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Self-Storage

Self storage can cut your business costs

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Self storage can cut your business costs

Office rents have been rising and adding to business costs.

One way to cut down the amount of space your business needs is to use self storage.

You can rent a small space to keep office records that must be kept but are not in use every day.

You can use it to store stock for when you need it rather than having it all on-site.

You can even use self storage for some small businesses such as a bicycle workshop, or other small-scale business.

It is relatively cheaper than having like a retail store to just do this sort of work.

If you can’t work from home, but don’t want to rent expensive town centre office space, using a storage unit to work in could be the answer.

Digital-Detox

Could a regular day of downtime make you more productive?

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Could a regular day of downtime make you more productive?

Many UK adults spend an average of five hours a day looking at screens, sometimes more if they are at work.

However, a new event, called the Offline Club carried out a a 24-hour digital detox.

One participant, aged 33, had calculated that between working behind a desk all day and coming home to watch TV and “doomscroll” on social media, he can spend up to 14 hours a day looking at a screen.

The Offline Club held its first in-person “digital detox hangout” in Amsterdam in February. In the months since, the company has already expanded into Paris, Dubai and London.

Ilya Kneppelhout, the co-founder of the Offline Club, said people have been surprised at how just a few hours offline “made them feel so much less stressed and more connected to themselves and to others”.

Would a day free of screens refresh you and make you more productive?

Group-Work-Meeting

Improving work meetings

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Improving work meetings

No-one denies that work meetings whether in person or online are sometimes necessary.

Elon Musk once said that “excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time”.

One global study has found that 72% of work meetings are ineffective.

Brain activity drops when in a Zoom meeting, according to Yale university research.

However, using AI has improved things somewhat.

It means transcribing the meeting for you, suggesting questions you might want to ask, summarising the meeting in point form, reminding you of who else is present.

It is argued that the use of AI will make meetings much more productive as people will be much netter informed before they attend, which should speed things up and focus them.

It is also speculated that AI can be used to moderate meetings and provide feedback.

Microsoft’s Ms Jaime Teevan is convinced that AI will help to improve meetings. “It can help people feel less overwhelmed, it can help them get started and check things off their list. And it can help spark ideas, seeing things in news ways and getting support there.”

Back to planet Earth?

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Back-to-planet-EarthBack to planet Earth?

There is a growing trend among businesses to leave cloud storage in favour of using locally based hardware data centres.

The reason is chiefly the cost largely because the storage space is rented from a cloud storage provider.

One US company quoted a boost in annual profits of £790,000 after leaving cloud-based storage.

But it is also about reliability: If a major data centre goes down, large parts of the web can go offline.

There may also be security concerns when using a cloud-based service which can be crucial to a company wanting to store sensitive information and protect it from competitors.

There is an initial outlay in buying the storage hardware, but if it is then shared with other businesses some of the costs can be recouped in rent.

It has been argued that using the cloud is faster, but that is only likely to be an issue for a huge multinational business.

The lesson is clear for smaller businesses; Do the research and find the most efficient, secure and cost-effective way to store your data.

Where-is-AI-useful-in-Business

If you’re planning to use AI in your business, be careful

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Artificial intelligence is set to affect nearly 40% of all jobs, according to a new analysis by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

While that might sound like good news in terms of reducing your overheads, particularly payroll costs, there is a downside to using AI.

The IMF warns “The technology is facing increased regulation around the world. Last month, European Union officials reached a provisional deal on the world’s first comprehensive laws to regulate the use of AI.”

Generative AI is, put simply, AI that can quickly create new content, be it words, images, music or videos. And it can take an idea from one example, and apply it to an entirely different situation.

This has already led to court cases for copyright infringement as it is not possible to establish where the information generated has come from, usually multiple sources.

Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, says: “regulation and legal battles might cool off the current mania for generative AI.”

New-Legislation

Beware new legislation if your business depends on online reviews and sales

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As part of the digital markets, competition and consumers bill currently progressing through parliament, fake reviews and unavoidable hidden online charges – which cost consumers £2.2bn a year – are to be banned.

In future mandatory fees must be included in the headline price or at the start of the shopping process, including booking fees for cinema and train tickets.

According to a Guardian report: “drip pricing, where consumers are shown an initial cost only to find unavoidable fees added later, is widespread.

“More than half of entertainment providers, 56% of the hospitality industry, and 72% of the transport and communication sectors use the practice, according to the government.”

Which? also reports that “fake reviews on sites such as Amazon, Google and Trustpilot are still thriving on Facebook.

While it welcomed the announcement Rocio Concha, Which? director of policy and advocacy, said: “Further action may be needed to tackle the range of sneaky pricing tactics used to bump up the advertised price in areas like flight bookings.”

Merry-Christmas

Merry Christmas

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To all our customers

We wish you all

A very happy Christmas and New Year

With time to catch up with friends and family and relax

AI & Cyber Security

AI & Cyber Security

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According to a survey by PWC 37% of the 3,900 companies they asked were worried that they were “highly or extremely exposed to cyber risks”.

While three fifths saw AI as a positive cyber and digital risks were top-of-mind in 2023, with those leaders responsible for managing risk ranking cyber higher than inflation.

More than ever, this emphasises the need for robust processes in business to guard against hacking and other cyber security risks.

This means ensuring that only those who need it have access to sensitive data.

It also means having a robust password system including regular changes and two factor authentication.

Plus, it is wise to ensure that all employees are trained to be security aware online and are kept regularly updated as new threats emerge.

AI-Friend-or-Enemy

AI – Friend or enemy?

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The risks from AI should be treated as seriously as the climate crisis, according to one of the technology’s leading figures.

He was speaking ahead of a UK-hosted summit on the safety of AI due to be held on 1 and 2 November at Bletchley Park, the base for the code breakers in World War 2.

He was advocating the creation of a body similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Among the risks cited were “aiding the creation of bioweapons and the existential threat posed by super-intelligent systems.”

His call has been echoed by others including Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive, and Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind.

While there is no denying the immense opportunities in the use of AI.

There is no denying that AI has its uses, particularly for routine tasks, freeing up human resources for more creative activity.

But it is a powerful tool and thus susceptible to abuse without proper regulation and oversight.

What do you think?

Cloud-Storage

Where your documents are stored in the cloud is more important than you might think

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We perhaps all take for granted our use of the hardware and software, data centres and communications networks that power modern business.

But differences in the laws in Europe and the USA are becoming an increasing cause for concern across the EU.

It is all about who controls the data.

Europe is heavily dependent on US firms for cloud services.

There are laws in the EU (GDPR) and UK to protect the privacy of data. But in the USA, the intelligence and law-enforcement services broad powers to access data.

At the moment Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and Google have a 65% share of the world cloud market between them.

But there are moves afoot to create what is being called Europe’s first “sovereign hyperscale cloud” thanks to €15m in seed funding and plans to build eight data centres in Europe in the next five years.

This will be managed by a Stockholm based company called Evroc.

There are 377 organisations participating in the Gaia-X project, which aims to join up cloud service providers in a federated system, so data can move between them while data owners remain in control.

Watch this space….