SOME EXAMPLES OF ARTICLES WRITTEN
Royal Bank of Scotland Copy
Headline: Teamwork Produces New Business First
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The first ever silver hedge for RBS Group has been traded by Commodities in conjunction with RBS International’s Corporate Treasury Solutions on the Isle of Man.
"Customers often don’t realise that banks can do this sort of thing - especially on the commodities side", said Mary Maginnis from Isle of Man Corporate Treasury Solutions. "But we bring expertise from the vast experience of all aspects of corporate finance for many different kinds of business over many years".
"The Bank can offer things such as wrapping different areas of financing together - typically in something like a silver hedge we might wrap foreign exchange exposure and commodities exposure together in one package".
"This deal shows how important it is to get out there and keep in close contact with all the RBS customers. It was a conversation at a customer function the subject came up. We delved a bit deeper and told the customer RBS had a commodities section".
"Our local Isle of Man presence and the price, service and level of professionalism impressed the client and a new channel of business for RBS was forged", said Mary.
The silver is used in the making of kettle elements by the world’s largest manufacturer. They traded 2680 kg of silver at a fixed price for the year 2007 to iron out fluctuations in world silver prices to stabilise forward costs of manufacture.
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Headline: Achieving their goal in Gibraltar
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RBS teams scored an incredible winner when they organised a unique football match in Gibraltar.
Forget pub teams, RBS managed to get 14 former Liverpool legends to play in the friendly match against mostly ex-Gibraltar footballers. Big names attracted to the Rock included European Cup Winners Jimmy Case, Phil Neal and Bruce Grobbelaar.
More than 3,000 spectators – a huge chunk of the Gibraltar population – turned out to watch the International Legends Charity Match, which was sponsored by RBS International Personal Banking division and RBS Corporate Markets.
Head of the Gibraltar Corporate Team Marvin Cartwright said: "We invited key customers and guests to watch the game, before taking them for dinner in the evening.
"For our guests, it was an opportunity to enjoy a unique event, and to meet some real footballing legends. For RBS, it was a chance for our people to spend some real quality time with key clients to further strengthen relationships."
The event, staged in October, attracted huge publicity for RBS on the island and netted more than £30,000 for the Research into Childhood Cancer charity.
And the score…2-0 to the men from Anfield.
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Headline: Getting to Know the Customer
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Little did RSB client Andrew Herbert, Finance Director of Domino Printing Sciences PLC, realise that he would come out of a business meeting with Jon Bramwell of RSB East Anglia with a commitment to a sponsored charity bike ride from London to Cambridge.
"Getting to know the customer better by spending some quality time towards a shared objective which is nothing to do with business really strengthens the relationship between RSB and the client and helps maintain the business link", says Jon Bramwell.
"We agreed it would be nice to do something together to raise money for charity", said Jon. "Both Andrew and me being keen cyclists we persuaded ourselves to do the 50 mile London to Cambridge bike ride and raised about £500.
" I got more than I bargained for because Andrew was a bit quicker than me so I spent most of my time looking at Andrew’s back", Jon said.
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Headline: Innovation Wins Business
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Banking mandates from long established Barclays customers have been won by RBSI Guernsey as a result of the innovative, professional and positive approach adopted by the Guernsey commercial team.
"NatWest Guernsey Premium Banking had opened personal accounts for the Co owner of a long established property company and advised us of the potential business banking. A meeting was set up within 24 hours", said RBSI’s Rob Girard.
Working with Relationship Director Scott Philpott and Offshore Corporate Credit, an innovative revolving credit facility was put in place within a short timeframe.
"Whilst Barclays quoted a lower price, the flexibility and reaction time of RBSI and the relationship teams approach in winning the confidence of the client in their ability to deliver were viewed as critical factors. The deal was completed in two weeks and a strong relationship based on innovation and delivery established" Said Rob.
The second win from Barclays within 10 days was Channel Islands Media business ‘The Image Group’, who felt they were not getting the service from Barclays they expected and called Rob Girard after remembering a conversation ten years previously.
"Key factors in winning the business were RBSI’s professional added value relationship approach, with in depth strength of the relationship team and knowledge of the local markets" said Rob Girard.
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Headline: Funding Global Growth
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Norfolk food company Lakeside Food Group has been able to expand it’s business even faster with a new £9.1m funding structure from RBS to help it buy, import and store ready prepared foods as it carries on increasing it’s turnover by an estimated 30 per cent this year.
"Providing working capital to business is an essential service RBS offer", says RBS Corporate Director Bob Annable. "Without it modern commerce would slow down to a snail’s pace.
"With the immense amount of RBS experience gained over many years of understanding and managing corporate finance for a wide variety of business activities we can also offer access to financing expertise to our clients which they would not have themselves", Bob told Reach.
"We are very happy with the funding structure provided by RBS. Bob’s team was able to provide us with sound advice and an imaginative approach. With the facilities now in place, we can concentrate on our global growth strategy over the next few years", said Lakeside Finance Director Graham Edwards.
The Lakeside Food Group was set up in 1989 by Michael Masters and Mark Taylor to buy ‘value added’ food products from around the World through supply contracts in Asia, South America and Eastern Europe.
It supplies own brand products for supermarkets Tesco, Iceland and Morrison as well as its own Lakeland and Foxwood brands. Lakeside Food Group is also increasingly selling to Western European countries and recently expanded into Australia and the United States. Global expansion continues with more international offices in the pipeline.
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Headline: £3m RBS Investment in School Grounds
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The largest ever private sector investment in school grounds saw RBS completing yet another playground improvement project in June at the Montgomery Primary School at Sparkbrook, Birmingham.
It was all smiles as the ribbon was cut to officially open the brand new Quiet Area, specially designed and planted for the children as part of the £3 million Supergrounds programme developed by RBS to improve more than 450 school grounds throughout the country.
Chris Hyde and Tom Senior from RBS Corporate Banking in Birmingham nominated Montgomery Primary because they were involved in the school.
"As a parent myself I know what a difference a playground like this makes to the lives of children and I’m really proud that the bank, through Supergrounds, has turned Montgomery Primary School’s dream into a reality", Chris Hyde Said.
Head Teacher at Montgomery School, Olga Owen, said " We are so pleased to have Chris, Tom and their colleagues from RBS working alongside us, as their continuing commitment to the school via Supergrounds is most impressive. Supergrounds has been a most successful and rewarding project".
The Royal Bank of Scotland Group spent £40 million on its community investment programme last year, which is one of the largest in Europe.
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Headline: Time for Local Community
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Giving time to something that benefits the local community saw six members of RBS East Anglia running in the ‘Chariots of Fire’ relay race through the streets of Cambridge on Sunday, September 24th.
RBS team members were Jon Bramwell, Steve Murray, Phil Green, John Everett, Nick Taylor and Duncan McCunn. A total of £533 was raised by RBS for the East Anglian Air Ambulance new helipad at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, which relies totally on voluntary donations.
"We felt we could do our bit and give up our own time for something that benefits the local community because RBS is part of that community", says Steve Murray. "RBS can be seen to be involved and it also helps us improve business opportunities".
"The RBS team may not have come first, but they certainly didn’t come last either ! Let’s just say they came respectably somewhere in the middle of the field with a very creditable time of 1 hour 22 minutes", said RBS team member Steve Murray.
The ‘Chariots of Fire’ race was founded fifteen years ago and consists of relays of 1.7 miles for each member of a six man team.
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SAM - MICROSOFT - BUSINESS INSIGHTS PUBLICATION
SOFTWARE ASSET MANAGEMENT - AN INTRODUCTION
What is SAM ?
Dramatic cost savings in IT budgets are being completely missed by the majority of UK businesses according to research by many industry analysts.
With a proper Software Asset Management policy in place Gartner Research estimates as much as 30 percent savings can be made on IT assets during the first year followed by between 5 percent and 10 percent annually. Other business analysts such as the Butler Group and IDC reach similar conclusions.
What is Software Asset Management or SAM ? Software is an asset just like any other business asset and needs to be managed to get the most out of it says Ram Dhaliwal, Licensing Programmes and Marketing Manager atMicrosoft UK. A good business manager doesn’t ignore other, more tangible assets, and software assets shouldn’t be ignored just because they are intangible, Dhaliwal explains.
‘SAM delivers one really important thing - which is getting maximum value from the software investment. It then delivers three key benefits’, says Dhaliwal.
- Overall reduction in costs of management issues. More control so you only buy what you actually need to use.
- Increased security and improved patch and upgrade management .
- Overall costs savings.
Senior Research analyst at The Butler Group, Mike Azoff, says Small to Medium Enterprises (SME’s) haven’t readily embraced SAM because it is mostly thought of as simply a tool for software licensing compliance and they are too busy to worry about yet more administration when they would rather grow the business.
‘They don’t realise there are other advantages of SAM too’ he says. ‘ Efficiency and productivity can also be improved and this translates into an improved return on investment. A SAM policy will invariably pay for itself’, he says.
Surprisingly, Gartner estimates that globally only about 10 percent of businesses have a SAM policy in place.
But in September 2006, an anonymous survey at the Gartner IT and Software Asset Management conference revealed that 35% of clients had experienced an on-site audit from a major software vendor. Gartner reports this trend accelerating In the short term.
Without a SAM policy to provide transparency and control the complexities of software licensing, more businesses will find themselves in expensive trouble with compliance issues they had no idea existed. SME’s are particularly vulnerable, according to industry analysts.
‘Over expenditure on purchasing software licenses that are not required at all - a complete waste of money which eats into company profits - is also extremely common, Butler Group analyst Mike Azoff says.
‘In the SME market it is quite typical for the IT department to have a folder with a few sheets of paper in’, he says.
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‘They put SAM at the bottom of their list of priorities because it seems easier. But licensing is also too complex to rely on bits of paper. SAM can tell you everything you need to know about what software you have in the organisation. You may have software with 50 licenses but only 10 of them are being used’, says Azoff. ‘Or another software with 20 licenses which are overused. SAM will allow you to rationalise your licenses and provide what is really needed for your business’.
Because SAM starts by establishing the known software in your IT environment, the SAM tools will pick up other software that is running and flag them to the administrator who can find out if it is licensed and how often it is used and so on.
This also includes Virus software. This will be detected in the SAM auditing process and can be removed, improving IT efficiency and business productivity.
Duplication of software - where different departments are using the same software and there are more licenses than are needed - will also be picked up using SAM. Significant rationalisation can often be achieved in this area.
A typical example of a small enterprise encountering the usual range of software asset managing problems is Chilfen Joinery of Hertfordshire.
Established in 1960 as a small family run manufacturing organisation, it specialised in traditional joinery. Today the company is a much larger concern with an annual turnover of 2.6 million. They employ at total of 53 people, 12 of whom are office based.
As the company grew Chilfen hastily added more PCs and employed a design specialist who worked with AutoDesk’s AutoCAD software package. During this transitional period there was still no one on site managing IT usage. Profits were up and the business was getting bigger, but unfortunately their control over IT assets was struggling to keep up.
A distant relationship with an offsite managed IT service provider and a lack of staff on site with knowledge of software asset management (SAM) left Chilfen Joinery unwittingly in breach of copyright law.
‘Our server was also being very erratic – there were so many problems with our software and general IT network Something had to be done’, a senior Chilfen manager reports. Our server had not backed up 3 weeks’ worth of data, so if a server failure happened we would have lost tens of thousands of pounds in man hours, money and possibly, even clients. Now as an integral part of the SAM policy in place it is monitored and backed up every day.
Following a SAM audit, a whole server re-build took place. A host of unauthorised programmes were found to be lurking on the system, along with several viruses.
All these problems were sorted out when a proper SAM policy was implemented for the first time. SAM has also given Chilfen a fresh approach to the use of IT within the business, making it more efficient and providing a strategic advantage over rivals who fail to manage their software assets with a SAM policy says Chilfen.
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MICROSOFT - BUSINESS INSIGHTS
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NEXT STEPS
Research by Business Analysts Ovum have found the single biggest IT concern quoted by 30 percent of SME’s is managing costs. Staying on top of technology changes was quoted as the second biggest concern by 18 percent of SME’s.
"Software costs are among the most misunderstood and poorly managed costs in IT organisations. Advanced Software Asset Management begins with cost modelling to identify long term costs as well as the risk exposure associated with licensing software", according to Gartner Analyst William R. Snyder.
CEO Lisa Hammond of Centrix, independent business and IT consultancy specialising in advising on SAM, says this makes Software Asset Management more vital than ever.
"Because a lot of SME’s do not have dedicated IT personnel they find it more challenging to get a grip on SAM. They view hardware as an asset but tend to ignore software as it is not visible".
"Centrix has found that for every 5000 people in a large organisation you can save £2 million a year by implementing a SAM policy. That equates to £400 per user and I would say it scales down exactly through to small and medium size enterprises too. Of course implementing SAM with an approved partner specialising in SAM provision is desirable, Lisa Hammond says, But it is now much easier to go down the DIY route as well".
"The new ISO standard 1977-1:2006 introduced last year is very pragmatic and the introduction says good practice in SAM should result in the following benefits".
a) Risk management: SAM should facilitate the management of business risks including:
1) risk of interruption to IT services;
2) risk of deterioration in the quality of IT services;
3) legal and regulatory exposure;
4) risk of damage to public image arising from any of the above.
b) Cost control: SAM should facilitate cost control including in the following areas: