REAL-WORLD INSIGHTS

Published: Nov 23 , 2017
Author: John McMillan

A characteristic of business in the UK in recent years, and I suspect in other countries, is the removal of people from the interface between buyer and seller. In the place of the traditional face-to-face meeting is the RFI, the RFP and the E-auction.…

Published: Jun 12 , 2014
Author: Alan Smith

Researchers into fatalities caused by storms have made an interesting and rather odd finding. For as long as people have been tracking and reporting hurricanes, also known as tropical cyclones, they’ve been struggling to find ways to identify them. Until well into the 20th century, newspapers and forecasters in the United States devised names for storms that referenced their time period, geographic location or intensity; hence, the Great Hurricane of 1722, the Galveston Storm of 1900, the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 and the Big Blow of 1913...

Published: Dec 19 , 2013
Author: Robin Copland, Partner

On the BBC news website in a move eerily reminiscent of Laura Ashley and John Lewis (see 28 March blog), it has been confirmed yesterday that department store Debenhams has told suppliers of its own brand products to cut their bills by 2.5% as a "contribution" to its investment plans”. It said it would deduct this from all outstanding payments on Tuesday night and would apply another discount of 2.5% to orders open on its system.