“It’s been a long time coming”David Higgins is a self-proclaimed ‘cyber-security geek’, used to working all over the world with the Foreign Office, now resident in Norfolk. He recently founded the county’s first cyber security cluster and is keen to get everyone talking about it. “In the past, it was generally hard to get people interested in security – they don’t think it’s something they need be concerned about – but nowadays people are getting a little more savvy”. Similar clusters are dotted all over the UK, seventeen in total, with the nearest one in Cambridge – David plans to get the Norfolk branch up and running before beginning a similar group in Suffolk. The cluster aims to meet once a month at various Norfolk locations, with the inaugural event in June. The regular meet-ups are free for SMEs, but larger companies are welcome for a modest charge. “I’m hoping it will be a big networking group to get the word of cyber security out. We’ll get developers, other techies and interested businesses in, even just to chat about what they do and how they do it” says David. The events won’t be limited to tech-talk either. Remember the young lad from Norfolk who was convicted of hacking mobile giant TalkTalk a couple of years ago? “I think I’ve got the solicitor that got him off coming to speak at some point!” As well as looking for members to join the cluster, which is free to do through the website, David is also asking for bloggers to contribute interesting and relevant pieces, as well as speakers for future events. “I’d like the cluster to be a big sharing portal where we can all learn and help each other in the Norfolk business community”. To join and find out about forthcoming events visit https://www.norfolkcyber.net/ To email suggested blogs, speakers or other ideas – contact@norfolkcyber.net Words by Lauren
No? OK, so we might mention blinds and curtains a lot, but one thing we don’t often mention is that we can also make matching soft furnishings.
Take cushions, for example. We can source from a huge selection of fabrics to complement your handmade roman blinds or curtains. There is something to suit every style and taste from classic to contemporary, cosy cottage to city apartments and everything in between. All our work is made to measure by local craftspeople, and designed to your exact requirements.
To complement your blinds and curtains, we can help you design some other great finishing touches that will add flair to a room and pull your entire design scheme together.
For example, if you are decorating a bedroom you might consider covering the bed headboard in a material that matches or adds contrast to your other soft furnishings. Equally, you might like a range of cushions, or even lampshades, for your bedroom in different sizes and fabrics to add subtle variety to your decorative scheme.
You might also want to consider pelmets and valances for your rooms. These can be created in any fabric and style of your choice. In the appropriate setting, they add a wonderful elegance to a room.
We can even make table runners to create a focal point in your dining-room, tying in all the other soft furnishings. Having a table runner made to measure can also be useful if you have a particularly large table and are struggling to find one of a suitable size and style.
So don’t forget, if you are planning new blinds or curtains for your decorative scheme, have a chat with us about how we can also co-ordinate your soft furnishings for you.
You can visit our Showrooms in Norwich or Attleborough, phone 01603 334035 or book an appointment online for a free consultation at your home or office.
People’s barriers start to rise the minute they hear the word ‘sales’. Images of cheap-suited, fast-talking phone drones appear, desperately trying to sell something nobody wants or needs. Scarier for some are the words ‘sales training’ – being taught how to give the hard sell, hit the targets and seal the deal no matter what. This ruthless vision harks back to the Eighties and is still conjured up in many minds when dealing with the topic of sales. This figure is outdated however, and the sales training that Naked Element receive couldn’t be further from it. The Naked Element team are trained weekly through the ‘Sandler‘ methodology by Ermine Amies who uses psychology to understand potential clients (and occasionally coloured plastic dinosaurs). The Sandler style encourages businesses to affect lasting changes in how they operate, not a big buck quick fix. Sandler offers a systematic approach to sales, rather than focussing solely on sales targets. It’s about understanding people and their needs, about building relationships. It also offers the opportunity to get support and advice from peers, to share ‘war stories’ and help to expand each other’s knowledge and gain practical experience of a sales environment. While not everyone will think they have the time or money to invest in such training, for those who are serious about improving their business skills and broadening their professional repertoire it can prove invaluable. It improves relationships between a business and their potential customers, increases the number of positive interactions between them and ultimately leads to an increase in successful results! When Naked Element makes a sales call, they really do want to get to know you and your business first, and sell you something second. Click here to read the blog on our site. Words by Lauren
Pure brought together forty leaders and CEOs from charitable organisations across the Eastern region for its annual Charity Leaders Forum in Cambridge.
The forum, held on 21 June at the Holiday Inn in Impington, is organised by Pure to provide senior charity leaders with the chance to come together, network, discuss key issues and hear from expert speakers.
Host David Culley, Associate Director at Pure, led discussions on defining and maintaining a clear employer culture. He was joined by guest speakers Judith Coplowe and John Stanton of PEM who looked at data protection regulation changes and the impact these could have on planning for fundraising. Vin Pandha of Lloyds Bank also advised on fraud guidance and protection techniques and David Beeney from Breaking the Silence shared his experience of mental health in the workplace and looked at positive strategies for creating stigma free environments.
David Culley said: “I’d like to thank all our guest speakers who took the time to take part in this forum and share their expertise. At Pure, we regularly work with charities across the region to support them with recruitment needs, as well as helping to raise funds for the many fantastic organisations in our communities. We know that as a leader of a charitable organisation there can be limited opportunities for networking with peers and for developing skills which are beneficial to the organisation. That’s why we decided to develop this dedicated forum to bring the region’s CEOs and charity leaders together to benefit from shared experiences and guest expertise.”
The session was free to attend, but donations were requested for the nominated charity of STARS, a children’s bereavement support service based in Cambridge. The event raised over £800 which will fund counselling sessions for local children supported by the charity.
For more information about future Charity Leaders Forums contact David Culley at Pure on 01223 209888.
More than 35 HR professionals from Suffolk attended an Employment Law seminar hosted by professional recruitment specialists Pure and law firm Birkett Long.
Pure and Birkett Long have been working together to host regular employment law seminars in the region for over four years. The two firms provide free, informative sessions to help local employers stay up to date with the often fast moving and increasingly complicated field of employment and recruitment law.
The latest breakfast seminar, held on Wednesday 5 July at the Suffolk Food Hall in Wherstead, included an overview of the latest updates in employment law and outcomes of most recent HR related legal cases. This was followed by a workshop which covered practical case studies about Employment Law.
Paul Sheldrake, senior manager at Pure, said: “Our aim is to make these sessions as valuable as possible to anyone in HR, helping to ensure their organisation remains a great place to work. The feedback we had from delegates was that the event was informative and engaging, and that the workshops provided a great forum to discuss issues with others working in the industry as well as gaining expert advice.”
The event was free to attend with voluntary donations collected for the Ipswich charity Lighthouse Women’s Aid. The session raised over £90 for the organisation, which supports women and children affected by domestic abuse, with more pledges still being received.
Pure and Birkett Long will be holding further HR employment law seminars in the Eastern region in 2017. For more information, contact Paul Sheldrake on paul.sheldrake@prs.uk.com
As the job market becomes increasingly competitive, it is becoming harder to whittle down the number of applications and find the perfect match. There are various reasons why businesses use a recruitment agency to help them find their next hire; to save time sifting through hundreds of CV’s and cover letters, not knowing where to look for candidates, quality of candidate and more. A recruitment agency will take on the entire hiring process for the business, advertising their vacancy, sifting through CV’s, shortlisting suitable candidates, arranging interviews and the offer process.
Here are some of the benefits associated with using a recruitment agency
Time
-Sifting through endless unsuitable applications not finding the quality of candidates that you want can be extremely time-consuming. Outsourcing your hiring to a recruitment agency whose priority is to find you the best candidates, makes financial sense. HEAD|HUNTED Recruitment can look after this whole process for you, meaning you focus more time on other areas that need it, leaving your next hire in the hands of an experienced recruitment specialist.
The Candidates
– Recruitment agencies will have access to a wider range of candidates than just those directly applying for a job advert. Here at HEAD|HUNTED Recruitment, we ensure all candidates have been spoken to before they are sent to our clients, therefore making sure that your time is not wasted by seeing unsuitable candidates. At HEAD|HUNTED Recruitment, we proactively target both active and PASSIVE candidates to guarantee our clients receive the very best candidates available, not just those actively looking for a new role.
The Full Hire Process
– A recruitment agency won’t just look for candidates. Here at HEAD|HUNTED Recruitment, we also offer a reference checking service, DBS checks and competency based interviews. We do this to make the full hiring process as smooth as possible for our clients.
If you’d like to ensure a successful hiring process, contact HEAD|HUNTED Recruitment – 01603 858024 / 020 362 72201.
No matter what business you’re in, you should know broadly what you want that business to look like – your vision. To achieve that vision you’ll need to set some strategic objectives to get you there. You might, for example, need to drive more sales, improve customer service, or reduce lead time.
But what does ‘more’ or ‘better’ look like? And how do you know that you’re heading in the right direction?
You need targets to measure your performance against – key performance indicators, or KPI’s, in “business speak”. Sounds simple, but getting targets right is quite a skill.
You may have heard the acronym SMART. As acronyms go, it’s actually a really good one. It’s often applied to targets or objectives, and serves as a reminder that they should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. If you can cram all that into your target, you’ve got a good one that, if used correctly, will help drive your business in the right direction.
Using appropriate targets as part of a continuous business improvement plan actually works – I’ve seen it! What gets measured gets done. To move your business forward, you need to define the key measures that will drive the right behaviours. It’s a waste of time having aims for your business if you can’t measure actual performance delivery.
I help businesses identify where they need to focus their efforts to drive the growth they want. I helps them define their objectives and create the right targets to help them reap the rewards.
Things to remember when setting targets
I’d like to sharethree top tips to to remember when setting targets:
Firstly, you need to know you’re measuring the right things, not just things that are easy to measure.
Secondly, you need to communicate those targets so the right people know what they need to achieve.
Finally, your targets need to include just the right amount of ambition. Having something to aim for can be a real motivator. It’s OK to challenge staff with your targets, but ask too much of them and it’ll have the opposite effect.
Well-defined targets should form a really key part of your business plan. Written and implemented correctly, they’ll help you achieve your goals.If you need help setting the right targets to help your business grow,please doget in touch!
My background is in lean manufacturing and supporting organisations on their growth journey. One of the most important aspects of that work is making sure that businesses have the right people in the right place at the right time.
It’s not just having the right people “at the top” that makes a business successful. It can be just as important to have the right personal assistant, administrator or payroll assistant in place. The right person in these roles can make the difference between a business running efficiently and lots of wasted time and effort.
However, as a small business, you might not be in a position to have someone in these roles on a permanent basis just yet. The cost of an additional full-time employee might be something of a luxury that you can’t quite afford. But having that extra pair of hands for a few hours a week could really free up your time to focus on growing the business.
So how do you get around that? A spot of flexible resourcing.
If you need additional skills or resource to support the growth of your business, we can help.
We’re offering small businesses the opportunity to benefit from some local, Norfolk talent. We have some fantastic people who specialise in short-term, part-time or flexible working. They have the skills to step into your organisation and really add value by developing your processes for improved efficiency, or simply get a few admin tasks off your desk. We can help organise your diary, plan events, and generally keep the business running smoothly.
The beauty of this as a solution? It’s a cost-effective way to get your house in order, without the commitment of recruitment costs, a regular wage, or all the other things that come with employing someone.
So, if you could benefit from a few hours or more of talented resource to support your business, then please get in touch for a chat. We’ll find out what you need and then match you with the best person for the job.
We’re not a recruitment agency, we just know some great people and like helping local businesses!
Taking the time to understand your customers can reap huge rewards!
How frequently have you tried really hard to engage with a customer, only to find that they walk away and buy from someone else?
With so much choice in the marketplace, we need to find a way that will help us quickly use the right communication methods, use the right language and ‘sales pitch’ to ensure that a prospect turns into a sale.
You can build up a relationship with a customer over time, develop their trust and really get to know their needs and wants. But there is a quicker way!
The Everything DiSC® Sales Profile Assessment allows you to understand not only yourself but your customers too so that you can use the communication method and approach that best suits each customer. This assessment, which takes around 10 minutes to complete, is reliable and cost-effective. The resulting profile report is comprehensive and detailed.
After you complete the Everything DiSC® Sales Profile Assessment, you can use the MyEverythingDiSC.com facility to plot the personality preferences of all your customers. For example, if you find out that Mr Jones always wants hard facts and figures right away, you can record this and when you next speak to Mr Jones you can be prepared with all the facts and figures and bottom line impact; in this way, Mr Jones is quickly on board with you and will appreciate you ‘getting straight to the point’.
You can extend this further and, using your CRM facility, record the preferences of each customer so that all of your staff know customers’ preferences.
To find out how you can increase sales and get to really know your customers better in a reliable and tested way, visit our website, www.corporategrowth.org and get in touch with Mary Aslett on 07931 098 023 or by email at mary@corporategrowth.org. We can send you a sample Everything DiSC® Sales Profile Assessment so that you can see for yourself how comprehensive the report really is.
The Chelmsford team at Pure are taking it in turns to volunteer at lunch clubs organised by local charity Kids Inspire to support disadvantaged children, and their families, throughout the school summer holidays.
Kids Inspire supports young people, and their parents and carers, across Essex who are at educational, social or economic disadvantage. Professional recruitment specialists Pure are long term supporters of the charity and regularly raise money to support the organisation through events such as its annual charity quiz night in the county. When the team investigated further ways in which they could provide support they were invited to become corporate volunteers at its ‘Kids Who Lunch’ clubs.
The clubs have been introduced to help children who would normally receive school lunches and might otherwise miss out on a good meal during the summer holidays. Beyond that, they are also designed to help families who need a helping hand in keeping children occupied over the summer and to provide young people with the chance to make new friends and to learn new things.
Each week, two members of the Pure team are attending the clubs to lend a helping hand during the sessions which include arts and crafts inspired actives, drama and music-themed fun, as well as lunch.
Ellie Punter, Recruitment Administrator at Pure, said: “We were really keen to be able to volunteer with Kids Inspire and the lunch clubs have created the perfect opportunity for us to do so. The charity really appreciates the extra help with setting up, making the food and engaging with the children. The corporate support from ourselves, and other local businesses, has helped to ensure these clubs can take place and provide this support throughout the school holidays. We are all really enjoying being involved. It’s great to see the kids having fun and trying things they have never done before, including eating different kinds of foods.”
Volunteers and supporters of Kids Inspire play a key role in helping the charity to support disadvantaged young people in turning their lives around and in making a real difference to the lives of vulnerable children
The question we get asked the second1 most when speaking to clients and potential clients is “how much will my bespoke2 software cost to build?” This is extremely difficult to answer without lots of detail and even then the complexities of software development, the complexity of client requirements and clients changing needs over the course of a project make an accurate estimate challenging. For this reason, most software development companies shy away from including prices on their website. In fact we checked the websites of a number of our competitors and the closest we found was one who offers a range of fee options from fixed price to a daily rate and a couple who ask for your budget when contacting them for more information. As a client, until you get that first email response, phone call or face-to-face meeting you’re no closer to understanding how much your software will cost. Even then it may be some time before you are any the wiser. We can’t help you understand how much your project will cost until we speak to you. What we can tell you is how much projects have cost our existing clients. We’ve broken the figures down into the types of services we provide, the minimum project cost, the maximum project cost, the average project costs and where in the range most of the projects sit: Project Type Minimum Maximum Average (Mean) Most Projects Under Enterprise Software & Mobile Development £3,000 £230,000 £36,000 £40,000 Creative Websites £450 £6,500 £2,500 £1,500 Consultancy £550 £20,700 £3,000 £1,000 * All values are approximate, exclude VAT and are correct as of August 2017 To start investigating how your business problem could be solved with a bespoke application, please contact us for a chat. __________________ 1 The thing everyone wants to know first is if we can solve their problem. 2 Our software is truly bespoke. We can modify off the shelf software for you, but we don’t consider this truly bespoke.