Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: business advice

  • Whose priorities do IT departments really care about?

    Whose priorities do IT departments really care about?

    Earlier this week mobile security company Imation showed off their latest range of Ironkey encrypted USB sticks and portable hard drives.

    Accompanying the launch was a presentation from Stollznow Research on how Australian companies are managing data with a comparison against similar surveys carried out in the UK, US, Canada and Germany.

    Of the 207 senior decision makers in Australian medium to large businesses surveyed, there were some interesting results on the attitudes of the nation’s IT departments and CIOs.

    In the field of confidence about the security of their networks, Australian IT managers came out a lot more paranoid than their foreign counterparts with only 38% of Aussies confident their office data is protected from loss or theft against 73% overseas.

    That result is encouraging as the internet and the world of IT security has a habit of severely punishing those with a false sense of security.

    What was particularly notable though with the Imation research was what IT managers considered to be the consequences of a security breach.

    consequences-of-data-breach

    Around the world, IT managers see the headache of cleaning up the mess and bad media coverage as being the biggest consequences of a data breach. Customers come fourth in priority and even then the only concern is losing clients rather than the effects it could have on those people’s lives.

    One of the tragedies of the continued Sony data breaches in 2011 was the leaking of credit card details. Many of those customers on pre-paid cards were young or low-paid workers who quite possibly lost all the money in their compromised accounts – debit cards don’t have the same protections against fraud as credit cards.

    Even more terrible are the effects on those who become victims of identity fraud as consequence of a data breach. Letting that sort of information out is a fundamental betrayal of trust by organisations with sloppy security.

    Interestingly over a third of respondents feared losing their jobs as a result of data being breached, in a perfect world it would be higher although we don’t live in a period where those accountable take responsibility for their actions.

    What’s more likely in many smaller businesses is that a data breach could be the entire organisation to fold, something that should worry anyone running a startup or small business.

    It may be true that many CIOs and IT managers aren’t too worried about the business effects of a data breach or system outage which shows that security – both physical and digital – are the job of everyone in an organisation, not just one department or executive.

    Similar posts:

  • Downward trends and demographics mark the end of consumerism

    Downward trends and demographics mark the end of consumerism

    One of the features of the late Twentieth Century economy was how consumer spending came to dominate the economy – as manufacturing moved offshore, mines closed down and agriculture became largely automated, many developed nations’ growth came from retail spending.

    Today’s release of retail spending figures by the Australian Bureau of statistics shows how that economic model too has come to an end. A post on the Macrobusiness blog illustrates the steady, structural decline of retail spending in Australia.

    ScreenHunter_10 Aug. 05 11.36

    Since 2000, the rate of growth has been declining, only low interest rate policies over the last two years has kept retail sales at a steady level.

    Those businesses whose business models are built on the assumption of high growth rates have a big problem – its no coincidence it’s the department and clothing stores are among the loudest complainers about taxes, labour costs and rents as they see their sales and profits shrinking.

    Basically the Twentieth Century era of consumption has come to an end as households have maxed out their credit cards. Now that many of those households are now older, they simply don’t need to spend as much anyway.

    With the demographic, economic and cultural changes now happening in society it’s a bad time to be planning on massive expansions in household spending and debt as we say in most western countries from the 1960s onward.

    It’s time to think different, and be a lot smarter about getting consumers to buy your products. The era of the 72-month interest free deal is over.

    Similar posts:

  • Is Australia falling behind on the internet of everything?

    Is Australia falling behind on the internet of everything?

    Last Friday Cisco Systems presented their Internet of Everything index in Sydney looking at how connected machines are changing business and society.

    Cisco Australia CEO Ken Boal gave the company’s vision of how a connected society might work in the near future with alarm clocks synchronising with calendars, traffic lights adapting to weather and road conditions while the local coffee shop has your favourite brew waiting for as the barista knows exactly when you will arrive.

    While that vision is somewhat spooky, Boal had some important points for business, primarily that in Cisco’s view there is $14 trillion dollars in value to be realised from utilising the internet of machines.

    Much of that value is “being left on the table” in Boal’s words with nearly 50% of businesses not taking advantage of the new technologies.

    Boal was particularly worried about Australian businesses with Cisco lumping the country into ‘beginner’ status in adopting internet of everything technologies along with Mexico and Russia, with all three lagging far behind Germany, Japan and France.

    cisco-country-capabilities-internet-of-everything

    In Boal’s view, Australian management’s failure is due to “the focus on streamlining costs has come at the cost of innovation.”

    This something worth thinking about; in a business environment where most industries only have two dominant players and the corporate mindset is focused on maximising profits and staying a percentage point or two ahead of the other incumbent, being an innovator itsn’t a priority – it might even be a disadvantage.

    For Australian business, and society, that complacency is a threat which leaves the nation exposed to the massive changes our world is undergoing.

    Similar posts:

  • ABC Nightlife – killing email

    ABC Nightlife – killing email

    For the July 2013 Nightlife spot Tony Delroy and I be looking at email – reduce the volume of email we receive or should we abolish it altogether. Join us from 10pm, July 25 on ABC Local Radio across Australia.

    Should you have missed the spot, it’s available for download at the ABC Nightlife website and listener’s questions are answered on our follow up post.

    In the United States, the Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig claims he’s never sent an email in his life. While Bud is an older worker with plenty of staff to print out his electronic messages, many of us are looking for ways of getting out from under the daily deluge of messages.

    While executives of major sports may be able to get away without using email, most people working in modern organisations can’t. So different companies have introduced different ways of reducing the amount of email flowing around their organisations.

    French company Atos is moving to completely ban internal email with CEO Thierry Breton claiming he hasn’t sent an email since 2008. In Australia, Telstra head David Thodey is winning acclaim for his use of enterprise social media service Yammer.

    Tony and I will be looking at how all of us can reduce our email load with filters, social media and business collaboration tools. Some of the questions we’ll be covering include;

    On the topic of social media and collaboration tools, Salesforce claim some major business benefits from their Chatter app, including thirty one percent of users claiming few meetings which in itself is a major productivity improvement.

    We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on the night on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

    Tune in on your local ABC radio station or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

    You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

    Similar posts:

  • Google and Microsoft show how online business is changing

    Google and Microsoft show how online business is changing

    Both Microsoft and Google yesterday reported their second quarter earnings for 2013 and both missed the targets expected analysts. Does this really mean anything?

    Microsoft’s earnings were particularly notable as they included a $900 million dollar write off on Surface RT inventories, this almost certainly means a key part of the company’s tablet strategy has failed.

    What’s striking in Microsoft’s earnings report is the terrible performance of the Windows Division which saw sales increase 10% year-on-year to 4.4 billion dollars, but earnings collapse by over 50%. Excluding the Surface RT write off, the division would still have seen a ten percent fall.

    The company’s statement emphasised how the division is struggling with increasing costs.

    Windows Division operating income decreased $1.3 billion, primarily due to higher cost of revenue and sales and marketing expenses, offset in part by revenue growth. Cost of revenue increased $1.2 billion primarily reflecting product costs associated with Surface and Windows 8, including the charge for Surface RT inventory adjustments of approximately $900 million. Sales and marketing expenses increased $344 million, reflecting advertising costs associated with Windows 8 and Surface.

    At Google, the company’s 2nd Quarter report show trend is still upwards but the core business of online advertising is showing some cracks as the total number of paid clicks grows, but the value of each falls. At the same time traffic aquisition costs are rising at the same rate as revenues.

    This could indicate that advertisers’ appetite for online links is fading. For smaller businesses, the cost of adwords campaigns has been escalating to the point where the old days of newspaper classifieds and Yellow Pages listings start to look cheap.

    Couple the cost of advertising with the inevitable ‘ad blindness’ that web surfers have developed and a worrying trend for Google starts to appear. Overall Google’s net profit margin was 26%, down from 31% a year earlier.

    While both companies remain insanely profitable – Google earned $14 billion this quarter and Microsoft $6 billion – both businesses are showing stresses as their markets evolve. It proves no business can afford to be complacent in these times.

    Similar posts: