Dermot's Blog: published recently

the move

2009-10-29T09:50:00.004Z

I've moved from blogger to a new Wordpress-fueled site at dermotcorrigan.com.

So to visit my new website / blog / portfolio click here.

Aid agencies could benefit from‘pay-cations’

2009-09-14T15:13:00.004+01:00

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment section - September 13 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

By part-funding gap year style working trips around the world, the government could help recent graduates through the economic downturn and boost exchequer funds, according to the organiser of this year’s Working Abroad Expo.

Stephen McLarnon, managing director of expo organiser SGMC Group, which takes place later this month, called on the government to consider implementing a part-funded ‘pay-cation’ scheme to support younger job candidates with limited opportunities in the domestic labour market. Such a scheme would benefit the economy by building on the professional experience and skill-sets of younger candidates, and boosting the government’s coffers.

‘‘We are not advocating that the government completely fund a gap year, but offer a fund-matching system for those considering taking a gap year,” said McLarnon. ‘‘A gap-year matching scheme for under-25s, offering up to €5,000 per person within a 12-month period, would offer immediate savings to the growing social welfare bill, while also assisting young unemployed people to gain new experiences and return to Ireland with something to offer.

‘‘It would keep people active, which is crucial, and it would give people a taste of life in less-well-off countries.”

A similar government scheme, under consideration in Britain, is proposing to fund up to 500 participants in overseas development projects. Under the scheme, participants would be required to raise funding of stg£1,000 (€1,140) and pay for their own flights and vaccinations.

‘‘The fact that Britain is looking at something similar gives the concept credibility,” said McLarnon. ‘‘Similar precedents exist here in Ireland, with the ESB earlier this year taking on approximately 300 apprentice electricians to help them qualify. PwC has offered graduates €5,000 to defer their entry into the firm until 2010.”

If properly managed, McLarnon believes such a scheme could raise vital funds for the exchequer.

‘‘An unemployed person, under 30 years of age and currently receiving unemployment benefit, gets approximately €10,000 per annum,” he said. ‘‘A fund-matching system, capped at €5,000,would immediately save the exchequer €5,000 per person. The government could include a 12-month exclusion from receiving any further social welfare benefits for participants in the scheme.”

The British government is piloting a gap-year programme in association with Raleigh International, a charity specialising in voluntary overseas placements. An Irish equivalent could target Irish organisations with overseas connections, McLarnon said.

‘‘The Niall Mellon Township Trust has done a fantastic job in South Africa, but is now suffering with less available funds from volunteers,” he said. ‘‘The trust, the government and Fás could come together and use the project for training apprentice plumbers, electricians and brick-layers. It would get nearly qualified trades people off the dole, qualified under the instruction of qualified trades people who have also lost their job, while also doing something worthwhile."

‘‘NGOs such as Concern and Goal are being badly affected by cuts to their overseas aid budget,” McLarnon said. ‘‘Many of these organisations are laying off staff and closing centres in much needed areas. The government could again part-fund professionals to work with these organisations while diverting them from the ever-growing dole queues.”

McLarnon said that there had been a significant increase in the number of Irish people looking abroad for work in recent months.

‘‘The number of young people travelling overseas has seen a substantial jump over the last 12 months, with a 33 per cent increase - an extra 5,500 people - in those going to Australia on working holiday visas,” he said. ‘‘This takes the number currently in Australia on annual working holiday visas to a record high of over 22,000. Figures for Canada, New Zealand and other countries are not available, but the total number could easily exceed a further 20,000.”

Other destinations also offer employment opportunities, McLarnon said.

‘‘Opportunities exist all over the world. There is an aging population in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, so they have to import a huge amount of labour,” he said. ‘‘The US is experiencing its own unemployment issues, but parts of Latin America such as Brazil are enjoying some growth.

‘‘Canada has avoided much of the financial crises and is very much open for business. Britain is largely expected to come out of recession in the coming weeks, joining Germany and France.”

McLarnon said that the healthcare sector, in particular, offered global opportunities for skilled Irish candidates.

‘‘Health recruitment has bucked the trend globally, except in Ireland, where the HSE is not renewing contracts and a recruitment freeze largely remains in place,” he said. ‘‘With this in mind, we have 11 British NHS trusts exhibiting at our show in Dublin in our dedicated medical and nursing zone. It is widely known that there is a surplus of nurses in Ireland, with overseas employers queuing up to recruit them.”

There is also overseas demand for qualified Irish engineering and technology professionals, said McLarnon.

‘‘Fisher & Paykel, the big home-appliance manufacturers, are exhibiting at our Dublin show, looking for all the various different types of engineers, including automotive and quality assurance people, for New Zealand. People are starting to get back into R&D as the global economy revives,” he said.

Some candidates, who would otherwise head overseas in search of work, have unavoidable commitments in Ireland, McLarnon said.

‘‘Generally, individuals with a mortgage or young family will be less mobile. Those with mortgages in negative equity will be reluctant or unable to sell their properties,” he said. ‘‘Renting their property out is difficult, creating an economic trap for those that want or need to work abroad.”

McLarnon said candidates who had only just graduated had a tough time securing working visas for other countries.

‘‘Workplace experience is very important in getting working visas for Canada, Australia or New Zealand. People with a couple of years’ working experience are generally better placed to secure a visa,” he said.

Candidates with foreign language skills and travel experience are best placed to secure work overseas.

‘‘Huge opportunities exist in continental Europe for people with a second language. Having travelled before is not a biggie, but employers like to see people who have lived or worked abroad previously as, chances are, they will settle quicker,” said McLarnon.

Now in its fourth year, this month’s Working Abroad Expo will have more than 50 exhibitors, including government bodies, migration officials and recruitment agencies. Relocation experts will offer advice and assistance on starting a new life abroad.

‘‘These are undoubtedly challenging times, but opportunities do exist, and the Working Abroad Expo is designed to give people options, separate the myths from reality and give people the full facts, information, paperwork, contacts and job options they need for starting a better life abroad,” said McLarnon.

‘‘Employers and recruitment specialists will outline job opportunities in nursing, social work, engineering and various skilled trades in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Russia, China and the Middle East,” he said. ‘‘There will also be seminars advising Irish tradespeople about meeting the increasingly high standards of the Australian construction, engineering and hospitality industries.”

The Working Abroad Expo takes place on September 19 and 20 in Dublin’s RDS and the Europa Hotel in Belfast on September 22 and 23. Tickets for the Dublin event cost €10. For more information, or to book a place, visit www.workingabroad.ie

Keeping the faith

2009-09-11T12:54:00.002+01:00

When Saturday Comes - WSC daily - September 8 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

After hauling off Sulley Muntari half an hour into a Serie A game with Bari last month, Internazionale manager Jose Mourinho blamed the Ghanaian midfielder’s religious beliefs.

“Ramadan has not arrived at the ideal moment for a player to play a football match,” said Mourinho, upset after a poor 1-1 draw for the Italian champions.

Mourinho's comments sparked a debate in Italy with Mohamed Nour Dachan, president of the Italian Union of Islamic Communities, telling Sky Italia: "I think Mourinho could do with talking a little less.” The UK’s Daily Star also helpfully picked up on the issue, headlining a story: Muslims: we’ll kill Mourinho.

The issue of footballers dealing with Ramadan, when Muslims must abstain from eating or drinking during daylight hours, has been more calmly dealt with in Spain, a country with its own Moorish Islamic past.

Sevilla's Freddie Kanouté is among the highest profile players affected. Kanouté, who was 20 when he converted to Islam, the religion of his father, told the press that Ramadan fasting benefited his game rather than hindering it. “Having faith helps my football,” he said. “There is no conflict because people who know about Islam know that fasting empowers and does not weaken the Muslim.”

Various dietary and religious experts have weighed into the debate on whether irregular nutritional intake hinders performance or adds mental discipline. Doctor and Imam Moulana Yusuf Daya praised Real Madrid for supporting the club's Islamic players, who include Karim Benzema and Lassana Diarra. “Fasting is an effective means of restoring a player’s longevity,” said Daya. “Ramadan also helps lower cholesterol and systolic blood pressure.”

However, while the physical conditioning argument is interesting, it is the strength of character to stand up for what he believes in, whether or not his employers agree, that marks Kanouté out as a singular footballer. When gambling website 888.com sponsored Seville in 2007, Kanouté refused to wear a shirt promoting the sinful practice of gambling, until a “sizeable” amount was donated to an Islamic charity. The following year he spent €500,000 (£434,000) buying a mosque in Seville that had been due to close, so local Muslims had somewhere to pray. In January he was fined by the Spanish League for celebrating a goal by revealing a T-shirt supporting the Palestinian cause.

It is not that uncommon either for Christian footballers to religiously remove clothing upon scoring or winning a game. Everton’s Steven Pienaar, when he scored a deflected winner for Everton against Spurs last year, showed off a “God Is Great” vest and was promptly booked. Kaka famously unveiled his “I Belong To Jesus” T-shirt after winning the Champions League with Milan in 2007. However even Kaka, a leading light in the Athletes for Christ movement, has not involved himself in as many causes as Kanouté.

Whatever you think about Kanouté's stubborn and/or independent streak, it certainly hasn't harmed his career. Since leaving Spurs he's become one of La Liga's top strikers, scored in two successive victorious UEFA Cup finals and was 2007 African Player of the Year. As it happens, he has had a fairly shocking start to this season – sent off against Valencia as his team lost 2-0 in the season opener. Meanwhile, a 1-1 draw with Benin last weekend means he won't be at next year's World Cup.

Twittering threat to job agencies

2009-08-31T13:05:00.004+01:00

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment - Aug 30 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

The use of social network ing websites by professionals is driving fund a mental changes in the Irish recruitment industry, according to Declan Fitzgerald, global sourcing manager with Microsoft.

‘‘The Irish recruitment industry is in a state of huge change at the moment, and social media and the internet are driving a lot of this change,” said Fitzgerald. ‘‘We are seeing the arrival of the ‘internet recruiter’ who knows how to deploy a variety of different technologies, tools and techniques to source particular candidates. The smart recruiters now understand how to harness these technologies.”

Ronan Colleran, managing director of Accreate Executive Search & Interim, said the recession was prompting recruiters in Ireland to use social networking sites to save time and money.

‘‘The rate of increased awareness of the potential of social networking amongst the Irish recruitment community has been significant over the past six months in particular,” said Colleran. ‘‘With the downturn in the economy, people have started thinking of fresh ways to approach their work; maybe they are working a little harder than in a buoyant employment market.”

The sheer number of people using social networking websites is an obvious draw for recruiters. LinkedIn has more than 44 million members in over 200 countries. The number of Irish users signed up to Facebook has more than doubled to over 900,000 since the start of the year, and Twitter is also fast gaining ground among business users.

‘‘It started very much with younger people exploring these social networks, but the vast majority of people joining Twitter and Facebook in the last six months are over 35,” said Fitzgerald. ‘‘There is quite a large number of directors and chief executives at large multinationals with a presence on these sites. They may not be active users, but they are there.”

Fitzgerald, who runs his own LinkedIn recruitment group and blog, said Microsoft was among the first companies in Ireland to use social networking for recruitment purposes.

‘‘We’ve been using LinkedIn successfully for three years to recruit, and now have hundreds of recruiters using it,” he said. ‘‘I run two-day training courses internally, where we teach people how to use LinkedIn, Facebook and the internet generally, to search for company information, see conversations that people are having, and thereby approach them using various communication techniques.”

In February, LinkedIn launched its Talent Advantage suite of solutions, allowing recruiters to actively target candidates on the site.

‘‘LinkedIn’s recruiter product allows you to send mass emails to LinkedIn profiles, which is an excellent way for you to send out your job description and get people’s attention,” said Fitzgerald. ‘‘You can expand your network, and get access to their millions of users. You are also able to send more mails and contact more people.”

Microsoft has used social networking to find overseas candidates with niche skills.

‘‘We were hiring people for our malware engineering virus response team in the last year. We looked in the Irish market and there were very few people with that specialisation,” said Fitzgerald. ‘‘Using LinkedIn, we were able to type in certain keywords or technologies and find profiles of engineers around the world with the right experience. We then targeted two countries in particular - Romania and Finland - and contacted candidates to see if they were interested. There were no agency fees, very little costs involved, and it was very quick.”

Accreate has also used LinkedIn to find high-level candidates with specialised skills.

‘‘We used social networking to source a candidate who was based in Korea for a European client with operations in Ireland. This required a specific and specialised skillset in the financial services area,” said Colleran. ‘‘Given the locations involved, it would have been difficult to source this particular candidate without using social recruiting as part of our research process.”

Despite these advantages, the sheer size of the social networking ‘net’ can sometimes create as many problems as it solves for recruiters.

‘‘The sites increase the reach for research teams but they do not lessen the workload,” said Colleran. ‘‘As more candidates sign up, more sifting needs to be done to ensure the most relevant candidates are sourced for a given role.”

Communications consultant Damien Mulley advised recruiters to use professional networking sites carefully, and with long-term goals in mind.

‘‘Some recruiters are playing the short game and putting a wide spread in their sights and targeting everyone, as it is easy to do digitally. These networks offer the opportunity to build a relationship over a period of months and even years,” said Mulley. ‘‘It would be great if you only get approached by a recruiter when the ideal position pops up - a bit like an art dealer that knows what you like and only contacts you when they have something they know you will like and they know they can sell.”

Mulley believes that social networking poses a serious threat to the traditional industry, as it offers a cheaper and easy-to-use alternative to employers.

‘‘I think we will see more people Twitter, blog and Facebook about new jobs in their company and those ads spreading through networks of friends and trusted sources,” he said.

As work practices become more flexible and dispersed, Mulley said social networking could play a central role in complex recruitment and human resource processes.

‘‘I think recruiters and employers might become hubs of hiring activity, connectors of talent and facilitators of information, he said. ‘‘With a workforce that is going to move away from nine-to-five work and not working in the office, it will be up to HR and employers to keep these different networks of people working well.”

Colleran advised recruitment companies to make sure their own staff had the skills to make the best possible use of social networking sites.

‘‘As the popularity of social recruiting grows, there will be an increased onus on individual consultants and researchers to embrace the sites. As some are more web savvy than others, in-house training could be used to address any issues in this regard,” he said.

Colleran said that recruiters who failed to adapt to the trend risked falling behind in an industry facing unprecedented change.

‘‘If firms do not adapt towards using these tools, they will be left behind. Social networking sites are free and, since candidates are embracing this new phenomenon, so too must recruiters,” he said.

Online tools should be used in conjunction with established recruitment practices, Colleran said.

‘‘Companies run the risk of not hiring the best candidate if they rely only on information gleaned from the web. It is important to bear in mind that not all candidates have a presence online. Traditional methods, which have served us well over the years, should not be discarded,” he said.

Ireland confident in testing times

2009-08-31T12:57:00.003+01:00

Sunday Business Post - Business of Sport - Aug 23 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

Everyone involved with the Irish cricket team is looking forward to taking on England in a one-day cricket international in Belfast on Thursday, according to the chairman of cricket for Cricket Ireland.

‘‘The England fixture is a massive event for everybody connected with Cricket Ireland,” said Joe Doherty.

‘‘As a one-off fixture, it would always be the showpiece of any year, but it is not just a meaningless friendly against one of the ‘big’ nations. It is a full ranking ODI (one-day international) that carries global ranking points for both countries and also serves as a benchmark for our own progress,” he said.

The match, sponsored by RSA Insurance, was the only chance to see top-level international cricket in Ireland this year, he said. It will be England’s first game after the final Test of the current Ashes series with Australia.

‘‘Tickets are selling strongly, and we expect the Stormont ground to be packed on the day,” he said. ‘‘The fixture is also attracting strong interest from groups making block bookings for corporate, club and social entertainment in the marquees.”

The game will be the third one-day international in three years between the two nations.

Although England have won both games so far, including a meeting during the 2007World Cup in Guyana, Ireland were not outclassed on either occasion. Given the timing this time around, they will fancy their chances of an upset on Thursday.

Ireland will have a full strength team to call on, including captain William Porterfield and England-based players Niall O’Brien and Boyd Rankin.

‘‘The coach and selectors have a full complement of players available,” said Doherty. ‘‘All our players are looking forward to another joust against the English.”

The Irish team is also involved in the Intercontinental Cup - the main competition for second tier cricketing nations.

‘‘We are proud holders of the trophy won in South Africa last winter, and have now won it on three successive occasions,” said Doherty. ‘‘It is a benchmark trophy for International Cricket Council [ICC] purposes, and an indicator of the ‘best of the rest’ outside the Test cricketing family. So far this year, we have had the better of a rain-affected draw against Kenya in July and performed well again against Scotland this week.”

Barring a win against England on Thursday, the highlight of the year for Irish cricket will remain June’s world T20 tournament in London, where Ireland beat Bangladesh to make the Super 8 stage.

Doherty said a successful qualification for next year’s World Cup, which will be held in the West Indies in April, was now expected of the Irish team.

‘‘We are determined to qualify again, and we will have all our top players available,” he said. ‘‘We are in no way complacent though, as aT20match can hinge on one good performance from one player on either side. Our T20 skills are being honed all the time and we hope to have the players at peak performance level, mentally and physically, come February’s qualifying tournament in the UAE.”

Off the field, the major development at Cricket Ireland this summer has been the recruitment of Mark Garaway as the sport’s new director of cricket operations, a position funded by the ICC to improve the standard and profile of cricket in Ireland.

‘‘Although only 35,Mark is vastly experienced at playing, coaching, analysis and cricket administration,” said Doherty. ‘‘In the England camp, he was responsible for providing specialist technical support to successive coaches, including Duncan Fletcher and Andy Flower.

‘‘We are confident that, as well as improving participation, development and coaching throughout Ireland, he will be a precious asset to coach Phil Simmons and the playing staff. We are excited about him coming on board.”

Garaway’s brief will include preparing Ireland for possible elevation to the ranks of full Test-playing cricket nations, said Doherty.

‘‘Test cricket is not feasible in Ireland in the short term due to logistical considerations, such as stadia, quality of pitches, core support for the game and working capital,” he said. ‘‘In the medium term, however, many of these issues could be addressed. The future structure of Test cricket is by no means set in stone.

‘‘Our medium-term goal is to be ranked in the world’s top eight by 2015,up from our position of tenth,” said Doherty. ‘‘Our strategic plans reflect the steps necessary to achieve that goal and we are undergoing a review of our domestic game to get the basics right.

‘‘Next year we will host Australia in another ODI, and we have negotiated an arrangement to alternate visits from the ‘big two’ from now on. Mark Garaway is joining us at the perfect time.”

He added that the rising profile of the Irish cricket team, especially since the World Cup in the West Indies in 2007, had led to an increase in the numbers playing the game.

‘‘Participation levels have definitely increased since 2007, and organised cricket is being played again in parts of Ireland where it had never been formally played or where it had lain dormant for more than a century,” he said.

‘‘We are currently providing development support to groups in counties Roscommon and Sligo and in the city of Derry, for example, where cricket had been in decline since the outbreak of the Troubles. We need to expand the core base of participation and active interest to give us a chance of recurring success at international level, competing, as we do, against countries with vast cricketing populations.”

Attaining test status would help to halt the steady flow of Irish-born players, such as Ed Joyce and Eoin Morgan (who is in the England squad for this week’s match) to other countries, said Doherty.

‘‘In the short term, the loss of players like Ed and Eoin will continue to be a challenge, but we respect our young cricketers’ healthy ambitions. For those two, England was the only Test show in town,” he said. ‘‘Until and unless we can offer meaningful Test or ‘new Test’ status to our players, that anomaly will continue to exist and frustrate us.”

No break for travel industry

2009-08-31T12:35:00.004+01:00

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment - Aug 23 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

A spate of redundancy announcements has rocked the Irish travel industry over the summer months, traditionally the busiest period for holiday-makers at home and visitors from overseas.

Last week, Sunway Holidays announced plans to close three outlets in Dublin, with the loss of nine jobs. The move followed 95 job losses at Budget Travel, which announced that it was to close 14 of its 31 Irish outlets earlier this month. The high-profile staff protests that followed Thomas Cook’s move to halt Irish operations, with 77 redundancies, pointed to wider unrest in a sector hit hard by the fall in consumer spending.

The numbers employed in the travel business have fallen significantly in the last year, according to Simon Nugent, chief executive of the Irish Travel Agents Association (ITAA).

‘‘The pattern this year has been about companies shedding staff, not recruiting,” said Nugent. ‘‘While the leisure travel side has dropped away a bit, the corporate travel side has dropped significantly. I would say pretty much all ITAA member firms have reduced their staff since last autumn.”

Falling employment According to the most recent available CSO figures, overseas visits to Ireland fell by 114,000, or 15 per cent, in June compared to the same month last year. Eamonn McKeon, chief executive of the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation, said further job losses were inevitable.

‘‘We reckon that, overall, jobs in the travel and tourism industry fell by about 10 per cent last year from a peak of 310,000,” he said. ‘‘Our ‘guesstimate’ is that it will reach about 250,000 this year, based on what we hear from our members. I am not aware of any sector of the travel or tourism industry, with the possible exception of family-run B&Bs or farmhouses, which has not had to let people go. The numbers are down everywhere, from hotels and restaurants to cruising companies and car rental firms.

‘‘The Dublin Airport Authority has been talking about rationalisation, as have the airlines. Every sector either has let staff go or did not take on the additional summer staff they would normally have taken on.”

Valerie Sorohan, marketing manager of Jobs.ie, said there had been a noticeable drop in the number of travel and tourism positions advertised online this year.

‘‘Jobs.ie has five different categories of travel and tourism jobs: chef jobs, hotels, pubs, bars and clubs, restaurants and catering, and travel and tourism,” said Sorohan. ‘‘This year, the number of jobs posted has decreased across all five categories by 50 to 70 per cent year-on-year.”

Study and training

Nugent said the shortfall in available positions had prompted candidates in the sector to consider new training and study options. Overseen by the ITAA, the Travel Professionals Skillnet has introduced several new courses this year, including a DIT-accredited Travel Professionals Higher Certificate and shorter training programmes focused on specific aspects of the travel business.

‘‘The Skillnet has been extremely important, as it allows us to improve staff skills and help travel companies put their best foot forward,” said Nugent. ‘‘Consumers have become more demanding, and people working in our sector now need an encyclopaedic knowledge of routes and destinations, the legalities and complexities of travel, visas and passports and insurance issues.”

McKeon said upskilling was a viable route for candidates unable to secure work in the sector.

‘‘There are lots of terrific courses available from Fás, and more directly tourism-related ones from Fáilte Ireland,” he said. ‘‘Some are distance learning, some are six weeks, others six months. There is something there for every skill. In all jobs, even craft-based professions, there is always a further level you can go to.

‘‘Courses that teach supervisor’s skills are a relatively attractive option for people. It is hoped that they can come away with a better CV and, when normal times return, they should be more employable and able to command a higher salary.”

Related sectors

Sorohan urged candidates to consider looking for work in a new or related sector or profession.

‘‘In these sectors, customer service is of huge importance, and people can perhaps transfer their skills Individuals could look at customer service jobs, waiting staff positions or others,” she said.

Nugent said other consumerfocused sectors, such as retailing or marketing, could offer employment opportunities to individuals with a professional background in travel or tourism.

‘‘To work in a travel environment, you have to be an extremely good ‘people person’ with a broad range of knowledge,” he said. ‘‘Having worked in the travel sector is very good training for any customerfacing role.”

Nugent said many of the candidates who have lost their jobs as a result of the downturn in travel and tourism were relatively recent arrivals to the country.

‘‘In 2006 and 2007, our members found it more or less impossible to recruit the staff they needed here,” he said. ‘‘They found very talented travel agency staff abroad, and lots of people had good experiences employing them. There is certainly then some mobility in the sector.”

Sorohan said the number of candidates applying for positions posted on Jobs.ie had fallen.

‘‘This January, employers could have expected to receive 66 applications, but in June this year that went down slightly to 45,” she said. ‘‘That would suggest that non-Irish workers unable to find a job in these industries this year have moved to seek employment elsewhere.”

Protecting jobs

Nugent said employers in the sector were keen to protect as many jobs as possible.

‘‘Companies have negotiated reductions in salaries and different part-time or other working arrangements with their staff,” he said. ‘‘Staff are entirely aware of the realities of the sector and have been quite understanding.”

Staff unhappy with the redundancy terms offered by Thomas Cook, following the closure of its Irish branches, with 77 redundancies earlier this month, staged a high-profile sit-in at the company’s Grafton Street branch.

However, Nugent said most redundancies in the sector were proving less contentious.

‘‘We provide a legal advisory service for our members that covers employment law and personnel management and doing right by your staff,” he said. ‘‘It is a difficult area, but in most cases things tend not to become confrontational.”

Further redundancies
McKeon said that, with no end to the downturn in sight, employers in the travel and tourism sector could announce further redundancies.

‘‘Travel people tend to be optimistic and hope that a recovery will come,” he said. ‘‘The problem is that we are now entering the off-season, and companies will not have built up the strong cash flows this summer to get them through next winter.

‘‘Huge discounting has been great for the consumer, but has only kept things ticking over. The lack of availability of credit is really going to test the survival capacity of lots of good businesses this winter.”

Despite this, the number of hospitality positions advertised on Jobs.ie in the first six months of the year were up on the same period last year.

‘‘From January to June, there was actually an increase in jobs being posted across all the five travel and tourism sectors by an average of 44 per cent, which is promising,” Sorohan said. ‘‘It suggests that these areas were hit hardest by the recession last year, but this year there are signs that each of these areas are picking up.

‘‘At present, the hotels category has the most number of jobs listed, and chef positions are also quite popular.”

Government cuts

Last month’s Bord Snip Nua report recommended a €12 million cut to the government supported Tourism Marketing Fund and a €15 million slice off Fáilte Ireland’s budget.

McKeon cautioned the government against implementing either measure.

‘‘The only thing that will keep jobs within the tourism sector is if visitors keep coming, so governments need to keep their marketing budgets in foreign markets,” he said. ‘‘It is a viciously competitive world out there, and if Ireland disappears from websites, trade promotions, media advertisements and all of that, we will lose market share.”

McKeon said discussions were under way with the government to give tourism companies access to the Enterprise Stabilisation Fund, which was announced earlier this month.

‘‘Foreign tourism is an export business, although domestic tourism is not,” he said. ‘‘We would be anxious to have the scheme extended to the travel and tourism sector.”

Future recovery
Nugent said the travel industry would recover quickly, once the wider economy stabilised.

‘‘What is good for the economy at large is good for the travel sector,” he said. ‘‘If the overall economy gets righted, it will kick-start growth for travel companies.”

When it emerges from the recession, Nugent said the sector would be leaner and more technologically advanced.

‘‘Travel is a very dynamic sector, and has been long before the recent fast economic growth and then sudden economic decline,” he said. ‘‘Our members are transforming their business models all the time and investing in the online capacity of their staff. ‘‘That is the way the sector is going.”

Irish have strong chance in Berlin World Championships

2009-08-31T12:15:00.004+01:00

Sunday Business Post - Business of Sport - Aug 16 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

The Irish squad competing at the World Track and Field Championships in Germany is one of the most experienced sent to a major championship, according to Liam Hennessy, president of Athletics Ireland. Leading track stars such as David Gillick, Derval O’Rourke, Paul Hession, Eileen O'Keeffe and Robert Heffernan are all part of the 14member squad at the championships, which began yesterday in Berlin.

‘‘The majority of these athletes competed in the last World Championships in Osaka in 2007, and again last year at the Olympics in Beijing, so we are lucky in that respect,” said Hennessy. ‘‘There are some great athletes on the team - and you look to the likes of Paul Hession (200 metres) and David Gillick (400 metres), who have been so impressive this year.

‘‘Derval O’Rourke (100 metres hurdles) showed what she is capable of when winning a medal at the European Indoors, so she is hopefully going to be up there,” said Hennessy. ‘‘Then you have Rob Heffernan and Olive Loughnane in the race walking and Eileen O’Keeffe in the hammer. Rob and Eileen were both top six in Osaka and Olive was our best performer in Beijing, with a seventh place finish. I think we could see some great performances in Berlin.”

The team for the championships was decided following the Woodie’s DIY National Track and Field Championships earlier this month at Santry Stadium. It also includes Roisin McGettigan in the 3,000 metres steeplechase, Alistair Cragg in the 5,000 metres, Jamie Costin and Colin Griffin in the 50 kilometre walk, Deirdre Ryan in the high jump, Deirdre Byrne in the 1,500 metres, Michelle Carey in the 400 metres hurdles and Thomas Chamney in both the 800 metres and 1,500 metres.

However, Hennessy said that, given the standard of competition at the World Championships, the majority of the Irish team would be concentrating on improving their performances, rather than winning medals.

‘‘Getting a medal would be a great achievement, but we have to look at it realistically,” he said. ‘‘When you compete at this level in athletics - whether it is the World Championships or Olympics - it is extremely tough to win a medal. Everything has to go perfectly for an athlete, and we have to remember that this is a world event, so we are up against the best athletes from across the globe.”

He said that, if the Irish team could get a range of finalists and see some personal bests, ‘‘we would be very happy’’. ‘‘That would represent a very successful championship,” he said.

Funding

The focus on track performances this month is welcome for Athletics Ireland, after another year marred by familiar political struggles and funding controversies in the generally eventful world of Irish athletics administration.

Hennessy said that Athletics Ireland was happy with the government funding received this year, although the total amount fell from €1.34 million in 2008 to just over €1 million.

‘‘The money is down from 2008, but that is the same for the majority of national governing bodies and we just have to get on with it like anyone in business,” he said. ‘‘The economic downturn has affected everyone and sport is no different. We are lucky in that [Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism] Martin Cullen fought hard to ensure we were still able to get a similar amount of Irish Sports Council (ISC) funding in 2009, considering the amount of cuts that are happening across the board.”

According to widespread reports earlier in the year, the ISC suspended Athletics Ireland’s annual funding after disagreements over internal staffing and administrative issues between the two bodies, while former Athletics Ireland chief executive Mary Coghlan has alleged that ISC chairman Ossie Kilkenny and chief executive John Treacy were behind her removal from the position in June.

Coghlan is currently pursuing an unfair dismissal case in the High Court, and Hennessy said he could not comment on this issue. However, he maintained that any strains in the relationship between the ISC and Athletics Ireland had been exaggerated by the media.

‘‘There are no issues with the ISC and we have our full funding for 2009,which has helped us to invest in a range of programmes - from high performance right down to grass roots and participation level,” he said. ‘‘We work very closely with the ISC on all aspects of athletics. It has been integral to establishing the programmes and structures we have implemented and the success we have achieved in recent years.”

Brighter prospects

After the World Championships conclude on August 23, Hennessy said that Athletics Ireland’s focus would switch to the European Cross Country Championships, being held in Santry in December.

‘‘Hosting the Spar European Cross Country Championships is a huge honour for Irish athletics,” he said. ‘‘We are hoping to put on a great event for the athletes and the spectators. It is a huge undertaking, but everyone is fully committed to making this a huge success, from Fingal County Council to the Irish Sports Council and Dublin City Council. We are all working together on the event, as we have been for nearly two years now.”

He said that Ireland would have a strong team at the event, with a possibility of success for the home team.

‘‘What makes the event even more exciting is the strength of the Irish team we are going to have there,” he said. ‘‘With athletes of the calibre of Martin Fagan, Mary Cullen and Fionnuala Britton we will have a team capable of winning medals. For these athletes to be able to compete in a European Championships in front of their home crowd will give them a huge boost."

Peachy chance to solve staff issues

2009-08-10T10:44:00.003+01:00

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment page - Aug 9 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

A Donegal company has developed an innovative online service to help companies to manage staff in different locations. Due to launch this month, Nvolve’s PeachyPeople.com website combines three tools for communication, training and people management.

Barry Harper, chief executive of Nvolve, said the product would appeal to companies with far-flung, mobile workers.

‘‘The whole concept of teleworking and the distributed workforce is very prominent at the moment,” Harper said. ‘‘Many companies are cutting costs and have people working from home. If companies want to grow, they have to go into Britain or Europe. Peachy People.com has been developed to meet these trends.”

Harper drew on his own personal experiences to design the Peachy Performer element of the site, which also includes Peachy Learner and PeachyConnect.

‘‘I used to be HR manager for Nortel in Galway,” he said. ‘‘We did an annual performance appraisal, which was seen as a form-filling exercise and just got over as quickly as possible.

‘‘With PeachyPeople.com, managers or individuals assign different objectives, which can be reviewed or updated every week or every month. Managers can run reports showing the progress of all outstanding objectives, giving an overall snapshot of how the business is performing.”

The Peachy Learner toolset helps employees to share knowledge more effectively. It also provides access to Nvolve’s e-learning products.

‘‘It allows users to share learning objects such as web links and reports, videos or webcasts, while also having a catalogue of 500 e-learning courses that users can take at any time,” Harper said.

Peachy Connect facilitates communication between employees with free peer-to-peer phone calls, video conferencing and online collaboration.

‘‘I can hit a couple of clicks and everyone gets an e-mail with the correct number to dial and the password to enter the teleconference,” Harper said. ‘‘If I want a web conference, it is the same - only everyone clicks on a URL. If I want to see your computer screen, I can.We can collaborate together on a document. It is all about saving people time, making them more productive.”

Harper launched a test version of PeachyPeople.com late last year, and was spurred on by the response it received.

‘‘It got picked up by some prominent blogs, and we now have over 500 companies registered - spread across retail, hospitality, professional services, finance, biotech and many others, including the Hilton Hotel Group, Fexco and Digiweb,” he said.

Peachy People is delivered using the software as a service (Saas) model, which means that it is accessed on internet browsers.

‘‘I am here in Donegal and you could be in America, but with SaaS it makes no difference,” Harper said. ‘‘The information is displayed extremely fast and your browser is turned into a desktop-like application.”

Users can access the basic package for free, while additional functionality is available to buy.

‘‘Every account gets 100MB of free storage space, but once people start using the application, they will generally need to purchase more storage space from us,” said Harper. ‘‘Twenty user web conferences are free, but if you want 50 users, there will be charges. The e-learning courses in the ‘knowledge bank’ element will be offered at a cost. Some companies may never need to move into the paying versions, however.”

Peachy People users are encouraged to provide feedback and suggest ideas to improve the service.

‘‘If users come to us and say they want a recruitment tool, then we will look to add that,” he said. ‘‘Eventually, the user community will determine the feature-set.”

Harper established Nvolve in 2006.The company has six staff at its headquarters in Letterkenny and 15 developers based in India. Recently shortlisted for the Small Firms Association’s Innovation Award, Nvolve has also received equity funding under Enterprise Ireland’s high performance startup scheme

‘‘We are looking at going to the market for venture capital funding later this year,” said Harper. ‘‘We already have companies registered from Germany, South Africa, Australia, South Korea and Japan. Our aim is over one million daily users within the next 12 months.”

Mayo firm signs New Zealand deal

2009-07-13T15:51:00.002+01:00

Sunday Business Post - Done Deal page - Jul 12 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

Mayo company Surface Power has agreed a NZ$30 million (€13.5 million) deal with a New Zealand-based distributor. Under the terms of the five-year agreement with Solar Distribution, the company will establish a distribution and training centre in Tauranga, New Zealand, creating 12 new jobs.

‘‘The training and development centre will deploy our system to tens of thousands of utility customers, managing quality control and the whole exercise effectively,” said John Quinn, founder of Surface Power.

Surface Power makes solar thermal heating and cooling systems to help large-scale utility companies and governments to offset CO2 emissions.

Quinn said the company would announce a number of international deals over the next 12 months on the back of product approval it had secured in over 25 countries.

‘‘We are scaling up from a product development business,” Quinn said. ‘‘We have distributor approaches from most countries in the world at this stage, but we are concentrating on the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.”

Surface Power is seeking external investment to fund its expansion plans.

‘‘Several US-based investors have visited us and we would hope to have funding in place within the next three to four months,” said Quinn

Last month, the company signed a €20 million distribution deal with Irish partner Moritz Group. Established in 2003, with backing from Udaras na Gaeltachta and Enterprise Ireland, it employs 15 staff in Ireland and Britain.

‘‘Our 2007 [turnover] was €500,000. In 2009, we are expecting revenues of between €2 and €2.5 million,” Quinn said. ‘‘Next year, we expect to be in the US and Canadian markets, so the figure will grow significantly again.” Surface Power licenses production to a manufacturing partner in China, but plans to locate all activities in Ireland in the future.

‘‘We plan, in the next 12 months, to manufacture in Ireland to service the European market, particularly Britain,” Quinn said. ‘‘We will also establish manufacturing centres in North America and Australia.”

Ronaldo to make his Madrid debut in Ireland

2009-06-15T16:58:00.003+01:00

Sunday Business Post - Business of Sport page - Jun 14 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

Cristiano Ronaldo looks set to make his Real Madrid debut in Ireland. The Portuguese star is expected to complete a €92 million transfer from Manchester United in time to line out alongside his new €65 million teammate Kaka´ for a friendly against Shamrock Rovers at their new Tallaght Stadium next month.

Ronaldo and Kaka´ will be accompanying their new team-mates – including Spanish internationals Iker Casillas and Sergio Ramos, and Dutch stars Arjen Robben and Ruud van Nistelrooy – on a ten-day preseason training camp at Carton House in Maynooth, organised by Fintan Drury’s sports management company Platinum One.

‘‘The Ronaldo story was fantastic news for us,” said Eamon McLoughlin, head of football at Platinum One. ‘‘We knew from speaking with them early on it was their intention to bring in some top, top players. We’ve done Barcelona in Scotland for the last two years, and all the top players were there: Messi, Henry, Xavi and Iniesta. We cannot know what will happen with injury or illness, but 25 players from Real’s first team squad will be in Maynooth.”

McLoughlin said that Real Madrid would play one match against an Irish team during their trip, but could not yet confirm the date or opposition.

‘‘We are talking to the FAI and the clubs and to South Dublin County Council, before we can release details of the date and the match times,” he said.

It is understood, however, that the game will take place on July 20, and that extra temporary seating will be installed at Tallaght Stadium to allow a 10,000 attendance.

McLoughlin said that Madrid’s Irish trip – which takes place from July 13 to 22 – would form a key part of new first team coach Manuel Pellegrini’s preparations for Madrid’s 2009-10 Primera Liga and Champions League campaigns.

‘‘It is the hardest part of their pre-season, with twice daily intensive sessions,” said McLoughlin. ‘‘It is too warm to do those in Madrid at that time of the year. The new manager’s fitness coaches were in Ireland this week.”

McLoughlin said that Platinum One would be covering all of Madrid’s costs for their time in Ireland.

‘‘We will cover everything from chartering the flight to the training pitches, to the food, civic engagements in Ireland, security and everything else,” he said. ‘‘From the minute they get on the plane in Madrid, to the minute they touch down on return to Madrid, we will control everything. Quite a bit of planning has gone into it.”

In return, the company gets to market all the team’s activities during the training camp, including TV rights for the game, McLoughlin said.

‘‘All management, commercial and media issues around the game would be covered by Platinum One,” he said. ‘‘We will run daily press conferences at Carton House, where we would expect 100-plus media from around the world. The game will be live in Spain and, with the sort of players they are signing, there is a fair chance it will be live in quite a few countries.”

IFI to get €1.7m facelift and redevelopment

2009-06-15T16:41:00.003+01:00

Sunday Business Post - Done Deal page - Jun 14 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

The Irish Film Institute (IFI) has announced plans to invest €1.7 million in the redevelopment of its premises in Dublin’s Temple Bar.

As part of the project, said IFI director Sarah Glennie, the Eustace Street facility will get a new 60-seat cinema to screen films and documentaries. The institute already has two cinemas as well as onsite retail, pub and restaurant facilities.

‘‘This is much-needed work for the IFI. We are very tight at the moment, with two screens. This will really let us expand our activities and show new films for longer, as well as different seasons and sorts of programmes,” said Glennie.

The new cinema would have digital projection technology enhancing historical and independent screenings from the Irish Film Archive and emerging Irish filmmakers, Glennie said.

‘‘We are the home of the Irish Film Archive, which is an incredible resource of Irish heritage. We will be able to really expand the amount of material for people to experience. We will also look at more education programmes and courses,” she said.

The design for the revamp, by O’Donnell & Tuomey Architects, follows an earlier upgrade to the Eustace Street facility by the same architects, dating back to 1992.

‘‘The feeling of the merging of the modern with the old listed building will remain, but the experience will be better,” said Glennie. ‘‘On entering the building, you will come into a dedicated film and bookshop, which will really signal what the IFI is about. The bar, which is a very important source of income for us, will have a much-needed facelift, and there will be new washroom, box office and information facilities.”

Glennie said that funding for the €1.7 million project had come from a mix of public and private sources.

‘‘We were awarded an access to capital grant of €1.2million from the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism in 2007. We then had to secure matched funding. We got an anonymous private donation, and the remaining amount came from ourselves,” she said.

"Building work will commence on the site on July 6.The cinema will remain open for the duration of the project. We will be open throughout the summer in the evenings and all weekend. The build work will be revealed in stages and finally complete by the end of October,” said Glennie.

The IFI’s most recent published accounts, for the 12 months of 2007, show turnover of €1.7 million. It employs 60 staff.

The IFI is preparing to host the ‘Stranger than Fiction’ documentary festival, which opens on June 18.

‘‘There is a very strong programme of new international and Irish documentary films. The highlights include the Irish premiere of the Michael Moore-style corporate infiltration documentary, The Yes Men Fix The World,” said Glennie. ‘‘It will also mark the world premiere of a very interesting film called ‘The Liberties’ by young Irish film-makers, which looks at the history and key characters of Dublin’s Liberties area.”

Trusting open source

2009-06-15T16:24:00.004+01:00

Sunday Business Post - Computers in Business Magazine - June 7th 2009

Ten popular commercial open source applications...

Alfresco
Alfresco is an open source enterprise content management system, which includes content management functionality, along with collaboration and interoperability tools, and a menu of services and training options. It is available in community (free) and enterprise (paid-for) versions.

Canonical / Ubuntu
Canonical is the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, a communitybased operating system based on the original Linux open source OS. The company offers paid-for 24/7 support and professional services, engineering services, and hardware and software certification around the Ubuntu system, which itself is free to download and use.

JasperSoft
JasperSoft's open source business intelligence suite includes reporting, analytics and integration tools for SMEs. It's available in either standalone or SaaS editions, and offered in community (free) and enterprise (paid-for) versions.

Liferay
Liferay Portal is an enterprise open source portal framework, offering integrated web publishing and content management, an enterprise service bus and SOA for application integration, and compatibility with all major IT infrastructures. The standard edition can be downloaded free, the paid-for enterprise version comes with support, training and services.

Magento
Magento is an open source enterprise-grade eCommerce application for managing online stores, which includes marketing and catalogue management tools. The community version is free, while the paid-for version with extra functionality, services and support starts at $8,900.

MySQL
MySQL is the world's most popular open source database. It's free to download and use, and many companies (including Sun, which ownsMySQL) offer a range of paid-for support and services - Sun's MySQL Enterprise Server and Production Support product costs $599.

Onepoint
Onepoint's open source project management software integrates project planning, controlling, monitoring and reporting into a single web 2.0-based project leadership software solution for project-oriented companies. Onepoint Project 8.1 for a single user costs €149, while five-user versions cost €1,499. Meanwhile, larger enterprise solutions are costed on a peruser basis.

Openbravo
Openbravo is a fully functional open source integrated web-based open source enterprise resource management (ERP) system, with procurement, financial, reporting, sales and project management and many other modules. SME users pay €1,500 plus €400-€500 per concurrent user, while the enterprise edition costs €500-€700 per concurrent user.

Red Hat
Red Hat provides Linuxbased operating system software along with applications, management, and middleware solutions.The basic subscription to Red Hat Enterprise Linux costs $349 and offerings range up to the premium Subscription (24/7 phone support, web support, unlimited incidents) at $2,499.

Sugar CRM
Sugar CRM is the world's largest provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software. Sugar Express costs $499 for one to five users, while the Sugar Enterprise edition is $600 per user.

This list was a panel for a longer piece I wrote for CIB looking at the increasing availability of business-ready open source applications. Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

Start-ups ‘gridlocked’ by lack of funds

2009-05-25T14:44:00.003+01:00

Sunday Business Post - New Business Section - May 24 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

Start-ups and other small companies are "gridlocked" by a lack of available finance, according to Eilis Quinlan, the newly elected chairperson of the Irish Small & Medium Enterprises Association (Isme).

‘‘The absolutely crucial issue overriding everything else at the moment is cashflow,” said Quinlan. ‘‘That, teamed with the late payments issue, is absolutely grid locking a lot of companies. The money is just not moving out there.”

Quinlan, who has run her own accountancy practice in Naas for 17 years, said her primary objective in her new role would be to help Isme’s 8,500 member companies to get money flowing through their businesses again.

Stilted cashflow was forcing otherwise viable companies out of business, according to Quinlan.

‘‘Bad businesses will always fail anyway, unless they are particularly lucky,” she said. ‘‘They do not deserve to succeed. Good businesses, which have been operating for ten to 15 years, with fundamental good business models and tight ships, and which are not operating in areas of the economy that are defunct, cannot get paid. Their debtors are taking longer and longer and the banks will not extend their overdrafts.”

Quinlan said small businesses in Ireland faced a number of other challenges.

‘‘The loss of competitiveness is also a major issue,” she said. ‘‘The cost of doing business in Ireland has become massive - labour costs, local charges, fuel costs. For exporting businesses, the fall in sterling is an issue.”

Quinlan said start-ups, and entrepreneurs who might otherwise opt to set up in business, needed forceful action from the government.

‘‘General economic uncertainty is a problem. People do not know what the government’s plans are, or even what government is going to be there in six months. There is no idea in place of any sort of overall master plan.”

Quinlan established her own independent firm of chartered certified accountants and registered auditors in Naas in 1992.The practice employs ten staff to provide auditing services, taxation advice and management consultancy, primarily to SMEs.

Quinlan is a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, holds a certificate in computing from Dublin City University and has an accredited commercial mediator award from the Mediation Forum of Ireland.

Quinlan is also a committee member of Naas Chamber of Commerce, a member of Mensa and a member of the government’s SME Management Development Council. In her new role with Isme, Quinlan succeeds outgoing chairman JJ Killian, managing director of Clonmelbased Flancare Distribution.

‘‘I am a qualified commercial mediator, and I am an experienced liquidator, but more important than any of that is that I am actually an SME myself,” said Quinlan.

‘‘I am a small-time employer and a risk-taker. I understand the business risks, and I hope this will stand in my stead very well in my new role.”

Quinlan said there had been a rise in the number of new businesses formed so far this year, particularly by entrepreneurs made redundant as a result of the recession.

‘‘There are huge amounts of sole traders and small companies starting up, as people do not just want to lounge around on the dole,” she said.

‘‘People are taking the opportunity to set out on their own. A lot of these are highly educated and highly skilled people, who have been thinking about taking the leap for the last ten years.”

Redundancy may turn out to be a positive event for many of those now starting out on their own.

‘‘There are really positive aspects about owning your own business, so this push could be the best thing that could have happened for them,” she said. ‘‘Any SME owner manager will tell you that there is not much work-life balance during the start-up phase, but in the medium and long-term the payback is huge.”

Quinlan advised potential entrepreneurs, with viable business ideas, not to be disheartened by the current difficult-looking business climate.

‘‘My advice would be to go for it if you have a good idea,” she said.

‘‘Entrepreneurs have always been brave and willing to take calculated risks. There are always opportunities out there and there still are. HP and Nokia were both set up during recessions.”

Quinlan added difficult economic times could be advantageous for some new businesses.

‘‘The cost base, in some ways, is now relatively low,” she said. ‘‘Insurance costs can be found cheaper. You can shop around for things like fuel, and rents can often be negotiated down in the current climate.”

Quinlan added, however, that it was imperative that new businesses secured sufficient funding to get off the ground. Access to start-up bank credit was an issue for entrepreneurs at the moment, she said.

‘‘At the time I was setting out, it was easier to get bank support than at present. A bank will want to see the paper, and they will want to see the figures. I can totally understand that as even in the good times banks are entitled to reasonable projections and a master plan.”

Quinlan advised new business owners to seek support and guidance and not feel they had to do everything themselves.

‘‘Do not try and be everything to all people,” she said. ‘‘Reach out and get help. If you have an excellent idea that is your unique strength, do not be embarrassed if you do not know the financial rules or the legal end of things.

‘‘One phone call or e-mail to Isme and we can comeback with the right answer. The support that is available from us is worth ten times the cost of the membership.”

Quinlan said new start-up companies would create the momentum to lift Ireland out of the economic doldrums.

‘‘Small businesses are the lifeblood of this economy,” she said.

‘‘When things get rough, your corner shop or local boutique or garage does not up sticks and move to another country. We are very adaptable and we can change direction quickly.

‘‘We can take setbacks on the chin and come back for more. In a way, we are much better poised to react to things as they happen than bigger business is.”

More government assistance is needed to improve credit access for small and medium-sized businesses, said Quinlan.

‘‘A government commitment to promoting SMEs would help,” she said. ‘‘The banks say they are lending, but we have seen no examples of that, I am afraid. Isme was instrumental in securing €350 million from the European Investment Bank, but it is just not being passed on. ‘‘The lip service paid to an SME stimulus provision in the last budget was pathetic and heart-breaking.

[Minister for Finance] Brian Lenihan had one line about €50 million being given through Enterprise Ireland, but how much of that will filter down to SMEs?

‘‘Then you have to go through hoops and piles of paper to get anything. In the meantime, new and small businesses are failing. Liquidations are coming across my door every day of the week, including good, serious businesses.”

Keep your career moving in the interim

2009-05-19T14:54:00.002+01:00

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment Section - May 17 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

"There has been a significant increase in the numbers of people approaching us, many of whom are more senior than might have been coming to us before,” said Robert Wasson, managing director of Watershed Interim Management.

"We have a flood of people at the moment, people who have been made redundant recently and others who feel they are about to lose their jobs. The seniority of some of the people coming to us has been a bit of an eye-opener.”

The increase in candidates seeking interim opportunities echoes the growing popularity of this option for employers, according to Patrick Dwyer, managing director of Executives Online.

‘‘We have seen a number of Irish companies, which cannot hire permanently owing to hiring freezes, take someone on in an interim capacity,” Dwyer said. ‘‘There has been a rise in the use of interims for projects that are a direct response to the economic crisis. Demand for interims to work on cost reduction - such as financial directors or procurement professionals - and sales improvements, are up.”

Career choice
When Michael Cowan decided to enter the interim market in 2005, he already had 18 years’ experience as a marketing director under his belt in the FMCG field. Among Cowan’s previous employers were multinationals, including Proctor & Gamble, Diageo and PepsiCo in Ireland, Britain and Central Europe.

‘‘It was pretty much a deliberate career choice,” Cowan said. ‘‘My wife and I decided to move back to Ireland. At the time, I looked at my CV and felt that interim management just suited my long-term career aspirations.”

Cowan said the move into the interim market was relatively straightforward.

‘‘The first role I had was working for a well-known Irish drinks business which was looking to launch a new product,” he said. ‘‘With my background, the functional skills and experience were there. It was just a matter of focusing on the assignment at hand and delivering a certain project brief.”

He said that the interim management projects he had so far worked on had been varied and interesting.

‘‘I am on my fourth interim assignment in five years,” Cowan said. ‘‘I have worked for drinks companies, an international sports body on a particular tournament, a financial institution and now an iconic Irish retail business.

‘‘Typically, I would be with a client for six months. Quite often, you are replacing someone who has a very specific skill set that might take longer to recruit long-term.

‘‘Also quite often, as in my current role, you are brought in to fill a void that is not just one particular job, but work across the organisation to sort out some fundamental issues and devise the best way forward.”

Working as an interim manager allows Cowan to focus on the project to hand, while avoiding long term management issues and the potential to become involved in company politics.

‘‘Working this way is about meritocracy,” he said. ‘‘You are very much rewarded for getting the job done, rather than being part of a department and getting established within the company politics and infrastructure. You are just there to do a job, which helps keep you focused, and helps you to be much more effective.

You can switch in and out of different companies and challenges. It helps to keep fresh that way.”

The flexible nature of interim work suits Cowan’s personal circumstances. ‘‘I come from New Zealand and this allows me the flexibility to, if I want, take three months off without it interfering with the business,” he said. ‘‘It suits our family lifestyle as well.”

Candidates who make the move from full-time roles into interim management tend to a mass to an established wealth of professional experience, said Was son of Watershed Interim Management.

‘‘Clients tend to select people who are slightly over-qualified for the position,” he said. ‘‘Typically the people we would place would have significant managerial experience, generally greater than ten years in senior management positions.”

Dwyer said interim management work suited people who were flexible in their approach and confident in their own abilities.

‘‘A successful interim manager needs to be very self-directed and resilient, and have a strong track record of delivering results,” he said.

‘‘Interim managers must be able to find their own assignments - although agencies can help - and cope with the on-off pattern of work, live out of a suitcase where necessary and be held to a very high standard for the results they are being asked to produce.”

Lifestyle change

Lifestyle is an important issue for anyone considering a move into interim management, Wasson said.

‘‘Some people may not want to work at certain times of the year, or may not want to work five days of the week,” he said. ‘‘They may want to keep a few days a week to work on something else, or for family purposes.

That is quite a common thing, especially with senior professional women who often want to work three days a week.”

Interim management and consultancy are not the same thing, according to Wasson.

‘‘The main difference is that consultants come in and advise people what to do,” he said. ‘‘Interim managers come in and roll their sleeves up and do it. Not everyone who is a consultant can be an interim manager, and vice versa, but you do get people who can do both.”

Interim roles

Many different types of organisations use interim managers - and for many different reasons, according to Deirdre O’Shaughnessy, business development manager with Inter IM Executives.

‘‘There is no ‘typical’ client,” O’Shaughnessy said. ‘‘Opportunities come from all sectors of the economy - private, public, and non-profit - and cover all managerial functions and qualifications. Interim managers can support one off projects, such as integrating mergers or acquisitions, product or market diversification or IT initiatives.

‘‘Interims can also be taken on to support organisational change, such as the introduction of new processes or management strategies, or to take over a critical role where a senior executive is absent through illness or pending the replacement of an outgoing executive.

‘‘An interim manager can even test a new or changing role in advance of a permanent candidate being appointed.”

Salary prospects

Senior executives could increase their annual power by working as an interim manager.

‘‘Successful interim managers can earn orders of magnitude more than they did in permanent employment,” Dwyer said. ‘‘If they replace a salaried role paying €100,000 per year, with interim roles where they earn €1,000 per day and are on assignment just 75 per cent of the year, they could easily double their earnings.”

Wasson said that interim managers working with Watershed typically earned between €750 and €1,200 per day plus Vat. He warned, however, that working on an interim basis did not automatically guarantee a high annual wage.

‘‘Interim may not suit someone who expects a very high salary, because of the rates available in Ireland and the number of days you can expect to work,” he said. ‘‘There are 220 days available and we would say that 150 days is fantastic. Therefore, you will have difficulty earning more than €150,000 through the interim route.”

Cowan said his yearly earning capacity as an interim equalled fulltime employment.

‘‘I operate through a limited liability company and my interim management services are part of a broader marketing services agency that Iown,” he said.

‘‘There are benefits to doing that versus being a PAYE worker. There are risks though. You do not get sick pay or paid holidays and there are no bonus schemes or share options. The rate takes that into account, so it probably evens out in the long run.”

Market trends

Wasson said there were more interim managers seeking roles than there were positions available. He said, however, that companies driven to interim management by the downturn were likely to stick with the model when the economy picked up.

‘‘Just at the moment, the stream of opportunities is drier than we would like,” Wasson said. ‘‘Having said that, we are seeing signs that companies are looking to interim managers as the way to start to reemploy people again.

‘‘We are convinced that will be an increasing trend and that the recession will be very good for the interim industry. It will break the permanent-only idea in people’s minds.

‘‘When companies think about taking on a senior executive, they will think about what they really need, and more often consider taking on someone for just six months, or just three days a week.”

Despite the downturn, Cowan said he would continue to work as an interim manager.

‘‘With the risk of the gap between assignments, there is a temptation if an offer came along of a permanent job, but at the moment I am pretty comfortable for the future of interim management,” he said.

Legal sector looks to retraining

2009-04-27T15:09:00.003+01:00

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment Section - Apr 26 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

Earlier this month, Dublin legal firm William Fry announced 17 redundancies, while in February, 45 jobs were lost at A&L Goodbody, another ‘big five’ legal firm.

Arthur Cox is also seeking voluntary redundancies from up to 20 secretarial and support staff. A similar number of qualified solicitors have left the company so far this year.

Legal firms around the country are implementing similar plans, according to David Byrnes, legal, tax and public practice manager with Brightwater Selection.

‘‘It is fair to say that the economic downturn has affected the entire legal recruitment market,” Byrnes said. ‘‘Unfortunately, it has affected small, medium and large legal firms, in-house legal people and the public sector as well. It is a particularly difficult time right now.”

Dave Riordan, a senior recruitment consultant with Careers Register, said jobs were on the line across the board.

‘‘A lot of legal firms are cutting numbers, and practices are scaling back their staff and not keeping on newly qualified staff,” said Riordan. ‘‘They are also offering early retirement to senior management and senior partners. Recruitment freezes are going on in many firms at the same time.”

Property and finance
For most firms facing difficulties, the collapse of the property market was a major catalyst, said Cliodhna Dineen, head of law at Griffith College Cork.

‘‘A huge amount of the work done and the fees gained by law firms in recent years would have been in property-related areas,” said Dineen. ‘‘As the property boom has gone, conveyancing work has gone with it. That has been the biggest problem for solicitors’ offices throughout the country. That is where a lot of employees have been let go or had their hours reduced.”

Unprecedented turbulence in banking and related sectors has added to the woes of legal employers nationwide.

‘‘Practices which were servicing the financial services industry have be en badly affected,” said Riordan. ‘‘Banking and funds have been the worst hit in the last six months in particular.”

Salary cuts
Accompanying the job cuts announced by William Fry and Goodbody were further plans by both firms to reduce pay for remaining staff. Riordan said salary cuts were widespread throughout the sector as firms sought to manage costs.”

Salaries have only moved downwards,” he said. ‘‘Towards the end of last year, O’Donnell Sweeney cut salaries of senior staff by 15 per cent, and cuts of between 10 and 15 per cent have been fairly typical in other larger legal firms.

‘‘Most legal employers are cutting salaries and looking at other ways of retaining staff, and different working hours and working arrangements are being looked at.”

Too many candidates
There are many more qualified legal professionals looking for work than there are positions available, said Byrnes.

‘‘Due to the number of firms that have had to let staff go and the sheer number of people who have qualified, there are a lot more candidates than jobs at present,” he said.

Unemployed candidates have scaled back on salary demands in the hope of securing new roles.

‘‘People see that they have to be very reasonable and flexible with their salary demands,” he said. ‘‘I have seen people at senior associate or just below partner level taking €20,000 to €25,000 hits on their salary just to get a job.

‘‘These are very good people, but because of the area they have worked in, it is difficult for them to get a job if they are not flexible on salary.”

New candidates
Newly qualified solicitors are particularly vulnerable in an increasingly difficult labour market.

‘‘I met a recently qualified solicitor - a fantastic candidate, but she is on €22,000 a year,” said Riordan. ‘‘About a year ago, she would be moving to €50,000 to €60,000, but as it stands, she is just being let go. That is typical for a lot of newly qualified solicitors.”

Riordan said a lot of highly qualified legal professionals were finding it difficult to secure new jobs.

‘‘A lot of solicitors have trained for years to get to where they are, and it is very frustrating for them to not actually have the tools and skills to find that next job as quickly as they would imagine a highly qualified person would,” he said.

‘‘We are advising them that it will take a bit longer to find the right role at the moment.” The decline in property-related work has impacted demand for solicitors with skills and experience in the area.

‘‘It creates huge challenges for individuals, because in most cases the legal professionals would have specialised,” said Byrnes. ‘‘For guys who went into some of the ‘big five’ or other law firms and just did property work throughout their career, it is very difficult.

They do not have to go right back to the start, but there will definitely have to be an element of retraining.”

Study options
Dineen said the majority of students completing law degrees this year did not expect to secure work with legal firms upon graduating.

‘‘The mood among our final year students is that most will continue studying and pursue a masters in law or other postgraduate courses in other areas,” she said. ‘‘They see that there are not that many jobs out there, so they keep studying and gaining more academic qualifications. That is the consensus around all third-level institutions at the moment.”

Byrnes said the number of candidates opting to study law had increased significantly in recent years, leading to a glut of supply in a cooling market.

‘‘The numbers going into Blackhall had increased significantly in recent years,” he said. ‘‘A lot of people are coming out qualified at a time when the market is not particularly buoyant.”

Newly qualified solicitors who cannot secure work can opt to continue their study, move into other markets or emigrate in search of work.

‘‘Further training and retraining has become the chosen avenue for many newly qualifieds, while some newly qualified solicitors are trying to offer services out of a home practice,” said Riordan. ‘‘The Law Society Gazette had an article recently on opportunities in Australia, China, the Middle East and Norway, which highlighted how far newly qualified solicitors are looking.”

Flexible skills
Candidates with a good law degree have the benefit of a range of career options requiring similar skills.

‘‘There are so many areas that you can branch into from a law degree,” Dineen said.

‘‘Not only does the degree train you in the academic side of the law, but you also learn so many essential skills such as critical analysis, problem solving and that type of thing. Those skills are invaluable in any profession or industry, whether journalism, banking or any form of business.”

In-house opportunities
Some opportunities do exist for legal professionals with the right skills and experience.

‘‘There is more activity in in house legal roles than in practice,” Byrnes said. ‘‘This is due to simple economics, as a lot of companies now are looking to have people in-house who maybe cost less than using specialist consultants from a legal firm.

‘‘Until recently, companies were looking for the best advice and they were willing to pay for it. Now they are looking for a bit more value for money.”

Byrnes said increasing regulation and compliance in financial services and other sectors could boost demand for suitable candidates.

‘‘Over the next couple of months, we will see a renewed focus on regulation and compliance, particularly in the financial services sector.

‘‘There will be opportunities for a good number of legal professionals to focus on these areas. I see an opportunity for the Law Society to run some courses around the new financial services regulations,” he said.

Riordan said the difficulties facing companies operating in a downturn could create opportunities for legal professionals.

‘‘Insolvency and corporate recovery requires legal work,” he said. ‘‘For solicitors, the area of insolvency, unfortunately, is on the up,” he said.

Family law is another relatively busy area, according to Dineen.

‘‘Areas of law that remain consistently busy and essential include family law,” she said.

‘‘People will always be divorcing and separating, and there will always be maintenance issues and concerns in that area. That has remained consistently busy.”

Signs of recovery
Riordan said there were some early signs of a tentative recovery in the legal market.

‘‘We feel there is a bit of a bounce over the last month. Maybe it is because some firms had put recruitment on hold for a while, and could not hold out any longer.

‘‘Maybe it is because there are fantastic candidates and wonderful talent out there, and they have decided to take advantage of it. It could also be that there are fewer recruitment firms as well, but we are definitely busier and we hope it will continue into the summer.”

Hotel reopens with an emphasis on true quality

2009-04-14T12:49:00.002+01:00

Sunday Business Post - New Business Section - Apr 12 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

The downturn in the hospitality sector has afforded an unlikely opportunity for two entrepreneurs. For Patrick Dillon and Paul O’Shea, the opportunity to set out on their own came earlier this year, with the closure in January of the Quality Resort Hotel in Killarney, Co Kerry. Dillon was general manager of the hotel, while O’Shea was financial controller.

Following the closure, the pair agreed a lease deal with owner Hepton Developments to take over the majority of rooms, reopening the facility on the Cork Road on April 9. The new hotel will continue to trade as Quality Resort Killarney, offering the same food, beverage and leisure facilities as before, according to Dillon, who is now managing director of the hotel.

Despite its recent failure, Dillon is upbeat about future prospects for the hotel. The business strategy would, he said, be to focus on the Irish market, rather than seeking to attract overseas visitors.

‘‘Our key strategy is to focus on our core market, which is the Irish family holiday market. We are going to be chasing the local market in a big way, whereas before we were part of an international brand. Our strategy is to provide similar facilities as we did previously, but giving extra value,” he said.

Dillon said that the re-opening of the hotel created 60 jobs, while up to 200 positions would come on stream in the high season.

‘‘We had an open day for staff, and advertised online and on the Fás website. A lot of people have been handing CVs in at the front door,” he said.

Under new management, Dillon said the hotel would contribute more than €3 million to the regional economy this year alone.

‘‘This will generate more than €2 million in wages, and another €1 million to mostly local suppliers. Then there is the knock-on effect for bars, restaurants and other businesses around Killarney,” he said.

While Quality Hotel previously operated with a mix of hotel rooms, holiday homes and apartments, Dillon said the new business would operate on a more streamlined basis.

‘‘We are opening with 199 bedrooms, so it is a materially different business to what was there previously,” he said.

O’Shea is finance director of the new operation. He said the move to agree a deal with the hotel’s owners, Hepton Developments, following the collapse of the existing operator Carvanna Properties, was swift and decisive.

‘‘We knew other prospective operators were making proposals, so we said, ‘why not ourselves?’,” he said. ‘‘We believed that we knew the business better than anybody else, we had the figures and we started putting a business plan together. We approached the landlord with what we thought was a viable rent compared to what was being paid before, taking into account that we were not taking some of the rooms.”

Dillon and O’Shea have formed a new management company, Laethanta Saoire, to run the hotel. Dillon owns 75 per cent of the new company, with O’Shea owning the remaining 25 per cent. ‘‘We had to put in a certain amount of money ourselves. The banks were fairly supportive, as we had a realistic business plan. We were not looking for a large loan to redecorate, it was mainly working capital,” he said.

The new company is targeting 40,000 room nights this year. It plans to utilise its database of previous customers to drum up repeat business. ‘‘Forty-five per cent of our customers were repeat customers.

We will be doing a very large mail-shot to all of our past guests, along with general advertising.

‘‘The key message is that we are open again and ready to welcome people back.” Dillon said the hotel would compete on the basis of value for money, rather than offering below-cost room rates. ‘‘We do not want to create a business that is not sustainable. There are a lot of hotels out there, particularly in Dublin, slashing rates,” he said.

‘‘This is great in the short term, but will their businesses survive? A core part of our strategy is giving extra value to our customers so that they return.” Dillon, who has been in the business for 20 years, advised entrepreneurs in the hospitality and tourism sector in Ireland to keep costs down and prices realistic.

‘‘It is a difficult time for all businesses, and the key thing is trying to manage costs. You need to spend every penny you have very wisely. You need to have a realistic business plan and know your market. There is no point doing something one year that cannot be sustained after that. It is about being sensible,” he said.

Dillon said he expected the number of overseas visitors to Ireland to fall this year. He said this would be balanced out by the projected increase in cash strapped Irish holiday-makers opting for locations at home. ‘‘The forecasts are that the overseas market will be back by 8-9 per cent this year. The indications are that the home holiday market will be stronger this year, and that will be great for us,” he said.

Opportunities exist in tough times

2009-04-08T19:11:00.002+01:00

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment Section - Apr 05 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

This year’s National Recruitment Federation (NRF) annual conference takes place against the backdrop of troubled times for an industry halved in just two years. NRF president Frank Collins said the event - billed as ‘Facing the future with ease - education, enterprise & enthusiasm’ - would promote a positive outlook among recruiters who remain active in the Irish market.

‘‘As an industry, we are suffering, but we would rather dwell on the positives,” said Collins. ‘‘There are small signs of growth in the industry, and we felt that we need to position ourselves for the inevitable turnaround and to lift people’s spirits. There are still a lot of good things happening out there - a lot of good things that we can do.”

The one-day conference takes place on Thursday, April 23 at Citywest Hotel in Saggart, Co Dublin.

Chaired by career management expert Rowan Manahan of Fortify Services, the event will also feature speeches from Minister for Labour Affairs Billy Kelleher, Alan Haugh of the National Employment Rights Association (Nera) and Ann-Marie Muntz of the world employers’ body Euro CIETT.

Lucy Gaffney, chair of Communicorp and formerly director and chief operations officer of Esat Telecom, will talk about managing a company through the ups and downs of the economic cycle.

Management consultant Bill Braining will outline his 13-point ‘Tin hat strategy’ for business growth, while Tempy Cummins, of Vision 2 Reality, will advise agency owners on motivating and encouraging staff through a difficult period.

Collins said the conference would help recruiters to improve service levels in a tight market. His presentation at the event will introduce the NRF’s new education strategy, which includes the launch later this year of a continuous professional development certificate.

‘‘We need, as a body, to ensure we give a certain standard of service, and we want to have a qualification that all recruiters should have,” Collins said. ‘‘Most of the people within the industry are professionals in their own sectors - they are accountants or engineers, qualified in the area they are recruiting in. This gives them the extra background they need to know in terms of the recruitment side. There has been a demand for this for quite a while, but it has taken time for us to get a course written and off the ground.”

Leveraging new technology can help recruiters to maximise available resources, said Collins.

‘‘Damien Mulley of Mulley Communications will be giving a live demonstration of the latest technologies in social networking. We will see how sites like LinkedIn and Facebook can be used in a firm’s day-to-day activities to help them recruit the right candidates,” he said.

Collins said he expected a high turnout from the NRF’s 120 member agencies at the event. He said non-members were also welcome.

‘‘This is the first year we have opened up the conference to all recruitment professionals,” said Collins. ‘‘There are a lot of people who recruit people who do not necessarily work for a recruitment agency. We want to spread the word to as many people as possible who are involved in recruitment activities.”

The last two years have, he added, been ‘‘traumatic’’ for the recruitment sector in Ireland, with the number of people employed by recruitment agencies falling significantly from a peak of just over 12,000 in 2007.

‘‘We are probably somewhere around 7,000 or 8,000 now,” Collins said. ‘‘We did a survey in autumn 2008,which found that 2,000 people had lost their jobs in the recruitment industry in the previous twelve months. I would have little doubt that another 2,000 have lost their jobs since then.”

The number of recruitment agencies operating in Ireland has also dropped sharply, Collins said.

‘‘Atone stage, there were 450 agencies here,” he said. ‘‘The number is now probably somewhere between 350 and 400.

Some agencies have shut down, particularly multinational agencies that had opened offices in Dublin. Other agencies are closing regional branches, which were costly to run. Some purely specialist sectional agencies went out of business when demand dried up.”

There has been some consolidation in the market, Collins said. ‘‘There are not necessarily more mergers and acquisitions than previously, but there are more agencies now looking in an opportunistic way to get agencies on the cheap, whereas before it was more about expanding into new sectors,” he said.

Collins said that a lack of confidence in the Irish economy was just as detrimental to the recruitment sector as the lack of new positions to fill.

‘‘Currently, there are more people losing jobs than there are getting jobs. That means there are less jobs for us to be filling,” he said.

‘‘There is also a knock-on effect, as people are not confident and are not moving jobs.

They are looking for stability and do not want to take a risk, especially as they will not be covered for redundancy if they are less than two years in the new job. If everyone stays where they are, there is no recruitment happening.”

Collins said that the latest live register figures - which showed the national rate of unemployment had increased last month to 11 per cent -were bad news for Irish recruiters, but he also pointed to the fact that 30,000 people came off the live register in January and February this year.

‘‘There are jobs out there, there are people getting jobs every day of the week. There is a lot of despair around, and a lot of misinformation, but there are opportunities out there,” he said.

‘‘Last week alone, NRF members placed over 400 people into permanent jobs, and filled 550 temporary roles. Other people started jobs that they found in other ways. We are not deluded, but it is important to acknowledge that there are some jobs available.

‘‘Construction and financial services have been hit badly, but certain parts of the services sector, particularly international traded services, are doing quite well.

‘‘Pharmaceutical is also doing quite well, and there are still retail and marketing jobs going. The healthcare sector and catering are not doing too badly either.”

Collins said the recruitment sector acted as an early warning system for the economy. There is some evidence of positive trends in the industry.

‘‘We lead economies by six to eighteen months. We saw the downturn in Ireland well before others, and we will see the upturn too,” Collins said.

‘‘A number of our members say they are starting to see some small pick-up. January and February were dead, but they are starting to see some movement now. With a bit of luck, it might accelerate a bit towards the end of the year.”

For more information on the NRF Annual Conference 2009, phone 01–8161754, or e-mail: director@nrf.ie. The cost of entry for non-members is €75

The Panel launches redundancy site

2009-03-30T09:34:00.005+01:00

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment Section - Mar 29 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

Dublin recruiter The Panel has launched a new website offering free advice to individuals who have lost their jobs.

SurvivingRedundancy.ie, launched at the start of the month, also offers paid-for outplacement services to companies managing redundancies.

Sarah Kelly, manager of SurvivingRedundancy.ie, said the site was launched in response to growing demand for outplacement services in the marketplace, in tandem with the recent drop-off in recruitment activity.

In operation since 1987,The Panel provides recruitment services to employers and candidates in the services and legal sectors, funds, banking, IT and accountancy, from its office on Northumberland Road in Dublin.

‘‘The development of the website has really been driven by demand from our key clients, due to the number of redundancies taking place at the moment,” said Kelly. ‘‘We want to diversify our business, as it has slowed down for us on the recruitment side. We want to use our expertise in recruitment to provide a service in a different shape and form, which people need now.”

SurvivingRedundancy.ie includes information on the core financial issues facing people who have been made redundant. Topics include jobseekers’ allowance and benefit entitlements along with pension, tax and mortgage advice. For employers, the issues addressed include treating employees fairly and a guide to short-term working arrangements. The site also offers career , interview and CV pointers.

Kelly said the site, which showcases content provided by The Panel’s managing director Brendan Burgess - who is also managing director of consumer finance site Askabout money.com - has clocked up over 3,000 unique visitors.

‘‘For us, it is a mixture of offering a very comprehensive information source, and also selling outplacement services on the back of that. The information on the site shows that we know what we are talking about and that we are absolutely on hand to deliver outplacement services,” said Kelly.

Kelly joined The Panel in 2004 as head of its legal recruitment division, The Legal Panel. She said the 15 recruiters working with the company were involved in the new range of outplacement services.

‘‘I am still managing the legal side of our recruitment business, but I am also now managing Surviving Redundancy,” she said. ‘‘Our other consultants are working on Surviving Redundancy too. If an individual from a banking background comes to us for outplacement, we can sit them down with our banking recruitment experts to talk about the options.”

Kelly said many of the company’s existing clients had little experience of managing outplacement programmes.

‘‘We have offered advice to companies as they have been growing over the years. Now, they are going through a downsizing period,” she said.

‘‘It is uncharted waters, really, for a lot of people, particularly employers who have not gone through a redundancy process before. We have a lot of market knowledge built up over 22 years of advising people on their careers.”

With its new range of outplacement services, The Panel is targeting potential customers across all sectors.

‘‘We are offering the outplacement services in all the sectors that The Panel recruits for - financial services, legal, funds, banking, IT and accountancy - but also areas in which we do not,’’ Kelly said.

‘‘We are on hand to help people from all sectors, because the elements of our outplacement programme work across the board. Strategic job search, CV design and interview techniques are useful for all sectors. We also offer an occupational psychology service to individuals or companies.”

While overall demand for recruitment is low in the current market, Kelly said The Panel was working on some ‘targeted’ projects.

‘‘It is certainly quieter than this time last year, and I think every recruitment company will tell you the same thing,” she said. ‘‘There are pockets of recruitment going on, but it is hard to say which sectors of the economy are busier. Accountancy continues to be busy for us, and we are doing some overseas work as well in Luxembourg and Britain, which is keeping us ticking along.”

When positions become available, the salaries on offer are much lower than corresponding rates 12 months ago, Kelly said.

‘‘Salaries are down by 10 or 20 per cent, and candidates are being realistic about the situation. We are seeing that in all sectors. I have seen salaries come down by €20,000.”

Kelly said she could not predict recruitment trends for the remainder of the year, given the continued instability in the economy.

‘‘The situation is changing every month, so it is hard to know. If the market picks up again, and we all hope that it does, then recruitment will be the most important part of The Panel’s business,” she said.

‘‘If the markets do not pick up, then the outplacement part will probably be busier. At the moment, it is a mixed bag.”

US trade mission proves lucrative for Irish

2009-03-23T09:56:00.006Z

Sunday Business Post - New Business Section - Mar 22 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

Deals adding up to €105 million were signed this week by 23 Irish companies during an Enterprise Ireland (EI) trade mission to the US. A total of 92 Irish companies from across all sectors - from technology to consumer products, and engineering and life sciences - including eight companies from Northern Ireland, took part in the trip.

The companies announcing deals included Meath firm Dromone Engineering, Cork clothing company Premium Golf Brands (PGB), Bord na Mona Environmental, and Galway-based online learning provider Alison. Lily O’Briens Chocolates also announced plans to open its first-ever US cafe.

Well-timed trip
Tom Cusack, director, Americas, EI, said the mission - the first to the US in 20 years - was well timed, given the challenges facing Irish companies doing business in the US.

‘‘We had a wide range of companies from across all the sectors announcing business,” said Cusack. ‘‘It is very important in this climate that companies show dedication to the market, and that they do not take for granted the relationships and business that they have here in the US. It is important to spend as much face time in the market as you possibly can.”

Figures compiled by Enterprise Ireland show that the US is Ireland’s second-biggest export market. It was worth €1.28 billion to Irish companies last year, up from€1.247 billion in 2007.

Optimistic mood
Despite the downturn, Cusack said the mood was more optimistic in the US than elsewhere at present, with the recent inauguration of Barack Obama.

‘‘Nothing has dramatically changed in the economic arena since President Obama took over, but there is a noticeable shift in attitude,” said Cusack. ‘‘Within any economic downturn, there is opportunity. There is a lot of doom and gloom at home, but the attitude in the US is not as bad.”

Some recent signs have indicated that some sort of recovery may be imminent in the US economy, Cusack said.

‘‘Our view is that the US market will start to pick up by the end of 2009.That would be an optimistic view, but certainly in the last week we have seen the markets hold up quite well,” he said. ‘‘Some of the banks that were considered to be in great difficulty have also started to pick up. I would be confident that we will see a turn by the final quarter of 2009.”

New opportunities
The difficult economic climate meant that many US companies were currently looking for new suppliers or partners who could help them to save money, Cusack said.

‘‘Irish companies are now getting access to companies in the US that they would not previously had got into,” he said. ‘‘Buyers are open to meeting new vendors now to see what value proposition they can offer. There is no doubt that companies will have to work hard, but there are opportunities.”

Companies taking part in the EI trip had the opportunity to meet with government figures in Washington DC. Cusack said there were opportunities for companies arising out of the large stimulus packages unveiled by the new Obama administration.

‘‘A number of experts from within the new administration came in to speak with us on how to deal with the new administration and take advantage of opportunities within the new Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” he said.

Irish enterprise stateside
More than 200 Irish companies in 1,300 locations employ over 82,000 US citizens in American operations, according to Enterprise Ireland. For new companies keen to do business in the US, Cusack advised them to establish a presence stateside.

‘‘US buyers need to see that the potential supplier is committed to the market,” he said. ‘‘EI has incubation units here in New York - office space that people can set up in. This gives them an address and also the endorsement of the Irish government. It shows that the company is here for the long run, not just a hit-and-run sale.”

Smaller companies and recent start-ups looking to crack the US market should consider partnering with an experienced distributor, Cusack said.

‘‘My first advice would be to look for a partner here. However, you cannot just come in and get a distributor and just leave them to sell the product. You have to spend time with the distributor or partner, to build the trust between both parties,” he said.

Cusack also advised companies to concentrate on individual markets within the US.

‘‘The US is such a vast market, that you need to take it in bite sizes. Some people concentrate on the East Coast or the West Coast, or even look at individual states,” he said.

Full commitment
Cusack advised Irish companies moving into the US market to commit themselves fully to the move.

‘‘It is often about sending over your best person,” he said. ‘‘It should not be someone who is just looking to spend six months in the US, or a graduate coming on board. You should send your best salesperson over. It is such a big market, and it should not be skimped on.”

Irish America
Irish companies looking to grow their business in the US should take advantage of the strong historical links between the two countries, Cusack said.

‘‘We get more than our fair share of coverage here, as a country,” he said. ‘‘A lot of business is built around relationships and networks, and the reach of Irish America is huge. Irish American executives tend to be very willing to do introductions, to help Irish companies and to offer strategic advice, in most cases free of charge.”

Cusack said Irish start-ups that had an American multinational based in Ireland as a reference customer, would enjoy significant advantages when looking for new business in the US.

‘‘If you have a reference site related to a US company, in Ireland or anywhere in Europe, it is definitely a door-opener here. Then it is much easier to knock on doors,” he said.

Get a job and see the world

2009-03-18T17:44:00.002Z

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment Section - Mar 15 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

There are abundant job opportunities abroad, but it is important to think about what a move will mean for you, writes Dermot Corrigan.

Soaring rates of unemployment at home are prompting a growing number of workers to leave Ireland in search of work overseas.

Hamish Reid, a senior consultant in Sigmar Recruitment’s international financial services division, said that more and more candidates were considering emigration as their only means to escape long-term unemployment.

‘‘We have seen more candidates who are more open to moving abroad,” said Reid. ‘‘They tend to have been looking for work in Ireland for a period of time, and then they decide they might want to broaden their options.”

According to the most recent available statistics from the Central Statistics Office, 45,300 people left Ireland to work abroad in the year to the end of April 2008.This is the highest annual emigration figure the country has seen since 1990.

Caroline Kilbane, marketing manager for Ireland with Grafton Recruitment, said she expected a significant rise in the corresponding figure for this year, though it has not yet been published.

‘‘Given the uncertainty in the current labour market, we would definitely expect that more and more Irish people will be searching for job opportunities overseas. We would expect more Irish workers to emigrate due to increasing levels of unemployment here,” said Kilbane.

Stephen McLarnon, chief executive of SGMC Group, said the motivation behind the decision to emigrate was changing for a lot of people. SGMC organises exhibitions showcasing work opportunities overseas.

‘‘In the past, it was people’s choice to leave,” said McLarnon. ‘‘When the economy was booming, people cited the high cost of living, expensive housing and the poor quality of life as a reason for emigrating. In the current challenging economic environment, people will find they have no choice but to leave.”

Popular destinations
McLarnon said that the majority of overseas destinations favoured by Irish emigrants were also bearing the brunt of the global recession.

He added, however, that some had been worse hit than others.

‘‘The global downturn has left no country untouched. However, Canada is stronger than most and job opportunities exist in Australia,” said McLarnon. ‘‘Australia added 1,200 new jobs in January 2009, when all other countries around the world recorded significant growth in unemployment. New Zealand has a big demand for primary school teachers. Dubai has slowed considerably, but opportunities do exist in Sweden and Norway.”

Kilbane said the jobs market in Canada was buoyant.

‘‘Canada is experiencing its lowest unemployment rate in 30 years and enjoying unprecedented economic growth,” she said. ‘‘As labour shortages increase, the Canadian government has introduced numerous migration programmes to locate skilled migrants to fill vacancies from entry-level to senior positions. Between 129,300 and 144,600 visas have been made available for 2009.”

Australia is popular with Irish individuals looking for experience overseas. Employers there look favourably on candidates with good qualifications, according to Kilbane.

‘‘Australia is already an extremely popular destination for highly skilled young people,” she said. ‘‘The country’s economy is strong and Australia is actively encouraging the immigration of skilled migrants. Ski l led migrants wishing to work in Australia are assessed on a points-based system, with points awarded for work experience, qualifications and language proficiency.”

Closer to home

Reid said many Irish candidates looking to emigrate favoured destinations closer to home. ‘‘When people say they are flexible in going abroad, it often means mainland Europe,” he said. ‘‘People like being able to come back every few months. For example, IT contractors who get an excellent daily rate can often commute at weekends or maybe work just four days a week abroad.”

Some financial services professionals were leaving the country on the trail of jobs that had been relocated overseas, Reid said.

‘‘There are a lot of financial services companies moving to Poland, because financial institutions can save money out there,” he said. ‘‘India is another option. People are more likely to consider Poland, however, as India is seen as a different world by some people.”

Letrecia Tippett, a director of Premier Group, said the Channel Islands offered some opportunities in the financial services sector.

‘‘We are getting a lot of jobs in from clients in the Channel Islands, and finding a lot of interest from candidates in those,” Tippett said. ‘‘This is especially true in areas like fund accounting, which has slowed down considerably in the Dublin market. The Channel Islands offer relatively high salaries, and they are close to home.”

Until recently, Reid said the Middle East had offered opportunities to Irish candidates in construction. ‘‘The employment situation is not fantastic in Dubai now,” he said. ‘‘That was a solution for a lot of people in construction, but it is not any more.”

Typical candidates

Kilbane said that the profile of the Irish emigrant had changed in the last 12 months.

‘‘This time last year, the young, skilled, single and flexible element of society was most likely to go abroad in search of work,” she said.

‘‘Their general motivations included broadening their horizons and gaining valuable career experience abroad. However, now more senior and skilled individuals are beginning to think about relocating entire families to obtain a greater sense of security in the face of increasing uncertainty.”

Reid said younger candidates tended to be more open to travelling further to find work. ‘‘It tends to be younger people who would always have considered maybe going abroad anyway, whether to mainland Europe or somewhere like Australia,” he said.

‘‘They feel that now might be a good time to combine taking that year away, and also getting some work experience.” More experienced candidates are more interested in contract positions, with a limited time frame, than permanent relocation.

‘‘Older people who are very experienced would often consider working on a contract abroad,” said Reid. ‘‘They may not be interested in moving abroad permanently, as they have family or other commitments here, but they would consider commuting for a period of time.”

Career progression

Tippett said some individuals viewed a move abroad as a way to fast-track their career progression.

‘‘Some people might want experience or a skill set that they have difficulty getting over here. Hardship posts tend to allow people to jump a few slots in their career,” she said.

Kilbane advised candidates considering emigration to tailor their CV to match the requirements of the overseas market they are targeting.

‘‘Before moving abroad, you need to think seriously about the skills that you have to offer, and identify which countries have skills shortages in your sector,” said Kilbane. ‘‘Skilled migrants will generally find it easier to obtain employment.”

Successful relocation

Tippett, who herself emigrated to Ireland in the late 1990s, advised anyone considering a move abroad to think carefully about all of the implications.

‘‘I know first-hand that, when you relocate to another country, there are a lot of things that you do not think about,” Tippett said. ‘‘People always talk about the fact that changing jobs is very stressful, but so is moving house and moving country. You have to be really committed to doing it.”

Recruiters placing candidates in jobs overseas use a thorough selection process.

‘‘There are very different processes for recruiting somebody who wants to move abroad, as opposed to somebody who is changing jobs in their own country,” she said.

‘‘The job and the money should be the second part of the process. The first part is asking whether you have really considered what it will mean to move.

‘‘Have you discussed the move with your family and friends? Do you have financial or emotional commitments that might stop you travelling? How long are you prepared to commit to being away?

‘‘Have you considered what you will do when, or if, you come back?

‘‘Most people have not thought of all of that. We ask them to go away and think about that, before talking about particular jobs or locations.”

Relocation package

Kilbane advised candidates to talk to potential employers or recruitment agents about relocation packages designed to help them settle into a new environment.

‘‘It is really important to negotiate settlement or relocation arrangements as part of your contract,” said Kilbane.

‘‘A reputable recruitment agency will help you with everything from opening bank accounts to finding accommodation and even finding a school for your children, but services differ.

‘‘Weurge candidates to activate networks, contacts and relatives to gain invaluable insights into opportunities and support systems that may be available in their destination countries.

‘‘Social networking makes this increasingly easier.”

Working Abroad Expo

SGMC Group’s Working Abroad Expo takes place in the RDS, Dublin, on March 21-22 and the Silver Springs Moran Hotel, Cork, on March 26-27.

‘‘The departments of immigration from Australia, New Zealand and Canada will be hosting seminars at each exhibition,” said Stephen McLarnon, chief executive of SGMC Group.

‘‘They will provide unbiased, accurate visa information for each of their countries. This is useful as neither the Australian nor Canadian embassies in Ireland processes migration visas, and New Zealand does not have an embassy in Ireland. Other exhibitors include employers and recruitment agencies covering construction, engineering, medical, nursing, social worker (Britain), financial services (Poland) and service providers such as removal companies, banks, foreign exchange, working holiday providers, TEFL course providers and volunteering overseas and internship services.”

Demand still exists for IT professionals

2009-03-02T10:24:00.004Z

Sunday Business Post - Computers in Business Magazine - Mar 01 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

In the current economic climate, IT professionals who can help potential future employers to cut costs are highly sought after. Fergal Keys, manager at IT Panel, said that specialists in technologies which helped companies to make their business more efficient were very much in demand.

“Clients are looking at investing in technologies that will reduce costs,” Keys said.” That might mean investing and upgrading systems. That is leading to new project management type roles. Everyone is looking at their bottom line and how they can do things better.”

This is leading to specialists in customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems being highly sought after, according to Keys.

“The CRM and ERP areas are important at the moment,” he said. "Business intelligence (BI) and SAP candidates are in demand. That side of the market is busy.”

Aoife Donnelly, director at Next Generation Recruitment, said that companies were looking to hire business intelligence and consumer insight specialists due to challenging market conditions.

“Business intelligence and data and consumer insight analysis candidates are in demand as businesses look for trends and patterning to see where consumers are spending revenue,” said Donnelly.

“Product patterning and consumption trends are being delivered straight back into the business, so that production can be aligned to meet demand, particularly in the FMCG [fast-moving consumer goods] space. IT is critical for that swift turnaround so that a company can maximise revenue.”

Colin Donnery, general manager at FRS Recruitment, said organisations were looking to hire people with virtualisation skills.

“Virtualisation can have massive cost savings for large organisations and it has been the main area of growth for us in the last number of months,” said Donnery. “Ireland has companies based here at the forefront of the technology, so it should lead to a steady stream of jobs in the next number of years.”

Aoife Donnelly said the spread of unified communications (UC) technology had lead to a requirement for suitably qualified candidates.

“Unified communications is in serious demand resulting in high need for engineers with voice and data skills,” she said.” The Cisco certifications and Call Manager and IPT Contact Centre skills are in demand.”

Siobhan Ryan, HR and IT resourcing manager at Ergo IT Resourcing, said there would continue to be strong demand for candidates with SharePoint skills and experience.

“SharePoint is the latest in-demand technology and there appears to be a significant lack of skilled resources available in Ireland,” Ryan said.” Demand for skills in this area will definitely increase in 2009 and into 2010.”

A good number of employers were also looking to fill multimedia-type roles at present, according to Donnery.

“The gaming industry is picking up massively in Ireland,” he said.” Anyone with Web 2.0 skills is also doing well.”

Ryan said that candidates with solid development skills were always in demand.

“There is still a good level of demand for Agile Developers for permanent roles,” said Ryan.” We also continue to see strong demand for Java skill sets, J2EE, back-end and front-end and developers with strong C#, ASP and .NET skills.”

Donnery agreed that companies were looking for strong developers at present.

“.Net, Java, and to a lesser extent Care the technologies where there is still plenty of work,” he said. “Anyone with solid skills in these areas should be able to find work at the moment. We placed a Java developer with about six years' experience with a financial software company in October. The company then got into trouble in December, and we had him in another job by the second week of January.”

Who's hiring?

Keys said that, despite the doom and gloom, there were still companies looking to recruit IT professionals this year.

“If you just read the newspapers, you would wonder what was happening, but talking to clients and candidates and other people in the industry, IT roles are still out there,” he said.” A number of big clients are stil l going through the projects to be rolled out in 2009.That will then determine their recruitment for the year.”

Donnery said there were fewer roles around now than 12 months ago, with the financial services sector particularly quiet.

“In terms of numbers of jobs we are definitely down on last year, particularly in the Dublin market, but it is quite sector specific,” he said.” Within the finance industry, the numbers are way down on last year.”

Ryan said that some of the bigger traditional IT employers were not hiring at present.

“In general, bigger multinationals are not hiring with a lot employing strict headcount freezes as a standard policy for 2009,” she said.” Some consultancy companies are hiring, albeit at a lower level than normal; however, you also see some of the bigger consultancies, like Accenture, announcing redundancies.”

Donnelly said there was more demand for candidates coming from smaller companies in the current climate.

"There are SMEs hiring and there are consultancies hiring, but they are more the smaller operations as the larger are in trimming mode,” she said.

Levels of opportunities
Most of the IT opportunities available at the moment were in mid-level positions, Ryan said.

“We see steady demand for mid-level resources,” she said.” There is really no demand for entry-level roles and we have seen little movement or demand at the senior level.”

Donnelly agreed that senior IT vacancies were scarce at present.

“There is really limited movement at the senior end at the moment,” she said. "Mid-range there is more movement up to the €65k range as it's a less risky decision to make.”

Ryan said that contracting positions in particular were hard to find, leading contractors to consider full time roles.

“We have witnessed a significant decline in contract opportunities in the marketplace,” she said.

“The contract market was practically non existent during the latter half of 2008, however there has been some slight upturn so far in 2009.We have seen a huge increase in the number of long-term contractors who are now focused on securing full time permanent employment. These individuals now value job security and an overall package more than contracting's higher earnings potential.”

However, Donnelly said that the current tight labour market favoured contractors with high-end or in demand skill sets.

“If you are experienced and expensive, go contracting,” she said.” You should be able to retain a higher annual return by working this way even if you are working less days a week. Companies looking for an experienced resource are having difficulty getting it signed off through HR.”

Salaries
Ryan said salaries for IT professionals in Ireland were currently stable.

“There has been a stabilisation of permanent salaries in the last six months in particular,” she said. “Most IT professionals currently working are realistic enough to know that the trend at the moment is towards reducing salaries and salary cuts in a lot of instances, so demands for increases would not be entertained at the present time.”

Keys said that employers were generally offering smaller packages for new positions than previously.

“We are definitely getting people saying a role might have been worth €75k last year, but we can fil l it for €60k or €65k this year,” he said.” It is without doubt a tougher market.”

Donnelly said that salaries for general roles were falling quicker than those for positions that required specialised skills.

“Salaries for jobs that require a broader technical skillset are dropping further than the more niche technical roles that are system or product suite specific,” she said. "Broader roles have easier transferable characteristics and therefore there is a wider pool of candidates eligible to do them.”

Keys said that IT professionals knew that they had to be realistic with their salary demands.

“Peoples' expectations are in line with market reality,” he said.” People made good money while the sun shone, and now they are happy to reduce their expectations, based on the current market environment. If they do not do that, they wil l find it hard to get a job.”

Donnelly said that candidates should consider more than just their take-home pay when weighing up potential new jobs.

“Salary expectations for 2009 should be tempered and it is better to be in a role than not,” she said. “When going for a role consider what you want to look like technically in two years time and then weigh up what that is worth to you. You are investing in your future for the long term not the short.”

Talent pool
Donnery said that IT professionals in a job were generally not looking to move.

“People are sitting tight, and thinking that they are ok where they are for the moment, and they will see what happens with the market,” he said.” People seem to be a bit afraid to move at the moment.”

Donnery said that employers were much less likely now to take on a candidate who was not an exact fit for the vacancy.

“Clients are quite fussy now, they are looking for the add-ons and extra development tools that candidates have,” said Donnery. “They might have previously taken on a solid Java candidate and trained him up in something like EJP; now they are looking for the full package, so the person can hit the ground running.”

Keys said that technology certifications were very useful for candidates at present.

“People are looking for the guy with the qualification,” he said. "They only want to know if he has the Cisco cert, or the Microsoft qualification. Client specifications are higher.”

Having a good CV, which was tailored to the particular vacancy, was a must given the tight market, Keys said.

“The CV has got to be good,” he said.” There are so many CVs being submitted for various roles, that if the first page does not jump out at the client, they tend to move on to the next one. It is important that, in the profile space, you look at the job spec.You might have done a lot of that type of work before, but your CV may not highlight that sufficiently. In your profile you can put down why you are a good fit for that particular role.”

“Do it in bullet points,” said Keys.” What is your role, what were your responsibilities. What have your achievements been in each role you worked in? Have you been promoted within your company?

Make sure you outline any of these. If you are going for a technical role, make sure you highlight your level of expertise in each individual technical area. The more information you can give the better.”

Donnelly said that some IT professionals recently made redundant were finding it difficult to return to the labour market.

“Some of them have worked for the same firm for 15-20 years,” she said. “Systems-wise they know only one infrastructure architecture. That can be limiting.”

Looking overseas
Donnery said that there were not huge levels of Irish IT professionals looking abroad for work at the moment.

“We are doing a bit of work placing people abroad, but not a huge amount,” he said.” Things are tight in other countries. Britain is in a similar situation to us, as is most of the world. Probably Australia is somewhere there is plenty of work, but that is a long way to go.”

Keys said that mainland Europe did offer some opportunities.

“There is work in Germany and in Luxembourg,” he said.” We are asking al l candidates whether they are open to going abroad, for a six-month contract or a permanent role.”

There were attractive IT positions in some other EU countries at present, Donnelly said.

"Holland and Belgium are the two more suited to Irish IT contractors,” she said. "There is a history of good performance from Irish IT professionals on projects there over the years and culturally there is a good fit. Language is less of a barrier.”

Calls for scrappage scheme intensify

2009-02-23T09:56:00.002Z

Sunday Business Post - Motoring section - Feb 22 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

Leading figures in the Irish motor industry are calling on the government to introduce a new scrappage scheme to address a dramatic drop-off in sales this year. In January, new car sales totalled just 16,000, down 66 per cent on the 47,000 sold in the same month last year, according to figures compiled by Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI).

‘‘I would be very fearful if the sales in January are replicated for the rest of the year - with that, you get a full year figure of 63,000 units. That is down from 151,000 in 2008, and 186,000 in 2007,” said Eddie Murphy, managing director of Ford Ireland. ‘‘You do not need to be a rocket scientist to see that there will be a lot of job losses, and a huge drop in the government’s VRT and Vat receipts.”

Motor sales resulted in about €2 billion in VRT and Vat returns to the exchequer in 2007, which fell to €1.5 billion last year. Murphy said returns this year would be significantly lower. ‘‘The government has a huge hole in terms of the money they are going to get from the motor industry. Unless they do something very quickly, that hole is going to get bigger,” he said.

A scrappage scheme - where a VRT rebate was offered to new car buyers -would stimulate car sales at minimal cost to the exchequer, said Pearce Flannery, chief executive of Pragmatica, a management consultancy specialising in the automotive industry.

‘‘It is a win-win situation from a government point of view,” said Flannery. ‘‘It will not result in any net cost to the exchequer. At a time when they should be beating down the doors to secure any money generating opportunity, their silence on this one is deafening and frustrating.”

The initiative could, Murphy said, operate in a similar manner to an earlier scrappage scheme which ran from1995 to 1997.

‘‘The last scrappage scheme was aimed at vehicles that were ten years or older,” said Murphy. ‘‘There was a lot of logic in doing that, as there were cars driving around that were dangerous or clapped out. Fourteen years on, there are actually more cars [that are] around ten years old or older than there was then.”

The old scheme offered a rebate of IR»1,000 (€1,270) for each car traded in. Murphy said any new scheme introduced should offer at least the same amount to participating motorists.

‘‘The rebate should at least equate to 50 per cent of the Vat and VRT payable. We would argue that is just the minimum required,” he said.

Flannery called for a significantly higher rebate to encourage large-scale uptake.

‘‘A scrappage scheme of €8,000 to €10,000 would make it worth people’s while,” he said.

The VRT rebate could also be targeted at taking environmentally unsound vehicles off Irish roads, said Flannery.

‘‘They could take hugely-emitting vehicles off the road by giving a 50 per cent VRT rebate on the new car if it emitted 50 per cent or less than the old vehicle. That would change hugely polluting vehicles into highly fuel-efficient cars.”

Murphy said it was likely that distributors and dealers would offer their own incentives alongside a government run scrappage scheme, if it was introduced.

‘‘I am sure that all of the distributors would embrace it aggressively and run with the opportunity, whether in the form of a price discount, or some other form of incentive,” he said.

According to SIMI, 3,000 motor industry jobs have been lost since September, and another 3,000 are at risk.

Flannery said the situation facing the industry was potentially far worse.

‘‘There are 75,000 people employed in the Irishmotor industry, and it is now probable that 50 per cent of those will lose their job,” he said.

‘‘There will be massive closures of franchise dealers. January, February and March are supposed to be the lucrative sales months of the year, and what is coming down the line is dismal altogether.”

New Windows security features revealed

2009-02-23T09:46:00.003Z

Sunday Business Post - IT security supplement - Feb 22 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system will include a new feature to allow users to encrypt data on memory keys and data sticks. The system, due to replace Microsoft Vista, is due to hit the market before the end of the year.

‘‘One of the new features in Windows 7 will allow users to encrypt data on memory keys or USB sticks,” said Declan Faller, infrastructure product manager with Microsoft Ireland. ‘‘A lot of memory keys with important data are being lost at the moment, and the ability to encrypt memory keys will be an important feature in Windows 7.”

Recent reports on the new operating system, which is also expected to have smart cards and biometric identifier capabilities, have pointed to the possibility of a security flaw within its User Account Control (UAC) system.

Although he declined to comment on specific details, Faller said the development of the product was at beta stage, and changes to the UAC would be made prior to its full release. He said Microsoft was working with major global security vendors to develop applications to run on Microsoft-enabled PCs and servers, and that the aim was to ensure that all would be compatible with the new version of Windows.

‘‘We recently announced the Windows 7 Ecosystem Readiness Program, where we’ll be working closely with software, hardware and peripherals vendors,” said Faller. ‘‘A key area for us is to ensure that each of the different vendors - like MacAfee and Symantec and many others - work very closely with the product team developing Windows 7, to ensure the products are ready to go.”

Microsoft is also set to release new versions of its ForeFront range of security products later this year. These will be used to protect company’s desktops, servers and applications.

‘‘The next wave of these products will be released before the end of this calendar year,” Faller said. ‘‘They will begin to really integrate the world of security with the world of infrastructure management, helping to automate security processes and giving users one console to look at all the potential vulnerabilities within their organisation. This will enable people to be much more proactive in how they manage their IT infrastructure security.”

IT managers and business owners facing falling IT budgets should not opt to scrimp on security.

‘‘We are very much aware that IT budgets are being reduced dramatically or, at best, remaining stagnant. It is very important that companies assess exactly where they make those cuts,” Faller said.

‘‘We are seeing that companies realise that they still have to spend a certain amount on security to protect their systems. Most organisations realise that maintaining the security of their systems is not negotiable.”

There could be potential savings for companies that were not utilising all of the security features on offer in their existing systems.

‘‘We are advising customers to look at their existing licensing agreements and maximise what they have paid for,” said Faller.

‘‘Sometimes, a customer might be licensed to use products that they might not be using. Another area is to make sure they are using all the features in the products that they have.”

Microsoft Office has a number of features to ensure data security. ‘‘There are a number of security features within the Office products which can restrict what can be done with a document,” said Faller.

‘‘If you are sending a sensitive document to a colleague that you do not want forwarded on, and you do not want to get into the public domain, you can set the rights of a particular document or spreadsheet so that they can only just view it, not forward it or print it off.

‘‘There are also password protection features for documents, such as spreadsheets from the finance department, that they want to share. They can restrict access to it using settings within the active directory, on who has the right to view that document.”

Businesses with valuable customer information held within their SQL databases or Microsoft Dynamics Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems should be using encryption and following strict information management processes, Faller said.

‘‘It is very important that databases are encrypted, whether the information is sitting locally on people’s machines or somewhere centrally,” he said.

‘‘If information goes missing - for example, if a laptop with customer details is lost - you should know where the information sits, and if that laptop was encrypted.”

Dunwoody expects top racing at Fairyhouse

2009-02-23T09:36:00.002Z

Sunday Business Post - Business of Sport page - Feb 22 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

Three-time champion jockey Richard Dunwoody, who is the official ambassador for the Irish Grand National, expects a top weekend of racing at Easter.

Dunwoody was announced as the ambassador for the 2009 Powers Whiskey Irish Grand National at a Racing Legends event in Dublin’s Merrion Hotel last week. The event, which is celebrating its 140th anniversary, will take place over Easter weekend (April 12-14) and has a prize fund of €250,000.

‘‘The Grand National at Fairyhouse is always a great race, and the festival is always a fantastic three days of racing,” said Dunwoody. ‘‘Racegoers get to see the best jockeys and the best horses. It’s a really good social occasion as well.”

During his career, Dunwoody rode 1,699 winners, including two English Grand Nationals, the Champion Hurdle, the Cheltenham Gold Cup and an Irish Grand National victory with Desert Orchid in 1990.

‘‘Winning the Irish national on Desert Orchid was one of the most memorable days of my career,” Dunwoody told The Sunday Business Post. ‘‘I made a bad mistake at the last, but fortunately we survived it. The reception Desert Orchid got was just amazing to witness.”

Last year’s race saw 33/1 shot Hear the Echo stun Fairyhouse to win by 12 lengths. Dunwoody said the Michael O’Leary-trained eight-year-old had a chance again, if declared.

‘‘At the moment, it is too early to know who will definitely run,” he said. ‘‘Horses like Hear The Echo and last year’s Welsh grand national winner Notre Pere, if they run, will be up there but, whoever runs, it will be a top-quality race.”

Although he has his hands full as a racing pundit for the BBC, sports columnist and inspirational speaker, Dunwoody is also something of an adventurer. In 2003, he completed a 350-mile ski race to the magnetic North Pole. And in January of last year, he completed a 680-mile, 48day un-resupplied trek to the South Pole, along a route attempted unsuccessfully in 1918 by legendary explorer Ernest Shackleton.

‘‘We set out on December 1 with all our provisions and, 48 days later, we got there,” he said. ‘‘A year on, I look back on it and have to say that it is certainly my greatest-ever achievement.”

Dunwoody said he would soon be announcing details of his next challenge.

‘‘I cannot say a lot about it yet, but it involves walking quite a long way,” he said. ‘‘We are hoping to launch that in the next month.”

Animation company bags lucrative Noddy deal

2009-02-18T16:55:00.004Z

Sunday Business Post - Done Deal page - Feb 15 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

Dublin animation company Brown Bag Films has secured a second international contract following its Olivia deal with US children’s TV channel Nickelodeon.

The Nickelodeon deal saw the first episode of a new Brown Bag animation series, based on the Olivia series of children’s novels by author Ian Falconer, broadcast last month.

Brown Bag bagged a hefty €6.2million production budget for the 52-episode series and is now working on another deal for a 52-part CGI animation series, Noddy in Toyland, for Chorion and British broadcaster Five.

‘‘Noddy is due to complete production by late summer, and we are currently in the final stages of contractual negotiation s wit h a global broadcaster for another project we hope to announce before then,” said Cathal Gaffney, managing director, Brown Bag.

Gaffney said the Olivia animation series, produced in high-definition CGI, would also air on television channels in Britain, Australia, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Iceland.

Gaffney, who was also an executive producer of the series, said that the company worked hard to convince Nickelodeon of its credentials during the pitching process.

‘‘We did a series of tests on the show before we landed the job,” said Gaffney. ‘‘Olivia is a very big property outside of Europe, and lots of animation studios were keen to win the contract. Our creative approach and the vision of the director, Darragh O’Connell, secured the work for us.”

Gaffney said producer Gillian Higgins had been hired at the outset to oversee Brown Bag’s end of the project and liaise with US media giant Chorion, which held the rights to the award-winning Olivia book series.

‘‘Gillian joined us after working in the US for over 10 years, and her US broadcast experience made for relatively smooth sailing,” he said. “’Olivia took 14 months of production and over 80 people are credited. We worked extremely closely with Chorion at every step of the production.”

Gaffney said that the project, the company’s biggest so far, had required investment in some new equipment.

‘‘We produced and post-produced almost ten hours of high definition in 14 months, which brought huge technological challenges for us in terms of rendering, editing and storage,” he said.

Brown Bag is owned jointly by Gaffney and O’Connell, who set up the business in 1994. The company employs 50 staff across television commercial and production divisions based in Dublin and Toronto.

‘‘We have a slate of our own original television properties, as well as family feature films, in development,” said Gaffney. ‘‘A huge part of our business is about generating, producing and exploiting our own copyright internationally. One 2006 TV series, I’m an Animal, has sold to over 110 countries worldwide.”

Move onto the right career path

2009-02-12T13:01:00.006Z

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment Section - Feb 08 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

Career coaching services, such as psychometric testing, can help people who are made redundant to devise a viable career plan.

‘‘For many, the goal is getting straight back into employment, thus job-hunting strategies are critical,” said Paul Mullan, director of Measurability.ie. ‘‘Companies may provide professional support, but if not, individuals can pursue the professional support option themselves.”

Joe MacAree, managing psychologist at Pearn Kandola, said career coaching had particular appeal for candidates looking for work in a tight and highly competitive market.

‘‘If there are more people vying for fewer jobs, those who are successful will have to be better prepared,” MacAree said. ‘‘Unfortunately, it is a numbers game, and any advantage that you can get is very valuable.”

Re-entering the job market
Individuals who are made redundant following long-standing service with one employer or in one particular role often need help to decide how best to re-enter the jobs market, according to Joe Ungemah, regional manager for Ireland, SHL.

‘‘Maybe someone has not had to change job or role for 20 years and is looking to understand what their preferences are,” said Ungemah. ‘‘Psychometrics and career coaching can be a good place to start.”

Ungemah said the technique could help candidates to understand fully what they have to offer a prospective new employer. It can help to give them a clearer picture of how they will be perceived in terms of their working style, competencies, skills and experience.

‘‘This means giving them a diagnosis of what they have to offer, and using that to present themselves in the best possible way in an interview or meeting with their potential next company,” he said.

Candidates who have been in one position for a protracted period may not be aware of all they have to offer a new employer.

‘‘Some people may not always realise the depth of experience or skills and attributes they have developed if they have been in a job for some time,” said MacAree. ‘‘They might be able to look at other jobs and see how those would now apply to a new position. In that way, we can see opportunities for people.”

Testing approach
A career coaching process typically begins with the candidate filling out a s et of psychometric questionnaires, according to Ungemah.

‘‘People are already familiar with their qualifications, their work experience and the usual CV stuff,” said Ungemah. ‘‘There is another type of information, and that is the stuff that psychometrics is particularly useful for. Usually these will be around personality, motivation, interests and values. These allow the individual to ask questions that they have never really asked of themselves.”

Psychometric techniques used by career coaches include motivational questionnaires, personality tools, interest inventories and emotional intelligence guides. The aim is to help to establish the candidate’s natural competencies, vocational leanings and personality traits, as well as their fit with different working environments and job tasks.

MacAree said psychometric tests were formulated to help the individual learn more about their own personal strengths and preferences.

‘‘Individuals can find out their own strengths, and areas they would like to work in,” he said. ‘‘That can be a range of things from personality questionnaires or broad based questionnaires that can help people to see where their natural strengths bring them towards.

‘‘Then, by talking to them about that, you can help to align them with particular roles or career options that might be a good fit for them.”

Combined strengths
Psychometric test results are usually combined with other information from the candidate’s career history to create a rounded picture. ‘‘The personality questionnaires are a very good starting point, but you need to then look closely at the CV as well to get an understanding of their experience,” MacAree said. ‘‘For example, the coach would ask the person how they had demonstrated a particular competency in the past.

‘‘If a person was quite extrovert, you would look at their communications skills or their people or leadership skills and experiences. By putting those two together, you would see that the person would be interested in roles with a high people content, and there perhaps might be opportunities to lead or direct other people.”

Active role
During coaching discussions, candidates plays an active role in identifying valuable information or options for themselves.

‘‘In coaching, the person themselves is very much in control,” said MacAree. ‘‘The role of the coach is to help them see what the information is telling them or suggesting to them. It is about bringing out options and potential future directions with them, in a very collaborative way, as opposed to a career guidance teacher in school who may have just told someone what job was for them.”

In some cases, Mullan said psychometric testing confirmed a candidate’s own view of their strengths and competencies.

‘‘My role is facilitation,” he said. ‘‘Individuals have the answers, they know what they want and what they enjoy. For some people, the goal could be to earn more money. For others, it could be to relocate, but others are genuinely looking for a job that offers more satisfaction and fulfilment.

‘‘Quite often, they cannot see these things through the haze of everyday life and work. A lot of the time, people have an idea what they want to do, but they need confirmation and someone to just say: ‘Go for it.’ “

Likely outcomes
Career coaches often use the information gleaned using a number of psychometric techniques to suggest potential new career directions for individuals, rather than specific roles.

‘‘If someone shows a strong preference for people, and enjoys working in groups, they are likely to enjoy activities like caring for people or helping them with their problems,” Mullan said. ‘‘This can lead into roles within, say, education and training or medical and health or travel and hospitality.

‘‘It can provide direction, but there are a lot of different roles within those. If they are then socially confident, good with people and competitive, it could then be worth considering a sales role within the health or education sector.”

Targeted selection
Mullan said the results of psychometric tests could also be used to focus on particular roles within one profession or sector.

‘‘Some people could be in field sales, and enjoy selling, but they do not enjoy the remoteness of the role,” he said. ‘‘To use a term from the personality questionnaire, they could be high-affiliated, which means they need the interaction of people and to have people around them. The sales element of the job might be right, so if you bring them into an office based sales role, it can help improve their situation.”

The coaching process can help to guide candidates out of one sector and into another that might suit them better.

‘‘We were working with somebody who came from a marketing background, who ended up moving into a HR role,” he said. ‘‘There is some overlap between the skill sets between the two jobs, but there are also some differences.”

Costs and options
The cost of psychometric assessments or career coaching varies depending on individuals requirements.

‘‘Private one-to-one career coaching can range in cost frome60 to €100 per hour, with career tests an additional €30 to €100 depending on the type of assessment,” said Mullan.

Ungemah said it was more likely for senior candidates to source career coaching services directly. Other candidates typically avail of psychometric services as part of an outplacement programme.

‘‘A process like this is quite expensive, and can be quite detailed and long,” he said. ‘‘You may have four or five meetings with your coach, and one session can cost more than €200 per hour.’ ‘The whole process might cost €1,000, which is a lot for an individual just to get a sense of what type of career they might want to go into.”

Green approach to job creation

2009-02-02T10:50:00.002Z

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment Section - Feb 01 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

'Green collar’ jobs are top of the agenda for US president Barack Obama, who has pledged to support employment in renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies.

Taoiseach Brian Cowen is thinking along similar lines. His €500 million Innovation Fund Ireland, launched in December, made reference to a green deal, and early plans to introduce tax breaks to help make Ireland an ‘innovation island’.

‘‘We hope that the government remains faithful to its pledge to create tax breaks for companies working in the renewable energy and environmental industries,” said Andrew Molony, commercial director of Greenjobs.ie. ‘‘If it can entice some of the big green players to set up in Ireland, this will bring some much needed economic stability through the creation of green collar jobs. The presence of multinational companies and smaller independent companies will open up more options for Irish jobseekers.”

The tough times in which we live could help to create more environmentally friendly jobs.

‘‘People are now being forced to look at emerging markets for longer-term security as traditional industries are no longer providing viable sources of employment,’’ Molony said. ‘‘We are likely to see a massive demand for qualifications in environmental biology, renewable and electrical energy systems, environmental management and specialist fields within science and engineering.”

Policy approach
Martin Shanahan, divisional manager of Forfás, said that policy-makers at the highest level in Irish society were already keen to make Ireland a greener economy.

‘‘There is a significant awareness at a policy level of the possible value to Ireland from the green or environmental sector and its ability to create future jobs,” said Shanahan. This is being reflected in the approach of the enterprise development agencies and education and training providers.

‘‘A joint report recently published by Forfás and Inter Trade Ireland showed that the environmental sector has the potential to become a valuable component of long-term economic development in Ireland. The value of this sector to the island of Ireland is growing and is currently estimated at €3.6 billion.”

Irish workforce
Molony said there was interest in environment-friendly jobs among Irish workers.

‘‘The Irish workforce is extremely keen to get involved in green industries,” he said. ‘‘Every day, we get people registering their CVs onto our site, which shows the level of enthusiasm out there. The slowdown in formerly dominant industries like financial services has forced the Irish workforce to look to alternative routes.”

However, the skills and qualifications of the Irish workforce do not compare favourably with some of our European neighbours, Molony said.

‘‘Denmark and parts of Scandinavia are arguably five to ten years ahead of Ireland,” he said. ‘‘Ireland is in the fledgling stages of providing enough green courses and training programmes. It is, however, a huge growth area.

‘‘Dundalk IT, NUI Galway, UCD and Limerick IT are all now offering environmentalthemed courses, which is a clear indicator of the growing appetite for these types of qualifications. There are also plenty of part-time courses like Building Energy Rate (BER) assessor courses and solar panel installer courses available to help people become more attractive to employers.”

Job creation
Molony said he expected green job creation in the medium term to be good quality and well paid.

‘‘We predict average annual salaries to come in close to €50,000, perhaps even higher while the skills set remains so scarce,” he said. ‘‘To attract the best applicants with the strongest qualifications and experience, it is vital to offer a salary that reflects the specialist training undertaken. However, as green industries develop, we envisage there being jobs created for all levels of skills and salaries.”

Shanahan said it was not just people with skills and qualifications in obvious green disciplines that would be attracted to green jobs.

‘‘There will be a requirement for people with some broad knowledge of the technologies, business acumen and management expertise to manage such multidisciplinary teams,” he said. ‘‘Companies involved in the production of environmental goods and services need all the other traditional supporting business functions such as finance, HR and marketing.”

Renewable energy
Conor McGennis, division manager - engineering & pharmaceutical, Sigmar Recruitment, said there was considerable demand from renewable energy companies for qualified candidates.

‘‘I would definitely say the energy and particularly the renewable energy sector will be a hugely progressive area over the next few years,” said McGennis.

‘‘Airtricity has shown the way forward and there are a number of start-ups within the renewable sector with potential in areas like wind and wave technology. The government, through Sustainable Energy Ireland, has a lot of companies in incubation, with links to academia.”

McGennis said he had come across candidates, with experience in more traditional engineering areas, looking to move into renewable energy.

‘‘Most engineers would agree that there will be fewer opportunities in manufacturing, and the number of jobs available in construction is very limited to say the least,” he said.

‘‘There is a shortage of well qualified electrical engineers in Ireland. People are doing additional courses, such as the Masters programmes in renewable energy. There is a flow towards that, as most people are aware that manufacturing is not going to be a long-term runner.”

Financial candidates
Among employers in the electricity sector, McGennis said there was growing demand for candidates with experience in financial services.

‘‘Companies like Airtricity, Wind Energy Direct and other slightly lower-profile private organisations, are looking for traders and analysts and similar jobs,” he said. ‘‘These would be for highly numerate people, not necessarily just engineers, but people more towards the trading side of things.”

Other sectors
Simon O’Brien, managing director of Honan O’Brien, said multinationals from other sectors with operations in Ireland, would more than likely switch focus to more environment friendly areas.

‘‘While there will be an increase in indigenous Irish companies, existing multinationals will also offer job opportunities,” said O’Brien. ‘‘Companies such as Siemens and ABB are likely to get involved in renewable energy and should offer great opportunities especially in research and development.”

Michael O’Leary, managing director of HRM Recruitment, said that smaller indigenous consultancy firms were actively recruiting people for ‘green’ roles.

‘‘Both our science and engineering divisions are recruiting for clients who are consultancy firms,” O’Leary said. ‘‘They are interested in people who have good experience in renewable technologies. The lead into a market tends to be in consultancies, where organisations buy the services first, and then tend to move in that direction.”

Shanahan said that a focus on energy efficiency would help stimulate demand for candidates in otherwise depressed sectors of the Irish economy, including construction and manufacturing.

‘‘There will be an increase in the demand for those who are qualified to install energy-saving technologies, such as biomass heating systems , geothermal, solar and photovoltaic panels, and who are capable of insulating properties to required levels,” he said.

‘‘There is now a much higher level of compliance required in the management of sites for all forms of development. The type of skills and knowledge associated with site assessment and waste management will be required both in the development of new sites and in the rehabilitation of old sites.”

Working towards a unified solution

2009-02-02T10:31:00.004Z

Sunday Business Post - Computers in Business magazine - Feb 01 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

The concept of unified communications (UC) is gaining significant traction in the Irish marketplace. It brings together communications channels including e-mail, voice calls, video conferencing and others, to enable all employees in an organisation to communicate better and work more efficiently.

Advances in the usability of the technology, and falls in the costs involved, means that UC is moving firmly into the mainstream, according to John McCabe, technical architect at CDSoft.

“UC is coming out of the earlier adopters' phase, where the technology was quite raw and sometimes clunky and more for the tech-savvy companies,” said McCabe. "It is now a more sleek, usable and easier to implement solution. More and more companies want to reduce the cost of managing their systems and due to the associated maintenance costs of UC, they realise they can reduce the amount of support contracts in place, which reduces their costs.”

Paul Kenny, head of infrastructure consulting services at Dell Ireland, said that particularly small and mid-size companies were looking at implementing UC solutions.

“Historically, the first companies that invested in UC were major companies trying to save on phone bills,” he said.” Today, it is more and more widely adopted by any kind of company. The technology from an end-user point of view is so simple to use that you do not need to be a tech guru to handle it.”

Pressure from individual staff members for the efficiencies and ease-of-use associated with UC was leading many companies to consider the technology, said Clive Ryan, director of advisory services at Eircom.

“People are used to this from their personal life, with instant messaging from Google, Yahoo, MSN and others,” Ryan said. “People want to dictate their presence to those who wish to contact them.”

Kim Majerus, managing director of Cisco Ireland, said that Cisco's internal research showed that interest in UC from Irish companies was increasing strongly.

“Our latest Irish research shows that about 30 per cent of Irish businesses cite unified communications as a high priority for their organisation in 2009,” said Majerus.

What is UC?
At its simplest, unified communications involves bringing together all of the different methods and channels of communication used by an individual during their working day, according to Joe Molloy, director of managed services with IT Force.

“Unified communications is about combining all the different means of communication into one - be it voice, video, e-mail, text, instant messaging - and facilitating the recipient to communicate back in their preferred manner,” said Molloy. "The 'unified' concept means the medium used to initiate the communicate does not necessitate that you communicate back through the same medium.”

McCabe said that the boundaries between communications channels were falling.

“UC generally means that, for example, you could receive a voice mail and later read it in your e-mail inbox or a user could instant message a colleague, escalate it to a phone call or full video meeting whilst sharing content to all users participating in the meeting,” he said.

In a full UC situation, individuals no longer have different e-mail addresses, phone numbers or instant message user names, Ryan said.

“It does not really matter what format the communication is in, whether it is a voice cal l, e-mail or instant message,” he said.” It all ends up in one common inbox, so the recipient of the communication can see it in one place. All the forms of communication can be mixed together, using a single identity or single logon.”

Present and correct
The user remains in control of this re-routing of all his communications, through the concept of ‘presence', which allows him to dictate to everyone else if and how he would like to be contacted at any given moment, according to Molloy.

“‘Presence' means that you can be contacted when and how you want,” he said.” It lets you know where someone is, whether they are available and how they wish to be contacted. It is effectively their contactable status, advertised to co-workers and in some cases third parties, such as suppliers or key clients.”

McCabe said that this presence function is one of the most useful elements of UC.

“It can tell you if a colleague is available, busy, on a call, at a meeting, etc,” he said. "This is real-time information, so it proves very useful if you are in a hurry to contact that particular person. UC provides the infrastructure for people to contact them via any particular method the person can choose to respond to the contact method if they wish but generally, once enabled for one UC, they are open to all methods of contact.”

Colleagues who were previously uncontactable by a particular communications method can now be reached using UC, Majerus said.

“It makes collaboration possible when users are online - no matter where they are,” he said. "For example, I can smartly ‘find' colleagues that I may need to join in a conference call at short notice. Generally, the users would define rules about when and how they can be contacted.

“Presence becomes particularly powerful when applications can decide on the best and most appropriate individual to contact and the best method to use.”

Jason Flynn, country manager for Avaya in Ireland, said that this did not mean that the status of all staff members was being constantly monitored.

“Presence does not mean a 'Big Brother' approach to business though,” said Flynn. "The user can decide to turn off their presence status if they are busy or unavailable. It just means that when they are working and available, they can be reached in the quickest, most efficient and most productive manner.”

Business case Kenny said that lowering communications costs was generally the primary motivation for a UC implementation.

“The costs reduction is the first objective,” he said. “UC allows a company to not go on the telephone network for internal company calls across multiple sites, including long distance and international calls. UC also allows a company to save on travel costs for internal meetings or internal training by organising very efficient video conferences.”

Speeding up communication between individuals was another important business benefit of UC, Molloy said.

“Without UC it can be difficult to quickly find, contact and share information with people,” he said. “Delays due to telephone tag and waiting for replies to e-mails negatively impact employee efficiency, and this is not good in the current climate, where time is money.”

Ryan said that the spiralling of the number and type of communications media in recent times had impacted negatively on people's productivity.

“Previously, there was a huge number of available communications devices or mechanisms that an employee had,” he said. "The employee in this case is actually unproductive, as people were trying to reach someone on multiple channels and missing them.

“People were also being deluged with different types of messages, emails, voice mails etc, and people trying to work together resulted in multiple copies of documents or notes being shared and piling up.”

Enhanced staff mobility was also a major attraction of UC, according to McCabe.

“Generally people use laptops or notebooks to do the majority of their UC interaction,” he said. "However, you can dial in with your mobile device and collect your e-mail or voice mail or faxes. You can also compose an e-mail or fax or have the presence and IM function if required.” Kenny said that implementing UC generally led to greater teamwork within organisations.

“UC allows an organisation to unlock their hidden teams by enabling people from different regions or areas to work together,” he said. "Presence allows them to see when their colleagues are available, then the ease of use of the variety of communication modes makes it easier to collaborate than not to.”

The joining up of the different channels enables better communication with clients or customers, Kenny said.

“Usually if someone calls you on your office phone and leaves a voicemail, you will get the message later that day,” he said. "With unified messaging, you will receive the voice mail in your inbox and you can hear it straight away.”

All of these business benefits tend to lead to higher productivity, Flynn said.

“With flexible working comes higher productivity through extended business hours, and an increase in responsiveness,” he said. “According to The Yankee Group, employees having access to unified and intelligent communications technologies can improve productivity by 15 to 20 per cent per day.”

Technology/ implementation
McCabe said that many of the larger technology suppliers were rushing into the UC marketplace.

“There is a lot of competition in the UC market,” he said.” There are UC solutions from all the major vendors and even some open source vendors. Each of the UC solutions essentially support all the same functions.”

Organisations could rollout UC solutions on a phased basis, Flynn said.

“They have the option to take either an evolutionary approach to implementation or a revolutionary approach,” he said. “Evolutionary being the choice for customers who wish to upgrade their solutions gradually, and revolutionary being for those who want to implement a complete set of IP solutions from day one.”

Vendors were typically working together to ensure that UC solutions were compatible with new and existing communications systems and business applications, McCabe said.

“UC itself used to be very difficult to implement and required specialists in both telecoms and data communications to bring it all together,” he said. "Now integration of systems is becoming easier to do and more secure.

“All the major companies who have UC in their product profile have very good documentation regarding installing and configuring the equipment and software. Not to mention friendly end-user experience, so adoption to the technology becomes very easy.”

Ryan said that a full UC solution generally involved working with more than one supplier or partner.

“We are not yet at the situation where it is a one stop shop,” he said. "You cannot buy or configure a UC solution entirely from one vendor; integration will always be required. You need to glue the UC platform into your existing infrastructure. For example you might have to integrate the UC solution into your existing e-mail application.”

Costs
Companies implementing a UC project generally need to invest in some new devices or networks, McCabe said.

“In most cases, they need some investment in new hardware, networks and/or handsets,” he said. “But when you consider that between the time saved for employees and the further reduced costs of managing the environment, the overall picture means a slimmer, more cost-efficient environment.”

Majerus said the cost of a UC system depended on the scope and scale of solution sought.

“Like any technology implementation, it would really depend on the size and scope of the solution - the hardware, services, implementation and other considerations,” he said.

“But to take a basic example, for a business that needs a simple yet effective collaboration solution, focused on online meetings, costs can start from about €50 per month for a fully hosted service, with no hardware to install or technical know-how required.”

Molloy said that a larger scale UC solution required a more significant investment.

“Where we have deployed a fully-f ledged UC solution, it is usual ly between €600 to €1,000 per user upfront,” he said. “However, when the immediate enhancement in employee productivity and efficiency are taken into consideration, and also the fact that you now have a solid and scalable foundation that allows you to plug in enhancements going forward, it makes great financial sense.”

Flynn said that UC projects could be designed with the requirements of the particular company in mind.

“It is also crucial that providers and vendors listen to their customers and take time to understand the specific challenges they face,” he said.” For example, an SMB working on skeleton staff may be most concerned about the mobility of its employees, whereas a large corporation may wish to integrate the latest video conferencing solutions into its existing infrastructure.

“Another key point to bear in mind is that in house technical know-how can vary depending on the type of business you are selling to and ease of use is therefore critical.”

Take-up so far
The costs previously involved meant that it had been mainly larger companies that looked at UC until recently, McCabe said.

“At the minute in the Irish market, enterprise customers have implemented UC more than SMB companies,” he said.” This is typically due to the perceived cost of implementing UC and the lack of understanding of how beneficial the roll-out of UC could be to them.”

McCabe said that companies with dispersed workforces tended to be early adopters of the technology.

"UC does suit some companies more than others at the minute,” he said. "Companies who have distributed offices or teams who work away from the office and, of course, large companies who employee hundreds of people benefit the most as they can communicate in real time with staff in the central locations without leaving their desk and usually without additional cost to the company.”

Organisations who either have a new premises or need to refresh their existing communications networks, are generally opting for UC-friendly systems, Molloy said.

“If a company is moving premises, has more than one office or needs to update the traditional telephone system, it is a no brainer, as new cabling and kit has to be done anyway,” he said.

Future
McCabe said he expected the take-up of UC to mushroom in the short to medium term in Ireland, particularly given current economic concerns.

“Over the next 18 months, Irish companies wil l be looking at costs and the associated cost centres,” he said.” They will be looking to become more efficient in how they operate. UC will certainly help with this. The technology around UC is becoming cheaper and easier to implement. Combine this with virtualisation and you can see that, for any size company, this is becoming a very viable solution to implement.”

Severance packages on the increase

2009-01-26T10:06:00.002Z

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment Section - Jan 25 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

Voluntary redundancy is on the increase, just a few weeks into the new year, as businesses look for solutions to the cost pressures caused by the downturn.

‘‘This is probably the highest number of companies offering voluntary severance packages that I have seen in the 15 years I have been in the business,” said Miriam Magner-Flynn, managing director, Career Decisions.

‘‘Voluntary redundancy is increasingly being seen as a necessary step by companies looking to reduce headcount.”

Managing the process
Voluntary redundancies should always be managed in a careful and sensitive manner, said Magner-Flynn.

‘‘No matter what a company calls it - downsizing, right-sizing, restructuring, merging, off-shoring - it often boils down to people losing their jobs,” she said. ‘‘Addressing and managing the separation of employees from the company is a difficult task for any organisation.

‘‘If a redundancy is handled badly, and poor-quality support is provided to departing or remaining employees, you can expect departing employees to express anger towards the company, and the remaining staff to feel extremely anxious about their future career prospects.”

Frank Keane, a partner with MKO Partners, also advised companies to handle the voluntary redundancy process carefully, no matter how severe the financial pressures they face.

‘‘It is not just as simple as letting some staff go,’’ said Keane. ‘‘The issues facing an employer range from the more clear-cut financial and legal aspects, such as, ‘How much will it cost me to make an individual redundant?’ and ‘What are my legal obligations?’, to the more difficult human aspects, including, ‘What position will I make redundant?’ and ‘How will this affect me and the individuals involved?”

Communication
Honest communication with everyone affected - from staff to customers and clients - is vital, according to Magner Flynn.

‘‘Information about job losses should be released first to staff, in a planned and honest way. The timing, wording, content and delivery of this announcement is pivotal in maintaining the goodwill, morale and confidence of remaining employees,’’ she said.

‘‘If word leaks out early, it creates uncertainty. Companies run the risk of prompting an employee exodus, rumours, reduced productivity and revenue.”

Who to include
Keane said it was often difficult for employers to decide which roles to include in the voluntary redundancy scheme.

‘‘It can be a gut feeling that someone is right and should be kept at all costs. One argument is to keep qualified and experienced staff if possible, as they will be more expensive to re-hire when times improve.

‘‘The opposite can also be true as less experienced people are generally on lower salaries and may be hungrier, born from desperation, to stay employed.”

From a legal standpoint, companies cannot simply select certain individuals to let go and offer a redundancy package just to them, Keane said.

‘‘One makes a role and not a person redundant,” he said. ‘‘It is therefore hard to decide [to keep] certain people, especially where there are a number of people at a similar level doing similar work. Companies need get proper legal advice on structuring and planning for the future.”

It is important to keep valuable staff, whose jobs are not affected by any redundancy plans, informed about their future with the company, said Magner-Flynn.

‘‘An organisation that is downsizing relies heavily on the loyalty and performance of remaining staff for its future survival and growth,’’ she said. ‘‘An individualised approach to communication, career development and role clarification is the key to retaining important people. It is important to spend time with employees to individually and collectively reassure them of their value, answer questions, explain how expectations have changed, find out their concerns and lay out the future vision for the organisation.”

Attractive package

Getting staff to accept voluntary redundancy in the current economic environment often required a substantial package, said Keane. In the current environment, redundancy would have to be generous to tempt someone out of a job unless they had another job already.

‘‘In an economic storm like this, the employer has a vicious circle of not being able to offer much money, but yet needing to offer larger sums to get people to take it,” he said.

‘‘Employees will weigh a tempting package against the probability of not getting another job for a period of time.”

Keane said there were mandatory payments that must be included in any redundancy offering.

‘‘Elements of the package should include the statutory redundancy payment - two weeks’ pay capped at €600 per week - for each complete year of service, plus one bonus week, as well as anything the employee is contractually entitled to,” he said.

Most voluntary redundancy packages went well beyond the legal minimum, Keane said. ‘‘Any ‘ex gratia’ payment offered is at the employer’s discretion,” he said.

‘‘The employer may choose to include company assets in the settlement - for example, company car, laptop or mobile phone, as a means of reducing the cash cost to the company. This may prove favourable for the employee from a tax perspective.”

Outplacement

Magner-Flynn said employers could assist employees who have taken voluntary redundancy, via outplacement programmes.

‘‘The main concern of employees is getting a job. Outplacement programmes enable employees to identify their next career or job move and to use the intervening period to up-skill and re-skill,’’ she said.

‘‘The employee has increased marketability and employability when they re-enter the job market, while the employer maintains employee engagement and productivity throughout the change process.”

Michael McDonnell, director, CIPD Ireland, said non-monetary factors were often foremost in an employee’s decision to accept a redundancy offer.

‘‘Issues like counselling and outplacement are quite important in seeking volunteers,” he said.

‘‘A well designed programme will help them with things like refreshing their interview skills, redrafting their CVs, helping them to reply effectively to job advertisements and also some advice about finance issues.”

Magner-Flynn said many employers were surprised at how many staff members decided to avail of voluntary redundancy schemes, despite the downturn, when given the opportunity.

‘‘A lot of people begin to see that there are opportunities. The initial reaction is one of fear, but once they are provided with the support they begin to feel differently,” she said.

‘‘From the perspective of some employees, it can be an attractive route out of an organisation. In some circumstances, voluntary redundancy presents an opportunity to satisfy the requirements of both the company and the individual, and create a win-win for both parties.”

Who might go?

Younger staff members were often less likely to accept voluntary redundancy, McDonnell said.

‘‘A lot of younger people have high mortgages, car loans and significant other debt. That puts extra strain on individuals who might have taken redundancy before,” he said.

‘‘Also, in the past, there were generally more opportunities abroad - people could leave Ireland for Britain or Australia and pick up jobs - but the global downturn limits the job opportunities abroad.”

However, others tended to take amore positive viewpoint, according to McDonnell. ‘‘A lot of young people are fairly optimistic that this thing will pass and, in a couple of years’ time, there will be more opportunities,” he said.

‘‘This can be a good time for younger people to maybe go back to college and upgrade their skills portfolio.”

Staff members who are already considering a career move are often the first to accept voluntary redundancy, McDonnell said. ‘‘You may have people with the idea to set up their own business, or who would like to take a year or two off. There may also be people who have given long service, and may be eligible to opt for retirement,” he said.

‘‘That can be a way of reducing numbers. The more you can meet their future expectations and address the apprehensions that individuals might have, the easier it is to get voluntary redundancies.”

Working practices

McDonnell advised businesses to let staff know that if they did not accept the voluntary redundancy package, there would still have to be changes in their working practices. ‘‘Carrying out an appraisal of future work prospects and possible changes in working arrangements, is also important.

That might persuade people to go, if they think that in future the company will be looking at salaries and work practices.”

Duolog’s silicon design product Weaver is launched in Japan

2009-01-26T09:30:00.003Z

Sunday Business Post - Money & Markets - Sunday Jan 25 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

In a busy week, Irish technology firm Duolog Technologies has previewed a new silicon design product and completed the acquisition, for an undisclosed cash and equity sum, of British-based competitor Beach Solutions.

Duolog’s new software tool had its first public demonstration at industry event EDS Fair 2009 in Japan last week.

‘‘Weaver was launched in Yokohama on Wednesday,” said Ray Bulger, chief executive of Duolog (pictured). ‘‘That is due for official release in April, and will fit into our Socrates platform, with the tools already there.”

Duolog develops electronic design automation (EDA) software tools that enable chip-design companies to better and more efficiently design their products. The new product manages the assembly of a complex silicon design system, and allows fast-track integration of IP blocks, Bulger said.

The Japanese launch complements Duolog’s focus on sales to markets in the Far East, which was also a driver behind the Beach Solutions move, Bulger said.

‘‘Instantly, we get Beach’s customer base, and it was doing about £1 million (€1.06 million) a year from customers including Samsung, Sony, NEC, Toshiba and Olympus.”

Bulger predicted that the new product launch and acquisition would help Duolog to grow its revenues to $15million (€15.9 million) this year, up from €5.5 million in 2008.

‘‘Beach’s £1 million (€1.06 million) was for just one product, and we have five products now,” he said. ‘‘In Japan we hope to add €1 million this year, and we reckon we will do about €1 million more in the US as well.”

The Beach deal, which took three months to negotiate, was not a straightforward acquisition, Bulger said.

‘‘We get its technology, its customer base, and some of its key employees. There were liabilities associated with the company which we did not want to take on,” he said.

The company’s sales in Japan are supported from Ireland and the US, but Bulger said he was close to a deal with a local distributor.

‘‘We are in fairly advanced negotiations with a key distributor in that market and hope to appoint a distributor before the end of this month,” he said. ‘‘That will involve a dedicated person on the ground, plus a very large sales organisation targeting Japanese customers.”

Last February, Duolog opened a new office in Palo Alto, California, at a cost of €500,000. Bulger said the Far East held greater potential for growth. ‘‘We are happy enough that we are holding our ground in the US, given the present market. The US spend actually shrunk by around five per cent in 2008. In the Far East, and Japan in particular, it has increased by between four and six per cent,” he said.

The US investment was funded by money raised mainly from Duolog’s existing backers, including Enterprise Equity, entrepreneur Jim Mountjoy and private clients of Davy Stockbrokers.

Bulger said the cash for the Beach acquisition came from the company’s internal reserves. ‘‘We would like to get more funding for this year, but we are assuming that there is no money out there. This all has to be financed from our own cash reserves and revenue coming in,” he said.

Duolog has raised €4.5 million since it was set up by Bulger and non-executive director Mark O’Donovan in 1999. It employs 85 people, 12 in Dublin with the rest split evenly between its Galway plant and a Budapest operation opened in 2003.

‘‘All the R&D, development, support and deployment is done from Galway. We have value-added, supply-end services which are done from Budapest. This has helped to reduce our costs, as the costs in Ireland were too high,” Bulger said.

Bulger said Duolog initially provided 3G mobile services, before switching to wireless data technology after 2001, and then launching its current range of EDA tools last March. Such flexibility is critical for growth in the high-tech field, Bulger said, particularly given current difficulties.’ ‘Technology companies have to be flexible, as markets can change by the month,” he said.

‘‘It is tighter out there than it has ever been, but if you show people a way to save money, they will spend money. If you have the technology, the R&D, and you can develop a best-in class value proposition, the sales will come.”

Berkley looks to grow its operations in Asia

2009-01-19T14:59:00.003Z

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment Section - Jan 18 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

Irish-owned recruiter Berkley will open its first overseas office next month to counter the downturn in the recruitment market at home. The new office in Singapore would employ ten local staff to target businesses throughout Asia, said Fergal Brosnan, co-director, Berkley Recruitment Group.

Berkley recruits IT, pharmaceutical and sales & marketing candidates from bases in Dublin and Cork. Its decision to set up an office in Singapore is part of a wider overseas strategy, which will include two further bases in Hong Kong and Taiwan, said Brosnan. He said the decision to move into new markets was not a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction to the downturn in the Irish market.

‘‘We did not see the Irish market going down and decide to take the first train out. However, about 18 months ago, we did feel that the growth in the economy was slowing and that, from a growth perspective, we should take this step,” said Brosnan. ‘‘We looked at our own client base, both multinational and Irish companies, to see where they were situated on an international level, and where their next steps might be. We also did a feasibility study looking at other locations, but the nucleus of all the Asian operations seemed to be in Singapore.”

Berkley’s co-director Steve Greenwood said the company was already working with a number of life-science companies with operations in Singapore, and other parts of Asia, including Eli Lily and Schering Plough.

‘‘There are nuances between Ireland and Singapore, but the overall life sciences industry, the companies and people involved, are pretty similar,” Greenwood said.

Brosnan said he planned to spend up to 80 per cent of his time at Berkley’s Singaporean office in the city’s Central Business District this year, to build up the firm’s business in the region.

‘‘It is not just a separate entity trading there on its own, it will be integrated into the Berkley family,” he said. ‘‘People from our Irish offices will work out there on various projects. The people from there will come to Ireland to get acquainted with our particular recruitment model.”

Greenwood said the company would also look at ways to encourage businesses in Singapore to set up operations in Ireland.

‘‘There are an awful lot of Asian companies who want to come to Europe, and would look at Ireland as a gateway to that,” he said. ‘‘We see as much business coming in this direction as going the other way.”

Established in 1993, Berkley has existing overseas alliances in London and Sydney. Brosnan said the company would continue to focus long term on the Irish market, despite current difficulties in the recruitment sector here. The company’s turnover last year was in the region of €5 million.

‘‘We are not as exposed to the downturn here as other recruitment companies,” said Brosnan. ‘‘Our base is solid and we have long-term relationships with our clients, and our market share in Ireland has grown throughout the last number of years.”

Strong Irish Contingent at PAF Fest

2009-01-14T16:58:00.003Z

IFTN.ie - News Story - Jan 14 2009

Read this story online at the iftn.ie website by clicking here.

It is not the first place you might expect to stumble across an extensive programme of Irish animated films, but audiences at last month’s PAF animated film festival in Olomouc, Czech Republic were treated to a season of 50 plus Irish animations running to a total of over eight hours.

Film-makers whose work was shown ranged from established figures such as Aidan Hickey and Deane Taylor to newer directors like Rory Bresnihan and Jason Tammemägi, while animations from studios Cartoon Saloon, Monster Films, Boulder Media, Brown Bag, JAM Media and many others also featured.

PAF's programme manager, Kateřina Surmanová, said the festival's Irish season had been warmly received by the local audiences.

"We were very happy with the Irish programme," Surmanová told IFTN. "During the festival many people told me that they were surprised by the high quality of Irish animation and asked us where they could get copies of the films we showed. PAF wants to introduce national animations that are not widely known here in the Czech Republic and Irish cinema is almost unknown here."

Ross Murray, Ross Stewart and Tom Moore from Cartoon Saloon were guests of the festival. Stewart and Murray gave a presentation outlining the genesis of their new Disney-distributed animated feature 'Brendan and the Secret of Kells' (on general release in Ireland from March 6th), while Murray talked about the practicalities of competing on an international stage from a smallish studio in Kilkenny. Diarmuid O'Brien and Mathew Lloyd from the Irish School of Animation at Ballyfermot College of Further Education also attended.

PAF ran from December 11th to 14th in Olomouc, a city 300 kms east of Prague. Austrian filmmaker and film theorist Peter Kubelka was another special guest, giving two energetic lectures on animation history and practice. Japanese composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda and Czech improvisation trio Mikroloops both contributed to the festival’s 'Live Animation' strand, where film-makers or audience members used the 'Polyekran' technique to animate in real time using fractured images on multiple screens.

The festival also featured an 'Adult Animation' season, built around the work of US auteur Ralph Bakshi and included a screening of his X-rated 'Fritz the Cat' (1972). Czech film-maker Miloš Tomić ran a pixilation technique workshop, while young Czech director Martin Kohout won the PAF 'Other Visions' award for his YouTube inspired short 'Moonwalk'.

For more info on the festival check out www.pifpaf.cz, and click on the English icon in the top right hand corner of the screen.

The reason I wrote about this for IFTN is that I travelled to the festival to give a talk about the history of Irish animation to give some context for the films being shown. Here's the proof.

Nothing taken for granted with GAA

2009-01-12T15:45:00.003Z

Sunday Business Post - Business of Sport - Jan 11 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

The payment of inter county players has long been a bone of contention in GAA circles, and the debate over whether professionalism should be introduced has been one of the associations’ biggest issues over the last number of years. While the Gaelic Players’ Association (GPA) insists it does not want to see hurlers and footballers lose their amateur status, it has fought hard to get compensation for those out of pocket as a result of playing for their county.

After long negotiations, the first government grants to inter-county GAA players were paid out last month, but already there are signs that they could be cut this year.

A total of €3.5 million was shared among 1,800 inter-county footballers and hurlers, with individual payments ranging from €1,400 to €2,500, depending on how many appearances were made in the 2008 All-Ireland championship. The grants are administered by the Irish Sports Council (ISC) on behalf of the government, and distributed by the GAA.

However, sports minister Martin Cullen has signalled that the player grants scheme may be scaled back in 2009, due to the economic downturn.

Dessie Farrell, the GPA’s chief executive and a former inter-county star forward for Dublin’s footballers, said he was confident that there would be no substantial changes to the scheme. ‘‘The ISC has an 8 per cent reduction in its budget, and we would be very happy to work within those parameters,” he said. ‘‘We see no reason why it should go beyond that.”

Farrell said that it had taken a good deal of hard work to persuade all involved to accept the grants scheme.

‘‘It was a very hard-fought concession,” he said. ‘‘We have been campaigning for this since the 2002 Finance Bill, when professional athletes were given lucrative tax breaks. Nonetheless, we are delighted with it.”

Farrell said that the principle involved was more important to players than the amounts being paid. Neither the payments nor the aims of the GPA interfered in any way with the GAA’s amateur ethos.

‘‘The upper levels of the GAA have accepted our acceptance of the amateur status of GAA players, but there is still some scepticism out there,” he said. ‘‘We have gone on record on numerous occasions to insist that we are very happy to see the amateur status retained. There is no hidden agenda.

‘‘You could always do with more funding. But, in this particular instance, we felt that there should be some recognition of the role that intercounty players play within the society.

‘‘We also felt that the revenue generated for the exchequer by these high-profile games should be taken into account.”

Farrell stressed that GPA members were eager to contribute off the pitch, in return for the money coming from the government.

‘‘It is not just a case of players putting their hand out and doing a runner,” he said. ‘‘There is an opportunity to convey very important social messages through high-profile role models. We are currently in discussions with the HSE about a programme involving mental health awareness for the general population. We would like to encourage more take-up from various government departments.”

However, Farrell said that, to keep the prospect of pay-for-play at a distance, there would have to be a certain ‘‘quid pro quo’’ on the part of the authorities - in both Croke Park and Leinster House.

‘‘The basis for the retention of the amateur ethos will be continued government funding, married with the introduction of a comprehensive welfare package for inter-county players,” he said. ‘‘That would be a foundation for players within an amateur context.”
Sponsorship

Farrell said that the GPA signed an agreement with sports marketing and management agency Platinum One last November. ‘‘Platinum One will manage the commercial side of things for us and seek out new sponsorship opportunities,” he said. ‘‘We are happy to hand over our commercial portfolio to a company with vast experience in sports sponsorship and management.”

The GPA currently has commercial relationships with Energise Sport, Halifax and Opel. The latter company’s three-year agreement with the GPA, signed in 2006, is understood to be worth approximately €3 million over three years. No figure was released for the Halifax deal, which was agreed in 2007 and runs for five years.

Farrell said that commercial relationships had been vital in establishing the GPA as a going concern.

‘‘Our ten-year share of revenues agreement with Energise, with what was C&C and is now Britvic, has been a great success for us,” he said.

‘‘Without that, there possibly would be no GPA today. Halifax sponsors our Fair Play award, and is involved with our twinning programme and Gaelic performance summer camps. Opel sponsors our Team of the Year and players’ awards.”

Last year’s Opel footballer of the year was Tyrone’s Sean Cavanagh, while Kilkenny’s Eoin Larkin won the hurling award. Farrell said that being associated with household names such as these was attractive for companies.

‘‘Ultimately, the companies see a huge benefit in being associated with the GPA, because of their involvement with our high-profile members,” he said. ‘‘It is a very attractive proposition for companies wanting that kind of brand exposure and coverage.”

Other work

Farrell said it could be frustrating when people automatically associated the GPA solely with financial matters. He pointed to two less heavily publicised GPA programmes, both of which were introduced last year.

‘‘The Fair Play award focuses on the positive aspects of players’ discipline and on and off-field behaviour,” he said.

‘‘Discipline has been a big problem for the GAA for as long as I can remember, so it is vital that disciplinary issues are tackled at an early age and applied across the board. We see the Fair Play award fitting in well with that.”

‘‘We also launched a twinning programme which pairs strong hurling counties with weaker counties,” Farrell said. ‘‘Players from the stronger counties do coaching sessions in the weaker counties. This programme was devised and implemented by the players themselves. It was hugely successful, yet that seems to get lost in the wash.”

Official recognition

Farrell said the GPA was now focusing its energies on gaining official acceptance from the GAA as the recognised voice of inter-county footballers and hurlers. ‘‘We have been recognised in a de facto capacity for a number of years,” he said.

‘‘The official recognition involves having an official agreement between the GPA and the GAA which recognises the vital role that the GPA fulfils in player welfare and other areas. We would hope in the coming months to ultimately bring that to the final stages.”

Farrell said that this agreement would have to recognise the central role the GPA played in protecting the welfare and rights of its members.

‘‘Through the official negotiations with the GAA, we would like to put in place a very comprehensive player welfare package, with funding from the GAA,” he said. ‘‘Those services would include career development programmes, educational programmes, help with financial planning, and health and wellbeing, including injury, psychological and medical issues.’

Banking on the right support

2009-01-12T10:46:00.002Z

Sunday Business Post - News Feature - Jan 11 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

Bank of Ireland’s Business Support Fund (BSF), which was launched last December, will help viable businesses to overcome trading difficulties brought on by the recession, according to Damian Young, head of small business, Bank of Ireland Business Banking.

The €250 million fund will be used to target small, indigenous businesses.

‘‘We wanted to demonstrate our commitment to the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector in Ireland by allocating specific funds to support businesses going through the current economic conditions,” Young said.

He said the support fund was designed to help fundamentally viable and sound businesses that are going through cyclical change due to the conditions in the market.

Applying for funding

Businesses can apply to Bank of Ireland for funding under the scheme in a number of different ways.

‘‘With the Business Support Fund, we are doing things like extending existing debt over longer repayment schedules,” said Young. ‘‘We are also providing moratoria to businesses so they can stop repaying their existing debt over a period of time to give them that flexibility and breathing space to get through the current turmoil.

‘‘We can restructure existing debt so that people can do smaller repayments now, and payments will increase then as their working capital requirement changes.

‘‘Where businesses have an existing overdraft facility that is coming under pressure as they are not getting paid quickly or because suppliers are looking for cash payment upfront, we can change an overdraft facility to a term facility so that it can be spread across a period of time.

‘‘The support fund is there for businesses that need additional borrowings, or new borrowings in the case of existing businesses who did not need to borrow to support their business previously.”

Term facility

Money made available to SMEs under the scheme will be provided as a term facility only with no arrangement fee.

The terms of the loan will depend on the company’s business needs, but maybe extended for a period of up to seven years. The fund is open to sole traders, limited companies and partnerships.

Young said that the amounts available, and the terms of the loans granted, would depend on the nature and circumstances of each individual applicant.

‘‘This is a tailor-made loan for businesses,” he said. ‘‘We are not putting any restriction on the upper limit available, but we are saying about €150,000 or €200,000 in most cases.

‘‘€20,000 is the nominal lower limit, but we are very flexible there as well. We are looking to see what is needed to support the business over the next 12 to 18 months, and how to best structure it over that period, which will be the critical time.”

Future plans

Young advised business-owners hoping to secure BSF funding in the present climate to put together a detailed business plan with in depth and specific details, bearing in mind the difficult trading conditions currently in play.

‘‘We want to see what the business is going to do with the money, including their business plan and projections for how they are going to trade through the current difficult environment,” he said. ‘‘We need to see that it is a sound viable business, which can trade through the next period of time.”

Young said Bank of Ireland business managers had certain criteria they would use to assess each application for BSF funding.

‘‘We want to see if they are looking at new markets,” he said. ‘‘Do they have a new product or innovation? Are they reducing their costs or sourcing materials from different suppliers?

‘‘Are they looking at more effective debtor collection systems and are they over exposed to any one particular debtor that puts them at risk going forward? Small businesses in any environment need to continuously look at their business plan and cashflow, if they do not do that they will find themselves in trouble.”

Business records

All companies should keep up-to date financial records in the current turbulent climate.

‘‘These should not necessarily be formal, audited accounts, but should include information on debtors, creditors, how much stock the company has, how long it has had that stock and how much is the stock worth,” Young said.

‘‘The SME owner should be able to update the bank on their current position. The bank then has up-to date information on how the business is doing, and can therefore make informed decisions based on that.”

Banking relations

Young advised SME owners to talk to their bank as soon as they current credit limits. ‘‘If you require additional debt, come and talk to the bank beforehand, do not just write the cheque,” he said. ‘‘Banks generally do not like surprises, so do not assume that an additional facility will be there whenever it is needed.

‘‘We are happy to sit down with any business and talk about restructuring debt or looking to see if existing debt is sustainable over the coming months. Agreeing beforehand protects the SME’s credit rating across the board, which is vitally important at the moment.”

Current difficulties

Young said the recession was affecting smaller businesses in a number of different ways.

‘‘Payment days have increased quite significantly and SMEs are waiting longer to get paid by debtors,” he said. ‘‘Average ‘debtor days’ are now 67 working days, which means the working capital requirements of a business have changed dramatically. Companies are looking to extend their own overdraft facilities, and to restructure their facilities to meet changing working capital requirements.

‘‘General market factors are another issue. Businesses are getting hit by declining consumer sentiment, retail sales are falling and businesses are coming under more pressure than they had been. This is not unique to Ireland. This is happening across the globe in the current environment.”

The capital structure of some newer businesses is a concern in the current climate, Young said.

‘‘Some smaller companies, particularly ones that have been set up in recent years, have been reliant on interest bearing debts to support the business,” he said. ‘‘When the economy changes and there is more pressure on cash, in a lot of cases there is a need for more equity in put or additional debt.”

The recent fall in the value of sterling relative to the euro has hit some smaller Irish businesses hard.

‘‘A huge number of SMEs are coming under significant pressure due to the near parity between sterling and the euro,” he said. ‘‘That is a 20 or 25 per cent difference from 12 or 18 months ago, which is eroding margins significantly.’

Funding new business

While the BSF is targeted at more established SMEs, Young said Bank of Ireland was also eager to speak to entrepreneurs looking to set up a new business in 2009.

‘‘For brand new businesses, we have a separate fund called the Developing Business Loan fund,” he said. ‘‘That has been running since 2006. In 2008, we upped the upper limit available to €50,000. It is an unsecured loan, so the entrepreneur does not to have tangible assets to secure it against.”

Young said that entrepreneurial activity w s continuing in Ireland, despite the downturn.

‘‘We are still seeing good activity in the Developing Business Loan fund despite the current environment,” he said. ‘‘There are still businesses being set up. There are still people coming to us looking for finance, and we are still supporting those businesses .Our activity in that is running at an average of €2.5million a week being provided.”

Start-up plans

Young advised entrepreneurs seeking bank funding to factor the current difficult economic climate into their start-up plans.

‘‘In the current environment, businesses coming to look for new funding should be prepared with evidence of how they are going to run the business over the next 12 to 18 months,” he said. ‘‘They should have a detailed business plan with cashflow projections, cost control measures, debtor collection plans, new markets or product innovation plans.”

According to Young, it is never too early to approach a bank for a chat about a new business idea.

‘‘The bank is not just there to give you a loan; it is a source of advice, support and direction,” he said.

‘‘Feel free to go in and meet with the business manager and talk to them about the idea and what type of things you should be looking at. You can then go away and prepare the plan a bit further before a more formal meeting with the bank about cash requirements.”

Business basics

Young said the same key business fundamentals applied in any economic climate.

‘‘Have a very good business plan and ensure it is your own and not somebody else’s,” he said. ‘‘The business plan should reflect the passion that the entrepreneur is willing to put into the business. Research the market very well. Understand the upsides, but also the downside, so that you have researched what can go wrong. Be prepared to work hard and manage the finances.”

Banks are generally keen to see the entrepreneur is showing a personal financial commitment to a new business, according to Young.

‘‘Make sure you start off on a good footing in terms of capital structure,” he said. ‘‘There should be signs they are putting their own money into the business, and that they are looking to the bank to provide a similar level of funding.”

Start-up trends

The number of new businesses created in Ireland fell notably last year, according to Damian Young, head of small business at Bank of Ireland Business Banking.

‘‘We do a barometer of start-ups and the first nine months of 2008 saw a 20 per cent drop off in the number of start-ups in Ireland,” Young said.

‘‘The final three months of the year, however, were the most difficult of the year, so we would expect that the overall start-up figure would be around 14,000 to 15,000.”

Bank of Ireland’s Start-up Barometer showed that the number of start-ups in Ireland in 2007 totalled 18,740. This represented a considerable drop over 2006, when 19,221 start-ups were founded.

Young said the fall in construction and related sectors accounted for most of the recent drop-off in start-up activity.

‘‘The shortfall was predominantly in construction, or construction-related sectors, which saw a 43 per cent fall in businesses being set up,” he said. ‘‘The non-construction related businesses were down in the first nine months of last year by only about 7 per cent. Certain services and retail operations would also be down on 2007.”

Low levels of start-up activity prevailed in all sectors last year, according to Young.

‘‘No one new sector really stood out in 2008,” he said. ‘‘The technology businesses were a little ahead of the previous year, and there are more niche businesses being set up in those areas.”‘ The downturn is affecting the type of new businesses setting up in Ireland.

‘‘In the current environment, you will get different types of start-ups,” he said. ‘‘You sometimes see stronger, more focused businesses being set up in a downturn. We see very good expertise coming from multinational companies that are downsizing or scaling back establishing niche businesses that have the capacity to internationalise and export. Those are the type of businesses that will add value to Ireland Inc going forward.”

Young welcomed the government’s commitment to support entrepreneurs in 2009.

‘‘The government’s new initiatives with regard to research and development are very positive,” he said. ‘‘Ensuring that businesses are putting capital into developing their own businesses is going to be important going forward. The likes of the County Enterprise Boards and other support organisations will be focused on supporting new businesses in 2009 as well.”

Bank of Ireland will expand the supports it provides to new companies this year, according to Young.

‘‘We are committed to continuing and enhancing our business start-up package this year,” he said. ‘‘In 2009, we want to be even more active in local markets, in terms of supporting businesses and providing advice and direction to them.

‘‘We have a partnership with Kernel Venture Capital to provide equity capital into new and developing businesses and we have been probably the most active bank in Ireland on the VC side of things.

‘‘We have a number of initiatives looking at business innovation and how we can support more innovative businesses. I am reasonably optimistic for 2009, even though it is going to be very tough here.”

Young said he did not expect any major drop in the number of new businesses setting up in Ireland this year, compared to 2008.

‘‘It is hard to say at this stage, but I would predict that it will be at a similar level to last year,” he said. ‘‘We will take out the element that would only be there in a boom time, but there is a core that might see the figure at around 14,000 next year. We are not going to go back to a stage where we would see fewer and fewer startups.”

Broadcasters prepare to fight the online battle

2009-01-07T10:03:00.004Z

Sunday Business Post - Business of Sport section - Jan 04 2009

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

The ways in which football fans view their favourite teams play may be rapidly changing, in ways that will have knock-on effects for all involved in the football business - clubs, broadcasters, sponsors, shareholders and fans.

Instead of having to fork out for a monthly or annual subscription to a pay-per-view broadcaster, or visit a pub or friends’ house, a significant number are watching their live football online, for free. The service is facilitated by sites such as the popular and notorious US-based website Justin.tv.

Set up last April to allow individuals to broadcast their daily lives online, Justin.tv is now being used by people and companies to show everything from rock concerts to political rallies to sports events. Fans can now generally watch every Premier League game - or other sports events such as European Cup rugby or USPGA golf - live via a stream on Justin.tv or many other copycat sites, albeit often with an imperfect picture and unsteady stream.

However, Setanta’s customer acquisitions director Brian Quinn said this development was not unduly concerning broadcasters who own the rights to show Premier League games in Ireland.

‘‘We are aware that in a small number of instances, some consumers are illegally viewing premium sports content for free on the internet,” said Quinn. ‘‘We do not believe the number of users in Ireland is very high as the viewing experience is very poor and unreliable."

‘‘Most people with a genuine interest in watching these games are happy to pay subscription charges to the legitimate rights owners, such as Setanta, and enjoy a quality experience at a price which represents very good value,” said Quinn.

However, despite this attitude, Quinn said that Setanta, in partnership with the Premier League authorities in Britain, was actively pursuing sites that illegally broadcast material to which Setanta owned the rights.

‘‘We are working with our rights partners, such as the Premier League, to pursue illegal businesses and have them shut down,” he said.

This is easier said than done, however. Justin.tv, for example, claims to be merely offering a facility for others to broadcast, and is therefore not responsible for the content shown. According to Michael Siebel, chief executive of the VC-funded website, Justin.tv immediately shuts down any channel broadcasting copyrighted material, once notified by the copyright holder.

‘‘The Premier League is registered with Justin.tv and is actively using our suite of tools that we provide to copyright holders, so we expect to continue working with them to manage their content on the site,” said Siebel.

Policing these channels, and the thousands of similar websites that have emerged in recent months, is difficult in practice.

Websites such as YouTube and 101greatgoals.com have been targeted by the Premier League, to ensure compliance with copyright legislation. However, as the websites where the content is actually hosted can be in faraway jurisdictions, including China and Iraq, complete enforcement is almost impossible.

This may be why Quinn said that Setanta was developing ways to utilise the internet to broadcast its sports coverage.

‘‘We were very early to realise that some consumers are interested in viewing premium sport through broadband,” he said.

‘‘In Ireland, we work with Eircom as the distributor of our premium content online. In the British market, we retail our online content directly.

‘‘We believe the percentage of our customers viewing online will grow and we are constantly working on improving the online product,” said Quinn. ‘‘In both Ireland and Britain, we will be launching some enhancements next year, which take advantage of the higher speeds now available.”

The previous Premier League rights went for an astronomical stg£2.6 billion for seasons 2007-10, including €570 million paid by Setanta for just one of the four available bundles of games. The next round of rights, for 2010 to 2013, will be sold next year.

Quinn said he did not expect illegal online viewing to impact significantly on the upcoming negotiations.

‘‘It is possible that many factors could influence future rounds of rights auctions, including the economic climate. However, at this point, it is unlikely that users illegally viewing poor quality sport online will impact on the process,” he said.

However, the next round of Premier League broadcast rights will include more complex packages, including different bundles of TV, and online and mobile delivery methods, rather than the traditional TV only deals. Setanta can be expected to bid for at least some of these new packages.

‘‘Distributing our content through various channels - such as satellite, cable, freeview, online and mobile - has been an approach we have embraced from early on and this has brought rewards for us,”

Quinn said. ‘‘We will continue the approach and will always look for new ways to ensure the widest distribution of our content.”

But Quinn said he did not foresee the internet replacing television as the primary medium for viewing live sporting events in the near future.

‘‘It is important to note that the vast majority of premium sports subscribers in two or three years will still be happiest consuming sport through their TV in a traditional format,” he said.

Siebel, however, argued that consumers would want to view content - whether live football, music or television - wherever and whenever they want, and said that rights holders should work with online channels to reach the most people possible.

‘‘I think the trend we have seen over the last few years, where consumers are able to enjoy content any time and anywhere, will continue to grow and evolve,” he said.

‘‘More and more content owners are coming to realise that they need to meet that consumer demand and find new ways to make their content available - whether it be through mobile devices, social media or live video.

‘‘Our vision is that all leagues will work together with Justin.tv in order to provide their fans with a live, televisionlike experience online.”

SMEs push government on funding start-ups

2008-12-30T20:49:00.003Z

Sunday Business Post - News Feature - Dec 28 2008

Read the article on the Sunday Business Post website by clicking here.

Business representatives are calling on the government to address the funding shortfall facing start-ups in 2009. Patricia Callan, director of the Small Firms Association (SFA), said that the government’s €10 billion bank rescue plan, announced earlier this month, would do little to help young businesses dependent on bank lending.

‘‘I certainly do not think that the recapitalisation of the banks will have any direct impact on lending. We propose that the government, rather than just guaranteeing the banks, should guarantee the loans they give to small business,” said Callan.

‘‘The banks say they are giving out the amount of start-up finance and credit based on the current economic climate, and irrespective of the credit crunch. I do not think anyone believes that.”

As a potential solution, JJ Killian, chairman of the Irish Small and Medium Enterprise Association (Isme), urged the government to consider nationalising one of the Irish-owned banks, which could then provide credit to entrepreneurs who need it.

‘‘We could look at a situation where the state takes over a bank and runs it similar to the way ACC was run in the past. It would be a government bank and could guarantee loans to small businesses in various parts of the country,” said Killian.

He said the ‘‘state of inertia’’ gripping the Irish economy required decisive government action to return some degree of confidence.

‘‘Confidence is the critical factor in the economy at the moment. The confidence has been wiped away at every level,” he said.

‘‘The person who can afford to buy something this week, and is in a steady job, will not do it because everybody has become so cautious.

‘‘We need confidence to rebuild at every level, from the governments to the banks to the small business owners to the man in the street. The only way to rebuild this confidence is to find away to get money moving again.”

Claims among the country’s banks, that business lending activity is continuing, are misleading, said Killian.

‘‘They are open for business in that you can walk in and apply for credit, but they are not open for business in that there has been a subtle ratcheting-up of the criteria applying to companies looking for credit,” he said.

Callan agreed that start-ups seeking bank finance faced an uphill struggle. ‘‘The reality is that things have changed. The banks all talk about funding sustainable businesses, but that comes down to a personal decision,” she said.

‘‘How people are being treated is different now, whether it is the amount of detail they have to provide when making applications, the length of time it takes to make a decision, or the requirement for a personal guarantee to get a loan.”

Business owners who succeed in securing credit face higher rates, said Callan. ‘‘I would be particularly concerned at the cost of finance, which is a direct result of the high cost of money on the international markets due to the credit crunch,” she said.

‘‘We asked people whether the cost of finance increased over the last six months of 2008. Fifty-one per cent of our members said the cost of finance for working capital had increased, and 39 per cent said the cost of finance for investment purposes had increased.”

Callan said she was optimistic that the investment capital sought by the Irish banks from the European Investment Bank (EIB), earlier this month, would be made available.

‘‘The banks have met with the EIB and sought funds from the €15 billion fund that was set up for SMEs,” she said.

‘‘There was some dispute over whether that was for working capital or not, but my information from the EIB is that it can be given in the form of two-year term loans, which is just the type of finance that people need at the moment.”

Killian said that the government should ensure that any EIB funding secured would be made available to start-ups and small business owners.

‘‘The government needs to make strenuous efforts to go after the EIB funding,” he said. ‘‘There should be some way of channelling that so that we can see what is happening, and to make sure that it comes into the small business sector.”

Callan said that there were signs that the banks would make this money available to Irish small business owners and entrepreneurs.

‘‘In one week in December, each of the four major banks announced major SME funding initiatives. They are all saying they will retain their current levels of business and have given guarantees of new funds, so there should be more money available,” she said.

She pointed to some other potential sources of funding for new businesses.

‘‘First Step is a specific micro-finance funding initiative, which gets most of its money directly from the European Investment Bank.

‘‘The local county and city enterprise boards can give grants and finance, and we are putting pressure on the government at the moment to expand their operations.

‘‘If you are high-growth and exportdriven, you can go to Enterprise Ireland.”

Callan said that, despite the funding difficulties facing start-ups, new businesses continued to set up around the country.

‘‘Start-up numbers were up to maybe 18,000 in 2007.The numbers were distorted, though, by a lot of small construction companies starting up, which will now be out of the mix.

They might come back to around what we used to have, which was 12,000 or 13,000 per year.”

Financial recruiters feel squeeze

2008-12-30T20:40:00.004Z

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment Section - Dec 21 2008

The recruitment sector hasn't escaped the recession's clutches, with a grim 2009 lying in wait, writes Dermot Corrigan.

The financial crisis is forcing some recruiters targeting the market out of business, as competitors vie for a slice of a shrinking market. According to Anne Keys, director of financial recruiter IFSC Panel, it is a case of "survival of the fittest" for financial recruiters navigating a turbulent market that shows no signs of stabilising.

"There will be fewer recruitment firms in Ireland by this time next year," said Keys. "There are fewer financial services jobs to fill at the moment so there is more competition for roles. We are certainly losing some of our competitors, and others are laying off staff, particularly those who focused on junior level roles. ”

Risk management
Despite this, ongoing developments in the market have created demand for certain niche skills. One prominent example is risk - now a major concern for employers concerned with fraud and security issues in the wake of the Bernard Madoff debacle.

“Operational risk, market risk and credit risk are popular as companies are looking to see where they are at and what the internal and external risks in the market at the moment are,” said Keys.

Brian Murphy, managing director, Ireland, Premier Group, said that the number of compliance roles on offer in the Irish banking sector, and wider financial services market, would grow in the years ahead.

"I would suggest there will be a lot of procedural roles brought into the banking sector,” he said. “That particular niche area within banking and financial services will be very busy. Sarbanes-Oxley came to prominence after the Enron scandal, and for the next number of years you could not get enough of them.”

Recruitment Industry
Shay Dalton, managing director, Lincoln Financial Search & Selection, said that the recruitment industry was less able to withstand economic upheaval than some other sectors.

"Recruitment companies really lead with their chin in recessionary times and they can be badly hit," said Dalton. "It depends really on how well you are established in your market. Recent entrants into the market will suffer and possibly mid-tier firms, who grew a lot over the last three to five years, may have to scale back a lot.”

The downturn has hit recruiters heavily invested in the financial market harder than those with a broader focus, said Murphy.

"The financial services recruitment companies would probably have had it a lot harder than the general recruiters," he said. "If they are over-dependent on a small number of big clients who stop hiring, then it becomes difficult."

Keys said that some employers in financial services had opted to exclude recruitment agencies from the hiring process altogether, in an effort to cut costs, particularly for low-end roles.

“A lot of clients are going are going directly for junior roles," said Keys. "It is a big thing that we have seen. They use the recruitment firm more for middle to senior end.”

Quiet Christmas
Recruitment activity typically dies down in the run-up to Christmas but, according to Keys, the seasonal lull had a noticeably longer lead-in this year.

“Things went quiet this year quicker than any other year," she said. "Normally it gets quieter in December, but from the end of October onwards we have seen clients putting recruitment on hold until they see which way the market goes in the new year.”

“The financial services employers who have been hit harder by the downturn are now paying the price and have had to let people go," she said. "Some clients are going over the radar, but some are under the radar, depending on the number of people they are looking to make redundant.”

Murphy said that hiring freezes were holding sway across the banking sector.

"An awful lot of our customers in the banking sector would have hiring freezes in place," he said. "Anything related to the construction sector, such as mortgaging broking, professional lending and similar types of roles, are very quiet.”

Specialist roles
Despite the downturn in the financial services sector, Keys said that there were still opportunities for candidates with specialised skills.

“It is not that it is completely dead," she said. "There are some roles available, but just less of them. Some banks are looking at contract work, and mainly on the finance side. Contract accounting is definitely busier, but that tends to be the case towards the end of the year anyway.”

Keys said there were job opportunities in the financial services sector.

“A number of both domestic and overseas insurance companies are looking to recruit head of compliance type roles at the moment,” she said.

Transferable skills
Dalton said that many individuals attracted to the financial services sector during a period of sustained growth in recent years were now opting to leave.

"The financial services attracted top talent over the past ten years," he said. “There are currently options open, especially for accountants, within the commerce and industry sector. The transferable skills include traditional financial reporting, internal audit, risk and compliance, core analytical skills as well as areas such as taxation and corporate finance."

Dalton said some accountancy practices were keen to take on candidates with experience in the financial services sector.

"There is a trend for candidates who trained in practice, and who subsequently went into financial services and industry, to go back into practice," he said. "The skills they gain outside of practice complements the advisory experience they developed in practice."

Some candidates with niche skillsets find it more difficult to transfer to other sectors, said Keys.

“A lot of areas in financial services are quite niche, particularly in banking, treasury, fund accounting et cetera,” she said. “It is quite difficult to transfer that kind of skillset into another area.”

supply of candidates
Keys said that the difficulties faced by companies in the Irish financial services sector meant that there was a surplus of good quality candidates on the market heading into 2009.

“We are finding that there are way more candidates available immediately," she said. "Candidates who have either been made redundant, or their contract has finished and they have not been offered a new one.”

Dalton said that individuals in employment were less likely to move to a new employer, given the current uncertainty in the market.

"In many cases, financial services professionals are staying are remaining with their employers, rather than voluntarily enter a turbulent job market," he said.

Keys said that a “huge change” in the professional mindset of many candidates.

“Previously, most candidates who were currently working would always have been looking for other positions,” she said. “The only people currently actively looking are those who might be unsure of their current role within the company.”

According to Keys, a move overseas is on the cards for some candidates.

“Some may look to go out of Europe to locations that are up and coming, and where their skillset is in demand, such as Dubai," she said. "It is mainly banking skills that are required there at the moment. India is a place where there is lots of activity happening, but I do not see a rush of Irish people going over there.”

Salary trends
Keys said that the salaries offered for some finance roles had dropped significantly in recent months.

“Some candidates, at senior and executive level, who are currently available, are coming down maybe €20,000 from what they were on previously," she said. “I have not seen roles that were at €40,000 drop down to €30,000 but an employer might pay around €5,000 less than they might have done.”

Candidates who are out of work, when searching for a job, have little scope to negotiate with potential employers in the current market, according to Keys.

“Clients are now able to say ‘look, this is what I am paying’ and if the candidate is willing to work on that basis it will go forward,” she said. “But employers will not be matching expectations or past or current candidate salaries.”

Year ahead
Dalton said bonus payments would take a hit in the New Year.

"Many bonuses within financial services are paid in January and in many cases, these will not be paid or will be less than 2007," he said.

Keys said:

“It is very hard to predict what way the market are going. Most of the media are saying it will be 2010 (before it picks up), and that 2009 will be a difficult year. The expectation is that Q1 and Q2 will be difficult, but that there will be some pick up in the third and fourth quarters of the year. It will be a tough year, but there will still be roles to fill.”

Global heavyweights feel pinch

2008-12-29T19:33:00.005Z

Sunday Business Post - Executive Search and Selection Report - Dec 14 2008

As demand slows down, some of the world's biggest executive search and selection firms have already shed 40 per cent of their workforce. But the full impact of the downturn won't hit home until next year, writes Dermot Corrigan.

Demand for the services of executive search and selection firms has slowed significantly this year, leading to job losses internationally, but worse is to come.

"We have seen two of the biggest executive search firms (in) the world - Heidrick & Struggles and Korn / Ferry - already let go about 40 per cent of their own staff," said Karl Croke, managing director of Amrop Strategis in Ireland. "The number of senior management searches coming into organisations, in Ireland or abroad, has slowed significantly."

Croke said the early effects of the downturn had begun to take their toll on the executive search and selection market in September. The full impact would, he added, hit home next year.

"We expect to come back down to the figures we had in 2006. That is just reflective of the economy, and what is going on."

Employers are taking more time to fill executive roles, meaning longer processes and ultimately less business for executive search firms, according to Maurice Carr, managing partner, BDO Recruitment.

“The latter half of 2008 has been difficult,” said Carr. “The main outcome has been a slow down in demand and also a lengthening of the time that it takes to complete a processes due to fear and negative sentiment on both the sides of the employer and the perspective employee.”

By contrast, 2007 was a peak year for executive search and selection in Ireland, said Barry O'Connor, partner, Merc Partners.

"Our revenues this year would be well down on 2007, which was probably the best in our history,” said O’Connor. “We do not expect a massive increase in 2009 either, we expect things to be quiet again, in comparison to 2007.”

Sectoral trends
"Construction has taken a hammering, particularly house-building and development,” said Croke. “Financial services is also finding it tough, but most sectors are feeling the brunt right now."

"Everything is connected, and there is a flow through, and with confidence the way it is people are holding on to the few quid they have. There is a big degree of fear out there. Until we get to the bottom of the cycle, that is not going to change."

O’Connor said some sectors were holding up better than in others.

"Some elements of the financial services sector are still functioning - insurance, for instance,” he said. “We are also doing business at senior level for quite a few back-office type operations for financial services companies. Food, pharmaceuticals, retail, consumer goods and outsourcing are all still quite active."

Carr said that the healthcare and green sectors had strong growth potential.

“The multinational healthcare companies continue to be strong performers,” he said. “They are still recruiting at senior level, the environment is also an area that is showing increasing demand, but that probably has a year or two left before it is a major employer.”

Croke said that the global slowdown was forcing multinational companies with operations in Ireland to rethink plans to relocate elsewhere.

"The Intels and other similar multinationals which were moving operations to Poland or China seem to have consolidated here a lot,” he said. “That sector has strengthened in Ireland in the last year, which is (not what you would) have expected."

New opportunities
Croke said the response to the downturn, among search and selection firms, had been to diversify, to broaden the range of services on offer to clients.

"Executive search, for people to run organisations day to day, has slowed significantly,” he said. “However, that has been replaced by leadership products looking at board structure, management review and board review."

"Organisations are saying 'given all the change that is out there, that our strategy might no longer be relevant and we should review everything'. If the required strategy has changed, companies may need new people on the board, or in the management team, with different competencies and skills."

Carr said that BDO had refocused its own offering in response to the downturn.

"We have focused on new areas, including doubling our interim turnover, and also increasing our consulting fees, particularly in the area of performance management systems," he said.

John C Harty, managing director John C Harty Associates, said clients facing a more difficult marketplace were keen to work more closely with their executive search partners to help manage recruitment and HR processes.

“Over the final quarter of 2008, and into the first quarter of 2009, our clients are looking more than ever before for a partnership relationship,” he said. “Our clients’ key decision makers are relying on the executive search firm to guide them wholly through the recruitment process and also looking for some guidance on existing staffing structures.”

Interim management was particularly popular in the current climate," said Carr, "particularly with senior finance people across all sectors who have been recruited to deal with liquidity issues, but also the full spectrum of businesses in dealing with the decisions and actions that they need to take to deal with the changes in the economy. I believe this will be a very active area in our business.”

O’Connor said that there was still some demand from Irish companies with operations abroad.

"We have seen more international activity in 2008 than before, particularly assignments in association with our affiliates abroad,” he said. “We have had clients looking for Irish people to work abroad, and likewise Irish clients looking to recruit people abroad for their operations abroad. The latter is something that has been busier than in previous years."

Salary markers
O’Connor said the remuneration packages on offer at executive level had taken a hit in recent months.

"Anecdotally, I would feel that there is downward pressure on compensation, which is particularly coming from lack of bonuses, which seems to be happening in all sectors,” he said. “Bonuses are still being offered as part of packages, but expectations are much lower."

In some cases, however, Harty said, many companies were still willing to offer increased salaries to attract the right candidates.

“When a top executive is being head-hunted for a new role in a different organisation the overall package generally rises by between 12 per cent and 16 per cent to that of their previous role,” he said. “This trend is holding steady in those sectors not directly exposed to the downturn.”

Croke said media coverage concerning executive salaries and bonuses carried its own risks.

"It is reasonable to question some of the bonuses and salaries, but we need to be careful not to shoot ourselves in the foot, in financial services or anywhere else,” he said. “Really good executives can move internationally. Ireland cannot nail these people to the floor. You can liken it to liverpool football club. If you cut the players wages in half, they will head for Chelsea or Inter Milan. We still really need leadership at the moment."

Future trends
O’Connor said he expected the market to pick up slowly next year.

“We are not planning any expansion or anything like that, but our business is chief executives and function heads, and the demand for leadership talent grows as organisations come under pressure," he said. "The demand for the best talent out there may increase in the coming year, and we would hope that we can play a part in that."

Harty said his firm was looking outside the Irish market to grow its business in the new year.

“In 2009, we open offices in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Doha,” he said. “Our aim is to search on a more global basis for all our assignments whether the role is based in Dublin or Doha”

Carr said that, as companies were forced to fight their way through a difficult economy, the services of executive search and selection agencies would be required.

“Although in the short term companies will be hesitant about making senior appointments, I see this improving in the first quarter of 2009,” he said. “Over the next number of years there will be a requirement for a higher performance from executives that this will create a demand in executive recruitment."

"The bar will also be raised in terms of the ability of people in the executive search market to deliver the quality of executive required.”

Panel: Advice for candidates
Executive-level candidates are increasingly insecure about the long term viability of their current roles, according to Karl Croke, managing director, Amrop Strategis in Ireland.

"The number of people who would like to have a cup of coffee with me is getting larger every day,” Croke said. “These are people at executive level who are concerned about their future and the role that they currently in. A number have been let go from various organisations. Some are in organisations where the writing is on the wall, and they are very concerned. Others who are in organisations where they can see a future, are thinking that maybe this is not a good time to take a risk and move."

Barry O'Connor, partner, Merc Partners, advised candidates to review all of their options.

"People need to look at how they will develop their career, and continue with that, regardless of the pressures in the general economy,” he said. “People have to look at whether they could do better, or be more effective or advance quicker in another firm. These are questions that executives should be asking themselves.”

Croke said that experienced candidates were finding more favour with employers.

"The law says that you cannot discriminate by age, but right now people with some grey hair, who have been through economic downturn before, are more valuable to organisations,” he said. “During the dotcom boom it was the 30-year-old gung-ho risk taker with huge energy seemed to be the flavour of the month. People who know how to manage through a difficult environment are now more interesting to companies."

O’Connor said the downturn had not affected which skills and talent employers typically sought from top-level executives.

"The fundamentals still apply,” said O’Connor. “Organisations still look for the competencies they have always sought, but they are looking for the best in those particular areas. Leadership is still a major requirement, as is commercial analysis and the ability to communicate and get people to buy into whatever agendas are required to rejuvenate organisations. Strategy also remains very important.”

John C. Harty, managing director, John Harty Associates, said international markets offered opportunities to Irish executives whose careers might have stalled at home.

“You have a greater pool of executive candidates in the market place who fear that their current position could be under threat,” said Harty. “My advice to senior executives would be to be as open as they can be to opportunities outside of Ireland. The more international experienced gained the better. The corporate world is changing and is about to change more dramatically. The era of outsourcing is about to (hit) the Western economies rapidly and those who do not follow or adjust to the global changing market place will be left behind.”

Career breaks can keep everyone happy

2008-12-08T19:11:00.003Z

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment Feature - Dec 7 2008

Career breaks are an increasingly popular way to cut payroll costs while keeping ties with valuable employees, writes Dermot Corrigan.

Career breaks are on the table for many companies looking to move staff off the payroll until the economy rights itself.

Permanent TSB (PTSB) recently announced a scheme to incentivise staff to take a two or three-year career break or voluntary sabbatical. Employee reactions to the scheme have been broadly positive, according to a spokesperson for the company.

The financial services company offered employees up to €20,000 to take a two-year break and up to €35,000 to take three years off. The total sum was offered as an upfront payment to a maximum level of half the employee's annual salary.

"It has been received extremely positively," said the spokesperson. "Staff see it as innovative, and its voluntary nature is attractive. We have received feedback over the last couple of years that staff would appreciate more flexible work arrangements; they see this as an option which meets this need."

While not releasing any figures on the take-up to date of the scheme, the spokeswoman said the company was happy with the number of applications thus far.

"We have received plenty of applications from all across the organisation," she said. "There is a mix of all employees applying ranging from three to over 20 years service, male and female, both Irish and non-nationals – reflecting our employee base."

"There is also a good balance between the two and three year option, depending on what people are planning to do during the career break."

Innovative approach
Janet Wallace, HR solutions consultant with Russell Brennan Keane, said that the PTSB offer provided an innovative way to managing staff costs in a downturn.

"It is a good way for companies to reduce their payroll costs over a certain period, while ensuring you can get your skills back for when you need them in two or three years time," said Wallace.

"You are not losing the investment you put into them from a recruitment and training point of view, and you keep the knowledge they have built up about your company. It is a lovely option to be able to give if you are an employer."

While those who take up the PTSB scheme are guaranteed a role in the company, similar to their current job, upon their return, Wallace said not all companies could offer similar promises in the present economic climate.

"That is a risk that individuals considering a career break have to take,” she said. “However, in the current climate there are other people who are not sure if their job is going to be there in two months time, never mind two years. It depends on the employee and the situation they are in. Some people might have a partner who would be able to keep them financially secure."

Wallace said candidates who did decide to take a career break, did so for a variety of reasons depending on their own circumstances.

"Over the past few years traveling has been a massive one for people, and especially younger staff might pick up on this,” she said. “Other people might want to go back and do further studies. Some other people might have family commitments, they might have young children and would like to take a couple of years out, knowing they had the security of a permanent job to go back to."

Volunteering Derek Bambrick, business manager with recruitment firm Abrivia, said employers generally looked more favourably on staff who use their time out of the company to develop new skills or experiences.

"Employers often give career breaks to people who they value, but if they offer a career break they like to see the individuals putting something else on the table when they return,” said Bambrick. “If it is well planned and constructive, a career break can be advantageous to any employer."

Bambrick said Abrivia had recently placed a candidate in a senior financial services position on his return from a two-year career break.

"This gentleman was an accountant and had six years experience post qualification,” said Bambrick. “He and his wife, who is a pharmacist, were just married. He decided he wanted to do some voluntary work, so he joined up with VSO (an international development charity) and worked in an international development role in Africa. He went away with numbers in his head, but he came back with very strong project management skills. He had the skills of a sales manager, and had the life experience to go into a country management type role."

Upon his return, Abrivia was able to place the candidate with his old company - and in a more senior role.

"When he came back he had to renegotiate another contract,” he said. “He was so well thought of that they nearly created a job for him. As he had a whole new list of talents, and a new skillset, his career was given a boost."

In general, however, it is not typical for employers to keep positions open for staff who leave the company for a year or more, Bambrick said.

"It depends on the relationship you have with your employer,” he said. “If you come back and reapply for a job, you will be in a good position with the new skills and experiences that you have picked up."

Secure new role
Bambrick said those who take a career break, without any guarantee from their current employer, could find that new employers are interested.

"Somebody might want to do voluntary work, and another person might want to go to university or something like that,” he said. “But as long as they can show value to the job market, and attain new skills and keep up with the existing skills they have, they will do very well."

Bambrick said more companies were introducing career breaks as part of outplacement programmes and redundancy packages.

"Some people choose to take a career break and do something else for a while,” he said. “We can do psychometric testing and give general advice on their options."

Case study: Tina Kelly - a 'better employee' after her one-year career break

Tina Kelly, a consultant with recruitment firm Sigmar, recently returned to Ireland following a six month career break in Australia and New Zealand.

"I had spent a number of years in recruitment and had seen some very busy times in the market, and I felt that I needed a bit of a break,” said Kelly. “Some personal changes had also happened in my life at the time. I sat down and talked with my manager, she was very receptive to it, and I decided that I could take a year out and then come back after the year. I was told my job would be here when I came back."

"I took a year out from Sigmar, and I went travelling to Australia and New Zealand, and then I spent some time at home here," Kelly said. "I had a great six months away, and then I was back in Dublin for six months."

Kelly said her experience differed significantly from the typical post-university gap-year trip.

"I was a little bit older than most people who take a gap year," she said. "I was in my early 30s so I had some money behind me. I was able to do all the backpacking things, but I was also able to go for meals, get my hair done, and still maintain a good lifestyle."

"I really enjoyed it, I met all kinds of different people, saw things I would not normally see, and I came back much more interested in my work and refreshed in how I looked at things. I was very motivated and I was happier in myself, and therefore a better employee."

A growing number of candidates in Ireland have career breaks on their CVs, said Kelly.

"Quite, often I would come across candidates who have taken a career break," she said. “It seems to be becoming a more common choice for people of all age groups, and all types of professions and careers."

"You get a real mix of people taking career breaks for all kinds of different reasons. Sometimes it is for family reasons such as someone being sick, other times they want to travel. People often study while they were off, and voluntary work would also certainly come into it."

"It depends on the individual. Some people come back and have decided that they do not want to return to their old job, and decide to try something different," Kelly said. "Sometimes a change has occurred while they were away, and they now want to try something new. But a lot of people would look to get back into the same kind of role as before."

Kelly said that employers were not generally worried about gaps in a candidates work history on a CV, once the candidate could explain how they used the time beneficially.

"I do not think career breaks harm people professionally,” she said. “I have never come across an employer who would have a problem with a candidate who has taken a career break.”

Redeployment is now a key issue

2008-12-01T12:01:00.004Z

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment Page - Nov 30 2008

A creative approach to managing staff is needed to avoid job losses in an unsteady economy, writes Dermot Corrigan.

Companies under pressure are finding more creative ways to manage employees in order to stave off staff cuts and balance the books. Staff redeployment is top of the agenda for HR managers tasked with finding ways to boost revenues, according to a new report.

The SHL Ireland survey, released last week, found that redefining how staff operate was of “critical importance” to 59 per cent of the respondents it questioned.

HR practitioners in 100 organisations in Ireland responded to the SHL survey. 48 per cent identified the redeployment of existing staff between offices, divisions or roles as "an important strategy" in the current business climate.

"Companies are refocusing and looking to see what positions have the greatest possibility for revenue generation or for cutting costs," said Joe Ungemah, regional manager for Ireland, SHL. "They are looking across all the positions they have and saying which ones do we need to focus on if we have limited resources; which are the positions that have the greatest chance of bringing in money, sales people for example, and also research and development?"

In many cases, staff earmarked for redeployment are willing and qualified to move into more productive roles, Ungemah said.

“You have to think about what job families are closely related to each other,” he said. “When you are, for example, thinking of moving someone from an operations role into R&D, it comes down to whether someone has the right technical skills and experience. It may not be something they are using now, but they have learned it in the past."

52 per cent of the respondents surveyed by SHL said they had no plans to cut training budgets despite the downturn. Ungemah said that slower trading conditions were allowing some companies the space to train staff to fill different roles.

"The speed of economic growth over the last couple of years has meant that a lot of companies have not paid attention to keeping their internal HR processes up to date," he said. “Organisations realise that they just can not move people around without giving them the necessary support."

The SHL report found that 68 per cent of the companies surveyed were focusing on succession planning. Ungemah said that redeployment often had long-term career benefits for individual career progression, helping the succession planning process.

“A lot of specialists and managers may not have had the opportunity in recent years to gain experience outside their current job,” he said. “A mid-level manager who has always been pigeon-holed into a specific area might see a terrific opportunity to learn something new. It can be great for them in building their own CVs and getting to understand other parts of the business."

Internal restructuring is now a reality for a growing number of Irish employers, more than half of whom are operating with hiring freezes in place, said Janet Wallace, HR solutions consultant with Russell Brennan Keane.

"When people resign, retire or come to the end of their contract, they are just not being replaced,” Wallace said. “It is one of the easier options for companies to take when they see that things have to be tightened up. This is a way of reducing costs without having to make people redundant."

Pay cuts

Temporary and permanent pay cuts are now common practice in many Irish companies, according to Wallace.

"Davy Stockbrockers has announced that they were reducing their salaries across the board by ten per cent,” she said. “I know that many other companies in Ireland are doing that at the moment."

Wallace advised employers to apply pay-freezes or pay equally to all employees, or as part of a top-down initiative.

"Some companies introduce salary cuts on a phased basis," she said. "For example senior management are the first to take salary cuts. If the situation does not improve the fact that management took the pain first signals that they are leading the way. That can make it easier to implement cuts across all roles at a later stage."

Paula McGrath, managing director of Achievers Group, said that a bad reaction was not a given among staff facing a pay cut or pay freeze.

"Staff know a lot more about what is going on than most employers acknowledge, and they may be imagining the worst,” McGrath said. "It is more worrying to see a company not making commercial decisions. It is important to protect as many jobs as possible rather than burying heads in sand as this jeopardises the company and more jobs eventually.

Individuals who refuse to go along with suggested changes in their pay or conditions can cause problems for employers, McGrath said.

"By law, you have to honour somebody's contract of employment," she said. "If you are going to change any conditions, both parties have to agree. However, you can look to see if the person is delivering what is set down very clearly in their contract of employment and job specification. I know of organisations that start down that route if the person is not willing to play ball."

Creative solutions

McGrath said that organisations in financial difficulty were focusing on creative ways to reduce their payroll costs.

"Many companies are offering job share and modifying benefits such as reduced pay for increased holidays," she said. "Other individuals are being bought out of their trainee employment contracts. Bonuses are being acknowledged but deferred and overtime reduced by introducing flexible work practices.”

McGrath said that some roles were more suited to these steps than others.

"In sales related roles, in some organizations, we are seeing a reduction in basic salaries for existing staff and an increase in the potential to earn performance related pay and sales related commission," she said. “An employee who may relish the opportunity to establish himself independently and have more control over his work life balance can becomes self-employed with a contract arrangement.”

Managing change

Wallace said that it was important for organisations considering these steps to bear in mind their legal responsibilities.

"A change in the terms of employment needs to be put in writing and agreed with the employee before action is taken,” she said.

McGrath said that managers might be surprised at how open employees were to possible changes to their working arrangements.

"Small business owners are so engrossed in surviving that they might not realise that two staff have been talking and would be happy to job-share," she said. "I recently spoke with an individual in a large accountancy firm, who is willing to go down to four days a week, which will necessitate a drop in salary. She wants her job, and she wants to continue working for that company."

Wallace advised employers to ensure that very valuable and indispensable staff did not disengage from the company as a result of any changes introduced during the downturn.

"High performers will always find new roles and companies need to be working to identify the key roles that are critical for the future and the key staff they want to retain in those roles," she said. "While you may not be in a position to protect your key talent from some short term measures like bonus freeze or reduced working hours, you can provide reassurance to them that they are valued and viewed as critical to the future plans of the business and ask them to weather the storm with you."

Eircom League looks to the future

2008-11-24T09:35:00.003Z

Sunday Business Post - Business of Sport page - Nov 23 2008

See this article on the Sunday Business Post's website by clicking here.

Despite the downturn, the director of the League of Ireland believes that clubs are in a good position for the future, writes Dermot Corrigan.

Bohemians and Derry City take to the field at the RDS in Dublin today for the showpiece event of the Eircom League of Ireland calendar, the FAI Ford Cup final.

Bohemians enter the game as favourites, having easily secured the league title in an eventful season. In sporting terms, 2008 will be remembered as the year that Drogheda United almost toppled Dynamo Kiev in the Champions League, while Dundalk returned to the top division after securing promotion with the very last kick of the season. However, this year will also be remembered for less positive reasons.

Two clubs - last season’s champions Drogheda United and 2005 title winners Cork City - have gone into examinership in recent months, each with debts of about €750,000. More than half of the league’s clubs have been unable to pay their players in full or on time.

According to Fran Gavin, director of the League of Ireland, the problems faced by the clubs are not due to bad management, but are a very public example of how the downturn is affecting everyone in Irish society.

‘‘On the pitch, this has been a very good season,” said Gavin. ‘‘It has been one of the best ever years in Europe. Bohemians won the league in a record-breaking manner and the standard of play has been very high. ‘‘Off the pitch, it was not a good year for the league, but wage difficulties are not unique to the League of Ireland. Everybody running a business in Ireland today is seeing financial difficulties. Ours get highlighted on the back pages of newspapers, and the issues around Drogheda and Cork City have been well-documented.”

The ‘‘issues’’ have included Drogheda players threatening strike action after the club’s plan to sell its ground and move to a new €35 million, 10,000-seater stadium ran into planning difficulties. Cork’s problems arose after the club’s former owner - venture capital group Arkaga - withdrew its backing midway through the season.

Galway United was forced to sell key players in mid-season and imposed pay reductions on the players who remained.

Bohemians’ league win has also been overshadowed by a High Court case between the club and property developers over its relocation plans. Bohemian’s Dalymount Park site, in Phibsboro in Dublin, was valued at €60 million at the height of the property boom, but is now worth a lot less.

Gavin said that some clubs, like many other parts of Irish society, were over-reliant on the property and construction sectors. ‘‘The difficulties span not only the deals that were done with developers, but there were also sponsorship deals with developers and property companies,” he said.

‘‘Some clubs have then had difficulty receiving the sponsorship that was agreed. That was clearly due to the downturn in the economy, particularly in the building trade.”

However, many clubs faced difficulties even before the property bubble burst or the credit crunch hit. The 2005 Genesis Report stated that the league was ‘‘near to being economically bankrupt’’ and ‘‘unsustainable in its current format’’.

Gavin said that a lot had changed in the three years since that report. Two years ago, the FAI took over the running of the league from the member clubs. It has since imposed a licensing process, which includes a wage cap at 65 per cent of a club’s total income.

‘‘It was best practice last year, it is regulation this year,” said Gavin.

‘‘Clubs were paying 95 per cent of their income on players’ wages, which was the highest [percentage] in Europe. Now clubs that do not come under 65 per cent by the end of the season can be sanctioned. The sanctions can go as far as not receiving a licence for next year.”

Gavin said he was optimistic that all clubs would qualify for their 2009 league licences, despite the events of this year. ‘‘Everybody has learned a lot of lessons this year,” he said.

‘‘All 22 clubs have to go through the licensing procedure, and only when that is decided will we know the structure of the league. We will take it that the ten teams that qualified for the league next year will be there, unless we are told otherwise, and the fixtures will be set out accordingly.”

According to Gavin, the FAI is two years into a five-year plan to get the league onto a solid footing.

‘‘We are trying to make clubs more sustainable and community-based,” he said. ‘‘We will then have more credibility and attract more sponsors. It is a marathon, not a sprint, but we have changed the ethos of the league.”

Eliminating club debts had been a priority for the FAI, according to Gavin.

‘‘Last year, the total [debt] was €7 million. This year, that is projected for €3.5 million. Next year, the clubs will be debt-free. At the moment, money is being used by many clubs to service their old debt. If that is no longer needed, clubs can then invest in youth policies, facilities and in staff to make sure the club is run better.”

While Arkaga invested in Cork City as a business opportunity, Gavin did not think that Eircom league clubs were suited to being run for profit. ‘‘It is a difficult situation running a football club,” he said.

‘‘It is not something that you are going to get involved in to make a fortune. A break-even position for most clubs would be a successful season.”

Gavin cited links between Shamrock Rovers and South Dublin County Council as a more sustainable club ownership model. Rovers are due to take up residency in a new, local authority-funded stadium in Tallaght for the start of next season.

‘‘These relationships are like a public private partnership, where the county council recognises the social role played by the football club in communities,” he said.

‘‘There are similar partnerships in many Scandinavian countries.

‘‘There are several different setups within the league. St Patrick’s Athletic have a wealthy backer [property developer Garrett Kelleher] who sees a social responsibility to build up the club. Bohemians is a members-owned club. The most interesting one for us is the link between the club and the local authority.”

Gavin said that the FAI had shown its commitment to the domestic league by raising the prize money for winning the league to €250,000,up from€17,000 five years ago. The FAI Cup is worth another €100,000 to the victorious club.

‘‘Besides the prize money, we have also been working on issues like TV money, sponsorship and other commercial issues to try to help the clubs increase their revenue,” he said.

Another goal is to attract more people to games. Gavin said that attendances in 2007 were up 100,000 on the previous year, although the numbers going to games had levelled off in 2008.

‘‘For the last two years, premier league clubs have [had] a promotion officer working in schools and different parts of the local community, which we co-finance with the club,” he said.

‘‘Clubs that have these officers have seen their attendances increase, whereas clubs without them have not. Sligo Rovers are a fantastic example; their attendances are up 20 per cent this year.”

While Gavin said that it was inevitable that the best players would be attracted to play abroad, he said the priority was to ensure that Irish players were developed to the stage where they could be sold for a decent price.

In the past, players have been sold for small transfer fees - current Irish international Kevin Doyle was sold by Cork to Reading for €120,000 and three years later, is valued at more than €8 million. Cork last week sold their rights to 10 per cent of Doyle’s next transfer fee, to Reading for a sum thought to be in the region of €250,000.

‘‘We have invested heavily in getting our managers to have the UEFA pro licence, which is the top licence for managers in the world,” said Gavin. ‘‘That is reflected in their coaching abilities, and the players in the league have improved.

‘‘Players that are being looked at by English clubs are now a much better product, fitter and technically better, so you can command a higher fee for them."

Disappearing Act

2008-11-21T17:13:00.003Z

When Saturday Comes - December 2008

In August, Irish champions Drogheda United came within inches of eliminating Dynamo Kiev from the Champions League. Midfielder Shane Robinson saw his injury-time cross-shot diverted on to a post by Kiev keeper Taras Lutsenko, before the ball agonisingly rolled across the goalline with no Drogheda player on hand to tap home. Minutes earlier Adam Hughes had somehow fired over an open goal from six yards.

The rattled Ukrainians held out to squeeze through 4-3, then hammer Spartak Moscow 8-2 on aggregate to seal their place in the group stages. Drogheda were left ruing what might have been. The Drogheda players’ recent thoughts are likely to have been more prosaic, as they dwelled on issues such as how to pay their mortgages or put food on their family's table.

On October 9th they were told by club chairman Vincent Hoey that they would not be paid for the rest of the season. A week later the club went into receivership with reported debts of over €732,000 and were docked ten points. This deduction could be moot, as they may well disappear completely before the new season starts next spring. Things were much different just 12 months ago.

A (relatively) expensively assembled team, managed by Eircom league legend Paul Doolin, cruised to Drogheda's first ever national league title. This came after two Setanta Sports Cups and an FAI Cup in the preceding two years. The glory times had arrived for a previously yo-yo, small-town club. This season saw them ease past Estonian champions FC Levadia Tallinn 3-1 on aggregate, before running Kiev so close.

Such achievements were possible because of the estimated €8 million that had been poured into the club since 2004, when Hoey and fellow directors Christopher Byrne and Eugene O'Connor rolled out their masterplan. They aimed to sell current ground United Park, which holds only 2,000 fans, and use the proceeds to fund a new €35m 10,000-seat stadium outside the town, while also developing residential units, offices and leisure facilities on the old site. The idea was initially hailed as visionary, and the board does appear to have the best interests of the club at heart, but planning issues have bedevilled the project and it remains on the drawing board. Meanwhile, their financial over-reach means that Drogheda's 27 players and 12 staff could well be out of a job by Christmas.

As this issue of WSC is still on sale, I'm not putting the whole article up on the site. Click here to purchase a copy of the magazine, or here to visit the WSC website.

Nowcasting International signs €300k Canadian deal

2008-11-17T10:14:00.003Z

Sunday Business Post - Done Deal page - Nov 16 2008

See this article on the Sunday Business Post's website by clicking here.

Irish company Nowcasting International has signed a €300,000 deal with Canadian global energy giant Nexen to provide weather forecasting services.

Mark White, chief executive of Nowcasting International, said the three-year agreement would service Nexen operations in the North Sea.

‘‘We are providing them with high-resolution weather data, and detailed meteorological and oceanographic services,” he said. ‘‘Nexen has several producing and drilling assets in the North Sea that require accurate and detailed weather forecasting, to safely undertake operations and to maximise the use of its assets.

‘‘We do not just pump lots of weather information to it, we give it to Nexen using software installed on its computers, which are Irish-designed. This solution allows it to get answers to its questions and identify weather windows, taking into account wave heights, wind speed or current speed and direction.”

The deal was finalised following a competitive four-month tendering process, White said.

‘‘We have a senior sales executive based full-time in Aberdeen,” he said. ‘‘It was a relatively quick deal for us, but we had been introducing it to our technology over the last year.”

Nowcasting was established in 1999, with initial funding from Eircom Enterprise Fund, Shannon Development and Mayfair Venture Capital.

The company delivers weather information provided by partner companies to customers using its patented Nowcast Pro technology. Customers include ferry operators, navies, coastguards, offshore oil and gas operators, shipping companies and individual boat owners.

‘‘When we started out, we had to establish credibility, as we were up against people like Met Éireann and UK Met Office,” said White. ‘‘We did a deal with HM Customs and Excise in 2002 to switch from UK Met Office, which was a big breakthrough for us and helped us to get current customers like BT and Chevron.”

Nowcasting employs 16 staff at offices in Ennis and turned over €3million in 2007. White said an agreement signed in 2003 with US company Wilkens Weather Technologies had enabled it to offer a competitive service to oil and gas companies in the North Sea.

‘‘Together, we have established a North Sea weather centre in Aberdeen,” he said. ‘‘We have four forecasters there providing a 24-7 service, which gives us a very strong position to compete with the likes of UK Met Office for this kind of business.”

Nowcasting’s partnerships with international weather data suppliers enable it to service customers in the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil, the Mediterranean, west Africa and Russia, White said.

The company recently launched online consumer forecasting service Askmoby.com, which won the Silver Award for Most Innovative Business Model at the Mobile Search Awards 2008, held in London last month.

‘‘It allows users on mobile phones and PCs hour-by-hour weather forecast for anywhere in Europe for a particular activity,” said White. ‘‘They get a free forecast, and a very specific ad focused on the activity and weather they will get.”

Griffith College signs €3m Chinese deal

2008-11-10T09:56:00.002Z

Sunday Business Post - Done Deal page - Nov 09 2008

See this article on the Sunday Business Post's website by clicking here.

Griffith College in Dublin has agreed partnership deals valued at €3 million to accept students from four Chinese colleges.

Griffith college president Diarmuid Hegarty said the deals would boost college revenues with the addition of up to 300 new students annually.

As a result of the agreements with Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST),Yangtze University, Hebei College of Finance (HCF) and Beijing International Studies University (BISTU), Hegarty said the students would take part in business and IT degree programmes run by Griffith College.

‘‘We expect to get 300 more students coming here out of the new arrangements,” he said. ‘‘With an average of €10,000 per student, we get the €3 million figure.”

Under the arrangement with HCF, Griffith will establish a new Association of Chartered Certified Accountant s (ACCA) teaching department. For BISTU, it will develop a special international degree in accounting and finance.

Chinese students from all four institutions will be able to use their studies at Griffith College towards their final degree qualifications at home, Hegarty said.

‘‘The Chinese universities will amend their programmes so students can effectively cover there what our degrees cover in the first two years,” he said.

‘‘Typically, students do two years in China and then one or two years here in Ireland.” Hegarty valued the new agreements at €6 million annually to the wider Irish economy.

‘‘Each student probably spends €10,000 while living here, on travel, accommodation and subsistence,” he said.

Griffith College already has articulation agreements in place with three other universities in Beijing and Shanghai, plus an office in Beijing employing three staff locally.

Prior to this latest deal, 500 Chinese students attended Griffith courses in Ireland each year, generating €5 million in revenues for the college, Hegarty said.

He said the college had worked hard since 1994 to build relationships with institutions and individuals around China. ‘‘We are now the best known Irish education institution in China,” he said.

‘‘It is all about developing personal relationships and staying in constant contact. You do not develop these contacts overnight, you go over there and meet with them and work with them to gain their trust.”

Five hundred accountancy students attend a Russian college established by Griffith in Moscow in 2002. It also has more than 140 collaboration agreements with colleges in the US, Europe and Asia.

Website investment is shrewd marketing

2008-11-03T11:46:00.002Z

Sunday Business Post - Computers in Business Magazine - November 2 2008

See this article on the Sunday Business Post's website by clicking here.

As the public tighten their belts, surfing online when considering a purchase will become more popular, so companies should ensure they have an attractive website, writes Dermot Corrigan.

Hard times are upon us, according to the experts. Even if they aren't, the perception is such that they may as well be. This means that customers are going to start looking to reduce costs. And many of them will start to spend more time online, given its association with cut-price products and services.

So the smart company preparing for an extended downturn should think of investing in a proper website now.

"When people are looking for cheaper products or services, whether it is airline flights or lawnmowers, they are going to go online," said Martin Casey, managing director of web design and internet consultancy firm Arekibo.

"When things are tighter and they have less money in their pockets, they are going to start looking more and more online to get the best deal."

Casey said that nowadays most customers look to the internet first when considering any kind of purchase, therefore companies should ensure they present the best possible online image.

"The internet has become the de facto reference point for people to find services," he said. "Everyone is going to Google or Yahoo. The website is your virtual front door, it gives the customer an insight into who you are, what you do, and how you treat people. It is vital in times like these that your internet is very much at the front of what you are trying to achieve with your business."

Developing a website as an alternative sales channel should be a key objective for many businesses faced with challenging markets, according to Casey.

"A website is not more important than having more sales people, because the internet site is a channel for introducing customers to your team," he said. "But it has to be part and parcel of supporting your organisation to sell your services. If you have fewer people to do the selling, then the internet site is there to support that."

Michele Neylon, managing director of hosting services provider Blacknight Solutions, said that not all Irish businesses, of all shapes and sizes, had yet realised the importance of their web presence to their business.

"There are still a lot of Irish businesses who have not yet fully understood what the internet is, and what they can do with it," said Neylon. "We get people contacting us who still do not understand the difference between an e-mail address and a domain name. The general level of knowledge has improved, but there is still a surprising level of misunderstanding.

"It is not just small businesses; for example, it is still impossible for customers to e-mail their local AIB branch, as the AIB branch network does not have access to e-mail. Within that environment it is hard to expect small businesses to get a handle on all the possibilities of ecommerce."

Maryrose Lyons, managing director of Brightspark Consulting, said that, while some very bad websites still existed, most Irish companies now had reasonably well-designed and well-thought out sites.

"I am happy to say that most Irish company websites have improved over the last half decade,’' said Lyons. "I run a web writing training course and part of the preparation for that is to find examples of what not to do. "And I have to say it's getting harder and harder to find some real whammies. That said, there are some shocking sites out there - many from larger companies that ought to know better. I can not understand how some businesses that understand the importance of design in their own products can allow themselves to be portrayed online with this kind of thing you sometimes see."

Fiachra O'Marcaigh, director of online consultancy Amas, said that smaller organisations often had better websites than larger competitors. "Smaller companies are often more innovative and more energetic in their use of online channels than larger ones," said O'Marcaigh. "Most companies now recognise that a good website is not a luxury, it's an absolute necessity."

What makes a good site

O'Marcaigh said that companies should think carefully about what exactly they wanted their website to do for them. "Clear thinking about what your messages or selling points are is vital," he said. "Without this, you simply cannot create an effective site. Once you know your own goals and messages clearly, focus on your users and what they want, need and know. Design your site for your users, not for yourself or your peers."

Companies should consider what business objectives they want their website to meet, according to Gary Cosgrave, sales director with Webtrade. "The most important thing for a website is to lead the searcher to a completed action in the shortest time possible," he said.

"That completed action depends on what your business type is, or what your business model is. It might be to get the customer to the piece of furniture that they want to buy as quickly as possible and purchase it online. "You have to make sure that the user interface design and the information architecture are structured in a certain way that people get what they want, what you want, and so that they do not get lost on the site."

Casey advised businesses to work out criteria for measuring a site's success "We want to set an understanding of how they are going to measure success from the start," he said. "When we are planning the site that is very important. Is it more queries or people calling you, more sales online, is it helping you to represent your organisation better? These are things that help the client understand and measure what their investment means."

Content

Lyons said that businesses should not try to use their websites to just store as much content and sales material as possible.

"Most businesses have an abundance of content lying around in sales material, proposals, strategic plans, product specs and the like," she said. "The trick here is not to simply dump all of this information on to your website. We read 25 per cent less off a computer screen, so write 50 per cent less. Be ruthless about culling your content. Rewrite it in a web friendly way. Use bullets instead of paragraphs. Use short sentences and no jargon." Different companies will want to promote different aspects of their business, and hence use different types of content, according to O ¨ Marcaigh.

"The kind of content that an SME publishes should be valuable to its online audiences and support the goals of the business, as set out in its online strategy," he said. "This will vary widely, from one business to another. For example, a bicycle shop may sponsor local races and post news and results to its website. A legal firm might publish a newsletter of legal news from the areas of law that it specialises in."

Fergal O'Byrne, chief executive of the Irish Internet Association, said that all business websites should be regularly updated. "Updating content on a website is key to keeping it fresh and interesting," he said. "It also ensures that users have confidence that the company behind the site is still in business! How many times have you been turned off a site because the last news item was two years old? Search engines also reward content that is updated regularly.

Search engine optimisation

Ensuring that your site is ranked high in Google or other search engine searches is a key consideration for all business websites, according to O'Byrne.

"Ideally, search engine optimisation (SEO) should be considered when the site is being designed," he said. "Most of the good web design companies build sites that are search engine friendly and stand the best chance of being found in the main search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN). SEO is an on-going process and companies need to constantly check where they are showing in the search engines and for what search terms."

Lyons outlined a number of SEO strategies. "Search engine optimisation has always been a bit of a black art," she said. "With the advent of Google, it has evolved to become a very specialised and technical part of the industry. The days of sticking a few keywords into your metadata are long over.

"Today's number one rankings are more a result of detailed keyword and competitive analysis, followed by labour-intensive, time-consuming link building activity. As a result, search engine optimisation is not cheap. For certain competitive keywords, you can almost expect to spend the same amount on optimising the site as you spent on building it."

E-commerce

E-commerce options and functionality figure prominently in many web strategies, O ¨ Marcaigh said. "Not every company needs e-commerce, but they certainly need to consider it carefully," he said.

"Consumers and businesses in a business to business context value the convenience of sourcing goods and services online. Increasingly, they want to be able to transact and buy online also. "Provided that the business is possible to carry out online, then companies should look carefully at the benefits, such as greater reach, lower cost of sales and other, as well as the downsides: set-up cost, fraud risk and the need to manage the channel." Lyons said there were various e-commerce systems available to suit the requirements of the company.

"If your business is involved in selling product and you are considering developing an e-commerce website, you can begin by offering payment with Paypal," she said. "This is the lowest fee level, good for very small businesses where brand is not an issue. If you are already a retailer and have credit card processing facilities then you can go for manual processing of transactions. "If you are really serious about e-commerce and are getting the volumes, then automatic card processing is a must. I recommend Realex because their systems are robust and the team there is super helpful and easy to deal with." O'Byrne said that some companies do not need an e-commerce element to their site.

"A company must establish whether the investment in an online booking or payments system will make a return on their investment," he said. "For example for a small B&B it may not be prudent to spend their budget on a real-time booking system. A simple availability calendar might be more useful and the remaining budget could be spent on an online marketing campaign via a service like Google Adwords, for example." However, that did not mean the website should be not be designed to encourage the browser in a particular direction, Cosgrave said.

"Some companies do not need a transactional element, so we can just make sure that it is an information rich, brochure type site," he said. "With that kind of site we are trying to lead the searcher to complete the contact us form to make direct contact with the customer, rather than actually making a purchase."

Bells and whistles

Recent years have seen increased interest in so-called Web 2.0 or interactive website features, such as blogs, forums, podcasts, really simple syndication (RSS), regular newsletters, etc, all of which allow businesses to communicate directly with their customers. However, Lyons advised businesses against adding too many unfocused bells and whistles to their sites.

"Only introduce elements that your target audience will use," she said. "If you are marketing to a youth audience for example, it's likely they will all have iPods, so a podcast might be a better way to get your message across than an e-mail newsletter. "However, e-mail newsletters remain one of the most effective ways to communicate with a business audience. Blogs are also great and as more people are using RSS, this will continue to be so. The ideal is to have a blog and then repackage the popular posts as the content for your newsletter. You can use Google Maps instead of a picture of the building.

"Use functionality that will make the visitor's experience easier and richer, not functionality that has no purpose - like those awful ‘skip intro' pages." O'Byrne said that smaller companies could use innovative websites to compete in larger global markets. "One of the best SME examples of embracing all these elements is worldwidecycles.com," he said.

"This Clonmel based specialist cycling shop allows potential customers from al l around the world to take a Virtual Tour of the physical shop via an embedded YouTube video, promotes an active blog, and utilises the photo sharing facility, Flickr. The end result is a sense of engagement and interactivity for the potential customer and returning client alike." Lyons said that the next few years would see even smaller websites evolving their websites to incorporate less text and more multimedia.

"We are seeing an increase in video content across many industries," she said. "If you need to communicate a message with an audience who are used to using websites and are perhaps a little tired of being presented with large amounts of text, then a short video can carrying your key messages can be more effective. "There will be a move away from the large 50-100 page sites that were driven by content management systems, back to short, punchy five or ten page sites using a mix of video, text and imagery to convey a message. Kanchi.org is a good example of that."

Nuts and bolts

O'Byrne said that most Irish companies now managed the day to day updating and maintenance of their website using simple content management systems (CMS).

"ACMS is an easy to use tool that allows a nontechnical user to update content, often text on the pages of a site and other elements like photos or pictures," he said. "In most cases it does not allow the user to break the site or interfere with the design template, which is a good thing." Gary Cosgrave, sales director of Webtrade, said that web design companies generally trained their customers on how to update their own sites using customised CMSs.

"Our CMS is designed specifically for the non technical users, and we train people to use it," he said. "It means you are not reliant either on internal technical staff or external consultants.

"You log in using your username and password, and you are actually editing what you see on the website. You click on a navigational button to add a page, edit a page et cetera. You get into a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) or text editor, which is pretty much the same as Word. If you can use Word, you can use the CMS." Often the updating of a company's website is not done by an IT expert, Casey said. "The fundamental change that has happened over the last few years is that marketing people have begun to look after the websites," he said.

"These people do not have time to be sent on a course to learn HTML. We would have a client trained up in two to three hours maximum, and they would be able to manage every aspect of the website, add pages, extra products, news and events et cetera." Neylon said that companies could benefit from analytics tools that let them see exactly how visitors are interacting with the website, including which pages and elements of the site were most popular.

"You can see which pages of your website people have visited, which elements within those pages that they have clicked on, where they spent more time," he said. "You can really see which things are working well and which things are not."

Hosting

Most Irish companies now outsource the hosting of their websites, according to Neylon. "Only very big companies would host their website in house," he said.

"Realistically speaking to do your own hosting, you need technical expertise and the infrastructure in place with a server connected to the internet 24 hours a day, seven days a week.You need stable internet connections, backups et cetera, it is not something that most small businesses are going to deal with." While Irish sites can be hosted on servers anywhere in the world, O'Byrne advised Irish companies to deal with local hosting companies.

"We always advise companies doing business in Ireland to host their websites here," he said.’ ‘It is reassuring to know that there is a physical presence behind the hosting company, that is contactable during your normal office hours." Hosting costs have fallen dramatically in recent years, according to Neylon. "The price has been pushed down on the hosting packages, and the services are being increased all the time," he said. "For €50 a year you can get a huge amount of disk space and oodles of everything else."

Whether to go for a dot.ie or dotcom web address can be a poser for companies, O ¨ Marcaigh said. "If possible, companies should register both and then decide which domain to focus on for marketing themselves," he said. "To generalise, the .com domain presents a more international air, while .ie is clearly Irish-oriented.

"For a company focused in the first place on the home market, using .ie puts them closer to their Irish customers. That helps to establish trust more readily. They should also consider registering the .co.uk domain name and look at any other markets that may be relevant to them in the future." Neylon said that his customers chose a mixture of .ie and .com addresses, however .ie addresses, only available from the IEDR (.ie Domain Registry), were sometimes more difficult to register and set up.

"You can register and get a .com or .co.uk up and running in about half an hour if the name is available," he said. "To get a .ie you have to be a registered business, or a limited company with a business name the same or close to the domain you want to register, or you have to contact them and persuade them to allow you to have the name."

Get more fibre in business diet

2008-11-03T11:40:00.002Z

Sunday Business Post - Computers in Business Magazine - November 2 2008

See this article on the Sunday Business Post's website by clicking here.

Fibre-optic cables will allow new speeds for internet access for business, writes Dermot Corrigan.

Most Irish businesses access the internet using a mix of traditional copper wires and more recent fibre-optic technology. Generally, there is a copper link from the business premises to the closest point on national or private underground fibre networks. That is the basis for the majority of high-speed broadband packages offered by the various vendors.

However, more and more companies are looking to get fibre to the premises (FTTP) links, which involve no copper and link the company directly into the national or private fibre system. This is because fibre is just downright better than copper for meeting a modern company's high-speed communications requirements, according to John Quinn, regulatory and development director with Smart Telecom.

"Fibre is simply the best medium to provide telecommunications services," said Quinn. "It offers practically unlimited capacity, very high security, symmetrical speeds and excellent quality of service. It does cost more than traditional copper-based services, but it is a matter of balancing quality and cost to the business need. Not all businesses need fibre, but for those that do, it is a value-for-money investment."

Liam Collins, head of products, enterprise and government market at Eircom, said that once a customer was looking for over 10MB download speeds, fibre was generally the answer.

"Whether you choose copper or fibre really depends on the amount of bandwidth you require, either for normal network services or for access to the internet,’' Collins said. "Generally speaking, if you require speeds of10MB or above, you would go for fibre. It just comes down to speed. Most customers would be using a variety of applications on their Wan [wide area network] such as e-mail applications, customer relationship management software or enterprise software like SAP or Oracle, a whole host of things.

"They would also probably be looking to connect their Lan [local area network] in Dublin to their Lan in Cork, for instance. If they need a high-speed connection, they would go for a fibre-based product."

Seamus Walsh, managing director wholesale for BT in Ireland, said that larger offices typically now required fibre-connectivity, just so their staff could go about their daily business. "The more people you have in an office building using the internet, the more demand there is on the connection," said Walsh. "If you have a building full of people who need to connect to the internet you eat up the capacity very quickly. The more commerce that is driven onto the internet, the more connection you need.

"As software systems develop they become more bandwidth hungry, it is just the natural progression of things. People get used to faster bandwidth speeds. Instead of being happy just to send an e-mail, they now expect to be able to watch YouTube and other videos pretty much instantaneously."

Collins said that smaller companies with a specific business need for high-speed internet access were also investing in fibre links.

"There is a change in the marketplace,’' Collins said. "Two years ago, it was only larger companies that were investing in fibre, but now we are finding that SMEs are finding that their bandwidth requirements are increasing dramatically, so we are now installing fibre-based products in companies that would have surprised me a few years ago."

This was being driven by reductions in the cost of fibre products, according to Collins.

"The price has already come down from the first fibre products we launched five or six years ago," he said. "The product that gives ethernet and IP network access to customers is now a fraction of the price that it was. That will continue to happen."

Getting the fibre in

Quinn said that the costs involved in companies connecting directly to national or private fibre networks varied depending on individual circumstances. "It very much depends on how close the company in question is to a fibre-optic network," he said. "Fibre itself is not that expensive and neither is the equipment needed. What tends to be expensive is the cost of digging the road from the company in question to the closest fibre network. For some companies, this makes the installation costs prohibitive." Geographical location was a major factor in determining the price of getting the fibre in, according to Quinn.

"The Mans [metropolitan area networks – public-owned fibre systems which can be used by private operators] go some way to helping here, as do private networks such as the T-50 in Dublin, which is owned by Smart," he said. "In most population centres, such as Dublin, Cork and Galway, it is relatively easy to get a fibre connection, in particular in business and commercial centres. There are 27 other towns that currently have a government Man."

Collins said that most companies in urban centres were relatively close to the existing public fibre network. "If they are in a major city, there is a reasonable chance they will be in striking distance of fibre," he said. "We can do a survey to see how costly it will be to get access to the fibre network. Usually, they will be within a few hundred metres, or maybe a kilometre, of the existing fibre network. Sometimes, however, there will be more distance, which might involve digging a trench to link them in."

Walsh said that street cabinets on city and town streets contained access points to the national fibre network. "We would bring fibre to the cabinet and then copper to the customer's premises," he said. "The fibre would go from one of our core sites or data centres out to the customer, and we would interconnect it back out to the other side." The majority of the cost involved in a fibre implementation was bound up in digging up the ground to lay the cable, Walsh said.

"The greatest cost is the actual physical digging of the trench to carry the cable into the customer," he said. "In most cases, the re striction is the length of dig required. Nowadays, if we are going to dig into the customer, we would always deliver fibre, as they would probably already have a copper connection in already." Collins said that the costs of installing the fibre therefore varied greatly from site to site.

"It is difficult to talk about costs, as they vary so much," he said. "But you could start at €8,000 for an install of fibre access. Once you get the fibre access in, the services can be layered on top of that very cost effectively. So, while the first cost might seem pricey, you can add further services and bandwidth extremely cost-effectively." Mark Kellett, chief executive of Magnet Networks, said that many new developments installed fibre connections during the build.

"The majority of businesses Magnet runs fibre to would be new developments such as mixed-use with residential, retail and commercial space, or large commercial buildings with a number of tenants,’' said Kellett. "It makes economic sense that, when the construction is under way, it is the cheapest time to lay the fibre, before the roads are even built." Many new business parks or industrial areas in towns are being developed with fibre-connectivity in place, according to Kellett.

"There are a number of business parks openly touting their high-speed internet capability to attract tenants, they are even advertising on the radio," he said. "A high proportion of new large business parks being built around the country would have fibre access. It is not unique to Dublin." Quinn said that easier access to fibre-connectivity was in store for companies in smaller towns around Ireland. "The Mans will be available to a further 66 towns from around the end of this year."

Unblocking the systems

Quinn said that companies investing in fibre links should not be worried that a new faster technology would displace it in the short or medium term. "Wireless has natural spectrum limitations, particularly in terms of capacity," he said. "Copper suffers badly from interference and speeds are directly related to distance. Fibre, however, is virtually limitless and can send information over vast distances as it is immune to most forms of natural interference." Kellett said that fibre connections were easily scalable, so companies could ramp up their bandwidth as required.

"If your business grows and grows and you have a huge volume of data going across the network, you do not have to worry about the piece of copper reaching its maximum, and having to get more and more lines into your building," he said. "The one fibre link will allow you to grow and grow." Col lins said that call costs did not increase quite as rapidly. "The cost increases are not as big as you increase bandwidth," he said. "It is almost like a discount scheme, a 10MB is not five times the cost of a 2MB scheme. It might be twice the cost, but you have five times the bandwidth."

Fibre's ability to deliver symmetric, uncontended (not shared) connectivity was another advantage, Collins said. "The fibre service is symmetric, so you can have the same download and upload speeds," he said. "That is especially useful for customers who have applications where they want to upload large amounts of information to the net."

Kellett said that fibre allowed providers to offer extra services, alongside high-speed broadband. "Providers are starting to offer a large diverse range of services, things like voice over IP [VoIP], virtual call centres, virtual PBXs [telephony systems], managed IT support services. With the kind of speeds we are talking about, you can do a lot more." Collins said that not everyone needed to rush out to invest in fibre connectivity, as copper would continue to meet the requirements of many smaller firms going forward. "Copper provides quite cheap access for people who require lower bandwidth services," he said. "It would depend on the size of the customer's site, but fibre will not completely replace copper."

Walsh said that the technology underpinning copper connections was also improving. "With advances in DSL technology that sits on the copper, you are actually beginning to be able to deliver higher bandwidth over the copper infrastucture," he said. "Very high bit-rate DSL [VDSL] can deliver 24MB to a customer and, for many people, that is quite a significant amount of bandwidth. They would also be able to put VoIP onto that line as well. You would have a data and voice connection to the internet on copper. Five or six years ago, you would have needed fibre for that service, but now it can be delivered through copper." Kellett said that more widespread fibre networks would be required in Ireland as demand for highspeed internet access expanded in the future.

"It is something that will last us 20 to 25 years," he said."Copper is not going to last us, and fibre is the future. BT is doing a major investment in fibre, in Britain, and Telefonica is doing a major rollout in Madrid. It is recognised now by the leading European telcos as mission-critical. They realise that in order to offer new and diverse services they need to be rolling out fibre." Quinn said the Irish government was currently looking at how to expand the public fibre network, which could then be used by private operators to offer fibre-based services, and would make fibre available to more locations around the country.

"The government can encourage all parties to look at such investments with many of the items outlined in minister Eamon Ryan's NGN [next generation networking] consultation," he said. "By making ducting available to operators [one example, there are many others] and mandating that new developments have adequate and correct duct infrastructure installed on a neutral basis, the government will make the business case for FTTP more attractive. The new Mans will also assist in bringing more fibre services to more businesses in Ireland."

Free and easy alternatives to expensive software packages

2008-10-13T09:28:00.002+01:00

Sunday Business Post - Technology Page - October 12 2008

See this article on the Sunday Business Post's website by clicking here.

With money tight in many households , some consumers may baulk at the idea of shelling out hundreds of euro on software packages.

Serendipitous timing then for the growth in quality and popularity of free software applications and web-based services that have much, if not all, of the functionality and usability of their ‘paid-for’ cousins.

Office packages
Microsoft has dominated the market for office software since the early 1990s. However, a number of free applications now offer similar word processing, spreadsheets and presentations functionality to home and business users.

Sun’s Open Office software is a freely available and downloadable alternative to MS Office. It features a word processor (Writer) similar to MS Word, a spreadsheet (Calc) similar to Excel, presentation programme (Impress) similar to PowerPoint and a database programme (Base) not unlike Microsoft Access.

Users familiar with MS Office should have no problems with Open Office’s layout or functionality. Open Office is designed so that files created in Microsoft Office can be opened, edited, saved and then be re-opened in Microsoft Office if required.

Download it from: www.openoffice.org

Google Docs is a web-service containing word process or, spreadsheet and presentation applications. Registered users create and edit documents in their web browsers and save and manage them online. The web-based applications have been designed to look and feel very similar to traditional Office programmes.

Tasks such as creating documents, formatting text and inserting tables and images are all done in the same way. Documents created online can be saved to the user’s PC in traditional formats, or e-mailed directly using gmail.

An extra feature of Google Docs is online collaboration, where documents can be shared, opened and edited by multiple users at the same time. As it is a web service, Google Docs users need to have constant access to the internet, however.

Visit it at: http://docs. google.com/

Accounts packages
There are many different free accounts software packages available, ranging from some that are little more than fancy calculators, to complicated solutions that require professional installation and could be used to run a medium-sized business.

GnuCash is a simple double-entry personal bookkeeping system, based on formal accounting principles, which also has features useful for small business accounting. Individuals or households can use GnuCash to do simple accounting tasks such as balancing a chequebook, managing credit cards or tracking mortgage or rent payments.

Transactions can be categorised into simple folders such as rent, groceries or transport. Small business owners can set up GnuCash to carry out tasks such as the payment of invoices and the recording of suppliers and customers. GnuCash also has a range of more complex functionality, such as importing information from online banking services or creating reports that can analyse your incomings and outgoings.

Download it from: www.gnucash.org

TurboCASH Accounting calls itself ‘‘the world’s first fully-featured open-source accounts packages for small business’’ and is designed for single users, small networks and distributed networks.

It includes functions under headings such as debtors, creditors, general ledger, full stock control, Vat accounting, invoicing, bank reconciliation, trial balance, balance sheet and income statements, full reporting and analysis, as well as mutli-company and multi-user capabilities. An Irish version has been developed that includes Irish tax and Vat details.

Download it from: www.turbocash.net

Photo manipulation and organisation
Digital photography has given the world a new verb: to ‘photoshop’. Many people now use their computers to improve, edit and even add or remove elements from their original photos.

Free photo manipulation software solutions are generally not as powerful as Adobe’s Photoshop CS4 suite (RRP €689.00 ex-Vat), however they can be useful for casual users who want to improve their photos.

Picasa is a software application that can be downloaded from the internet for free and used to organise and edit digital photos. Users can import photos directly from their camera or open images already on their PC.

Picasa’s photo-editing features allow you to do things such as resize or crop your photos, reduce ‘red-eye’, adjust the colour and lighting and add effects like black and white or sepia. Picasa users can also store and publish their photos online for their friends to see, or upload them to photo sharing services, such as Flickr, or save them for printing.

Download it from: www.picasa.google.com

Amateur photographers can also use online photo manipulation services to tweak their photos. Web services such as Photoshop Express and Picnik allow registered users to upload their images to the internet and edit them in real time on their browser.

Improvements are carried out in real time so you can watch the changes take place (and undo them if required) immediately, before you upload the shots to Facebook or e-mail them to friends.

Visit: www.photoshop.com/express or www.picnik.com

Anti-virus software
Some users might be a bit wary of protecting their valuable files and information with a freeware solution, but a number of security packages have built up solid reputations over the last few years as reliable and competent security solutions.

AVG Free is a wide-ranging security package that includes a virus scanner, rootkit scanner, spyware scanner, e-mail scanner and a firewall. This means that every time you get an e-mail, visit a webpage, or try to download something it will not allow you to continue until the programme is sure it is safe. The software automatically updates itself every four hours to keep up to date with the latest threats.

The latest version - AVG Free 7.5 - has an improved user interface and does not use as much RAM, so it does not affect other programmes running on your computer.

Cautious users can set up AVG to scan everything they download or every website they visit, while more techie-types can disable some of the automatic functions and only use the programme when they suspect a potential problem.

The software is free for home users, while business users can purchase upgraded packages that include extra protections and telephone support.

Download it from: http://free.avg.com

Electronic prescriptions on the way

2008-09-30T12:35:00.002+01:00

Sunday Business Post - Best Business: Healthcare supplement - Sep 28 2008

The technology for electronic prescriptions has been developed and tested by a consortium of Irish companies including Helix Health, Health Ireland Partners and DMF Systems, which are currently involved in a EU supported market validation project called ePrescript. However, until changes are made to the law a fully electronic prescription process is impossible.

"The legislation means we must produce a paper prescription for the doctor to sign,” said Declan Fitzgerald, DMF’s managing director. “Ideally you would want to lose the paper, but to deliver that we need a legislative change."

Ongoing discussions on unrelated matters between the HSE (Health Services Executive) and the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland (PSI) also form a hurdle to a full rollout of the technology, according to Fitzgerald.

"We got held up quite a lot due to the issues between the HSE and the pharmacists," he said. "This meant it was very difficult to get an implementation up and running in a pharmacy. But we believe that dispute is coming closer to resolution at the moment."

Declan Rossiter, managing director of Health Ireland Partners said the ePrescript project had demonstrated exactly how an efficient and secure electronic prescription model could work.

"The idea of the ePrescript project is to demonstrate how the practice management system in a GP's surgery could issue a prescription," he said. "Instead of writing it on a prescription pad, or printing it on a piece of paper, it is sent to a web portal broker and sits there. When the patient goes to a pharmacy, the pharmacist has an identification code to log on to the web broker and draw down the prescription for the patient. A message is then sent back to the GP to say that the medication has been dispatched by the particular pharmacy."

During the ePrescript trials, funded 50 per cent by the participants and 50 per cent by the EU commission, the technology was installed and tested in three Irish pilot sites. Similar trials are also underway in Belgium and Poland.

Those involved in the ePrescript project have adapted the system to deal with the challenges imposed by Irish law, according to Howard Beggs, managing director of Helix Health.

“We have changed the doctor software so that as well as printing the prescription it also prints a 2D barcode beside all the details,” he said. “It is very similar to the barcode used for online check-in by Aer Lingus. The doctor signs it in ink so it is compliant with the law, and then the patient takes the piece of paper to the pharmacy. The pharmacist simply scans it with a barcode reader and the information is transferred into his system."

A primary benefit of electronic prescription is the elimination of human errors or misreadings, according to Beggs.

"The doctor knows that what he has prescribed is exactly what is dispensed," he said. "There is no room for keystroke or other error with the barcode. If the doctor wants 25Mg, that is what gets dispensed.”

Electronic prescription also offers efficiencies for both pharmacist and patient, according to Rossiter.

"Instead of having to type in details of a prescription, the pharmacist can spend time talking to the patient about how to use their inhaler or whatever the medication might be," he said.

Rossiter also said that electronic prescription was more secure than the present paper-based system.

"It eliminates the possibility of fraud and duplication, which are big concerns," he said. "The prescription can only be used once, the patient cannot go to another pharmacy, and get another lot of the medication."

Beggs said that the HSE could use the new system to implement much greater centralised oversight and analysis of prescription trends in Ireland.

"From a budgeting point of view the country spends more than €2 billion a year on dispensing drugs through the PCRS (Primary Care Reinbursement Service) service," he said. "They will be able to analyse patterns of use and prescribing."

Beggs also said that similar technology had already been rolled out in Britain.

"In the UK it took approximately four years to get electronic prescriptions fully up and running,” he said. “The paper is completely gone out of their system. That is in a population of some 50 million."

Everyone within the Irish healthcare sector was positive about fully electronic prescribing becoming a reality, Beggs said.

"This technology has great buy-in from all the stakeholders," he said. "The minister has seen it and likes it, the ICGP (Irish College of General Practitioners) has seen it, the IPU (Irish Pharmaceutical Union) have had a delegation here in the office looking at it.”

“Raising public awareness by running pilot projects and getting consumer feedback is important,” Beggs added. “We need people to be asking 'why are we not doing this?'"

Fitzgerald said he was optimistic the legal and administrative hurdles could be overcome.

"The appetite from the GPs and pharmacist is certainly there, and the technology already exists,” he said. “Fully electronic prescription could be introduced and up and running certainly within a year."

Buy4Now purchased for €10 million

2008-09-22T09:15:00.002+01:00

Sunday Business Post - Done Deal Page - Sep 21 2008
Read it on the SBP website by clicking here.

US retailer group MyWebGrocer has acquired the US business of Irish company Buy4Now in a deal valued at $15 million (€10 million).

Under the terms of the agreement, Buy4Now founder Ali Murdoch will head up the new operation, Buy4Now USA, under MyWebGrocer ownership.

Murdoch will retain his existing 10 per cent shareholding in the Irish company, with sales director and co-founder Michael Veale succeeding him as chief executive.

The €10 million acquisition figure includes an estimated €6.5 million outlay by MyWebGrocer and approximately €3.5 million in restructuring costs.

Veale, along with fellow directors Kevin Murphy, Dan Murphy and Allen Corcoran, hold a 53 per cent shareholding in the Irish company. Veale said the deal would benefit all concerned.

‘‘Ali Murdoch has been living and working in the US for some years and it is very exciting for the new management team here,’’ Veale said.

‘‘While we owned a small percentage of something that was bigger, we now have a larger percentage of a pretty valuable company going forward. The original investors - Superquinn, Grafton and Eircom - have also retained an interest.”

Veale said MyWebGrocer had instigated the deal, approaching Buy4Now late last year. ‘‘We were a major competitor of theirs in the US, and we were winning a lot of the large accounts, so they approached us to see if we were willing to sell the US business,” he said.

Buy4Now entered the US market in 2004, securing e-grocery agreements with retailers including A&P Group, Roche Brothers, New Seasons Market and Lunds & Byerlys. Established in 2000, the company has 80 staff and an annual turnover of €8 million.

An online portal for retail brands, it features more than 20 Irish retailers, including Superquinn, Atlantic Homecare and Arnotts, and 2.5 million products on its website.

Veale said the company’s original e-retail model had evolved over the years to include software development.

‘‘We now see ourselves primarily as a software and services company for retailers,” he said. ‘‘We can design and develop a website, host it and maintain it for you, and also provide call centre support facilities.

‘‘If you buy any phone from our biggest client - 3 mobile - whether through a partner store, their own store, online, or telesales, at some stage you are using Buy4now software.”

Veale said the company planned to focus its future expansion efforts on overseas markets closer to home, including Britain and other European countries.

‘‘While we have been very successful in the US, we have been looking at lesser-developed e-grocery markets in Europe,” he said. ‘‘We see opportunities there for driving the company forward. Europe and Britain are pretty untapped markets for us.”