businessinfomag.uk
magazine
08
Innovative start-ups get
their just rewards
Coffee bean recycling company bio-bean,
featured in the last issue of
Business Info
,
has enjoyed a successful summer, winning
aVirgin Media Business VOOM 2016
entrepreneur award in the ‘grow’ category
and a 2016 Talent Unleashed Award for Best
Start-Up, Social Impact.
As one of five VOOM 2016 winners, the
converter of waste coffee grounds into biofuels
and biochemicals will share a £1 million prize
fund made up of a cash prize and mentoring and
marketing support.
The other VOOM winners are MacRebur,
which mixes waste plastic with bitumen to
create a 60% stronger road surface (start-up
award);What A Melon, a supplier of 100%
natural watermelon water (crowd-funder
award); Trustedhousesitters, an online service for
connecting pet owners with house sitters (great
award); and Paint 360, which mixes waste paint
into new emulsion for facilities management
and social housing applications (impact award).
The 2016 Talent Unleashed Awards hosted
by global IT and recruitment firm Talent
International honour Europe’s most disruptive
and innovative tech start-ups.
Joining bio-bean as winners this year were
friend location app Sup (Best Start-Up – Tech
innovation); Therapy Box, a supplier of speech
and communications apps for Alternative and
Augmentative Communication (AAC), education
and dyslexia needs (Best Digital SME – Tech
Innovation); and visual discovery app Blippar
(Best Tech IPO/Venture Capital Raising).
CFOs should promote
collaboration says ACCA
Effective collaboration amongst the
C-suite and with external partners is key
to successful innovation and growth, ACCA
(the Association of Chartered Certified
Accountants) claims in a new guide.
CFOs and the C-Suite – focusing on effective
collaboration
explores what lies at the heart
of successful collaboration and suggests that
those working within the finance function have
an opportunity to take a key leadership role in
developing collaboration within organisations.
ACCA senior manager Omid Tissier said:
“CFOs need to become collaborative leaders
and this requires honing their ‘softer’ skills,
from effective conflict management to an
entrepreneurial mind-set and advanced
emotional intelligence. These are particular focus
areas that will allow leaders to collaborate more
effectively.”
Tap to feed
Lunchbox, a contactless payment terminal that
enables people buying lunch to make a 30p
donation to school feeding charity Mary’s Meals
with a simple tap of their card, achieved 1,500
taps in its first six weeks. Every day, Mary’s
Meals provides nutritious meals to more than
1.1 million hungry school children. As 30p buys
five meals, those 1,500 taps funded a total of
7,500 school lunches. Lunchboxes are being
used in Reynolds, Ethos, Mortimers Café and
Lantana Cafe in London and in Lynwood Cafe,
Oxfordshire.
Video collaboration boosts productivity
Video collaboration boosts employee productivity and improves business relationships – so says
Lifesize, a provider of audio, web and video conferencing technology, and a majority of its customers.
In fact, 99.2% of users surveyed by Lifesize agree that video conferencing helps build better
relationships inside and outside their company; 91.7% find it easier to get their point across when
they can see the other person on video; and 77.7%. say that using video collaboration to work
remotely increases their productivity and enhances their work-life balance.
Three in a row
Collaborative technology provider Oblong
Industries is celebrating its third successive year
of 50% year-on-year revenue growth. Over
the same period it has increased its worldwide
headcount by 50%. It has just launched a new
channel recruitment program in EMEA to drive
sales of its Mezzanine collaboration solution.
Three quarters of small and medium-
sized businesses (SMEs) do not have the
technology needed to stay afloat in today’s
web-enabled economies, NETGEAR claims
in a new report.
As an example, the network specialist points
out that 72% see no need to implement 10
Gigabit switching as a way of future-proofing
their network and increasing bandwidth to
support the always-on era’s increased data
consumption, workload-heavy applications and
BYOD in the workplace.
Currently, just 33% of SMEs have more than
30% penetration of 10 Gigabit in their network,
although 61% expect to have greater than 30%
penetration by the end of 2017.
NETGEAR’s research suggests that SMEs
are still unsure of the benefits of 10 Gigabit;
only 33% are adopting the technology to solve
network performance issues when expanding
premises; only one third agree that 10 Gigabit
would be warranted in the event of greater
video or broadcast streaming; and just 40% plan
to migrate to 10 Gigabit switching solutions in
order to decrease network bottlenecks.
NETGEAR director of global product
marketing Tris Simmons said: “Our research
highlights that the number one reason why
SMBs are deploying 10 Gigabit is to address
bottleneck performance issues. Such challenges
are only going to increase in prevalence and
underpin why 10 Gigabit is appearing more and
more on the radar. 10 Gigabit Ethernet Fibre
switching has been around since 2002, but it’s
only been in the last three years, with more
affordable 10 Gigabit copper switching, that
adoption has really started to take off.”
SMEs put network performance
at risk
