GuruOnline Blog

We’ve recently added yet another new contributor to our ever expanding list on GuruOnline, IT Performs Limited is a specialist information technology consulting firm.

IT Performs Ltd was established by like-minded Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Warehouse practitioners, who shared both a passion for the huge benefits that BI could bring to organisations, and frustrations about the failures and missed opportunities that they had historically observed – usually when called in to resolve the resulting problems.

In these unique sets, CEO Glen Westlake offers free business advice on business intelligence including how, from a manager point of view, you could benefit from business intelligence, practical approaches to implementing business intelligence, building your data warehouse, data management and data quality and management considerations for business intelligence projects.

So what exactly is business intelligence? Well, in general, business intelligence is taking your data and generating business benefit from it. So what this means is, taking data, turning it into information, creating knowledge, then getting it out to people at the right time in the right place in the right format so they can make better decisions to drive business benefit.

Due to the fact that business intelligence spans many departments and many functional areas of a company, you quite often find it exposes the differences of those parts of the organisation. The data you’re reporting at an operational level is very siloed, so you have a single set of users, a fairly narrow scope of requirements, so for example your finance package will do finance, this means they’re very isolated so they’re actually quite stable in their functionality, their requirements and the data that goes in them. As soon as they’re compared and the data is pulled together you start going across boundaries in your organisation. This usually cause issues of constancy, management issues around communication etc, so there’s a challenge there with having to pull different people together with different parts of the organisation, overcome users with different requirements, users with different skill sets (so you may have users that need information that are at the bottom of the organisation right up to users at the very top of the organisation) will have different skill sets and different views so there’s quite a broad span of enterprise, data, business and users that business intelligence has to cover which can be challenging. This challenge is addressed by only doing short deliveries into each department and have an organisational structure with a business intelligence steering committee and pull the bodies together so when there’s any conflict senior management can resolve it, prioritize and move on.

The above is just a tiny snippet of the information covered by Glen on, you can view all the sets on business intelligence in full on GuruOnline now.

The Forum of Private Business is a must view for any SME, with six sets currently live they cover a broad range of subjects ranging from finance advice to employment terms and conditions to maternity leave to redundancy advice. Although these sets contain invaluable information for employees, the information is particularly educational for employers.

The Forum of Private Business is a member support organisation established in 1977, which currently represents 25,000 companies employing in the region of 600,000 staff and their members cover all sectors of industry across all regions of the UK. The FPB are recognised by government as being one of the six major business support organisations in the UK.

The aims of the FPB are to provide business support solutions for its members and to campaign and lobby on their behalf. The FPB achieves this in three ways, by looking at small businesses and start-up businesses and see what campaigning needs they have and what lobbying needs to be done to support them within government. The FPB also provide specific business solutions for that sector of the small business market. Secondly, they provide similar support mechanisms for those companies which are in a business growth environment and thirdly the FPB support local businesses around the UK.

Jane Caven is a non-executive director of the FPB and a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD. Jane offers advice on Maternity Leave and explains exactly what women are entitled to in terms of time off, pay, benefits and holidays.

Jane also explains redundancy from the employer’s point of view; she clarifies exactly what redundancy is, as well as the considerations an employer must take into account before making redundancies.

In Jane’s third set, she clarifies employment law and explains employment contracts and what this contains. All employees should receive a statement of main terms and conditions or an employment contract within the first eight weeks of starting their employment.

Phil Orford joined the FPB in 2008 as Chief Executive. Phil explains all about the Forum of Private Business and exactly how it can benefit small businesses. The FPB is recognised by the government as being one of the major business support organisations in the UK, this means the FPB is invited to regular government meetings and are able to take the views of their membership and other small business and campaign and lobby hard for the interests of the small business sector. Phil also clarifies the Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme, which provided a new fund of £1.3 billion of available lending to small businesses from all the major high street banks. As the Government backs 75% of the loan, it means the businesses with a slightly riskier business model should find it easier to secure funding through this scheme.

Noel Guilford is Chairman of the FPB and has considerable experience in advising the shareholders, directors and management of private companies on raising finance.
In Noel’s exclusive set, he offers detailed advice on how small businesses can still access finance in today’s economic climate.

The Forum of Private Business are the experts when it comes to business support solutions, these sets not only offer practical advice when it comes to the day to day running of your business, but they explain the laws and regulations in easy to understand bite sized videos.

Another one of the more popular Gurus is Richard Denny and his set on Sales and Selling Techniques. It’s popularity is not surprising, this is a must view set for anyone who works in sales, whether they’re new to the industry and want to discover some trade secrets or even if they’ve been in the industry for years, they’re still likely to pick up some useful tips and information.

Richard Denny explains that like a lot of people, he got into sales by accident and never aspired to work in sales as a child. After having a surplus of large eggs, which wouldn’t fit into the packaging, he sold them to Harrods marketed as large free range eggs and his empire soon expanded. In these exclusive sets, he gives away some of his trade secrets and explains how your attitude can be your best asset, so long as you know your product and industry and you believe in what your selling you can succeed.

He starts off explaining exactly what his definition of sales is; a sales person is a mind maker upper. Their job is help people make up their mind to buy the right service or product that’s right for them. The job of the sales person is to guide that process through.

One of the toughest parts of working in sales can be the rejection and being told no. Richard explains that this shouldn’t be a deterrent as a ‘no’ is only a no at that current moment in time. Your potential customer may not be interested in your product or service today, but circumstances can change, tomorrow, next month or next year, your product or service may be just what they’re looking for. By keeping in touch (but not pestering) you will stay in their mind, so, when they do want your product or service, you can turn that no into a sale.

Next to the ‘no’ response, sales people will also hear the potential customer already has a supplier which they’re quite happy with. This is another response that doesn’t necessarily mean an end to a potential sale. Asking questions is often the key to securing a sale, ask them if when they made the deal with their current supplier, they made it because they were offered the best service at the best price, (which will be the most common reason a contact was negotiated), they will more often than not agree to this, then you simply need to ask them if that still stands today. You then tell them you believe you can offer them the best service at the best price today, ask them if they would consider just giving you a trail with a small section of their business, once they’re happy with that service and you’ve earned their trust you will be able to get more business from them.

These are just a couple of snippets from dozens of videos by Richard Denny; why not take a look at the rest of Richards’s sales advice on GuruOnline now.

This week’s blog is going to look at another new contributor on GuruOnline.
Harley Young are a small niche company of ‘Change Management Specialists’
They achieve affective solutions by using sustained & absorbed change, rather than ‘moving the furniture around’. This requires external objectivity. It also requires building strong relationships with clients to help them withstand the knocks and scraps of change.

Harley Young co-founder, Philip Cox-Hynd, covers five different topics on change management and has over 140 videos currently live. He covers, how to approach organizational change, what the different parameters are for delivering successful change, change through effective management & powerful teamwork, what can stop change being successful and directing and sponsoring change.

So how do you know when your organisation needs to change? There will often be an obvious reason which would have alerted you to the notion you need to do something different, it may be a merger, an acquisition, an expansion into a different market place, a restructuring or something that is of a specific nature. To gain the buy in of your workforce it’s important to find out what for them needs to stay the same and what needs to change, you need to hear their opinions as it will give you a better indication as to where you are. This will give you an unflustered and unbiased set of opinions that can be critical and often dovetail with strategic change objective that you’ve already got in mind.

The best way to implement change is thoughtfully. Its important that the objective for change is thought through, there’s a difference between what can be called organic change, which is something that’s happening all the time to all businesses non stop, and prescriptive change or planned change. If it’s the latter than careful thought needs to be given to the objective, the time scale and what’s realistic against what’s wanted. Once it’s planned people need to be engaged with, not just talked at.

The best way to measure change is subjectively and objectively. Subjective, because opinion is critical, there are three areas they you need to collect opinions from, they are employee opinion, what do your employees feel has been successful in the change? Secondly, clients, suppliers and partners, collect antidotal evidence form them. Thirdly, senior managers should have been tasked with behaving more inline with the new company. So you need to measure the opinions of people within the organisation to how well their role modeling those new behaviours.
On the objective side, churn rate should have gone down and retention should have gone up, retained business should have been increased and new business won should have also been increased.

For more change management advice check out the rest of the sets on GuruOnline

Last week I told you all about IBM’s Darren Adams set on how to improve collaboration in mid sized businesses.
Most of the IBM sets can be found under the technology channel but there are plenty of other contributors under the technology channel, in fact there are over 340 sets for you to view on a whole host of topics.
These topics include free business advice on driving traffic to your website and search engine optimization, e-marketing and e-commerce, AV technology and how to install and maintain it and telecommunications for businesses among others. All these of course are from industry experts with a proven track record.
Here’s a brief introduction to some of the more popular contributors and the free advice they’re offering.

Reflex AV has been in business for over 25 years since the data projector first presented the opportunity to display computer generated data to large audiences. As the technology has grown and developed so to have Reflex who has always made sure they’re at the forefront of new technology. In their sets, they give free advice on Audio Visual technology.
Audio Visual technology is basically about improving communications. This can be the way you deliver a presentation or how you want to impart information, and the AV technology is how you go about that, for example, projector equipment, displays, or video. It doesn’t have to be ridiculously over the top or too expansive but most businesses will need some sort of AV technology especially if part of that business involves presentations or conveying information. In their sets, Reflex give free advice on what sort of AV technology a business will need, how to install and maintain it as well as explaining all about digital signage.

One of the other popular contributors on the technology channel is the National B2B Centre. They have over 75 sets discussing e-collaboration, e-commerce and e-marketing. The National B2B Centre is a Centre of Excellence for e-business and they specialise in giving advice to small and medium sized businesses.
e-collaboration, e-commerce and e-marketing all fall under the topic of e-business which is the term used to describe the utilisation of internet technologies to improve the productivity or profitability of a business. This can expand much further than just having a company website, there is a whole host of technologies online which can help benefit the way a business works.
In their sets, the National B2B Center explain how e-collaboration can help a business run more effectively (this set compliments Darren Adams set on collaboration very well). The e-commerce sets explain all about how trading online can benefit you business and how to go about setting it up and the e-marketing sets give free advice on how e-marketing can benefit your business and how to go about establishing an online presence.

These are just a very brief overview of two of our contributors; check out our technology advice channel for loads of other sets offering great business advice.

Since GuruOnline was launched last year it’s gone from strength to strength with every month seeing more visitors than the previous one.

One of the more popular sets on Guru, are the IBM ones and in particular, Darren Adam’s sets on how to improve collaboration in a mid sized business. In one of my previous blogs I gave a brief overview of the IBM sets in general so you know all about the different great topics there are for you to chose from. In this blog I’m going to try and condense Darren’s 28 sets down into just one blog to give you a more in-depth overview of the type of free business advice on offer.

The two main themes around collaboration are the quota restrictions on inboxes and the file attachments often sent round with email. Due to the fact that a lot of organisations impose restrictions on the size of employee’s inboxes, staff end up spending time keeping their inboxes in check rather than concentrating on their actual duties. When file attachments are sent round with emails, you have no control on who can edit the content and to what extent, so you never know who’s working from the original and therefore cannot verify its content.

A simple solution to this problem would be for staff to start storing their content centrally, which would ensure everyone who needed it, has access to up to date information. The tools which are used to do this have to be easy to use and easy to integrate into everyday working life. Having documents managed centrally also gives an extra level of security as you can control who can read and edit the document too.

Another method of improving collaboration in mid sized businesses is unified communications, this is a very broad term for the unifications from a desktop point of view of access to things like telephony, voice over IP, video and unified messaging. When used properly, these tools can help utilize time effectively, for example, through instant messaging services, you can not only see at a glance whether someone is at their desk, but also whether they’re available to take a call – which is much quicker than having to phone them, maybe go through their secretary and inconvenience them if they’re busy.

Activity centric computing has to support both ad-hoc and structured modes of working. Ad-hoc, because a lot of business activity had to happen within a matter of days and will come up very quickly and therefore has to be completed quickly.
It is equally important to support structured activities as there will be many things which are repeatable on a monthly basis so the activity centric computing has to support a more template driven approach.

Comprehensive collaboration is not just for the benefit of your own business and employees, it’s very important to be able to collaborate effectively with organisations outside of your own, if you don’t, then the common denominator that you have is email. Which we already know can have too many failings.

The most important aspects in terms of collaborating outside your organisation is going to be security and access control because you’re starting to share some of your content and business processes outside of your organisation. The important thing however, is that it has to be easy for people to access not only in terms of security and login but also in terms of the tools they use on a day to day basis, what you use in your organisation might be very different to what another organisation uses, therefore open standards and an adoption and integration of commonly used business tools and productivity suits is very important to ensure you can collaborate in the same way.

This is just a brief overview of some of the things Darren talks about in his sets. For more business advice on collaboration why not check out the rest of the sets. Don’t forget, there are loads of other sets from IBM covering a whole host of topics from IT security to IT finance to information management.

If you’ve had a look round GuruOnline, you’ll know we only work with the leading figures in each industry to ensure our community gets the best free advice possible.
Our latest contributor on Guru is Aktrion who are experts when it comes to outsourcing. We currently have over 60 different videos for you to watch all answered by Aktrion’s Managing Director Chris Baumann. Chris covers all areas of outsourcing from what outsourcing is exactly; to how it can benefit your business and how to ensure your outsourcing is cost effective and efficient to your organisation.

Outsourcing is when a company allows an outside company to take responsibility for certain parts of their operation this can be done to change the working practices and efficiencies of that part of the organisation or to increase the resources which in turn increases production and output, it provides additional management support to improve the cost effectiveness of the overall operation.

This can sound a bit like an employment agency but outsourcing differs from employment agencies in several ways, for example, if your business were to go through an employment agency, they would technically by employed by you, if you were to go through an outsourcing company it would be them who would have full employment liability.
Perhaps the biggest difference between an outsourcing company and an employment agency would be the level of personnel provided. An outsourcing company would bring management to the organisation, which isn’t something an employment agency would necessarily provide, For example a professional outsourcing company could provide operational management to help implement health & safety procedures etc.

Before you start outsourcing, you need to have a clear idea of what your objectives are and long-term goals. It’s not just the transition which needs to be well planned, but also what happens after the transition that will need to be thought through too. Without everything being clearly planned out, the end results may not correlate with what was originally needed.

The above information is just a snippet taken from a couple of the sets (there are dozens more!), so for more information check out the new outsourcing sets from Aktrion and if there’s anything specific you want to know that we haven’t covered, please feel free to get in touch and we’ll do our best to help you.

One of the most recent contributors to GuruOnline is the China-Britain Business Council (CBBC)
The CBBC is the UK’s leading source of practical services to British companies doing business in China. They are there to provide help to businesses of all sizes who are looking into doing any type of business in China. They have offices throughout the UK and a strong presence throughout China. Whether you’re just after some advice or you need step-by-step support to do business in China, CBBC is the definitive expert in the industry.
There are several sets on Guru from the CBBC covering, basic information about CBBC, doing business in China and how it can benefit your business, operational business advice and the culture of China, the more intricate details of suppliers and selling in China and setting up HR in China.

Chris Cotton gives a comprehensive introduction to the China Britain business Council before going on to talk about the basics of doing business in China, and how it can benefit your business.

Giles Backburne talks about the operational aspects of doing business with China and how culture can impact on this, from the language barrier including meetings and website translations to traveling and factors like finance, transportation and customs.

Ralph Rogers explains the practicalities of setting up HR in China, covering topics like how to set up a representative office, to hiring staff and contacts in China. He also covers the legalities of leasing and selling technology to China.

Chen Wu gives advice on suppliers and selling in China. He talks about verifying Chinese business information and gives tips on making sure you can trust your business contacts especially when you use the Internet.

If your company is thinking of doing business with China, these sets could really get you started.

We’ve already established why GuruOnline is such a useful and productive resource, now we need to know exactly what it contains. In this blog I’m going look at some of the newer sets.

Last summer, IBM provided some very useful information on business IT. In their sets they talked about IT Security, they explained what it is and how to manage the risks it can sometimes entail. They also talked about IT collaboration and how it can be improved in mid sized businesses. Due to the success of these sets we’ve added some more content from them. There are now two new sets from Richard Bingham and Ian West.

Richard Bingham is responsible for IBM’s financing offerings in the UK and Ireland. In his set he talks about how small and medium businesses can finance IT. Today’s current economic climate is making a lot of businesses nervous about borrowing money and investing in new projects. Unfortunately it is not going to be feasible for most businesses to wait that long before they invest in new security and IT systems. Richard’s sets offer free practical advice on how small and medium businesses can finance new IT projects.

Ian West is responsible for all aspects of IBM Software Group’s Information Management Business. In his set he talks about information management, what it is and how it is essential for the smooth running of any business. No matter what industry your business is involved in, information management is imperative if you want your business to be productive. He covers all areas of information management from information management strategies to data warehousing.

To view all the IBM sets check them out on GuruOnline.tv

You probably already know what a great business resource Guru is, through it you can access loads of business advice on dozens of industries and hundreds of topics. If you don’t think we’ve covered a topic thoroughly enough or if there’s something specific about one of the sets you would like further information on, then please don’t hesitate to contact us and we’ll do our best to help you.

We all know there are hundreds if not thousands of business resources and online information centers out there but there are a few things that make Guru completely unique, the first is the format in which you can access the advice, everything is streamed through instant online videos. There aren’t pages of text that you need to sift through to be able to find the information you’re after, because every set is broken down into individual questions you don’t even have to sit through the whole interview. You can find the relevant information you’re after and just watch that, you can even pause it or listen to it over again, then if you decide you would like some more information on that subject the rest of the questions are right there clearly labeled and ready to go.

Secondly, because all the information on Guru is in video format, you know you can trust the source of the information. We only film industry experts (as you can see), which means you know these people know what they’re talking about.
You can never be sure who has written content you find online, you cant even be sure they’re who they claim to be and validating that information can be very time consuming.
With GuruOnline you can see exactly who is providing the information, what company they’re from and what gives them the authority to talk about their topic, there is even a link to their website too.