The workshops, valued at $2,500 per participant but free to customers, begin 17 March at 24 locations across Australia. The workshops will be held in local community locations to provide convenient access and networking opportunities to participating businesses.

St.George CEO, Greg Bartlett, said the expanded St.George Business Mentoring Program will offer small business owners practical advice on how to realise the full potential of their business.

“Many small business owners are so focused on the necessary day-to-day operations and functions of their business that they find it very difficult to give proper attention to some of the key ingredients for business success, including forward-planning and strategising, up-skilling and seeking the right advice to improve their business performance,” Mr Bartlett said.

The Business Mentoring Program workshops begin with advice on the steps small business owners can take to structure their business for growth. This workshop is followed over the next eight months with sessions dedicated to business planning, finances, marketing, sales, customer service, team development, systems and business improvement. The workshops are delivered for St.George by international business coaching firm ActionCOACH.

“At St.George, we are committed to partnering with our small business customers to help them achieve their goals. We are delighted to be delivering this added-value service to more than 1,200 businesses across Australia. Our Business Mentoring Program is a fantastic way for small businesses to gain valuable insights in key areas such as planning, sales and marketing, managing employees and customer service,” Mr Bartlett said.

Local St.George Branch Manager and St.George small business experts also attend all of the workshop sessions to answer any questions business customers might have about banking and business finance.

“St.George is committed to meeting the needs of small business customers, through our specialist Business Contact Centre that is now open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in addition to our 320 branches around Australia,” Mr Bartlett said.

St.George offers a choice of business packages to help customers manage and grow their business, combining day-to-day business bank accounts, merchant facilities, loans for business and business insurance.

Mr Macdonald said the strategy, developed by Industry & Investment NSW and available online at www.business.nsw.gov.au/innovation, will help regional businesses and communities prosper in the 21st century.

“Innovation increases businesses’ competitiveness through the development of new, or significantly improved, products, services, systems and processes,” he said.

“The NSW Government has produced this Regional Innovation Strategy as part of our ongoing efforts to promote innovation and sustainable business development across the State.”

“This strategy is the result of extensive research and will help make regional businesses more productive, resilient and successful.”

*Regional businesses often face challenges: water shortages; fluctuating economic conditions; access to markets and services; transport links; and  demographic changes resulting in skills issues.

“Not surprisingly, many regional businesses are embracing innovation to help deal with these types of issues.”

“Bureau of Statistics data shows a higher proportion of regional businesses are innovative compared to capital city businesses – 38.9 percent to 35.8 percent.”

“The Regional Innovation Strategy includes case studies of successful innovation in five regional industries: winemaking in the Riverina; tourist parks in the Northern Rivers; manufacturing in Western NSW; the coal industry in the Hunter; and integrated pest management in the vegetable industry.”

Mr Macdonald said the NSW Government will immediately implement the Regional Innovation Strategy in consultation with local communities.

“Innovation Initiatives will be developed and customised for each of the State*s regions outside Sydney, focusing on areas where local innovation can make a difference,” Mr Macdonald said.”These initiatives will be integrated into Regional Business Growth Plans and will be updated regularly to reflect the changing priorities and needs of each region.”

“The Government will work with Regional Development Australia (RDA) committees and local stakeholders to implement these Innovation Initiatives.”

The Strategy also includes a series of Guiding Principles which will assist regional organisations to develop their own strategies to help businesses to use innovation.

These are also reflected in the other recommendations of the Strategy, including:

• Expanding access to management training programs for regionalbusinesses
• Innovation coaching including in Lean business techniques
• Greater knowledge sharing through the development of stronger regional business networks
• Expert innovation workshops
• Tapping into the knowledge generated by our research institutions for the benefit of business
• Using broadband to enhance regional business innovation.

Parliamentary Secretary for Innovation and Industry, Richard Marles, said Australian businesses often overlooked brand protection as a crucial component of their intellectual property (IP).

“Not only is it important for a business to create a strong brand and business reputation, they should safeguard these assets with a registered trade mark,” Mr Marles said.

Mr Marles said the breakfast seminar will talk about the need for businesses of all sizes to protect their brand.

“In 2009, the Sensis Small Business Index showed 31 per cent of small businesses were not aware of the IP in their business.

“This figure shows an alarmingly significant portion of Australian small businesses aren’t using the trade mark system strategically,” Mr Marles said.

Today’s seminar will be headlined by Allied Brands chief executive, Shane Radbone, who manages well-known brands Baskin and Robbins and Cookie Man.
Mr Radbone has broad knowledge in branding and IP having established his first business at the age of 20. He now manages numerous brands that are highly visible in shopping malls in Australia and internationally.

“IP protection is vital to Allied Brands’ business and expansion plans. For example, we had a very significant trade mark registration program in China and India before entering those markets which enabled us to actively defend our brands when needed,” Mr Radbone said.

The seminar being held at the Novotel Brisbane will show SMEs how to:
• create a distinctive brand personality
• utilise domain names to enhance a brand
• apply real-life strategies to help expand a brand into overseas markets and
• identify key ownership considerations for brand managers and strategies to deal with direct competitors.

For more information on the ‘How to make your brand great’ breakfast seminars held during March around Australia visit the IP Australia website www.ipaustralia.gov.au.

IP Australia is the Federal Government agency responsible for granting intellectual property protection through patents, trade marks, designs and plant breeder’s rights.

Only 20 per cent of business travellers plan to cut back their business travel in 2010, compared to more than 50 per cent of corporate travellers surveyed last
year.

The Quest Serviced Apartments Business Travel Survey polled more than 1000 regular Australian business travellers.

Quest Chairman, Paul Constantinou said the results reflected a more positive outlook for business travel, as the new decade gets underway.

“The economic downturn put a lot of pressure on budgets and bottom-lines, and in many instances business travel was the first to suffer,” Mr Constantinou said.

“Following a difficult 2009 period, the new decade has bought about a renewed sense of optimism and this positive response reflects the new-found confidence,” he said.

“With further positive signs for the economy on the horizon, it appears that companies are prepared to re-invest in business travel to help re-establish or
grow their company following the downturn.”

The AVG research study is based on the analysis of threats reported during the last 6 months from AVG’s 110 million worldwide users of its AVG LinkScanner web security product. The research indicates an increase in malware-serving web sites targeting end users, which typically focus on stealing online banking credentials, credit card information, personal identities and passwords to social sites.

The detection and analysis of exploits was based on AVG’s unique crowd-sourced methods for analysing web content for malicious or dangerous intent as reported by AVG’s vast network of LinkScanner installations worldwide. AVG’s research shows that malicious code is not just an issue with outlaw servers located in countries with weak laws and lax enforcement.

Monitoring active web servers serving exploits around the world indicates that 44 percent of the corrupted servers are hosted in the United States, followed by Germany and China at just 5 percent each. Many of these malware-serving web sites are legitimate sites compromised by hackers to serve exploits on their behalf. In total, exploitive servers were found in nearly 4,600 locations throughout the USA.

“The results of this study shatter the myth that malicious code is primarily hosted in countries where e-crime laws are less developed,” said Karel Obluk, Chief Technology Officer, AVG Technologies. “Our research shows that malicious content is much more likely to show up on web servers in the U.S. than one in Asia or Eastern  Europe. This makes perfect sense since the USA is a primary target market for the criminals and has rich and mature Internet infrastructure making the threats both highly accessible and cheap to host.

Obluk continued, “Even more important to note is that, on average during this six month period, about 50 percent of the domains hosted on these servers were online and hosting threats only one day or less. This transient nature makes them very hard to find and add to traditional reputation-based protection systems in time to be helpful to users.”

Two pillars of the original 1910 charter were universal suffrage and equal pay for equal work and, according to Maggie Alexander, a founding member of FITT, progress has been a bit of a ‘mixed bag’.

“While all of our members have a voice at polling day, we obviously have not been vocal enough about narrowing the gender salary gap,” said Ms Alexander.

As part of the day’s proceedings, over 300 members and guests were asked to complete a survey that sought to rank five specific aims for the women over the next 100 years, and also gave respondents the opportunity to add one more aim of their, or their table’s, choosing.

The order of priority, according to the set aims of the survey was:

1. Continuing to strive and campaign for ‘equal pay for equal work’
2. Encouraging Australia’s female youth (regardless of industry) to focus more on success by achievement rather than media-driven body-image stereotypes
3. Supporting women from IT&T backgrounds to make it to board and C-level positions within private Australian organisations (and not only public/NFP sector where female representation is higher)
4. Encouraging successful women in IT&T in Australia to share their ‘road to success’ with younger women in IT&T or those considering IT&T careers
5. Creating a level landscape for women in IT&T in Australia regardless of cultural, religious or social pressures so that they can achieve their potential

“It is both sad and significant to note that the number one priority has been the same for one hundred years, but it’s also encouraging to see how Australian women are coming together to collectively and collaboratively address current issues,” said Ms Alexander.

According to Ms Alexander, findings from the ‘open aim’ section of the survey fell into a small band of categories.

“There were a significant number of suggestions that revolved around the need to do more to encourage females in secondary education to view technology as a career that offers them great rewards, both financially and personally.  Another common theme was a belief that we needed to look at our industry in non-gender terms.  There was a strong feeling that equality would be best achieved by looking at both genders as simply employees, rather than the traditional them and us attitude that arguably exists today,” said Ms Alexander.

In putting the survey into context, Ms Alexander stressed that FITT’s membership covers over 1,800 members drawn from a wide range of career positions, from software engineers to CIOs, and all the way up to senior management of global technology and telecommunication companies, and that the guests at the function were a representative sample of all job classifications.

‘The Australian Cash Report Q1 2010’ released by financial research company, CoreData, has revealed only a handful of people (13.7 percent) consider deposits held by mutuals to be ‘very secure’, while 13.9 percent consider mutual deposits to be ‘somewhat not secure’.

Only one in eight Australians surveyed consider combined credit unions and building societies to be very secure for their cash deposits. Half of respondents considered the big four banks to be very secure.

While Australian investors felt more comfortable investing with the larger banks during the GFC, one quarter were unaware of the Federal Government’s deposit guarantee and most respondents had only some idea of what it was.

“The guarantee sought to slow the flight of investors towards the big four banks at the expense of the smaller players, but clearly the Government’s move to stabilise the system failed to resonate with consumers with a dramatic effect on competition,” CoreData Principal Andrew Inwood said.

More than one third of investors altered their portfolio weightings to hold more cash during the GFC, with customers willing to change banks to achieve a better rate of return.

“Customers are ready and willing to move banks to find the best rate of return,” Mr Inwood said.

“This trend has led to a great deal of customer turnover for Tier 2 banks as they introduce, then withdraw their promotional rates.

“There is around $508 billion currently being held in cash which investors plan to move into other assets – property and shares being the likely beneficiaries. The interesting question is who’s going to get this money: is it the financial advisers, the banks or the super funds, or will investors cut out the middle man and go direct?” Mr Inwood said.

The research also found Australians have less reliance on bank branches with just 7.8% considering accessibility to be the most important factor and only 3.6% ranking service as the most important.

“Interestingly, our research revealed the once popular phone banking service is now all but dead with the majority of respondents saying they never use it and conversely the use of online bank services is continuing to grow,” Mr Inwood said.

Prochaska’s stages of change model

Many would say big deal but as business people this model reflects the buying process that your customers go through before making a purchase. They move from not even considering your product, to thinking they ‘should’ get it, to ‘going to’ to get it and then finally they act and make the purchase form you, whereby they maintain their new behaviour using your product.

So what does this have to do with leading a balanced life . . .

Simple  . . . the majority of business owners and senior managers are either in pre-contemplation stage – not considering it at all or thinking they ‘should’ do something. FYI – if the majority of business owners and managers were not in these stages but rather action or motivation then we would not have:

• Pressure on our hospitals with sick people;
• An obesity epidemic;
• World domination in fat kids; and
• A population so unfriendly and unhappy!

As living people we are making the world for our kids and our grand kids. And if you don’t give a stuff about the rest of the world then consider our country, your state or even just your community! The unhealthy choices we are making will have a direct impact on where future government money is needed not to mention your personal health.

Stop being so selfish . . . make a decision to today to make healthy choices.

• Eat fruit.
• Reduce the fried food.
• Go to bed at a reasonable hour & get 8 hours sleep.
• Exercise – just walk!

Don’t make a commitment to me or Dynamic Business that you will do something. Make a commitment to your family and loved ones . . . they will thank you! As will future Aussies!

According to the ACCC, Mwave breached the Trade Practices Act by telling customers it was a “reseller only” and as such, not responsible for providing the same level of customer support a bricks and mortar retail store would when customers receive faulty items. This information on the Mwave website was deemed to contain misleading and false information about consumers’ rights. 

The Trade Practices Act permits consumers to request a refund from retailers without having to deal directly with the manufacturer, in addition freight costs for faulty items should be covered by the retailer, not the customer.

“Consumers have the same rights online as if they were to walk into a store,” ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel said.

“Basically, they can expect that a product would have a level of quality and performance that would be reasonable to expect, do what it is meant to do and match its description.”

The perception that only large fleets benefit from outsourcing their fleet management is starting to be challenged. Many fleet management providers are now offering their services to the SME industry.

SME’s tend to stick to fuel cards as their only fleet management tool, a powerful tool nonetheless but only the tip of the iceberg in terms of efficient fleet management. There are various components of fleet management that can also be outsourced to the advantage of small business owners looking to cut costs and administration time.

Small business’s can now receive the same benefits that large corporations have enjoyed for years, with fleet management providers unlocking the potential of the SME market by offering fleet management solutions tailored for the small business market.

Maintenance Scheduling

By outsourcing maintenance scheduling to a fleet management company your business can benefit in numerous ways;

• Reduce time spent on administration and organising; giving you more time to run your business and concentrate on what really matters.
• Make sure your vehicles are always running at their best, avoiding expensive costs or repairs down the road and maintaining re-sale value.
• All the headaches of maintaining your warranty are removed, they will select appropriate repairers when required and organise the repair.
  • This becomes especially important after a breakdown or accident when most people forget about obtaining an authorised supplier.
• The OH&S benefits are just as important as the financial returns of investing in maintenance scheduling.
  • Covering your business from major incidents in the future by detecting maintenance issues early on.

Road Side Assistance & Accident Management

By going with a fleet management company the whole process of incident management is outsourced, including the hassle and time spent dealing with repairers, not to mention significant indirect costs of employee downtime and administration involved in getting the car back on the road.

In the event of a breakdown some fleet management providers will even connect your driver through to family members, friends or business associates to notify them of any possible delays This just highlights how outsourcing roadside assistance and accident management removes the pain and effort of co-ordinating breakdowns, while reducing vehicle & driver downtime.

Reporting

Rather than looking at several different invoices from various suppliers every month, a fleet management company can consolidate your entire vehicle operating costs into a single monthly invoice, smoothing the payment cycle, allowing accurate budget allocation. Again, there are substantial indirect savings here in relation to employee time spent balancing budgets and processing payments and often having to deal directly with numerous different suppliers for these tasks.

Fringe benefit tax reporting is also made easier under the care of a fleet management provider. They assist in keeping you on track with all your FBT responsibilities so that you are well prepared and ready come tax time

With all this administration taken care of you can concentrate on the more important parts of running your business.

Champagne on a Beer Budget

All this service comes at a lower price than you would think, with fleet management providers discovering the untapped value of the SME market, maintenance and administration costs have been lowered to meet smaller business expectations.

Small business owners can now access the perks of the large corporate fleet customers and streamline their business processes while reducing operating costs. If you have a fleet of two vehicles or more you can qualify for a fully outsourced fleet management solution.

To find out more about Fleetcare’s SME fleet solution, Fleetpro, call 1300 655 170 or visit fleetcare.com.au