appeal for two reasons.  One - they save money, often hundreds of pounds a year.  This, although important, would not by itself be enough.  The other reason is that they make life easy for people, sparing them the time and drudgery of finding the best quote for themselves and thus improving their quality of life.

Surely, this is exactly what technology is supposed to do for us?