There is the age old saying: it wasn’t like that in my day.  I am sure many of us have caught ourselves muttering it under our breath when paying an extortionate  amount to get on a bus or going to the cinema. Well this saying is carrying on in to the world of business.

There is an increasing characterisation of new graduates being fickle, very demanding and not likely to stick around for too long with one business. Long gone are the days of having a job for life. But I find myself asking if that is such a bad thing? The saying is completely correct, it was not like that in my day.

New graduates, or generation ‘Y’ as someone has called them, have grown up in a technological revolution and are perhaps perfectly poised to change the way that we think about business.

There has never been a more technology savvy generation with access to communication, technical, editing, music, social and visual tools.

They have been given a real chance to use these tools to find out what they can do without any major constraints which has allowed a new generation to help shape the way in which the digital world is being shaped.

But what does this mean for business? Well, with access to so many powerful communication and image tools and most importantly the fact that the majority of these are free to use, the initial setup costs  in starting your own business are drastically lower.

You can operate with almost no overheads which allows breathing space for the business to develop and one mistake, which will inevitably happen at some point,  will not cause the whole idea to be scrapped.

Once the company gets bigger you may wish to look to banks for advice on expansion, loans or invoice finance to ensure that it can make the jump to a larger scale.

It is this ease of starting up that I think is creating the generation ‘Y’ image; they are aware there is a lot more opportunity to start your own business and make it a success in these technologically and digitally driven times.

Obviously the recession has had an affect on everyone but the near collapse of some of the biggest businesses in the world has shown that everyone is vulnerable and that it is not necessary to work for the larger organisations.

I think the next generation will have a much better understanding of the way in which digital business should be carried out, they won’t be gurus (or any other buzz word), it will be part of them and it would make sense for businesses to listen, watch and learn from what they do.

We have put together a collection of young entrepreneurs that have already had some success and should be watched to see what they do next.

Are you working for a large organisation and thinking of going into business for yourself? Or maybe you already have? Tell us about it in the comments below.

This is the 6th edition of our look at business case studies and this month we are looking at Recruit 121.

Overview

Recruit 121 Logo

“To connect the world’s best-run businesses with the very best talent.”

The Company

Recruit 121 started in 2000 with the simple aim of focussing on the SAP workplace and has been growing ever since. Its goal was to build a company with global reach and offer a smoother connection in a previously disjointed sector. They now work for clients and candidates all over the world and are able to see both perspectives of the market as well as linking them together.

The company’s philosophy is based on five business principles: Quality, Honesty, Screening, Simplicity and Speed. It is these principles and their proved track record in the market that has allowed them to become a trusted partner of SAP AG, their partner and customers since 2003. This has further assisted the business to continually strive to grow and develop further.

The Global Expansion

The company then started on an expansion strategy and looked to find financial support and The Royal Bank of Scotland became their new banking partner. A collaboration between the RBS commercial banking team and the RBS Invoice Finance team lead to a working capital worth £1.75 million.

The finance was used to assist Recruit 121 in its international growth and securing their place in the SAP professional recruitment market.

The company now has over 2,500 placements in more than 30 countries and is one of the leading supplier or SAP employees worldwide.

Do you know of a UK based business which is doing well in these tough economic times? If you do, leave a comment below and we could feature them in a future post…

In these difficult times, everyone is looking to save a little bit of extra cash. Unfortunately, fun stuff like hobbies can be one of the first areas to take the hit when you’re tightening the purse strings.

Let’s face it: who wants to spend money on craft supplies when they are struggling to pay for the weekly food shop?

Image by terren in Virginia

But with a little bit of careful planning, you might actually be able to make some money from your favourite hobby.

Arty? Teach art classes or sell crafts that you make. Love playing music? Give private lessons or perform for a fee at special events. Sporty? Train to be a personal trainer, or referee local matches.

As you can see, the possibilities are endless.

Here are some top tips for making that hobby a nice little stream of cash:

Do something you love

Hopefully you will already have this aspect sorted, as you wouldn’t be dedicating so much free time to it already if you didn’t love your hobby!

It may sound obvious, but it really is key – if you love what you do, that will shine through and leave a great impression on your customers.

Do Your Research

Chances are if you’re doing something that is naturally enjoyable, there is already a lot of competition out there. If you want to make some serious cash, you’re going to have to put in some serious research. You need to become an expert, which means getting to know the ins-and-outs of the market and know the competition like the back of your hand.

Think about costs

Cash flow is one of the major barriers to any new venture, and must be considered carefully. If you are making something, don’t be scared to shop around to find your raw materials at the lowest price. Try to save money at every stage of your business process, from premises rental, to cheap van hire, to lowering shipping costs. Every penny you save will add to your profit, and the more money you will make!

Just remember though, if you do start to make a fair amount of cash, you will need to make sure you are paying the right taxes. Head over to Direct Gov ensure everything remains above board.

Set some goals

It’s important that you set yourself some measurable goals – so that you can create a realistic timescale for getting things done.

It’s also a good measure of knowing when to quit. I know, I sound like a bit of a negetive Nancy thinking about failure before you’ve even started, but you need to know when your venture isn’t working so that you can get out before wasting too much of your time or racking up any scary debt!

And if you don’t fail – imagine how good it will feel to reach those goals!

Start online

Compared to bricks-and-mortar premises, online real estate is very cheap, and quick. Think about it – setting up a simple webpage can take up a fraction of the time of saving up for and buying a premises!

Consider setting up a shop on Ebay, or craft shop du-jour Etsy. Alternatively, if it’s a service you’re selling, put adverts up on online noticeboards like Gumtree to spead the word and gain potential customers.

…and there you have it! Some tips to help turn your hobby into an income. For more specific advice, be sure to check out our ‘Turn your hobby into a profession‘ series. We have a new article every month, so whatever your interest is, we are sure to cover it!

Do you have a hobby you want to turn into a career, or do you have a suggestion of what we should cover in our series? Tell us about it in the comments below.

Today International Airlines Group, have announced they had made a pre-tax profit of £425.6m.

british airways plane via prayitno

IAG is the parent company of British Airways and Iberia has had a 10% increase in revenue despite a 29.7% increase in fuel costs.

This is a positive change for the company which had a difficult 2010 with the Icelandic ash cloud, weak economic environment and industrial action.

IAG’s chief executive, Willie Walsh, said demand for North Atlantic routes remained strong and steady demand on transatlantic routes helped profit levels.

Looking Forward to 2012

Although things are positive at the moment, the company is looking ahead to 2012 and is concerned about the increase in fuel costs this year, the eurozone debt crisis and the upcoming Olympics Games. Willie Walsh has said:

“While the Olympics will be positive for the long-term position of London as a global destination, past experience in other host cities suggests that demand could be dampened during the games.”

The airline is also concerned about the cost of air passenger duty and warned that a further 8% rise from last year could damage progress of the company.

Future Plans

IAG is looking to expand by buying the airline BMI from Lufthansa, which would boost their services leaving from Heathrow. This deal however still needs approval from the regulators but IAG remain hopeful that this will be allowed and they could launch some new long-haul flights from the London airport.

Are you planning a trip away this year with British Airways? Let us know…

It’s just all doom and gloom at the moment, isn’t it? It feels like reading the financial section at the moment should come with a mental health warning: “may cause uncontrollable feelings of impending doom”. Heck, even this blog gets pretty depressing at times.

Image by katerha

Sorry about that. But is it really that bad? Only this morning, BBC reporter Steph McGovern visited British based shoe makers Hotter Shoes to show that there are indeed some small green shoots in the UK economy.

Things are looking pretty rosy for Hotter Shoes. It has opened 20 stores in the past 18 months, which has created around 200 jobs across the country. It also has a widely expanding online business selling comfortable shoes and has successfully expanded into the American market.

It was announced just this afternoon that Intercontinental Hotels, who own the Holiday Inn and Crown Plaza brands, will create 3,000 jobs in the UK over the next three years. They are just the latest in a long line of brands taking on new staff: both McDonalds and Subway have revealed that they will also be increasing their headcount.

Business spending and retail growth

According to the BBC, 38.5% of businesses intend to raise their marketing budgets this year, compared to 2011 where there was no planned net increase in spend.

And there’s good news for retailers too: last week, it was revealed that retail sales rose in January compared to December, which is a much stronger figure than what economists were expecting.

So put that nervous breakdown on hold – yes, the economy may be in a pretty bad way, but it looks like there are little glimmers of hope beginning to creep through the cracks.

Do you think the economy is beginning to recover? Or is your personal situation still in a bad way? Let us know what you think in the comments section below!

Today, thousands of Unilever workers will start 11 days of striking against plans to change their final-salary pension scheme.

Unilever Logo

The strikes are due to take place for 11 days between today and 28th January with 12 different sites participating  including Norwich, Leeds, Manchester and North Wales.

Union leaders “furious”

Members of the Unite, Usdaw and GMB unions are against plans from Unilever to stop their final-salary pension scheme later this year. Union officials are reportedly “furious” at the plans to scrap the final-salary scheme which they claim could lead to cuts between 20% and 40%. However  Unilever has stated that almost 90% of affected staff members will retain 80% or more of their pension.

However the Guardian claims that the staff members are “crazy to strike over their pensions” because their new pension will still rank amongst the most generous this country has to offer.

Longer life-expectancy

Unilever state that the reason they are changing their pension schemes is due to rising costs caused by increased life expectancy and volatile investment returns. The scheme was closed to new starts in 2008 and on the 31st of march 2010, the scheme had a deficit of £680m. The company responsible for Marmite, Pot Noodle, Lynx, Flora and Walls’s Ice Cream said:

“We believe the provision of final salary pensions is a broken model which is no longer appropriate for Unilever… It is our responsibility to protect the long-term sustainability and competitiveness of our business, and to do so is in the best interests of our people.”

The current scheme is a final-salary pension meaning it’s based on your earnings at the end of your career and the number of years worked at the company. Unilever are looking to move to the career average scheme which is based on the average pay over your entire career.

This move by Unilever is just seen as the latest company to shut-down its final-salary scheme. According to the National Association of Pension funds, almost a quarter of these schemes are now closed to new and existing staff members. Oil giant Shell is set to become the last FTSE 100 company to shut-down its final-salary pensions scheme to new workers in 2013.

What is your pension like? You think your company is fair with how much the offer? Let us know…

In this third edition of our monthly Case Study, we bring you ThirtyThree a recruitment organisation, part of the OneAgent global network.

ThirtyThree Logo

The London and Bristol based organisation, has a range of clients including the National Trust, Starbucks and many blue-chip companies and carries out campaigns such as the RBS graduate campaign and the ITV careers campaign. The company has won a number of awards for it’s campaigns including the RBS and Barclays graduate campaigns and a profile raising campaign for Burges Salmon.

Doing their bit for charity
The campaign involved asking students at local schools to take images of ‘their’ Bristol and then collating a book of the images, mailing it out to candidates and then selling it to raise money for a local charity. This shows that ThirtyThree is successful at creating award-winning campaigns for larger brands who want to shout about who great they are, to a more subtle campaign for Burges Salmon.

ThirtyThree Resist the usual campaign

Company growth
In April 2008, ThirtyThree bought over their Bristol competitors RAA, with the help of a financial support package from RBS IF. The growing company needed some additional financing to complete the acquisition so the RBS team compiled a bespoke finance package which included invoice discounting support which allows a company to get money owed to them, before the supplier has paid their invoice.

This meant that ThirtyThree had access to all their own money, earlier than they would normally be expecting, allowing them to complete the acquisition. The company was also able to employ all 42 staff of RAA, joining their current offices in Bristol meaning no one was out of a job.
Commenting on this arrangement, chairman of ThirtyThree, Andrew Young, said:

“Despite the changing economic climate, we are continuing to think long term and make judicious investment decisions. The RBS team worked closely with us to understand our business and support our objectives, while also taking us through a robust due diligence process.”

ThirtyThree is successful due to its ability to keep up-to-date with social media and keeping the website up-to-date. Also being a recruitment business in  tough economic times means that they are needed more than ever to find their clients the best people for the job. They are still continuing to grow, gaining even more new clients through the end of 2011.

Do you know of other businesses performing well in these tough economic times? Let us know in the comment section below.

supermarkets via comedy_nose

BBC’s Panorama investigated pricing and offers at Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons and found that most of the ‘offers’ advertised are simply a marketing ploy rather than giving shoppers a real discount. These tactics could potentially be illegal and supermarkets could be prosecuted due to the findings.

Some of the ‘deals’ found to be in potential breach of consumer protection regulations include the ‘Wow’ factor – where some products were no cheaper and others were actually more expensive than they used to be; the multi-buy non-deal – where no saving is made at all; and the ‘bigger pack, better value’ – which actually means that the pack just costs more.

The findings come as the big four are apparently in a ‘price war’ to keep shoppers coming to their stores and not their competitors. Richard Perks, retail analyst, told the BBC Panorama show that:

 “If there was a price war going on at the moment we would have seen profits falling, or we would have severe warnings and that is just not happening. The name of the game is to be as clever as possible in how you promote and how you use your discounts and how you attract your customers … But it seems some customers are no longer convinced by these promotions”

The big four supermarkets, Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons own 68% of the UK grocery market with £65 billion going through their tills out of the total £96 billion spent across the market. They all deny attempting to mislead shoppers and all commented that they do their best to keep prices low.

A separate survey found that 4 out of 10 shoppers, said they did not believe the ‘offers’ and ‘discounts’ were true. 31% of those surveyed said that they were even less likely to trust them now than in the past.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you actually need what the deal is offering?
• Will you finish it before it goes out of date or do you even need more than one bottle of squash?
• Always look at the unit price of products – is it actually cheaper per litre to buy the bigger bottle?

“Panorama: The Truth About Supermarket Price Wars” will be shown on BBC 1 tonight at 8.30.

European central bank via uggy boy

Some European countries spent too much money, had to borrow some more and now can’t pay it back due to rising interest rates. So we thought we’d look at how we got here. We will continue to update this blog post as more news is announced.

2009

April’09

The EU orders France, Spain, the Irish Republic and Greece to reduce their budget deficits (the difference between their spending and earnings form tax).

October’09

There is much anger towards the previous Greek government over corruption and spending, and George Papandreou’s Socialists win a sudden general election.

November’09

Concerns about some EU member states’ debts start to grow following the Dubai sovereign debt crisis.

December’09

Greece admits that its debts have reached 300bn euro, the highest in modern history. Mr Papandreou insists that his country is “not about to default on its debts”.
Greece is burdened with debt amounting to 113% of GDP, which is nearly double the eurozone limit of 60%. Ratings agencies start to downgrade Greek bank and government debt.

2010

February ’10

As well as Greece, concerns start to build about other heavily indebted countries like Portugal, Ireland, and Spain.
Greek borrowing costs reach record highs, 13.6% of GDP is attributed to the Greek deficit

2011

February ’11 

Eurozone ministers set up a permanent bailout fund worth about £500bn euros.

May ’11

Eurozone and the IMF approve a 78bn-euro bailout for Portugal.

June ’11

Discussions have started around forcing Greece out of the Eurozone.

July ’11

A second bailout for Greece is agreed.

August ’11:

European Central Bank commits to buying Italian and Spanish Government bonds to bring down borrowing costs.
Italy passes a 50bn-euro austerity budget.
The European Commission predicts the eurozone will grow by 0.2%.

September ’11:

Leading finance ministers urge urgent and decisive action to deal with the debt crisis.
Italy has it’s debt rating cut to ‘A’ from ‘A+’.
George Osborne says there are just ‘six weeks’ left to save the euro.

October ’11:

General strike brings Greece to a standstill.
Franco- Belgian bank Dexia receives a huge bailout.
Euro ministers agree Greek bailout.
Slovakia is the 17th and final country to approve the expansion of the eurozone’s rescue fund, two days after rejecting the plan.
George Papandreou’s defies logic with he announces that he will put Europe’s latest efforts to rescue the Greek economy to a public vote. Disappointment and panic spread across the Eurozone.

November ’11:

George Papandreou abandons his plan to hold a referendum, amid scenes of open warfare in his own party.
Lucas Papademos replaces George Papandreou as Greek Prime Minister.
After the Italy’s borrowing rate peaked at 7.40% Silvio Berlusconi stepped down as Italian Prime Minister to restore investor confidence and was replaced by Mario Monti.
G20 leaders meet in Cannes and for the first time, EU leaders admit that it might be necessary for Greece to leave the eurozone if the single currency is to survive.
The US administration has expressed concerns that the Eurozone crisis could damage the US economy.
But world markets were up in response to reports of a proposed fiscal union that would set binding limits on eurozone government borrowing.

December ’11:

President Nicolas Sarkozy called for a new EU treaty to save the single currency in a ‘make of break week’.
Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, has commented that the ECB is ready and willing to help in the fight to solve the Eurozone crisis and it is widely agreed that this is neede.
David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy are in talks in Paris to reorganise the Governance of the Eurozone which could potentially lead to a lessening in Britain’s influence. Germany and France are to agree a plan of action on how they are going to stop the crisis.

So what’s next for the Eurozone? Things can only get better. . .right? We’ll be updating this timeline weekly to keep you informed, meanwhile you can share your thoughts about any recent events in our comments section below.

Cards via plastic data card

Plastic Data Card was started in 1992 by Jim O’Carroll who was looking to capitalise on a growing demand and decided to start his own company to make the most of this demand.

The Kent based company supplies a wide range of cards from event passes to membership cards. The company supplies Tesco as well as other blue chip companies. Plastic Data Card has a number of satisfied customers, most  happy with the quick turnaround as Hannah Jones says:

“I was really impressed with the quick service that we received. You guys really stepped up to the plate to ensure our vip badges were delivered on time to a really important event.”

The company, like most small companies starting in this difficult climate, decided to look into using invoice factoring services to keep their business secure but struggled to find financial backing:

“Back then we were a young business. Some finance companies saw us as too much of a risk to offer a full range of credit facilities, so we chose factoring. This early decision has proved to be right – time and time again.

They use these services to get credit checks carried out on new customers submitting large orders. The service also has a bad debt protection element which allows for fast turnarounds and gives the company a competitive advantage.

Managing director Jim O’Carroll, said that the invoice finance service “has been a key part of the way we do business, and has certainly helped us to get where we are today.”

Today the company is keeping up-to-date with modern business and now has a Facebook and Twitter. The company is thriving in a difficult financial market by keeping to traditional business values like a good and reliable service.

Do you know of any businesses which are weathering the economic storm? Tell us about them in the comments section below.