Business Reporter

Cash or caché? When it comes to the sales team, it’s not always money that motivates One thing that preoccupies sales managers and directors is the sales bonus scheme. As former frontline salespeople, they know that the incentive plan drives the sales team’s behaviour. But there is much to consider: the basic/commission percentage; the type [...]

Outsourcing isn’t just about saving money – for today’s businesses, it’s also about sharing expertise and increasing skills and flexibility It’s said that when US President Barack Obama asked the late Steve Jobs about returning the manufacture of products such as the iPhone to the US, the Apple chief replied: “Those jobs aren’t coming back.” [...]

External factors from globalisation to the spread of social media are changing the face of outsourcing as we know it – but it’s all about partnership Should outsourcing by now be a mature and well managed strategy for organisations in both the private and public sectors? Not really. Although many processes and tasks have long [...]

Negotiating a merger or acquisition is one thing– making a success of it is another. Will it take-off, or is it on course for a crash landing? The value of mergers and acquisitions has come under much scrutiny for many years. The most commonly quoted statistic on the subject is the landmark Bain & Co [...]

Once the company leadership has decided the strategy, how do you get all the employees on board? The key word here is engagement… Amid all the changes in policy since the coalition government came into power, one subject has seen continuity: employee engagement. In March the government, and Prime Minister David Cameron personally, gave their [...]

As bringing goods to market becomes both increasingly risky and costly, are supply chain managers the real business innovators? A generation ago, issues such as risk in the supply chain didn’t keep managers awake at night. That was simply because there was no such term as “supply chain”. There were operations and logistics managers, but [...]