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EDITOR'S BLOG |
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Weathering the storm
From Opinion column issue 42 – August-September 2009 The next few months are traditionally among the busiest for logistics companies. In the run-up to Xmas, there is a lot of retail-driven economic activity as sales for food and drink and general consumer goods rise. Will the credit crunch affect spending patterns this year? It’s probably too early to tell, but certainly a lot of businesses will be relying on a seasonal sales boost to keep them afloat. However, optimistic you are for 2010, there are bound to be casualties. It is becoming harder for companies to predict exactly where their businesses will be in 12 months’ time, and that uncertainty has led to an outbreak of “short-termism”. After all, if customers are refusing to commit to a long-term contract, it is perfectly understandable that businesses are reluctant to risk invest in outright purchase or long-term leases for new equipment, whatever the benefits may be for their business. Read whole of above item Email us about this item
Talk to me: the need for telematics standards
From Hanging Up column issue 42 – August-September 2009 I was very proud of my first fax machine. It didn’t do photocopying, it didn’t work on plain paper (only that good old thermal stuff), and it certainly didn’t make the tea. What it did do was send and receive faxes. What’s more, it sent them to any other fax machine you could name: plain paper machines, thermal machines, combo units – even other people’s computers, providing they were running fax software (which many could). I never once got a message back saying “Sorry, your fax machine doesn’t send faxes compatible with ours.” I did however come to regret leasing it rather than buying it. I seem to remember working out that I’d paid a total of about £1,300 for it over the term, whereas the retail value was only about £700. Not my most prudent purchase, you could say, though I did get the benefit of spreading the cost and avoiding an up-front payment. Read whole of above item Email us about this item
Telematics suppliers can ride out the storm
From Opinion column issue 41 – June-July 2009 The failure of the former GlobalLive and losses reported at Minorplanet have sent shivers through the UK telematics sector. Clearly suppliers are struggling, though Minorplanet has come out with a strongly positive message about its own prospects. But if others should fail, the rational view will be that the market is simply adjusting to economic conditions, and there is bound to be fall-out. The economy is still fragile – UK truck registrations for the year to June are down 49 per cent, and those for vans are down 40 per cent. However, one company’s struggle is another’s opportunity. Causeway has had enough confidence in the future of the market to acquire GlobalLive’s assets and keep the brand alive, and other suppliers are also reported to be on the acquisition trail. Read whole of above item Email us about this item
The spy in the sky, and how to harness it
From Hanging Up column issue 41 – June-July 2009 Readers with long memories will recall the fierce opposition to tachographs among truck drivers back in the 1970s and 80s. The so-called “spy in the cab” was anathema to a lot of them, and wasn’t always a popular idea with employers, either. They realised they would have to pay to install the instruments, then keep them running and monitor the records they would produce. What seems almost laughable now is that those original tachographs, eventually introduced back in the mid-1980s, offered little more than a retrospective record of how long vehicles were driven for, how far they travelled and how fast they were going along the way. They didn’t show where the vehicle was, or what the speed limit was on that particular road. The best your software could do was make logical assumptions on the basis of the starting and finishing points. Which was seldom worth doing, unless it was done in relation to accidents. Read whole of above item Email us about this item
Downloading data to your mobile: don’t assume it’s free
From ‘Hanging Up’ column, issue 40 – April/May 2009 Heard the one about the chap who went skiing, downloaded a few TV programmes to entertain his son in the evening, and got hit with a bill for nearly £22,000 on his return? Unfortunately for the father, this was no joke. He had assumed his £25 Vodafone data card would cover the cost, but it merely gave him access to mobile broadband abroad. The downloads were charged at a rate equating to £300 per minute. Yes, that’s right: per minute! Since the advent of what is now being called “mobile broadband” (you might think of it as a wireless dongle), it has never been so easy to stay in touch via a wireless network wherever you happen to be. And sure enough, both consumers and businesses are embracing the opportunity to do so in droves Read whole of above item Email us about this item
Spending for Britain?
From ‘Opinion’ column, issue 40 – April/May 2009 In today’s economic climate, telematics and tracking systems ought to be an easy sell. If you’re a vehicle operator, the fact is that you really can save money by introducing telematics – and the savings will probably come within less than a year. This isn’t just a pious hope: fleet operators seem to be practically lining up to tell you about the benefits. Elsewhere on this issue we describe several such companies. One covered on this page says it is saving £300,000 a year with a telematics-based system – much of it just through improved fuel consumption. Add in other benefits such as reduced insurance premiums, reduced maintenance bills and shorter journey times, and the savings just keep mounting up. Read whole of above item Email us about this item
TV while you work? Why yesterday’s luxury is tomorrow’s necessity
From ‘Hanging Up’ column, issue 39 – Feb-Mar 2009 Most new mobile technology and applications are targeted squarely at the consumer market. It’s not hard to see why: a potential market of millions of users is more attractive to technology and application developers than the much smaller business-to-business community. Nevertheless, developments in the consumer market often do eventually have their impact on the business world. Those same consumers are often mobile workers too, and their personal experience raises expectations when it comes to the way mobile technology affects their working life. Businesses have long recognised that user acceptance is a key factor in the success of any mobile deployment, and the more users become accustomed to slick applications on their mobile phones in their private life, the more they come to expect similar seamless ways of doing things at work. |