Phil Turtle to speak online about “Protecting your brand image in the Web 2.0 jungle” Thursday 8Oct09 at 3pm

Webinar: – Protecting your brand image in the Web 2.0 jungle

Web 2.0 services, including wikis, social networking portals and blogs, are powerful drivers in the B2B and B2C communications channel – for many companies, they open up new doors as never before.

But these same Web 2.0 services also create more than a few branding and security headaches. not least in reputational terms.

It only takes one slip to trigger a viral crusade against your organisation that can significantly dent your company’s reputation.

Many companies – mindful of this issue – have forbidden the use of social networking and other Web 2.0 services by their employees, but doing so means they miss out on the plentiful benefits that such services bring to the business table.

Join us for an entertaining and thought-provoking webinar in which a team of senior professionals look at the brand image and reputation issues that Web 2.0 services engender, and explain some of the solutions that are now available.

This webinar will:

• Help you understand the viral power that drives Web 2.0 services.
• Explain some of the problems these services create.
• Detail the solutions to the reputational issues caused.
• Educate you to take a fresh look at reputational security controls.
  

This webinar is for:  

• IT managers who are forward-thinking in their approach to Web 2.0 control issues
• Managers wanting to better understand the solutions to reputational threats from Web 2.0 services
• Anyone wanting to gain an edge in Web 2.0 control issues
  

Click Here to Register for the Webinar Now

The importance of good public relations in a recession.

The world economy is in recession: and most industry has been forced to take stock and tighten its belt.  So why not join the tide of lemmings and commit corporate suicide by making your company invisible too?

When hard times hit and the industry is fighting for fewer customers with smaller orders, advertising and PR budgets are often slashed first in the fallout.  Of course it doesn’t make sense, but that’s the knee jerk reaction of every accountant and 90 percent of MDs.

You can see their point – especially when they’ve just announced 12,000 redundancies – they’ve got to claw in every bit of expenditure they can.  But by reducing visibility, businesses are making hard times even harder for an increasingly pressured frontline sales force.

But can you as sales and marketing specialists ensure our customers and prospects continue to be reminded we’re still in business, still winning contracts and launching new products – and yet still deliver major cost savings to the board?

The answer is not to simply stop everything.  Nor is it to drastically scale back.  Instead look at your marcomms afresh and plan from first principles based on a smaller budget – you get a very different solution.

Do this and you’ll discover advertising becomes an expensive optional extra  – unless you use direct response successfully for lead generation.  Direct marketing is the best lead generator for most of us so you will need to keep this.

The one element that becomes crucial to keeping your presence alive is B2B media relations.  Per square inch of coverage it can be from 400 to 1200 percent as productive as advertising.

As one of our clients kindly said: “By cutting back on advertising whilst spending more on PR we’ve successfully increased our market visibility within a significantly reduced overall budget.”

Or you can cut everything and give your competitors a helping hand!

Why do MOST small businesses fail?

What is a small business?

A good definition would be … less than 20 employees for non-manufacturing industries, and less than 100 employees for manufacturing industries.

Key features of small business

• Independent from outside control
• Smallness compared with other firms in their industry which inevitably means that many have major resource problems at two critical points – in the first few months (and even the first year or so) after start-up, and as they start to grow at more than a casual rate.
• Owner managed whereas larger organisations are managed by professional executives who are salaried employees.

Typical small business profile

People

• A close and loyal work team
• Low employee turnover
• Education, experience and skills: practical but narrow
• Lack of specialist employees
• Lack of promotable staff
• Age and health of owner(s)

Management

• Owner managed
• Strong desire for independence
• Centralised power and control
• Leadership: personal but task oriented
• Owner idiosyncrasies
• Intrusion of family interests
• Reluctance to take risks
• Informal and inadequate planning and control
• Decision making: more intuitive than rational
• Responses:  reactive rather than innovative
• Major resource problems during first few month
• Major resource problems during growth

Operations

• Labour intensive work
• Limited process and product technology
• Multifunctional work and management roles

Market

• Narrow product/service range
• Product dedicating rather than customer orientation
• Limited market share and heavy reliance on few customers
• Lack of control over environment

Finance

• Limited ability to obtain funds

Small businesses fail in early years

Alan Williams study of 41 000 new firms between 1973 and 1994 (22 years) 26 564 (64.5%) sample firms failed.  Of the firms that failed just over 10 percent qualified as long term survivors.

 The first two years are the most dangerous with nearly half failing.  In the first two years poor management takes its toll. Many new owner/managers have made the wrong decision.  However as small firms survive each year generally their ability to survive the following year improves.

The number of early failures is increasing

There is no reason given for this increase.  It may be due to factors such as changing economic situation and the fact that more people are being made redundant and are going into business without the appropriate management skills.  Interestingly total failure rate of about 70 percent has remained fairly steady over the 20 year period.

Non-financial reasons for failure

According to Alan Williams’s studies nearly 15 percent (approximately 6,000) close down for “non-financial” reasons.

How many businesses fail?

Estimated about 40,000 small firms fall in Australia each year.

Our failure rate is close to 4 percent of the small and medium sized business population with estimated average loss of over $115,000.  Loss to economy of about $45 billion per year.

Financial problems of some kind are the direct cause of the great majority of most business closures, and also contribute to personal problems that interact with other problems areas (such as family/marital discord and poor health) and hence lead indirectly to decisions to close down.

Reported reasons for business failures

Study revealed:

1. Lack of business/management experience skill and ability 62.3%
2. Inadequate records 56.2%
3. Inadequate sales 47.7%
4. Inflation and inability to operate with fluctuating costs and prices 39.3%
5. Union interference and problems 28.7%
6. Excessive private drawings 24.4%
7. Under capitalisation (especially at start up) 23.4%
8. Overuse of credit (slow collections and bad debts) 21.6%
9. Inventory problems (slow stock turnover, dead stock, poor records) 20.8%
10. Inability to use/understand financial reports and statements 18.0%
11. Rapid rate of technology change (affecting product knowledge, skill requirements,
12. staff training, work quality, customer expectation, etc) 17.7%
13. Failure to seek and use external advice 17.6%
14. Lack of financial planning (no budgets, inadequate cash reserves, tax payment problems, etc) 17.5%
15. Industry-wide downturns 14.9%
16. Problems with staff supervision, motivation and productivity 13.5%
17. Inability to get and keep good staff 11.9%

Major reasons for failure

Major reasons for failure of small enterprises in Australia, in order:

1. Poor financial management and liquidity (cash flow) problems
2. Overall management inexperience and incompetence
3. Sales and marketing problems
4. Problems coping with inflation, recession, and other economic conditions external to the firm
5. Poor or non-existent books and records
6. Staffing difficulties
7. Difficulties with unions
8. Failure a to seek and use expert advice

Conclusions

Management capability

An inability to manage a business is by far the most significant underlying reason for at least 95 percent of all small business failures.

Failure can be prevented

Virtually all the reasons are controllable, preventable or avoidable.

The next step:

Contact Turtle Consulting Group for advice and help phil.turtle@turtleconsulting.com

Read widely on management related subjects. You can find all the relevant books at www.managementbooks.co.uk

Lynd Morley RIP

It was with very great sorrow that we heard yesterday of the death of Journalist and Editor Lynd Morley. In recent years, Lynd had been a recent contact of several of the Turtle PR team as Editor at European Communications Magazine. Lynd was a highly professional journalist and Editor and her untimely death brings a very sad loss to the telecoms industry. Rest in Peace.
Phil Turtle

Very sad to hear this. I met Lynd a couple of times back in the 1980s/early 1990s  - a very pleasant lady.  I worked with her remotely on a great number of articles and she was a pleasure to deal with.
Steve Gold

I am extremely sorry to hear of Lynn’s demise; she was always extremely fair and businesslike in her dealings with me at BT and Turtle Consulting.
Andy Emmerson

Solving the Hotel IT Nightmare

Released: October 2008

“I’m sorry our system is down at the moment.”  Not what you want to hear when you’re in a rush trying to book out of your hotel in the morning. Yet the hotel industry has some of the most unreliable IT systems known to man – particularly in the medium to small sized hotels and smaller groups.

Why?  We talked to Richard Kwiecien at Manchester’s Eclectic Hotels Collection – hotels used by stars like, Manchester United, Victoria Beckham, and Take That – but whose IT troubles used to cost them in excess of £30,000 a year and to Mike Hall, md of LYNDOS Business Critical IT Support – the company who have not only fixed Eclectics problem, they’ve invented a new data-centre based approach to solve every hotel’s IT nightmare.

Eclectic’s Kwiecien says hoteliers can be naïve when it comes to IT systems.  “We have complex requirements, both in house and linking out to external intermediary websites, so we have to rely on IT people, asking them to keep costs down because margins, even for exclusive boutiques like ours, are low. But the inevitable result is unreliable systems which get steadily worse.”

“Hotels are 24 hour operations” explains Kwiecien, “We can’t afford system downtime.  Failures at check out can be horrendous.  Queues of busy people and we can’t even see if their restaurant or phone costs have been added to their bills.  We end up not being able to charge the full amount – sometimes nothing at all.  Last year I could count at least £30,000 of  lost revenue due to IT being down.  In reality it might be three times that much.”

Alan O’Riordan, sales director of XN Hotel Solutions, the UK’s sole provider of Protel the market leading Hotel PMS system, put Eclectic in touch with LYNDOS.

When LYNDOS audited Eclectic’s IT  we found a Classic hotel IT installation: cheaper, unreliable machines being used as servers, no duplication, no redundancy, and no fail-over mechanisms.  If one machine crashed, multiple systems were taken off line.

The hotel IT environment is complex and particularly demanding in infrastructure terms. There are many interacting software systems – all needing to pass data to each other in real-time. If they’re not properly set up these interfaces fail sporadically but no-one actually realises this is the underlying problem.    Usually we have to throw away the entire Windows Active Directory setup and start again – but this time  we incorporated formal configuration management.

Coming up against this situation time after time, Hall decided it was time for a totally different approach, one that would be affordable and reliable. “Redundancy, duplication of data and failover are the key elements needed – says Hall.  “But this would be far too expensive on the conventional ‘IT-system-per-hotel’ basis.”

So LYNDOS designers studied taking the IT out of the individual hotel and into a properly managed data centre type operation.  “We’re not talking a massive data centre here, explains Hall, “it might be only six or ten servers, but properly engineered, with RAID data storage, data duplication across machines and fail-over so that if for example the PMS server fails, (we’ve ensured the data is already on a separate duplicated SQL database server) Another box, say the file-server, will fire-up the PMS application and take-over running it until the faulty server can be repaired/replaced.”

Only LYNDOS personnel are able to change server configurations. “We fit DRAC secure remote access control cards to all the servers, says Hall – so even if the machine is hung or crashed we can soft or hard re-boot it from our offices or homes.”

“For us,” says Kwiecien, “the great thing is that LYNDOS know some hardware has failed but we don’t even notice. “

 Windows Terminal Server is LYNDOS’ platform of choice meaning that more or less any old PC can be used for each and every function within the hotel itself.  So if a front-desk machine fails, a non-IT-trained night manager can plug in a spare PC or even a laptop and simply log back in to the terminal server and Hey Presto!

“The other great thing about this, says Hall, is that all of the sensitive, valuable data is in a totally managed environment – duplicated and backed-up both at the data centre and off site.  .

But doesn’t separating the data from the hotel cause reliability problems and great expense for the connections? Not according to Hall.  “Terminal Server is brilliant in that it has very low bandwidth requirements and so we’re not talking about Gigabit or even 100 Mbit/s links.  A separate ADSL2 at the hotel would carry the guest WiFi system traffic and if the hotel is using the Quadrant hosted restaurant booking system we might dedicate an ordinary low-cost ADSL to this.  In a fail-over system we can automatically or manually re-configure any-to-any just in case a JCB accidentally takes out one or more circuits.  We always design systems so that even our fail-overs have fail-overs.

Belt, braces and then a spare pair of trousers as well it seems.

Very recently the Pantin Hotels group engaged LYNDOS to implement this remote data centre strategy for its new headquarters in Leeds and The Ellington 36 room boutique hotel which has just opened in Leeds’ financial quarter.  .

Kit List

Dell 1950/2900/2950 Poweredge with RAID

DRAC remote access cards

Auto tape loaders for unattended backups

 HP ProCurve QoS managed Ethernet switches

Windows Server  2003/2008

Exchange Server 2003/2007

DFS data duplication

Multiple domain controllers (on and off site)

Windows Terminal Server

Mitel 3300 distributed VoIP phone system

Protel PMS Software

Quadrant Restaurant Booking Software

LES or MPLS 10 Mbit/s trunks to each hotel

SDSL for fail-over access (multiple if required)

TIGER call logger

Mitel VoIP handsets in rooms and back office

Spectralink QoS managed WiFi base stations

Spectralink WiFi handsets for management on a separate QoS managed VLAN over guest WiFi network

TeleAdapt Media Hub for room A/V and games consoles

Nexans Cat5e cabling and optical fibre

SKYFreeview and SKY Channel re-broadcaster to all rooms.

LY0027

BBC Dragons Den Product infringes patents, UK patent office announces

Released: March 2009

Mille-Tie Plant and Cable Tie patents are infringed

 The Rapstrap reusable tie strip product featured on the BBC’s Dragons Den program in August 2008 which received a £150,000 investment by Dragons James Caan and Duncan Bannatyne infringes Millepede’s patent, the UK Intellectual Property Office has announced in an opinion issued this week.

The UK Intellectual Property Office under took at the request of Millepede a full technical review of the Rapstrap product made by Andrew Harsley, an ex-employee of Millepede, and concluded that it infringes Millepede’s granted patent.

Both parties supplied additional information and details to a senior examiner at the UK patent office to allow his review, and the examiner  concluded the Rapstrap product possessed all the characteristics needed to infringe the Millepede patent.

The Rapstrap has received major publicity in the UK as the most successful Dragons Den product in the history of the program by securing a £36m order from a major distributor. 

John Butterworth Millepede’s Managing Director said: “I was amazed when Harsley, who had previously founded the Millepede company forgot to mention Millepede’s  existence on the program. Then afterwards all the parties showed a lack of interest in talking to Millepede about our prior patent. I hope this official review will now change that situation.” 

Millepede’s reusable and releasable tie strip concept that caused such interest on the program can be seen at www.millepede.com

The Dragon’s Den episode can be viewed at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden/episodes/s6e4rapstrap.shtml

The full UK Intellectual Property Office patent infringement adjudication is available by pdf and can be viewed at:

http://www.ipo.gov.uk/pro-p-opinion-advert.htm

Photos

Mille-Tie the product whose patent the Rapstrap infringes;

http://fs.turtleconsulting.co.uk/PICS/MP_Five%20Mille-Ties.jpg

http://fs.turtleconsulting.co.uk/PICS/MP_Mille-Tie1.jpeg

John Butterworth, MD at Millepede;

http://fs.turtleconsulting.co.uk/PICS/MP_JohnButterworth.jpg

 John Butterworth, MD of Millepede is available for interview please contact Turtle Consulting Group:

Phil Turtle, phil.turtle@turtleconsulting.com 070 7470 7080

Or

Debby Freeman  dfreeman@turtleconsulting.com 070 7470 7063

MP0011

CELLFLEX Lite – new additions complete RFS’ proven aluminum transmission line technology range

Released: February 2009

RFS (Radio Frequency Systems), the wireless infrastructure specialist, has boosted its range of cable solutions with the addition of several new CELLFLEX® Lite corrugated aluminum coaxial transmission line products including the ½ inch LCF12-50JL, the 1¼ inch LCFS114-50JL and the ultra flexible 1¼ inch UCF114-50JL.

The extension to this advanced range means that the industry leading series of lightweight corrugated aluminum cables is now complete with all popular sizes and applications being covered.

This latest set of additions to the family has been prompted by a resounding success in numerous project rollouts and ensures that RFS’ portfolio of corrugated aluminum outer conductor cables are now the most comprehensive in the world.

“The CELLFLEX Lite solutions have been proven in a number of 3G wireless scenarios – as well as 2G deployments – and continue the company’s  ‘single choice for multiple application’ cabling strategy,” said Bernd Furche global product manager for Transmission Lines with RFS, adding that these same solutions are ready for LTE applications.

“This means that a single range of accessories like connectors and grounding kits fit to all RFS cables including CELLFLEX low loss and ultra-flexible copper together with low loss and ultra-flexible CELLFLEX Lite – all of which share the exact same outer conductor profile,” he added.

According to Furche, using this approach ensures there is no risk of error in the field during installation and helps to reduce the required customer inventory levels. “For example, Any RFS 1¼ inch OMNIFIT connector will fit any 1¼ inch RFS transmission line product perfectly,” he explained.

RFS’ CELLFLEX Lite cables, he said, continue the success story of corrugated feeders, so avoiding the installation challenges introduced by other aluminum solutions being proposed or released.

CELLFLEX Lite was the world’s first corrugated aluminum transmission line and achieved critical acclaim when it was launched.  The CELLFLEX Lite range has now matured into a highly valuable range of advanced performance cabling solutions for a growing number of carriers and OEMs.

Furche says that the cable’s advanced performance, coupled with lightweight construction, have combined to make CELLFLEX Lite a preferred transmission solution for fast-track network rollouts.

CELLFLEX Lite features a foam-dielectric corrugated coaxial cable with an aluminum outer conductor and a copper inner that is now a complete portfolio, being available in all common sizes. Supporting an alternative price point and performance combination for establishing the base station-to-antenna RF link, CELLFLEX Lite continues to represent an important development in transmission line technology.

The technology’s robust construction and advanced electrical performance have propelled CELLFLEX Lite to become the next generation choice in RF transmission development.

Now available in low loss ¹/₂”, ⁷/₈”, 1¹/₄”, 1⁵/₈” and ultra-flexible ⁷/₈” and 1¹/₄” diameters, CELLFLEX Lite is the most comprehensive corrugated aluminum feeder range available on the world market and also the lightest of its kind. It also features non-kink easy to bend corrugated outer conductors throughout the range.

“CELLFLEX Lite was designed to offer wireless carriers a long-awaited alternative to copper transmission line with comparable electrical and mechanical performance. Aluminum, its chief component, is far less volatile in price than copper meaning that carriers can fix on a standard and not have to change strategy because of world commodity market prices,” said Furche.

“CELLFLEX Lite is a lightweight solution that assists carriers in their rapid roll-out of 3G – and soon LTE – wireless network infrastructures taking place around the world,” he said.

“With the rate of increase in wireless network deployments accelerating  in many countries, carriers are continually looking for alternative ways of delivering quality mobile services and coverage to users. CELLFLEX Lite meets these requirements in a timely and highly cost-effective manner,” he added.  

Photo can be downloaded here: http://fs.turtleconsulting.co.uk/pics/RFS0223_CellflexLite_Omnifit.jpg

RFS Company background

Radio Frequency Systems (RFS) is a global designer and manufacturer of cable, antenna and tower systems, plus active and passive RF conditioning modules, providing total-package solutions for wireless infrastructure.

RFS serves OEMs, distributors, system integrators, operators and installers in the broadcast, wireless communications, land-mobile and microwave market sectors. As an ISO compliant organization with manufacturing and customer service facilities that span the globe, RFS offers cutting-edge engineering capabilities, superior field support and innovative product design. RFS is a leader in wireless infrastructure.

For more information visit: http://www.rfsworld.com/

RFS0223

LTE – “Ready when you are” says RFS

Released: February 2009

RFS (Radio Frequency Systems), the wireless infrastructure specialist, is ready for the next great switchover in the wireless business – the migration to Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology.

“More than any other wireless technology, LTE has the capability to change the face of communications as we know it. That’s why our research and development teams have expended considerable effort in the last few years preparing for this point in LTE’s development, when the first carriers are preparing for technology trials later this year,” said David Kiesling, global product manager for RFS Wireless Infrastructure Solutions.

“The message we are taking to our carrier customers – both old and new – at the GSMA World Congress is that we can help them in what is certain to be a revolution at the cell tower top. We can do this because our products offer an evolutionary path that keeps the real-estate changes to an absolute minimum,” he added.

According to Kiesling, the key question that carriers are asking leading suppliers like RFS is: `Will the technology that we install at the top of the cell tower today need to be changed in the next 12 to 18 months? And what is the lifespan of the LTE hardware and associated systems?’

And the answer, he says, is that RFS can help reduce the headache that carrier operations and planning managers are certain to face in the next few years as the industry evolves to an LTE ecosystem.

Forwards and backwards compatibility

One of the major issues facing today’s carriers says Kiesling, is how to support the introduction of LTE at the cell site with a minimum of extra real estate and yet ensure that support for legacy wireless technologies – as GSM is rapidly becoming – together with 3G services, is constantly available.

“Then, of course, there is the requirement to future-proof the antenna, diplexers and other base station systems, as end-users change the role that LTE technology plays in their lives,” he explained.

These changes, says RFS’ global product manager, are likely to involve the displacement of fixed-line broadband with mobile broadband, the possibility of home/office LTE-delivered ADSL solutions and – just to make life interesting – the arrival of femtocells into the transmission equation.

The LTE solutions that carriers install today, says Kiesling, must ensure the highest possible forwards and backwards-wireless capabilities, at the optimum cost, and so ensure that carriers are able to secure a reasonable return on their investment in as short a timeframe as possible.

“RFS’ LTE technology solutions can achieve all of these requirements, efficiently and cost-effectively,” he said.

RFS can help carriers solve technical issues

One of the biggest problems facing carriers as they prepare for trials of LTE technology later this year, or in 2010, will be how to support frequencies at the antenna ranging all the way from 1700 MHz to 2600 MHz.

This is achieved using RFS’ groundbreaking broad-band antenna technology by also using, as an example, an RFS LTE diplexer at the bottom supporting GSM 1800 and LTE 2600, with the signals combined onto the feeder and sent up into the broad-band antenna. On the receive side of the technology, the antenna can handle the complete wireless spectrum and then the relevant frequencies can be divided out at the base of the antenna.

From a real-estate perspective, says Kiesling, carriers can have the same antenna form factor and cable runs, but have two services operational. This is, he observes, the best solution from an equipment simplicity perspective.

This multi-band approach, he adds, also works for carriers that need support for quad-band operations at the cell tower.

“Traditionally, this would be achieved using separate antennas under a single radome (cover), however each antenna within the radome would still have its own Tx and Rx feeder connectors – meaning that either individual feeders would still be required or that diplexers and combiners would be needed at the bottom and top of the tower to share feeders.

“To support say 900, 1800, 2100 and now 2600 MHz using multiple arrays would lead to eight RF-connectors at the tower top. No carrier can realistically afford eight feeder cable runs per sector, explained Kiesling nor is there physically room for eight feeders times the number of sectors to run up most towers. “Using RFS multi-band antennas and our diplexer and triplexer technology, carriers can significantly reduce the number of feeders required, “he explained.

He went on to say that RFS is in fact developing a very exciting broadband antenna which covers the complete 1700 to 2600 MHz frequency range.  ”We are exhibiting a 2100/2600 MHz common connector dual band antenna at our booth at the GSMA event and will be discussing our LTE technology roadmap which includes other multiband antennas supporting LTE 2600 MHz,” he added. The roadmap includes a dual band broad-band antenna (824-960 MHz/1710-2700 MHz) with internal diplexers which allows a carrier to compress the eight feeder lines into two – the most efficient use of tower real estate ever.

RFS’ discussions with carriers suggest that the biggest technical hurdles to be faced with effective LTE deployments are in metropolitan (city) areas, specifically the interworking with legacy 2G (GSM) and 3G networks.

In the first phase of metropolitan deployment of LTE, Kiesling predicts that cell reselection (handoff) with a legacy 2G network will almost certainly be required, but real-time handover of a VoIP service between an LTE and a 2G network may not be supported or required at this time.

“Interworking with W-CDMA (2100/900MHz) networks, however, is going to be a high priority. This is especially true in situations where the legacy network is providing a high degree of service continuity in a metropolitan environment, or in areas at the edge of coverage,” he said.

“The bottom line with our LTE technologies on show here in Barcelona is that they will make all these technical compliance issues much easier,” he added.

RFS Company background

Radio Frequency Systems (RFS) is a global designer and manufacturer of cable, antenna and tower systems, plus active and passive RF conditioning modules, providing total-package solutions for wireless infrastructure.

RFS serves OEMs, distributors, system integrators, operators and installers in the broadcast, wireless communications, land-mobile and microwave market sectors. As an ISO compliant organization with manufacturing and customer service facilities that span the globe, RFS offers cutting-edge engineering capabilities, superior field support and innovative product design. RFS is a leader in wireless infrastructure.

For more information visit: http://www.rfsworld.com/

RFS0214