CV Magazine May 2017

May 2017

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Excelling in Education Also in this month...

Rent a Car Niger The Power of a Job Well Done - AllStaff Inc.

Pictured Below, L to R...

Philip Newcomb - The Software Revolution Inc. Samantha Rutter - Open Study College Arvind Vidudala - Kaizen Switchgear Products Zahra Nensi - Deloitte Consulting Limited

Cardiff Sixth Form College is a world class co-educational school, leading the way in outstanding academic results and the highest quality of education.

We explore how the college is working to achieve excellence for its students and support them as they look towards a bright and exciting future.

Editor’s Note

, Welcome to the May edition of Corporate Vision Magazine, which is packed with an array of news and features from all across the world.

In recent research, Paessler AG reveals how decision makers (ITDMs) feel about cloud computing and how they are using it to meet the demands of today’s changing business climate. They surveyed more than 2,000 ITDMs globally, including Australia, and found that the majority are positive about cloud and are planning to expand the types of IT services they run in the cloud in the coming years.

British brands have suffered some dramatic falls in their dollar-denominated values this year according to leading valuation and strategy consultancy Brand Finance. While Britain’s 150 most valuable brands are featured in the 2017 Brand Finance UK 150, from the 140 of the brands with data for both 2016 and 2017, 88 have declined in value. On average, the UK’s top brands lost 6% of their value last year. There are a number of reasons behind this, but the common factor is the devaluation of sterling in the wake of the Brexit vote.

I hope you enjoy reading this informative edition.

Jonathan Miles, Editor Phone: +44 (0) 203 725 6842 Email: jonathan.miles@ai-globalmedia.com Website: www.corp-vis.com AI Global Media, Ltd. (AI) takes reasonable measures to ensure the quality of the information on this web site. However, AI will not assume any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, correctness or completeness of any information that is available through this web site. If errors are brought to our attention, we will try to correct them.

The information available through the website and our partner publications is for your general information and use and is not intended to address any particular finance or investment requirements. In particular, the information does not constitute any form of advice or recommendation by us or any of our partner publications and is not intended to be relied upon by users in making or refraining from making any investment or financial decisions.

Appropriate independent advice should be obtained before making any such decision. Any arrangement made between you and any third party named in the site is at your sole risk and responsibility.

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Contents

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4. News 8. Excelling in Education 10. In Total Control 12. Delivering Cutting-Edge IT Comprehensively and Successfully 16. Enabling Business Transformation through Technology 18. Solving Complex Problems 20. The Very Best in Lifting Equipment Engineering 22. The Presence of Music 23. Standing out from the Crowd 24. A Strong Focus on Energy Savings 26. txtNation Among the UK’s Elite Business Operations* 28. Exciting yet Challenging Times 30. Revolutionising Distance Learning 32. Ship Building 34. Creating Healthy and Safe Environments 35. A Passion for Content 36. Focus, Passion and Drive 40. It’s a Steel 41. The Power of a Job Well Done 42. Uncovering Hidden Value 44. Plain Sailing 46. The Apprenticeship Levy - a Challenge or an Opportunity?

48. A Formidable Force 50. Internationally Recognised Experts 52. Diverse, Dynamic & Entrepreneurial 56. A Noteworthy Firm 57. Winner’s Directory

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CORPORATE VISION / May 2017 3

NEWS

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Cloud Adoption Growing Among SMBs Worldwide

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NEWS

, Paessler AG, the innovative network monitoring specialist, on 4th May released the findings of new research into how global IT decision makers (ITDMs) feel about cloud computing and how they are using it to meet the demands of today’s changing business climate.

The company Paessler AG surveyed more than 2,000 ITDMs globally, including Australia, and found that the majority are positive about cloud and are planning to expand the types of IT services they run in the cloud in the coming years.

Overall, ITDMs from nearly 100 countries had an overwhelmingly positive personal opinion of cloud, with 80.1 percent responding affirmatively, with 63.5% of respondents working for companies with fewer than 500 employees. While many appear to be comfortable with cloud as a strategic IT delivery model, it does not necessarily mean they have moved their entire IT infrastructure there. Findings show that the most popular cloud functions were Web hosting, blog and content management (39.2 percent), email (32 percent) and file sharing (32.2 percent) capabilities.

While many of the ITDMs surveyed, claimed that they are hosting a number of basic applications on the cloud, a significant number are planning to deploy more complex business applications in 2018. The most popular include: network monitoring (34.6 percent), sales, CRM and ticketing systems (35.4 percent), and backup (33.9 percent).

“Widespread migration to the cloud in the SMB market is already underway, especially here in Australia, said Andrew Timms, Sales Director for APAC at Paessler. “The uptake of cloud and prevalence of BYOD has played a major role in the IT department. We will continue to see system administrators leverage the cloud model, together with existing on premise applications to better manage local area networks, switches and data rooms.

Welcome to the hybrid future.”

Despite high levels of cloud approval overall, many ITDMs were still sceptical about certain aspects of the technology.

Specifically, data security stood out as the biggest concern, with 44.7 percent stating it poses a significant obstacle, with an additional 41.3 percent who said it is somewhat concerning.

“The findings from this survey confirm that the transformative impact of the cloud does not only exclusively impact enterprises; the SMB market is also starting to reap the true benefits,” said Timms.

To view the full report, please visit www.paessler.com/campaign/cloud-survey. For more on PRTG, please visit www. paessler.com.

Early Adopters of Tax Apps Can Save Money with Weenie Business Solutions Weenie Business Solutions in Swindon believes entrepreneurs need to get ahead of the digital tax rules arriving in 2019.

As a partner of Sage — a global leader in accounting software — Weenie Business Solutions is providing 12 months’ free subscription of Sage One Start to the first 100 clients who buy their Level 1 Business Self-Assessment or Tax Return Service, each priced at £120 (including VAT).

“HMRC’s ‘Making Tax Digital’ plans are still sending shockwaves through the business community” said Amelia Bishop, Director of Weenie Business Solutions. “With Brexit set to happen at about the same time as the HMRC changes come into effect, 2019 could be hectic for business owners. On the other hand, I believe everyone can plan for change and find bespoke solutions with our advice.”

The Level 1 Self-Assessment is particularly for start-ups, sole traders and contractors who are likely to be most affected by the change to quarterly HMRC reporting in two years’ time. The app will also be given to any clients who want Weenie Business Solutions to complete their self-assessment tax return for the 16/17 or 17/18 tax years.

Whereas many businesses still need to employ accountants and finance staff to keep the records up to date, in future, some of the day-to-day tasks will be at the fingertips of those with apps like Sage One Start.

Sending invoices, recording receipts, watching the income and expenditure will all become much easier. As with all technology, it’s expected that those who become early adopters will be the first to enjoy the greatest benefits.

Weenie Business Solutions is a business consultancy that helps small and medium size businesses grow and achieve their goals.

Working alongside Amelia at Weenie Business Solutions are specialists in accountancy, bookkeeping and payroll, business analysis and business development.

For more information, visit, www. weeniebusiness.co.uk.

CORPORATE VISION / May 2017 5

NEWS

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Funding Initiative Aims to Provide All UK Neonatal Units with Personalised Video

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NEWS

, Personalised video specialists, vCreate, recently announce a new funding initiative aimed at ensuring that all 200 UK neonatal networks are equipped with personalised video by 2018. According to Bliss, the UK’s special care baby charity; over 90,000 babies are admitted to neonatal care in the UK because they have either been born prematurely, or full term but sick.

The decision to look for corporate sponsors to fund the provision of secure video within neonatal units will make technology, that would have previously been out of reach due to unavailable budget, accessible for the wider neonatal community.

Ben Moore, founder of vCreate, explains why he believes this innovative approach to funding will make all the difference: “It’s clear from our discussions with medics that digital technology such as this has huge potential to transform the way services are delivered across the NHS. Delays or lack of central funding can leave the people who deliver the care hamstrung; there’s a proven case for a solution, a need for change, but budget for such initiatives isn’t readily available.”

The team at vCreate is in search of corporate sponsors to fund instances of vCreate by neonatal region. With vCreate, staff are able to send short videos of babies to parents when they are away from this hospital. Ben added: “We’ve already seen how secure video is enhancing patient care following the successful pilot programme at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow, and there’s been widespread media and public interest in the project.”

Impact Healthcare Reit Plc Acquisition of Seed Portfolio Impact Healthcare REIT plc is pleased to announce that the company has completed the acquisition of the Core Seed Portfolio and the Mulberry Portfolio for a total consideration of £148,754,000. All outstanding lending facilities have been repaid in full and the Seed Portfolio has been acquired debt-free by the company.

The terms of the acquisition are in accordance with the prospectus published by the company on 24 January 2017 (the “Prospectus”).

Royal Glasgow Hospital for Children is the first in the UK to trial vCreate in their neonatal unit. Neil Patel, Consultant Neonatologist, explains how vCreate is supporting mums and dads through what can be an extremely stressful time: “The idea originally came from a parent of one of our patients. He uses personalised video in his work to connect with clients and asked if we could send him video updates of his own baby. We then asked more families who all told us there is nothing more reassuring than actually seeing their baby.

It’s a personalised video platform that makes it quick and simple to create a video which can then be securely accessed by the baby’s parents on any device at any time.”

The net initial yield on the Seed Portfolio is 7.6%. with rental income accruing from admission on 7 March 2017, supporting the company’s dividend policy. The company is targeting the payment of dividends for the first 12 months from admission which equate to a yield of 6%. per annum on the Issue Price, on an ungeared basis and payable in quarterly instalments.

vCreate believes that the funding proposition delivers for both the public and private sectors. The public-sector gains innovative video technology when they need it, and private sector sponsors have the opportunity to support families of premature babies.

The Seed Portfolio comprises 56 residential care homes offering 2,479 beds which are leased to the Initial Tenants, in each case, for an initial term of 20 years with an option to extend for two further 10 year periods. The leases are subject to annual uplifts based on increases in the UK retail prices index (subject to a cap and floor).

As part of the sponsorship package, corporate sponsors can expect to see their company logo across the vCreate application which would be seen by the parents logging in to watch the videos; plus, media coverage across multiple channels, and positive brand and CSR association.

Further to the announcement on 2 March 2017 and following completion, applications have been made for the admission of 14,000,000 Ordinary Shares to trading on the Specialist Fund Segment of main market of the London Stock Exchange in connection with the Vendor Issue.

Admission is expected to occur at 8.00 a.m. on 5 May 2017.

Rupert Barclay, non-executive Chairman of Impact Healthcare REIT plc, commented: “We are pleased to have completed the acquisition of the Seed Portfolio following the IPO in March 2017. This diversified operating portfolio of residential care homes is let to experienced operators for an initial term of 20 years, providing the company with stable, secure cash flows from admission. This enables the company to provide shareholders with regular, attractive, inflation-protected income with the potential for dividend and capital growth through active asset management as well as potential acquisitions.

Pursuant to the Vendor Issue, Mahesh Patel has subscribed for 10,000,000 Ordinary Shares through a wholly-owned SPV, Maal Limited. Maal Limited has entered into a lock-in deed dated 3 May

Impact Healthcare is a well-resourced and extensively networked care home investor well placed to capitalise on the highly-fragmented market with a supply/demand imbalance that is continuing to grow.”

For more information, please email theteam@vcreate.tv.

2017 on equivalent terms to the lock-in deed granted by Mr. Patel on the company’s IPO. The total number of Ordinary Shares in issue immediately following Admission will be 160,172,360, each with equal voting rights. This total voting rights figure can be used by shareholders as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine whether they are required to notify their interest in the company under the Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules of the Financial Conduct Authority.

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Excelling in Education Cardiff Sixth Form College is a world class co-educational school, leading the way in outstanding academic results and the highest quality of education. We explore how the college is working to achieve excellence for its students and support them as they look towards a bright and exciting future.

Established in 2004 as a small, private tutorial college, Cardiff Sixth Form College was dedicated to pioneering a new approach right from the very beginning. Combining small class sizes, excellent teaching and individual attention for each student the college focused on nurturing potential in order to provide first class results.

Since inception the college has gone from strength to strength.

Rapid growth has necessitated development on all fronts, and as such the college has relocated twice as word got out about its achievements and it now resides at Trinity Court, Newport Road.

In the heart of Cardiff city, this modern, spacious campus is the perfect site for our growing ambitions and is able to deal with the college’s ever growing population.

In 2009, Cardiff Sixth Form College accepted its first international students. Since then the college has accepted more and more students from overseas, providing boarding facilities and first rate pastoral care. Cardiff Sixth Form College is a thoroughly multi-cultural environment and is exceptionally proud of its diversity and now has students from over 30 different nationalities studying within its walls.

Cardiff Sixth Form College searches the world for the best approaches to education and is constantly exploring new ways to improve and grow. Its innovative teaching philosophy draws from both East and West. Like its multicultural student body, the college believe that its integrated methods set it apart from other boarding colleges.

Eastern education prizes rigour and discipline, and students

receive a first-rate understanding of core subjects across the student body, while Western approaches value individual creativity. Each pupil is given pastoral care and encouraged to foster the talents which are unique to them.

At Cardiff Sixth Form College students do not have to choose between the two approaches as its teaching combines the strengths of both systems to create a unique educational approach. The college provides all students with a strong, disciplined curriculum of core subjects, whilst also monitoring and aiding individual progress.

Continual development is vital for both students and the college alike, and as such the college analyses its classes and teaching styles; constantly aiming to perfect. It is always possible to improve, as there is a science to teaching. By evaluating the details of education – large and small – the college provide the best possible atmosphere for students to learn.

Additionally, tradition is important. Every school needs a culture. At Cardiff Sixth Form College, however, this culture is thoroughly in the presentday.

Many English boarding schools rely on long histories and heritage, whereas at Cardiff, the focus is always forward. The college wants to build for the future and be the standard by which all schools are judged.

This has been achieved through strong results. In 2016, 93% of

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students at Cardiff achieved A*-A grades, whilst 99% of students achieved A*-B grades. For six years running the college have been awarded Top Private School in the UK, Top Private Coeducational Boarding School and Top Private Sixth Form College in the Education Advisers’ Awards. In addition, it has been ranked number one for A-Level results in league tables published by The Telegraph and The Times for four consecutive years, all of which serves as a testimony to the level of excellence it works towards.

Ultimately, the college, like its students, work hard towards grades, and equip every pupil with the skills and confidence to thrive in their life beyond.

Following their time at Cardiff Sixth Form College students are ready to join universities in the UK, the US, or anywhere else in the world, with the college providing the ideal start to a great education, and this dedicated focus will remain central to the college’s approach as it seeks to build upon its current success moving forward.

The growth it has seen over recent years has helped Cardiff Sixth Form College to reached its goal and become the Top Independent School in the UK

by A-Level results. The college is proud of its origins, but is now looking forward to the future.

The overall aim to continue striving for success; standing at the forefront of disciplined and creative teaching for generations to come.

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When asked about the essence of Cardiff Sixth Form College, the Principal, Gareth Collier draws inspiration from Henry David Thoreau who said: “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined” “Cardiff Sixth Form College is proud to be able to assist some of the most able, academic students in the world to ‘live the lives they imagine’.”

He says, “Aspiring to study at top universities of the world is a worthy dream and Cardiff Sixth Form College is designed to help build credible pathways to these universities for the students in our care.”

Company: Cardiff Sixth Form College Address: 1-3 Trinity Court, 21-27 Newport Road, Cardiff CF24 0AA Phone: (+44) 029 2049 3121 Email: marketing@ccoex.com Website: www.ccoex.com

CORPORATE VISION / May 2017 9

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In Total Control ABB’s leading European partner wins Drives & Motor Supplier of the Year award three years in a row.

A poll of over 350,000 people from UK Industry have voted Quantum Controls Ltd to be the ‘Drives and Motor Supplier of the Year’ for the third year running.

UK Corporate Excellence have just presented Kevin Brown, Managing Director, with the company’s latest accolade in April 2017.

Established in 1989, Quantum have been the largest supplier of ABB variable speed drives and motors in the UK since 1994. They have over 100 service and maintenance contracts throughout the UK, and while specialising in ABB products, Quantum offer a

full turnkey solution to the specification, supply, installation, commissioning and after sales maintenance and repair on all brands of drives and motors.

Brown said “We are once again delighted to receive such a prestigious award voted for by the UK Industrial community.

This three year win recognises Quantum as a company that really does put our customers first, with all of our staff receiving continuous training to ensure they are experts in our field.

Alongside this, we ensure that all staff are employed based on attitude as well as aptitude to ensure customer service is the first thing they think of every day - the foundation on which we base our KPIs.”

Kevin Brown, Managing Director of Quantum Controls is delighted to accept the award of ‘UK Drives & Motor Supplier of the Year’ for the third year running

In the past year alone Quantum have doubled the size of their business, serving clients at both a local and national level.

This growth is primarily down to their commitment to investing in people in order to deliver the best experience possible for customers.

Brown continues “Another reason for our success is that we are continuously trying to be innovative by bringing new solutions to our client’s problems.

Every year we are investing in R&D and we have developed several new service and maintenance options delivered through our unique DriveCare packages, which have now become nationally recognised solutions.”

“Furthermore, we are a company of engineers and experts, and working across all industries we understand the problems our clients face each day in each of those industries and we’re often transferring new solutions and innovations from one industry to another.”

“As well as delivering the right solutions to our clients, we have also invested heavily in order to ensure that they truly receive an all-round pleasurable experience with Quantum. We do this in different ways every day, and we encourage all of our employees to do this by giving them the autonomy required to deliver excellent service as standard” says Brown.

“We firmly believe that we have set a level of customer service and technical expertise that is unrivalled in our industry,

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however we also understand the need to keep improving if we are to stay ahead and winning this award for the third year in a row tells us that we are doing something right.”

“Recognition such as this is important for our staff and our clients. Our staff feel assured that they are contributing to a successful business and our clients have the reassurance that they are dealing with a company that has been recognised as the ‘best in class’ in our sector.”

Quantum have seen year on year growth in motor and drive sales, but it is the growing number of service and maintenance contracts that is set to be their biggest area of growth for 2017.

With a network of service centres throughout the UK, Quantum pride themselves on delivering unrivalled 24/7 support to their contract customers.

Michael Eunson of AkzoNobel praises Quantum for their “excellent attitude when attending either a breakdown or a service. Their engineers show a very good knowledge and always take site rules and regulations into consideration, hence why we have Quantum as our site contact for emergencies and service.”

Brown concludes “Every point of contact we have with a customer influences whether or not they’ll come back. We simply have to be great every time.”

UK Corporate Excellence Awards 2015/16/17 QUANTUM CONTROLS

UK Drives & Motor Supplier of the Year

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Company: Quantum Controls Ltd Address: 6A Dukes Way, Low Prudhoe Industrial Estate Prudhoe, Northumberland NE42 6PQ Telephone: 01661 835 566 Fax: 01661 833 868 Email: sales@quantum-controls.co.uk Web: www.quantum-controls.co.uk

CORPORATE VISION / May 2017 11

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Delivering Cutting-Edge IT Comprehensively and Successfully We invited CEO of the Year - Washington awardee, The Software Revolution’s (TSRI) Philip Newcomb, to reveal his thoughts on what it takes to successfully manage the growth of a medium-sized IT company and to share some details regarding his firm, which is focused on the assessment, transformation and refactoring of legacy applications.

The biggest challenge TSRI faced in its early years was general disbelief that the level of automation they offered for information system modernisation could be achieved, or that it could be achieved with sufficiently high quality. In the meantime, over the course of 20 years of modernization they’ve substantiated their claims and quelled the worries of sceptics, first and foremost, by delivering.

Philip’s company has received contracts for and successfully modernized 150 systems, and has done so without a single failure to date. Despite this track record, TSRI has a number of tools it uses to make it easy for their customers to preview TSRI’s capabilities, products and services prior to purchase. These including offering a sophisticated project forecast to qualified customers using the customer’s own code and publishing an extensive array of case studies on their website. To ensure they and the industry as a whole are adhering to quality standards useful to the community and their customers, TSRI also works closely with the Object Management Group (OMG). Philip Newcomb lends us insight into the development of his company and career in this interview.

“I’ve come to accept that the best way to dispel the admittedly natural scepticism of clients is to go the extra mile as early as possible in the business development cycle. To do this, TSRI invites clients to witness first-stage modernisation using their own legacy code. To support the large number of clients in TSRI’s pipeline, we have streamlined and automated these processes of assessment, transformation and refactoring.

“Generally, TSRI can give clients a taste for what we are capable of within a few days of initial engagement. To be honest, that ‘wow, you guys just did that’ moment, and the effect those demos have on our clients is a lot of fun to see. They’re happy and amazed, and that’s what we get to do day-in and day-out.”

“At the core of the firm’s business model is the JANUS Studio® toolset, which is a fully automated tool capable of transforming between any practical combination of source and target languages. TSRI is the industry leader in providing automated legacy system modernisation services to government and industry, and this is largely thanks to the dedication and expertise of the men and women working at TSRI”

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“TSRI’s staff has invested hundreds of person years developing the sophisticated artificial intelligence based processes and machine knowledge housed, within JANUS® and its associated environment. We bring the full force of JANUS® and our expert team to bear, using a model-based and rule-driven approach to architecture-driven legacy modernisation. TSRI has an unblemished track-record delivering 100% automated assessment, transformation and refactoring capabilities to their clients and partners.”

The company’s reliable fourphase process for Assessment, Transformation, and Refactoring has been applied to modernize source languages into functionally equivalent, platformindependent modern applications using modern object-oriented languages, including C++, C#, VB, .Net, EGL, Java, JavaScript, Python and PL/SQL. This output can then be deployed as modern-private, hybrid or cloudbased platforms. Philip was willing to explain these points in greater detail, providing us with deeper insight into the services TSRI provides.

“TSRI offers many services, but four that are best showcased in JANUS Studio® are the ability to: (1) Ingest a software application written in a legacy language and automatically transform (not just transliterate!) it into a modern, uniform, native, object-oriented target language; (2) refactor the transformed code to improve that code’s structure, security, performance, and maintainability; (3) generate full UML documentation for both the ‘As-Is’ as well as the ‘To-Be’ systems; and (4) transform monolithic legacy systems into single, multitiered web-based application or micro-services.”

TSRI’s reach within the legacy IT system modernisation spans a robust array of customers.

Currently the company addresses over 30 different legacy source languages and has modernised hundreds of millions of lines of code supporting the needs of military and civilian government organisations, and commercial industry. TSRI also has the flexibility within the JANUS Studio® toolset to rapidly adjust to new legacy source languages requiring modernisation, allowing them to reliably meet customer need, even when TSRI did not exhibit prior fluency regarding the coding language in question.

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Delivering Cutting-Edge IT Comprehensively and Successfully

“We’re pretty sure that there is simply no other company that matches TSRI’s level of automation or it’s breadth of reach into so many different government and industry applications” Philip also set out how his company generally approaches projects to ensure successful delivery.

“Lastly, and this is something TSRI prides ourselves on, which really is at the core of how we approach all our projects, is that we task ourselves with delivering an adaptable solution that is customer-driven. That is, our customers entrust us with the transformation of highly sensitive, critical systems to a target of their choosing, and we make it a point, a personal matter of integrity if you will, to deliver comprehensively and successfully.”

CEO of the Year – Washington Following his success in winning the CEO of the Year – Washington award, Philip reveals more about his important role as CEO, Founder, and Chairman of TSRI. In addition to shaping company direction through identifying opportunities for innovation and growth, he makes it his personal mission to ensure a welcoming,

Company: THE SOFTWARE REVOLUTION INC. (TSRI) Name: Philip Newcomb, CEO TSRI Email: pnewcomb@tsri.com Web Address: www.tsri.com Address: 11410 NE 122nd Way, Suite 105, Kirkland, 98034 USA Telephone: +1 206 851 3790

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respectful and intellectually stimulating environment for the entire TSRI team.

“The people with whom I work are the engine driving the TSRI mission. The value and excellence TSRI can provide to the companies and people we work with, and the neverending stream of challenges this provides are a powerful source of motivation Philip also offered more thoughts on his own role at TSRI. “At this point, my key role, which is largely defined by my greatest challenge and the opportunities it provides, is chaperoning a seamless transition of TSRI from its roots as a small innovative technical organisation, to the process-driven medium-sized technical products and services organisation it has become. In support of that role, I continue to communicate the company and technology vision of leading the software transformation industry and enabling migration of legacy applications to modernised software implementation on the application platforms of the future.”

“I’ve been CEO of TSRI off and on since founding the firm in 1995. I enjoy creative computer science more than executive management, but I found the leadership needs of a company with as highly complex an IP portfolio as TSRI has are too demanding to outsource on a sustained basis. Fewer than 30% of small businesses survive more than 10 years and less than 1% of small businesses with more than $5M in revenues exceed 40% growth on a sustained basis. I aspire to ensure that TSRI beats the survival statistics and thrives - and to do so, it’s my opinion the chief executive must have a solid understanding of the company’s core technology - and a sound business model.”

Industry trends In terms of keeping up with industry trends, it is worth pointing out that TSRI’s core business involves taking the technologies from 10, 20, 30, or 40 years ago, and bringing them

into modern technologies, or even future state technologies.

TSRI hears from customers on a regular basis as pertains to their desired languages and architectures. Some of the specific industry trends that TSRI sees are the increasing need for capabilities in cybersecurity, and the increasing interest in microservices-based architectures. Philip offered us his thoughts on cybersecurity.

“The recent successful and attempted attacks on critical government legacy information systems at the Office of Personal Management and the IRS have provided a stark reminder of just how vulnerable older systems are. Commercial systems are not immune to criminal agencies either, and in fact, may have more to lose in the near term in lost revenue, IP theft, negative branding, and lingering scandal than government entities may.

Sony, Anthem, Banner Health, Home Depot and many others can testify to this fact.”

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• “Cybersecurity advances try to keep pace with prevention of these attacks. However, while there are many security benefits and cybersecurity tools for applications written in modern languages like Java and C#, legacy systems (COBOL, Assembly, PowerBuilder, Ada, Fortran, etc.) suffer from many vulnerabilities inherent to the limitations of the languages they are written in. And this isn’t just a logical conclusion – the relative vulnerability of legacy languages operating in modern environments is a severe enough problem that it’s actually already been pretty well documented in independent academic research.

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TSRI’s model-based transformation approach offers a unique and effective solution for many of the common security flaws present in legacy systems. Here are a few ways in which TSRI have used automated modernisation to enhance cyber-security for their clients and partners.

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Moving to modern languages protects TSRI’s clients by removing the ability for

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cyber-criminals to leverage decades of experience and tools-development designed to exploit older languages; Automated modernisation can move systems from weakly-typed to stronglytyped languages. This removes vulnerabilities associated with non-explicitly called data types; Using information from code scanners like Fortify, SONAR, CAST, or other tools, model-based refactoring uses automation to remediate defects and flaws detected in the application code; Modernised applications take advantage of the newest security and authentication procedures, e.g. LDAP; When code-level defects are identified in new attacks, automated refactoring can be used to enact rapid, pattern-based, systematic modification in modern languages like Java and C# to eliminate vulnerabilities; Detailed system documentation, produced automatically, allows developers to quickly identify flaws; Many legacy systems fail to document changes made over time, leaving them vulnerable to systemic weaknesses, gaps for malware, and Advanced Persistent Threats.

Automated modernisation exposes those gaps and removes dead code; Many malware attacks and APTs rely on inactive code to hide from antivirus scans, e.g. the malware discovered in US power systems across the east coast. Automated removal of this code eliminates these hiding spots; Many legacy systems are irreplaceable mission-critical systems with highly sensitive data—and represent a large risk and tempting target.

Legacy transformation facilitating modern securitisation better protects these mission-critical systems and; In addition to code modernisation, automated refactoring can be used to

alter the architecture to avoid design flaws that attackers may exploit. TSRI’s modelbased transformation tools support this.

Philip then went on to say, “Microservices architectures are also a major new area of interest for TSRI’s current customers. TSRI’s automated refactoring capabilities allow us to make pattern based changes to applications allowing our customers to completely rearchitect their systems to take advantage of new advances in computing trends and technologies.”

In terms of Philip’s future aspirations for TSRI, he underlined that automated legacy system modernisation is finally starting to take off as an industry, yet it is still only a very small one.

“There are fewer than 10 suppliers of automated IT modernisation services and most have fewer than 20 employees and revenues of less than $5 million a year.

But, we are seeing an explosion of opportunities. TSRI’s business pipeline and market demand is very strong and we are positioning ourselves to achieve sustained 100% revenue growth per year for the next five years” Philip concluded by sharing his thoughts on US federal government IT spending in the US with us, including how TSRI is taking steps to reduce these costs.

“Today the US federal government spends more than $90 billion/year on IT. At least 80% of this expenditure, and in fact 80% of all IT expenditures go to sustain and maintain legacy systems. Independent studies have shown that 60% to 80% of the O&M costs of legacy software can be reduced per annum.”

“TSRI strives to bring the cost of modernising legacy systems to a tiny fraction of this IT spending.

We’re actually confident enough in our ability to deliver value, that for the vast majority of projects we involve ourselves in, we estimate the ROI to modernise will be recaptured by our partners

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Delivering Cutting-Edge IT Comprehensively and Successfully

and clients within a single year. Beyond just the value, though, we like to ensure that our customer’s tools are even stronger moving forwards, than they were. We strive to create modernised systems capable of the organic evolution required to avoid the build-up of technical debt we’ve observed in this, the first era of computer evolution.”

“Not only can TSRI reduce current costs of modernisation, it is our intention to significantly eliminate the costs of future maintenance so that the legacy systems that we modernise, once modernised, stay modernised.”

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Enabling Business Transformation through Technology Avasant is a leading management consulting firm focused on translating the power of technology into realizable business strategies. We caught up with Kevin S. Parikh, winner of the CEO of the Year California Award, to learn more about how Avasant is impacting the market.

Since Avasant’s inception in 2006, it has supported some of the most influential Fortune 500 companies through substantial change and growth. These engagements were successful because of the firm’s core principles of innovation, flexibility, and agility. Much of this can be credited to the strong foundation established by Global CEO and Founder, Kevin S. Parikh, and his founding team.

With offices all over the world, Avasant promotes a company culture predicated on teamwork.

An extensive 12-week training program, an annual offsite company retreat, and even zero-cost gym memberships, are just some of many perks Avasant provides its consultants.

This mix has created a unique internal dynamic, resulting in Avasant being recognized as one of the 50 “Best Companies to Work For,” according to Vault Consulting.

This collaborative culture has also enabled Avasant to provide high value solutions and recommendations to big brands. Martin Boyer, VP and CIO of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA), stated in a recent interview about the

company’s working relationship with Avasant, “Avasant has been engaged with GTAA to support in an enterprise-wide business and IT transformation initiative. As a result of this initiative, GTAA has identified both significant IT costs savings as well as potential for business process optimization, passenger experience improvement and revenue growth. Avasant continues to be a trusted partner in this journey and a key part of our success.”

“Our clients come to us for strategic advice on how to utilize market-available technologies within their businesses to support their clients and employees alike,” says Parikh. “The majority of society feels threatened by impending concepts such as ‘digital singularity’, when technology will have integrated itself into every aspect of our realities – how we live, work and play. At Avasant, our stance is that the advent of artificial intelligence, automation, and the like does not mean the end of humanity, but rather the beginning of a new era to free human creativity and deliver greater opportunities.”

As a result of embracing this new paradigm, Avasant is working on some of its most exciting, transformative

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projects yet. For example, Avasant recently created an application modernization and services migration strategy for a multinational toy manufacturing company that is projected to generate $300 million in added value.

“Moving forward, we have a number of highly disruptive projects planned which will change the way businesses are run and interact with their consumers. These projects will implement the most innovative products on the market and change partnership structures with technology partners to promote co-investment and growth,” says Parikh.

Through initiatives funded by organizations like the World Bank and Rockefeller Foundation, Avasant has helped catalyse the creation of thousands of new jobs across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America.

Avasant’s not-for-profit arm, Avasant Foundation, supports technology and skill development programs to create employment opportunities for youth across these territories. Parikh is the Chairman of Avasant Foundation, and also serves as a member of Girl Rising’s US-India Advisory Board.

Parikh looks forward to continue promoting a culture of excellence within Avasant to drive high value engagements and social impact.

Avasant’s engagement in the global market has also inspired a strong commitment to community and social responsibility.

Company: Avasant Name: Kevin S. Parikh Address: 1960 East Grand Avenue Suite 1050, El Segundo, California 90245 Phone: +1 310 643 3030 Fax: +1 310 643 3033 Email: Nicole Dulay, Digital Marketing Manager, Nicole.dulay@avasant.com Website: avasant.com

Rent a Car Niger

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Solving Complex Problems Zahra Nensi is the Associate Director for Strategy & Innovation at Deloitte Consulting Limited, and was recently awarded the Business Woman of the Year - Strategy and Operations award.

We invited her to tell us more about the professional services firm she works for and her own fascinating role as a part of that.

Deloitte is a professional services firm whose sole purpose is to make an impact that matters. This purpose is enduring, it informs all of their business decisions, guides their operational strategies and steers their activities as corporate citizens. With a defined purpose to lead, Deloitte acts with courage and conviction to make an impact that matters every day, across their businesses and around the world. They do this by serving the most sophisticated clients, tackling the world’s most complex problems and promoting integrity and trust in the marketplace.

Following this optimistic introduction, Zahra Nensi tell us in her own words what this award means for her, before detailing Deloitte’s significant achievements over the last 12 months and how they are impacting the world.

“At Deloitte, we strive to create value for our clients, develop our people and give back to the community. All of the awards and recognition we receive are a testament to these commitments.

“Over the last year, despite the global economic and geopolitical challenges, Deloitte achieved aggregate global revenues of $35.2 billion, representing growth of 7.6%. Deloitte hired approximately 62,000 new professionals last year and invested more than $200 million in community and societal impact initiatives around the world.

Deloitte is also an innovator that is expanding its capabilities in areas such as cognitive technologies, cloud computing, digital applications, cyber, risk and crisis services.

“Solving complex problems is Deloitte’s passion. We’ve built our world-class business to effect change that matters, to deliver transformational impact for clients and the communities in which we work. Deloitte’s operating model allows us to

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work better together and enable sustained enhancement and innovations to service capability and cross-border delivery and talent development and deployment. Our multidisciplinary portfolio empowers Deloitte professionals to deliver deep business capability and industry insights across a broad spectrum of services including consulting, audit, tax and legal, risk advisory and financial advisory services.

Zahra then provides a compelling insight into her own work in the firm and the aspect of her current role that she enjoys the most in her own words.

“I have been working with Deloitte Tanzania over the last four years through our Deloitte Global Mobility programme.

This experience has certainly provided me with an international perspective and exposure to diverse thinking from our Deloitte practitioners and clients in East Africa. My work in Tanzania has largely been focused on improving the quality of life for all Tanzanians through inclusive growth across all sectors – with a focus on health (particularly HIV/ AIDS), financial inclusion, social innovation, analytics, economic growth and youth employability.

“For me, I personally enjoy working with people that share that same passion for striving

for excellence, managing to results and genuinely making a sustainable impact on the lives of Tanzanians. The energy is contagious when you’re working with people that are emotionally engaged and working together towards one purpose. I’ve been with Deloitte for over 10 years and look forward to continuing to play a leadership role in the firm, shaping our strategy, nurturing the next generation of leaders and leaving behind a legacy on the firm, people and communities around us.”

There is no doubt that Deloitte has an established and respected presence all around the world. Indeed, Zahra tells us that Deloitte has a far-reaching network and multidisciplinary model, with deep institutional knowledge that allows member firm professionals to deliver exceptional services across a range of industry sectors.

“Deloitte’s aspiration is to be the undisputed global leader in professional services. This means the first choice for clients; being the premier career destination for top talent; being a role model of quality, integrity and positive change; and helping solve the toughest global challenges.

Globally, Deloitte has a presence in more than 150 countries and employs 225,400 people around the world” Zahra concludes.

g Solving Complex Problems

Company: Deloitte Consulting Limited Name: Zahra Nensi Associate Director, Strategy & Innovation Email: zanensi@deloitte.co.tz Web Address: www.deloitte.com Address: Bay Adelaide Centre East Tower 22 Adelaide Street West, Suite 200, Ontario Canada M5H 0A9 Telephone: +255 (0)685 646 075

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The Very Best in Lifting Equipment Engineering Ghada Talaat of Lloyds British Testing Egypt Ltd was recently bestowed the Business Woman of the Year – Egypt accolade. She is the company’s managing director for the Africa region at Lloyds British testing and has held the position since February 2012. In this article, we profile the wider work of this remarkably successful international company.

As to what makes Lloyds British such a successful international company, this is something that many of their rivals are asking. There are no simple answers, but it is worth noting that the firm have gained their international industry leading reputation through an evolutionary process, acquiring invaluable knowledge and practical know-how for over 200 years.

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The company operates in a niche sector within inspection and certification, with an aligned manufacturing business. Their lifting engineering services encompass inspection, testing, NDT, operator training, design and manufacture, equipment sales and other associated areas. The lesson for others to learn here is there are no short cuts, you either know it or you don’t. Their engineers are trained to the highest standard, LEEA certified.

Clients Lloyds British Testing pride themselves on their customer care - why would they not? They are good at it! Thousands of UK and overseas companies, including most of the leading names in British industry, choose to deal with them but why?

Lloyds British Testing current operation was created in 1812 and for over 200 years the name Lloyds British has been synonymous with the very best in lifting equipment engineering.

Today, Lloyds British operates from a number of locations across the UK providing services to a wide range of clients. Their expertise extends to a number of disciplines:

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Above and underground services; Power; Construction; Mechanical engineering; Oil & gas services; Petrochemical; Chemicals; Coal; Marine; Defence; Steel; Rail; Nuclear and; Training.

Their focus is about delivering the highest standard of services to their customers.

Service, has perhaps the biggest impact on their people. They want everyone who works for them (no matter what role they’re in) to be focused on helping to deliver a service people talk about. This in itself has created a set of values, which apply to all of the firm’s teams. In short, they like being talked about!

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Some of the firm’s testimonials include the following: “Thank you for the excellent presentation on lifting operations and lifting equipment regulations. Our members have gained some valuable information from the presentation.”

Branch Secretary, The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health “The feedback from the directors has been very positive and I feel very confident about the future of health and safety in the company.”

Human Resources Manager UK case study In March 2017, the Lloyds British Wednesbury Site Services team helped Severn Trent with a problem where-by they couldn’t gain access to a confined space because of material loss to the original access ladders.

After a site visit it was decided that the safest possible method for access and egress was to use a Tripod equipped with a goods winch and recovery block.

Whilst Lloyds British has used traditional methods of rope access in the past, on this occasion the inspectors involved required a method with safer control. It was with this information that the Lloyds team approached the team at Speedy West Bromwich Superstore for an alternative solution. With

assistance from Carl Barton (depot manager), the team opted to use the Abtech Safety 30073 counterbalance davit arm alongside a Checkmate TR3 Fall arrest and load bearing tripod.

The job took place over two days and was deemed a great success - with the Lloyds team and customer both satisfied with the solution. This is part of an ongoing working relationship with Severn Trent, including rescue standby at Ladybower Reservoir in Derbyshire, UK. Lloyds British Training With an International reputation for quality and technical expertise that is second to none, Lloyds British Training lead where others only follow.

With a prestigious portfolio of clients ranging from small enterprises to major blue chip companies, they are without doubt the market leader in Lifting and Slinging training, offering over 80 separate programmes of workplace instruction to meet the requirements of most industries and workplace environments.

All their trainers are fully qualified and all their work meets with current regulations.

In addition, Lloyds British is an ISO 9001, ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001:1999 company and they are member of Lifting Equipment Engineers Association (LEEA).

If the training of your workforce

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and the protection of your organisations assets is your priority then leave nothing to chance, use Lloyds British, who are the leader in the field!

Their training team have relocated to Tamworth which is a fully equipped IPAF and PASMA training centre, and they now have access to over 30 state of the art training venues all over the UK.

The Very Best in Lifting Equipment Engineering

Legislation The regulations governing the duties and responsibilities of employers and the self-employed are becoming ever more complex and stringent. This is especially true when considering your health and safety obligations according to Lloyds British Training Services.

At Lloyds British Training Services, they are dedicated to assisting you maintain a safe working environment, by achieving operator competence and heightened levels of safety awareness amongst your employees.

Company: Lloyds British Testing Egypt Ltd Name: Ghada Talaat Email: ghada.talaat@lloydsbritishegypt.com Web Address: www.lloydsbritish.com Address: 2H/2 Lasalky St. New Maadi, Cairo, Egypt Telephone: + 202 2517 7629

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The Presence of Music SOCAN licenses the use of music compositions for public performance and communication to the public. This includes radio, television, radio, live concerts, retail establishments and music streaming services. We interviewed the firm’s Chief Operating Officer Jeff King to find out more - following their success in being selected as part of the Large Cap Top 50.

SOCAN’s plays a leading role in supporting the long-term success of more than 130,000 Canadian members, as well as the Canadian music industry.

Now there’s a staggering thought. SOCAN not just license music uses and distribute the resulting royalties, but they also provide showcasing, development and networking opportunities for members.

These opportunities allow them to continue to refine their skills and the craft of songwriter.

Chief Operating Officer Jeff King goes on to explain how the firm has been successful, the significant contributions they have made to the world of business and how they have demonstrated excellence, despite the ongoing challenges the global economy presents.

“SOCAN’s acquisitions of Audiam and MediaNet have not only brought SOCAN into new sectors of the music industry, but also into new markets. The SOCAN Group provides services to various companies and partners all over the globe. Additionally, SOCAN has been very active in the Middle East and North Africa to provide much needed services to rapidly emerging markets.

“The ability to easily license and use music efficiently contributes towards the success of the businesses. Our research has long shown that the presence of music enhances the customers experience be it on TV, film, restaurants or other more expected industries such as radio and streaming services.

Additionally, by bringing together technology and cultural industries, we are showing a path way forward to improve the

efficiency and operations of the entire ecosystem.

“Although some regions of the global economy are struggling, the rapid rise of high speed wireless connectivity and the rise of music and audio-visual streaming services is causing the entire industry to grow.”

In terms of the wider industry that SOCAN is a part of, Jeff underlines that they are taking a leadership role in the exploration of leading edge technology, such as blockchain and artificial intelligence. Working with global technology partners, SOCAN will be major contributors to the transformation of the music industry in Jeff’s opinion. He then tells us how it feels to be selected as part of the Large Cap Top 50?

“We are honoured to be included in this group and to have our work and accomplishments

recognised on the global stage.

We are pleased to have our results identified and recognised.

We plan on using this as a team building opportunity for our group.”

“Following on from this, I believe that our staff are instrumental in the success of SOCAN. The passion, energy, skill and commitment of our team members enables the entire organisation to achieve tremendous success.”

Jeff concludes by offering his thoughts on the firm’s hopes and plans for 2017 and beyond.

“SOCAN’s vision is to lead the global transformation of music rights. We plan on pursuing this goal throughout 2017 and beyond. Additionally, as the world become more connected, SOCAN is keen to work with a variety of partners to grow our businesses in a profitable way.”

Company: SOCAN Name: Jeff King Chief Operating Officer Email: KingJ@socan.ca Web Address: www.socan.ca Address: 41 Valleybrook Drive, Toronto Ontario Canada M3B 2S6 Telephone: +1 416 442 3811

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Standing out from the Crowd The whole team at The Cult is delighted to have won the Excellence in Small and Medium Business Award. We’ve always felt that our small, close-knit gang delivers incredible results for our clients and it’s great to see that other people are recognising our work as well.

When Charli Morgan and I first left the world of journalism to create our own agency, we did so with the intention of always being a company whose work stands out from the crowd - whether that’s by creating the biggest, most bizarre or most innovative campaigns - and that philosophy still flows through everything we do as a company.

shut down the Thames to sail a camouflaged ship full of ecoterrorists into London; we created the world’s first ever Bunny Spa, where guests received free treatments while rabbits roamed free; we’ve brought London to a standstill by walking life-sized dinosaurs through town; and we’ve shut down Regent Street for a fleet of supercars to make their way to the finish line of a cross-European rally.

We love to work with brands who want to push themselves - and us - to create something truly unique and exciting. We’ve

We do all of these things because, while every client is different, they all have one thing in common - they want to be noticed.

At a time when journalists are more time-poor than ever before, they need us to be creative on their behalves, and that’s why our team at The Cult strives to do something different every day. The media industry as a whole is changing, from print to digital media, so our work has to be more visual than ever, and it needs to be easily translatable across mediums.

So much so, that in 2016 we launched a content creation and social media division called The Creationists and a virtual reality division called Cultural Reality Co, offering our clients more opportunities for great exposure than we ever have before.

The Cult’s goals for 2017 and beyond are to grow the new divisions of our agency while working with ever bigger, more ambitious clients - our work on London Evening Standard’s Food Month this year, which will be the country’s biggest food festival, is testament to that.

But more than anything else, we want to carry on creating campaigns that get our clients and, of course, us - noticed for all the right reasons.

Company: The Cult PR Name: Matt Glass Email: matt@thecultpr.co.uk; charli@thecultpr.co.uk Web Address: www.thecultpr.co.uk www.thecreationists.com Address: 82 Southwark Bridge Road London SE1 0AS UK Telephone: +44 (0)207 620 0063

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A Strong Focus on Energy Savings David Edward Seitz was recently crowned CEO of the Year – Texas, after which we took time to profile his career background and interview him about the challenges he enjoyed in his leadership role.

Born in 1939 in McAllen TX, David Edward Seitz attended the University of Texas, Edinburg and Austin. Seitz was guided and assisted by his wonderful mentor, Lloyd Bentsen Jr. David E. Seitz Loan Brokerage company was founded in 1964 and in 1968 was converted to Ashford Mortgage company in Houston, TX. In 1974, Seitz was responsible for financing the Houston Northwest Medical Center to successfully prevent a serious default under the hospital’s financing agreements.

He also assisted in the development of a master plan that included affordable housing for hospital employees, and medical office building development. In 1975, the total debt of the hospital was less than $18 mm and was therefore enjoying an incredible success.

In 1995, the owner physicians sold the hospital for over $250 mm.

In 1974, Seitz provided the underwriting and revenue bond financing for the Northeast Medical Center, the first hospital in Humble, TX (18 miles for downtown Houston) and the birth place of Standard Oil Company.

Ashford Mortgage enjoyed a wonderful reputation for being the lender’s lender, and provided

the underwriting procedures and guidelines for major government programmes, such as HUD’s 223F. Ashford provided financing for Johnny Carson and Neil Simons purchase of land at the very well-known Willowbrook Shopping Mall, in Houston, TX, and the development financing for the North Castle Hills Estates in San Antonio, Inverness Resorts hi-rise at South Padre and many more notable developments.

In 1986, Seitz introduced electric tankless in the Inverness Resorts Condominiums at South Padre Island, TX that he was developing. These initial tankless products were developed by an unrelated Houston company and unfortunately, although very impressive in initial service, they were not reliable for more than about a year.

Seitz was so impressed with the concept that he formed a new company, Microtherm, Inc. later to be named Seisco International INC., for the development of a new design utilising an engineering polymer from GE Plastics complimented by his unique patented power/ temperature control. After four hard years, it was determined that the selected GE polymer was not a good choice. Seitz turned to DuPont and its Nylon products, which in the ensuing 20 years of use and new product development proved to be a great choice for his

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Seisco electric tankless heaters.

In 2000, the Seisco electric tankless was the choice of water heaters for the Clinton initiative, the ‘Partnership for Advancing Technologies in Housing’ (PATH) In 2006 the Seisco’s used in the PATH programme were voted as one of the ‘Top 10 Technologies in Housing’.

In the following years, the control was improved in four new U.S. patented technologies. By 2012, Seitz and his shareholders decided to reinvent the Seisco line of electric tankless and offer a very broad line of electric heaters, including space heating, safety equipment, boilers etc. Just after four years and a very important final U.S. patent, Seisco was in the final stages of completing all the goals he established when he was approached by the A.O.S. company to but the Seisco company. After almost a year of negotiation, Seitz now 76 years old and looking for vacation time decided and sold Seisco International LLC to A.O.S. On winning this CEO of the Year – Texas award David says he is definitely flattered to receive it. Looking at his firm retrospectively, the work he did as a CEO and the types of clients he worked with David explains that these consisted of major publicly held corporations including DuPont Engineering Polymers, Watts, GE Polymers,

A.O.S. company, government agencies such as HUD, NREL, DOE, major distributors of plumbing products and leading engineering companies.

The challenges that any successful CEO needs to overcome in their position of leadership are “doubt, fear and loss of direction and focus” David underlines. To keep himself motivated and positive in order to be a successful CEO, he simply did this by “focusing on the enormous opportunities available every day to utilise the firm’s products in “never ending challenging and rewarding applications”.

The key attributes that make for an award-winning CEO are integrity, commitment and foresight and the ability to stay on track in David’s view.

David’s business was “the development, manufacturing and marketing of the global standard for the most reliable, safe, and best performing patented technology for electric residential, commercial, industrial, line of tankless water heaters and boilers” he explains.

When undertaking a new client or project, David comments that it is important “to thoroughly analyse the client’s and project needs and identify our capability to best meet those requirements.

In the case of a new distributor for example, the ability of the

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A Strong Focus on Energy Savings

client to properly cooperate in the education of his employees on the proper selection, use and maintenance of the products.”

Looking to the future, David aims to, “continue to develop new water heating products that complement the needs of all applications, with a strong focus on energy savings.”

Company: Seitz International LLC Name: David Seitz Email: david@deseitz.com Address: 3510 Ryoak, San Antonio, Texas, TX 77217 USA Mailing Address: P.O. BOX 435, Mountain Home, TX 78058 USA Telephone: +1 832 515 3204

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txtNation Among the UK’s Elite Business Operations The txtNation team sits down to discuss the company’s incredible 2016 performance and how their commitment to innovative mobile gateway solutions garnered them a UK Business Elite Award from Corporate Vision.

txtNation, a UKbased full-service award-winning provider of Mobile Billing and SMS messaging services, which includes mobile campaigns and management solutions, this week received an honourable distinction from Corporate Vision, an international team of business experts, advisors, and insiders, for their innovative commitment to developing mobile billing and messaging solutions.

As a company focused on flexible solutions that are intelligently supported, txtNation has earned the reputation of being one of the most trusted providers in the business today.

Jon Rowsell managing director of txtNation tells us more about the company.

“We understand the mobile industry can be a confusing one to master for business solutions today. As an industry based on technological developments, ours is one that is ever changing and ever evolving. Passionate about being at the forefront of these impending changes, we specialize in providing Mobile

Gateway and Platform Solutions that combine the best-of-breed mobile campaign services available today.”

It wasn’t by happenstance that txtNation brought home this Corporate Vision award for their performance in 2016. Starting in March of last year, txtNation unveiled a new feature, Insights, in their MytxtNation portal.

Insights enabled clients to view all Mobile Billing activity across Direct Billing and Premium SMS services in much more detail than ever before. With this newly provided key data, clients could now forecast future payment trends and deliver the best customer growth and revenue performance.

Come April 2016, txtNation announced South Africa Wifi Flow for Direct Billing (OBS).

The Wifi Flow was as simple as entering a mobile number and then confirming the PIN. Shortly thereafter, they unveiled a new client support site feature to their platform that contained a help inbox for immediate support. The new screen enabled clients to submit support tickets, receive replies from the technical staff at

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txtNation, chat representatives in real-time, or ask staff about knowledge-based questions on any topic. Since then, the inbox has contributed to their enormous strides with regards to customer support and service.

By summer of 2016, txtNation had added more routing to its leading HLR Lookup, a popular company product. They added several new MNO routes for HLR Lookup, a service that enables real-time validity of a mobile number and gives operator identification and roaming information. For all of their SMS aggregators and service providers, this new announcement improved their revenue margins by reducing routing inaccuracies. And, just to ensure their digital experience matched their technical support expertise, txtNation rolled out Web Tools as well as Desktop software for Bulk and HLR. “We are always astute to improving our technological platform experience so it complements our mobile solutions for clients around the world,” said Rowsell. “As you

can see, at least quarterly, we do something to make our user experience better than it was a few months prior.”

In June of 2016, txtNation was announced as the Finance Monthly Global Awards 2016 winner. It was a vote-based distinction in which Finance Monthly asked subscribers to cast votes between March and May of 2016. A total of 17,887 votes were registered, solidifying txtNation as the undisputed winner.

In the fall of 2016, txtNation went on to announce they now work with Casino Operators for direct billing. The new service made it possible for online casinos to deposits, using Charge to Mobile from txtNation. To accompany the new fall announcements, though there were countless other unveils by the company in 2016, txtNation was named a finalist in the iDate Awards in November of 2016.

Rowsell proclaimed they are committed to developing a better client experience ongoing, as well as service offerings and to look out for more announcements in 2017.

g txtNation Among the UK’s Elite Business Operations

Company: txtNation Email: sales@txtnation.com Web Address: www.txtnation.com Address: txtNation, Billacombe Road, Plymouth Devon PL9 7HX Telephone: +44 (0)1752 484 333

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Exciting yet Challenging Times CEO of the Month – Mr. Arvind Vidudala ,award winner celebrates his success by profiling their corporate group viz.Epoxy House. The Group was established in 1973 in Vadodara (Gujarat, India) by Mr.D.R. Patel, a veteran in electrical engineering to manufacture Epoxy resin moulded components for the Electrical Power Industry. We spoke to the winner of the award, Arvind Vidudala (CEO - Kaizen Switchgear Products which is an exclusive Export oriented unit under their corporate umbrella of Epoxy House ) to find out more about his current role and the firm he heads up.

The flagship company, being Baroda Bushings & Insulators, a name recognised for more than four decades, began manufacturing Epoxy Resin Insulators in a 4000-square foot facility in Vadodara, with 10 employees In the years that followed, the company leveraged this technology and quickly expanded its product lines. Having established their credentials for quality & price, with a view to reach out globally & help enhance the competitive edges for their customers, Kaizen Switchgear Products , a 100% Export Oriented Unit (EOU) was Instituted in 1995.

Today, with state-of-the art manufacturing equipment and more than 1500 employees under the corporate umbrella of Epoxy House, the group offers the most complete range of Epoxy moulded components and ancillary products for the Electrical Power industry. CEO of the Month award winner – Mr Arvind Vidudala , associated with the group’s Export Unit – Kaizen Switchgear Products , starts the interview by outlining his thoughts on this marvellous achievement and what it means for him.

“Winning the CEO of the month award was a pleasant surprise.

Awards always have a feel-good factor as they not only recognise your efforts but also reinforce your direction of work. It is a great honour to be considered as an expert, indeed the recognition provides an increased ability to influence others and helps one to develop talent and trigger a lateral shift socially.”

very important- there is nothing like a good decision or a bad decision- it is only the outcome which determines and if the consequence favours us we feel it is a right decision and if not , we seem to conclude to have taken the wrong decision. Hence taking a decision is important, when we are at helm of affairs, and the consequential effects are situation specific.

Following on from this, Mr.Arvind reveals how he stays motivated and positive, the challenges he has overcome to be successful and the key attributes that every CEO should possess.

He further states a quote by a famous personality “Ability may get you to the top but it is character which keeps you there”. Honesty, integrity and perseverance are the values I stand by. The yearnings to make a difference in the lives of individuals who are affected by my actions push me to do better.”

He quotes “All of us may not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talent “. This talent, skill and ability combined with passion and a purpose transforms an individual into a winner. This can be achieved when people are valued and nurtured leading to workplace happiness and well-being. We live in exciting yet challenging times - but to rise to it, relish the challenge and the success of overcoming it makes us feel good and this cannot happen without good management and self-discipline.

“Secondly being decisive at the right moment and time is

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On the wider work of the firm,Mr. Arvind explains that under the corporate umbrella of Epoxy House, Kaizen Switchgear Products, is a 100% Export Oriented Unit (EOU). It is one of the leading organisations in India, engaged in the design, manufacturing and supply of Epoxy moulded components.

Kaizen Switchgear Products is focused on providing solutions for the overseas market, with a comprehensive customer management system, creating

the ability to recognise and tailor solutions for the electrical industry. In their work, they are finding applications for low/ medium voltage switchgear units, power distribution and instrumentation transformers.

Mr. Arvind then tells us about the firm’s ongoing strategy and the key principles they adhere to.

“Our business is modelled around three intrinsic characters, the first of which is to excel in terms of swift execution from drawing to delivery, due to rapidly changing customer needs. The second attribute is to remain a differentiator in terms of our prices and services. We have the edge for competitive pricing due to our intra-group support manufacturing facilities and our belief in CRM values enhances the customer experience. The third attribute is to remain ‘at par’ on global quality standards, which we attain with the state of art equipment we possess for manufacturing, as well as testing facilities.

“Our approach is to consistently deliver the best experiences of doing business such that the experience as a whole is delightful. The process would involve mapping the customer’s perception, concerns and issues and instituting systems to meet expectations.

g Exciting yet Challenging Times

Finally, Arvind shares his thoughts on his future aspirations for the Kaizen Switchgear Products.

“Though we dwell in a technology era, I believe that at the same time there is an unbalance of wealth and skill. We need to move over from ‘systematic’ to ‘system change’, for which we need to be flexible and possess the ability to grasp new things, which implies a change in skills and competency levels.

“We shall continue to emphasise the importance of training, for which we would need to liaise with educational institutes and co-evolve, to help bridge the gap for total value maximisation of the enterprise.”

Company: Kaizen Switchgear Products Name: Arvind Vidudala Email: arvind.v@epoxyhouse.com Web Address: www.epoxyhouse.com Address: 1414, G.I.D.C. Industrial Estate, Waghodia, Dist.Vadodara-391760, Gujarat, India.

Telephone: +91 8980811744/8980811741

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Revolutionising Distance Learning Distance learning is nothing new, with the first courses launching back in the 1890s. However, what is new is the high quality of materials and course delivery which we at Open Study College deliver. It’s this quality approach which has revolutionised the delivery of this type of online distance learning.

In an industry which has previously been blackened by some providers not delivering on promises, we are turning this reputation on its head. Founded in 2007, we were a two person family business with a turnover of £500k. Fast forward 10 years and Open Study College now offering over 450 high quality courses to over 60,000 students through trusted providers, including A Levels and AAT to name just two. Through our distance learning courses we are changing lives by providing accessible courses for people who want to study in their spare time but find traditional college timetables too restrictive.

Award Winning Empowerment To win an Influential Women in Business Award is personally very flattering. I’m still relatively young in terms of business, I think I can still get away with saying that - and am very proud of what I’ve achieved in my career so far.

As an organisation whose customers are largely women in the 18-38 age range it’s great to think that we’re empowering women across the UK and also being recognised for our efforts – which I find incredibly positive.

For Open Study College, being recognised for innovation and excellence with peers who have also played an important part in major developments around the world, alongside some of the world’s most successful organisations including PWC, Core Medical Imaging and Citra Health Solutions to name a few, is testament to how far our business has come.

Women in Leadership Women still face challenges in business today. Yes we’ve made huge progress but women in leadership bring a hugely positive and different perspective to the businesses they lead and ensure that there is a nurturing and empathetic side to business which usually works well for staff morale. A mixture of men and women at the helm is the perfect scenario for a balanced business.

As Chief Operating Officer, I’m involved in all aspects of the business means that no two days are the same for me, which is great. One day I can be with the team focusing on the next promotional campaigns and the next day I can be head down, blinkers on to review the latest course content or plans to roll out a new sector website. It’s certainly very busy but I wouldn’t want it any other way.

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Ongoing success Our course offering is always expanding and our course delivery is continually changing and growing and we saw a 40% year on year rise in student enrolment. One area we are developing at the moment is a separate academy side of the business surrounding a beauty theme which is very exciting.

As technology evolves daily our business adjusts to fit and our video tutorials will be coming thick and fast in the next year as we move towards delivering 100% engaging content for our students.

During the last year we’re incredibly proud as we’ve been recognised many times for our high standards of Tutor support and training provision. One of the highlights in the last 12 months was being shortlisted for the TES FE Awards (Times Educational Supplement Further Education). These awards are for the traditional FE college sector and for a Distance Learning Provider to be shortlisted just demonstrates how far our business has come and how highly regarded we are in the education sector today. It’s not all about our achievement though, we also like to give back to the local community and we are immensely humbled to have

hit our £50k fundraising target for Macmillan Cancer Support.

Don’t be ordinary Being ordinary doesn’t get you anywhere. We are setting new high level standards for the distance learning industry. Our business is getting noticed because we are delivering more in terms of course choice, quality and delivery than any other distance learning provider. Our founders, ecommerce director and development team are staying ahead of the technology curve by researching the latest technology.

Our developers love to work at the edge of new technologies, and are fascinated by emerging innovations. We have a competitive advantage as we work hard to retain our developers and keep them engaged by empowering them to come up with innovative solutions. We are embracing change, keeping agile in our forward planning as we adjust and adapting our courses to fit with Cloud and mobile developments.

Superiority reigns In the future distance learning providers will need a clear understanding of who their target market is. Students will demand more in terms of qualifications,

g Revolutionising Distance Learning

support and customer service, providers will also have to be more responsive. It’s certainly time for a new era, for providers to prove their worth and superiority against sector competitors which now cover the globe. It will, in layman’s terms, through the provision of high quality and great service, see superiority reign.

Samantha Rutter is Chief Operating Officer at Open Study College, offering over 450 high quality courses through trusted providers and helping over 60,000 students study for qualifications. www.openstudycollege.com

Company: Open Study College Name: Samantha Rutter Email: info@openstudycollege.com Web Address: www.openstudycollege.com Address: 6140 Knights Court, Birmingham Business Park Solihull Parkway, B37 7WY, United Kingdom Telephone: +44 (0) 3300 563100

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Ship Building Steve Jones, director and founder of European Active Projects, talks to us about his successful career in the wake of being awarded Managing Director of Q1 in the Finest in Business Awards 2017.

European Active Projects Ltd (EAPL) is primarily a Marine Engineering Company supporting all elements of the ship repair industry from fabrication, mechanical works through to Electrical repairs and installations. The company has six UK Locations (Middlesbrough, Hull, Chatham, Ramsgate, Southampton and Falmouth) with two mainland Europe bases (Gdansk, Poland & Constanta, Romania) – Head Office is in Chatham, Kent whereby the company has a 150M alongside berthing facility in a non-tidal wet berth.

Recent diversification has seen EAPL conduct land based recycling projects installing plant and replacing sea wall structures.

EAPL has a sales turnover of c£10 million and growing with 50 staff and the use of around 200 contractors.

Steve Jones is director of EAPL, he tells us more about the firm’s three areas of experience and expertise: technical capabilities; project management and recruitment.

“With the company being in the heavier end of the engineering sector technical expertise is paramount in order to carry out repair and replacement projects to the specification requirements of ship owners,” he begins.

“Project management is also a key area – there is little or no movement in project completion timing, it is a must that projects

must be completed to deadlines and specifications, if any delays are experienced it has a direct impact on ship owners’ ability to be back at sea earning money, the opportunity cost of a ship in dock is extremely high.

“Recruitment of the correct skilled, qualified and certified contractors is of high importance – the skills required within the industry is high and in order to satisfy the technical and project management areas the recruitment of these skills is a must.”

Steve owns 100% of the shareholding of EAPL and his role is to lead the team but also to allow them to run themselves with a strategic direction. Each location has a geographical manager reporting to the operations manager, each geographical manager is responsible for their sales and contribution budgets and adherence to customer and H&S requirements.

“I have only a small number of direct reportees but do take a great interest in all the areas,” explains Steve. “I travel extensively meeting customers in each region and beyond, I also have a keen interest in the financial areas of the company ensuring cash and profitability meet expectations.

“We have twice yearly strategy meetings at head office with all the geographical managers and senior managers present – this is a day’s event covering all aspects of the business and ensuring the future direction meets expectations and desires.”

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Steve has spent his working life in the transport engineering sector, completing a technical apprenticeship with British Rail Engineering in York in the early 1980’s and transferring to Hampshire on completion of the apprenticeship.

“I then joined British Aerospace in Hamble as an Aircraft Fitter in the mid 1980’s – BAE has always been a progressive employer and soon promoted me into their commercial department – in this time I continued with part time education and moved rapidly up the ladder within Hamble and attained an MBA.” BAE sold Hamble in the mid 90’s and Steve, by the age of 30, became managing director of one of the Hamble Group’s businesses which he ran for five years until it was purchased by Smith’s Group in 2001.

“I was approached by Lord King of Wartnaby (Ex Chief of British Airways) in 2001 to take control as chief executive of his Engineering Company in Leicester with a shareholding – I did this and turned it into another Aerospace Company.”

It was in 2005, in partnership with a ship repair group, that Steve launched EAPL. The company started as a recruitment base for skilled ship repair workers, however it developed well and quickly grew – he maintained his presence with the Leicester Aerospace company until 2009.

“In 2009, I sold my interest in the aerospace company, purchased

the balance of the shares in EAPL and also acquired the ship care business based in Chatham, Hull & Dover – I decided then to relocate EAPL from its Midlands base to Chatham as Head Office, this turned EAPL into a bona-fide marine engineering company. In 2013 I also acquired a marine electrical company based out of Southampton.”

Steve enjoys business and leading people, as he embellishes: “I am not autocratic and I believe the people that can express themselves will be more successful, there is the odd business trip up that comes with the territory.

“I do enjoy a satisfied and pleased customer – my strengths have always been in this area and I run the company on this basis – whilst of course ensuring profitability.”

Recently, Steve was awarded the prestigious accolade of Managing Director of Q1 in the 2017 Finest in Business Awards. He tells us how it felt to be given this title, and what he owes his success to.

“It is very pleasing to win this award; however, credit must be given to the team within EAPL, the company is diverse in geography and all must and do communicate closely and well, this is a real strength of the company and its success.

“They do genuinely play a huge role – they are the technical expertise, the project management and the recruitment – the back-office support staff also add to this tremendously.”

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Company: European Active Projects Ltd Name: Steve Jones Email: steve@eap-ltd.co.uk Web Address: www.eap-ltd.co.uk Address: No.5 Berth, Barrack Road, Gillingham Gate, Chatham Docks, Chatham, Kent, ME4 4SW UK Telephone: +44 (0)1634 827369

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Creating Healthy and Safe Environments: Undoubted Experts in the Field

T. Harris Environmental Management Inc. (THEM) is a leading Canadian environmental consulting firm. They are proven experts in the fields of environmental services, hazardous materials management, industrial hygiene and occupational health and safety.

As a full-service environmental consulting company, THEM is known for providing solutions of unparalleled quality to a variety of sectors including property management, healthcare, educational and industrial organizations. With four (4) regional offices, THEM has clients covered in Ontario and Quebec. In addition to these strongholds, the THEM team is looking forward to expansion with a newly-established office in Edmonton, Alberta.

Innovation, expertise and continuous improvement are the driving forces behind the success of T. Harris Environmental Management Inc. Aside from experience and education, their consultants take every opportunity to expand their knowledge and to contribute

to the industry. Many of their consultants actively participate in developing industry guidelines through various associations. At the same time, THEM continues to introduce innovative services, such as radon testing and Bayesian analysis for better occupational exposure testing.

All of their efforts are geared towards finding the best way to effectively meet their client’s needs.

The THEM team cherishes connections and always looks forward to creating new ones.

Their approach is to treat their clients as friends: get to know them, provide them with unique solutions to meet their needs and never let them down. This unique style and the quality consulting services is the reason THEM maintains a strong client base. Many organizations have continuously used THEM for their

environmental consulting needs for over 35 years.

The outlook at T. Harris Environmental Management has always been towards trustworthiness and knowledge expansion. THEM started in the winter of 1979 as a group of motivated professionals with a single desk as their base. The goal that brought THEM together was to inspire positive change and to empower people to create safer environments through firstrate asbestos consulting. When environmental management was in its infancy, the THEM team members became active leaders in forming the industry by closing the knowledge gap around asbestos management. In the process, they have accumulated substantial knowledge and, as other environmental issues emerged, tackled them by expanding both their personal

and organization’s expertise.

The THEM team is passionate about what they do and every team member is committed to excellence. Some of the exciting landmark projects that showcase the expertise of THEM are the rehabilitation of the West Block on Parliament Hill, the Victoria Memorial Museum Building, the Saint Vincent Hospital Renovations and the continued support they provide for multiple school boards. In all of these large projects the THEM team productively worked alongside contractors, architects and other stakeholders to keep the project on schedule and budget while implementing the best solutions. To find out more about the successes and services of T. Harris Environmental Management Inc., please visit www.tharris.ca

Company: T. Harris Environmental Management Inc. Email: info@tharris.ca Web Address: www.tharris.ca Address: 93 Skyway Avenue, Suite 101, Toronto, Ontario M9W 6N6 Telephone: 1-888-ASK-THEM

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A Passion for Content Award winning healthcare and wellness communicator Cristiana Tudor shares her undoubted passion for the field of social media marketing, content management and strategy for the healthcare and wellness industry in this upbeat and compelling interview.

What products and services do you provide your clients with?

I am specialised into social media marketing, content management and strategy for healthcare and wellness industry. I am deeply passionate about this incredible field and the impact I have generated in the lives of millions of men and women world-wide through educational campaigns speaks volume. I am honoured to have changed the conversation in regards to early detection versus prevention topic. I am very blessed to inspire and empower men and women regarding their health.

How would you describe your client base?

My client base varies from world - renowned doctors, to clinics and not only.

What factors make you unique in terms of your professional experience?

My healthcare and wellness education (deep understanding of anatomy, pathophysiology, public health and healthcare disparities) combined with SEO integration and my passion for this industry make me unique.

The more I understand the specific audiences, the better I can serve my clients’ needs.

Understanding the topics from a scientific perspective, the trends and the industry overall gives me credibility. I have built the social media presence for the brands I am working for, from scratch by educating the audiences and considering the algorithms specific to different social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.

What are the most significant challenges currently facing your activity in the months and years ahead?

It is a very dynamic industry, that generates new features, new possibilities every step of the way, so clients’ needs may change daily. Keeping up with the newest trends, being able to shift priorities and adjusting them to the new context are challenges I will be facing.

What are the main objectives for yourself in the future?

My main objective is to be able to inspire and empower as many men and women as possible in regards to their health, because “He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything. “ (Thomas Carlyle) What business or business person do you most admire and why?

I admire all those who are passionate about what they do and inspire others to do the same.

Name: Cristiana Tudor Email: cristianatudor27@gmail.com Web Address: www.linkedin.com/in/cristiana-tudor-ma-mba-61105a29 Address: New York, NY, United States Telephone: +1 347 551 8733

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Focus, Passion and Drive Female CEO of the Year 2016 – USA winner is MethodSense, a life science consulting firm with offices in the US and Europe. We enjoyed an in-depth interview with Chief Executive Officer and Senior Consultant Rita King to find out more about her success leading up to and in her current role in an exciting industry.

MethodSense is a life science consulting firm with offices in the US and Europe. We guide medical device, biotech and pharmaceutical companies with quality, regulatory and technology solutions that support the commercialization of their products. Our clients typically do not have a straightforward path to market or they do not have experience bringing a device to market, which is why they seek our expertise. Clients we most enjoy working with have challenging, long-term needs that require strategic thinking and ongoing support. These projects often include complex medical devices that incorporate both software and pharmaceutical products.

Tell me about your business and your ongoing strategy?

MethodSense is both a consulting and product development firm. I initially created the company to help large life science companies manage critical information subject to regulatory oversight.

We evolved further with the development of InfoStrength, a regulatory compliant information management software we designed, after extensive market research, expressly for life science companies. In order to facilitate the quality and

regulatory requirements of our clients, my team created this software solution specifically geared toward maintaining compliance throughout the lifecycle of a business, from product design and development through commercialization. Most software in the industry was not intuitive and was cumbersome to use. My goal was to develop a product that would require little to no training for the users, yet still meet life science company requirements. As the software gained traction, client demand for hands on quality and regulatory support, in addition to the software, grew.

MethodSense’s consultants use their critical thinking skills and industry experience to guide medical device manufacturers through worldwide commercialization. Since 2012, the consulting aspect of the business has grown considerably. This growth has enabled us to expand our services with expertise in quality compliance, regulatory strategies, software validation, human factors and usability engineering, risk management and other services for US and global markets. Moving forward, I will expand our team with talent in these areas, enabling MethodSense to continue providing quality and regulatory services that support innovation.

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What is the process/ approach you have taken in order to develop your company effectively?

Do you have any key principles you adhere to?

We are a regulatory and quality assurance company whose mission is to practically address the commercialization challenges experienced by our clients. To accomplish this mission, we add expertise to our company by keeping up with state of the art innovation, as well as adding team members with their own niche skill sets. When we work on a project, we pull together the team members with the skills best suited to meeting the client’s objectives and goals. We are continuously learning and looking for people who will add to the team based on their personal and professional strengths. We are like a family at MethodSense, so when we find a person who will be a good fit, we focus on developing his or her strengths in a manner that will support both the individual and the company.

Key principles that have supported our growth include: • Focusing on strategic thinking; • Believing in the talents of our team; • Always seeking opportunities for learning and; • Good, old fashioned hard work.

What challenges have you encountered as a woman working in the corporate environment and how have you overcome them?

In this day and age, I feel hard work, dedication and perseverance can bring success to anyone – whether male or female. Because I have never let sexism be an issue, it never has been. I attribute the challenges I faced on my road to success to inexperience and lack of mentorship, not to any sense of inequality. To overcome these challenges, I read every business book I could get my hands on, obtained an MBA from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business and sought relationships with respected, successful entrepreneurs. The knowledge I gained from these sources gave me direction and supported my path to success.

What are the key attributes you possess that make you an awardwinning CEO? Key attributes that make me an award-winning CEO include focus, passion and drive. I am focused on the success of my clients, my team and my company. I have a passion for learning and teaching. With every project, I expect to learn something new. And, when I do, I take the opportunity to share that knowledge with my team,

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Company: MethodSense, Inc. Name: Russ King Email: rking@methodsense.com Web Address: www.methodsense.com Address: P.O. Box 110352, Durham, NC 27709-9998 Telephone: +1 919 313 3960

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so we are always expanding our knowledge. Lastly, I am driven to deliver the best possible solutions to our customers. This might mean working tirelessly to prepare for a regulatory meeting or traveling abroad to support a client during a difficult audit. This focus, passion and drive results in our clients getting 110% when they work with MethodSense.

How do you think the industry has changed over the years, and has this affected your business?

The life science industry is constantly changing. New regulations are developed and existing regulations are modified, requiring that we regularly monitor evolving compliance requirements.

Technology, especially software, has completely changed the medical device landscape, which has required MethodSense to cultivate the skills necessary to guide our clients through various requirements. Working in an industry that changes so frequently means we never get complacent. We are always keeping an eye out for what has recently changed and for what is on the horizon.

What advice would you give to other women looking to succeed in your industry? What attributes do you believe are vital to reaching the top of a firm within your sector?

I feel very fortunate for my success. The Duke MBA program prepared me for business leadership; and my 10 years of work at Underwriter’s Laboratories helped me understand how and why regulations are developed, giving me tremendous insight for interpreting the regulations and standards required for medical device commercialization.

To become successful in the life sciences, it is important to maintain relevance by understanding how the industry changes, not just from the regulatory standpoint, but from the perspective of innovation, as well. For other women looking to succeed in our industry, I would recommend they become actively

involved in the topics they are interested in and stay focused on their goals. If they aspire leadership, I highly recommend a good MBA program to develop a foundation of business skills.

I also recommend they find a knowledgeable mentor who can guide them through challenges, help them understand the industry and keep them motivated.

What are your thoughts on the state of your industry currently? Are there any particular issues/changes that are affecting it?

This is an exciting time in the life science industry. Medical devices are getting “smarter,” and the industry is evolving to meet the challenges this creates. The application of new technologies, such as the use of mobile platforms, will alter the medical device landscape. It will be very interesting to be a part of this shift toward personalized healthcare and healthcare that is more distributable and available through technology.

“In this day and age, I feel hard work, dedication and perseverance can bring success to anyone – whether male or female.

Because I have never let sexism be an issue, it never has been”

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How important do you think technology is in your industry, and how do you ensure it is used effectively?

Technology is critical in my industry. More and more medical devices are incorporating software, communicating with networked systems and other devices, and connecting to patients using smartphones.

Regulations and guidelines related to software are changing to meet the demands of the industry, which, in turn, requires manufacturers to understand what is necessary for them to maintain compliance. As consultants in this field, my team needs to stay on top of these changes in order to guide our clients appropriately through their regulatory pathway. We are well versed in software validation, software development lifecycle requirements and methodologies, and software risk management, and this knowledge is applied to many of our clients.

What are your future aspirations regarding your business? Do you have any future plans/projects you would like to share with us?

For the future, I see our team growing in knowledge and expertise. We will continue working on complex submission projects that require strategic thinking to bring products to market, such as advanced cancer treatments, radiological devices, combination products that include medical devices and pharmaceuticals, mobile medical devices that deliver more personalized healthcare solutions and many more products that utilize software to control devices and information. I have a positive outlook for the future of the medical device industry, and I am looking forward to the new challenges it will bring.

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It’s a Steel Most Outstanding Sales & Marketing Manager Qatar award winner Salman Shaban shares his thoughts on this impressive accolade and his position of Senior Marketing Manager at the scrap metal recycling firm he works for.

Lucky Group is a leading integrated scrap metal recycler, established in 1973 with Global Headquarters in Dubai, UAE. The group has six strategically located operations in the Middle East, Far East and North America. Its modern recycling facilities are located in Dubai, Jebel Ali, Doha and Miami. It also has an International Trading Office in Toronto and an Liaison Office in Shanghai. The group’s operations are fully equipped to handle all types of Ferrous and Non-Ferrous scrap metals including copper, aluminium, stainless steel, brass and iron.

Lucky Group is a family owned and operated business entity. Its core values strictly follow three key principles: (1) Contractual commitments; (2) Long-term business relationships (3) Commercial ethics.

In terms of my own career background in Sales and Marketing, I have completed my under-graduate degree from the University of Waterloo (Canada) in Managerial Science.

I also had the opportunity to attend numerous conferences, seminars, workshops and symposiums on this subject field.

Needless to mention, that I have almost fifteen years of strong solid job experience in Sales and Marketing.

To be awarded the Most Outstanding Sales & Marketing Manager Qatar award, I believe this will act as a boost to my attitude and a motivational tool to achieve higher strides. I joined Lucky Group in 2003 in the low rank of the shop floor. Almost fifteen years later, today I am proudly working as a Senior Sales and Marketing Manager combined with a value-added experience, global travels and completion of the group’s rigorous Management Training Programme. I feel privileged to be part of this group and I look forward to the next amazing fifteen years of working here.

I am thankful and honoured to be awarded with the Most Outstanding Sales & Marketing Manager Qatar award.

My current position is the Senior Sales and Marketing Manager at Lucky Group. I look after the global marketing collaterals for the group. Some of my responsibilities include: (1) Branding & Sponsorships (2) Media Campaigns (3) Event Management (4) Business

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Development (5) Data Analysis.

My personal successes can be defined by some of these recent achievements: (1) I have managed a team to set up a metal recycling facility in Qatar; (2) I am a Global Ambassador to the UAE and Qatar for the University of Waterloo (Canada); (3) I have travelled to almost thirty countries globally for business and pleasure; (4) I have lived in six countries including Pakistan, UAE, Oman, Canada, New Zealand and Qatar and; (5) I am included in more than ten media coverage outlets including magazines, websites, newsletters and newspapers.

Lucky Group’s success can be defined in terms of several awards and recognitions received in the last five years. These includes (1) Most Outstanding Exhibitor award at the 2016 Annual CMRA Convention held in Guangzhou, China; (2) Top 100 Recycling Blogs selected

by Feed Spot in March 2017; (3) Best Metal Recycler 2017 award by the UAE Business Awards 2017; (4) Certificate of Appreciation bestowed by Qatar Red Crescent in 2013 and; (5) Contact: Salman Shaban Email: salman@luckygroup.com Company: Lucky Group Address: Lucky Star Alloys WLL Bldg. 131, Zone 81, Street 23, New Industrial Area Po Box 40543 Doha, Qatar Telephone: +97444115311 Web: www.luckygroup.com

Being selected by the Bombay Non-Ferrous Metal Association as the only facility in the GCC market for their delegation tour.

At Lucky Group, we primarily focus on the Implementation of latest technologies, equipment and machinery. The group does not shy away from large CAPEX items. Nevertheless, innovation is being done at every stage of all process driven cycles of our production.

In addition, we have a marketing team which consists of a Business Research Analyst, Marketing Coordinator, Senior Marketing Manager and a Board Advisor. This team reports to the Board that decides on the group’s marketing strategy. The nature of our marketing decisions solely relies on three key factors: (1) Branding & Sponsorships within key industry events (2) Editorial & Publications targeted towards key decision makers (3) Search Engine Optimisation in all leading search engines.

My hope for the future is to see Lucky Group meet its Vision 2020.

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The Power of a Job Well Done Lisa Hutchinson, President & CEO of AllStaff Inc. was recently awarded Canadian CEO of the Month - Employment Sector; Lisa shares her thoughts on being an award-winning leader and how she motivates the staff who don’t just work for her, but along side her.

At AllStaff Inc., we believe in the power of a job well done. We believe in people. We are a boutique staffing company who helps connect top talent with top corporations across Canada and the United States. We are industry leaders in the staffing industry, providing direct hire, executive search, and temporary/ contract staffing to companies of all sizes within a wide range of industries. As a company, we have over 120 years of experience in staffing and human resources, and we put that experience to work every day.

As the President & CEO of AllStaff Inc., I am very grateful to have won the Canadian CEO of

the Month - Employment Sector award. When I started AllStaff in 2000, I was the only employee. I made job offers from my hospital bed the day after delivering my youngest daughter. Failure was not an option. Today, we sit at just over 50,000 employees across all offices in Canada and the USA – the same employees who have made AllStaff Inc. a success.

Simply put, we would not be the award-winning company we are today without them.

The key to being an awardwinning CEO is going above and beyond. Whether it be for our employees or clients - setting the bar so high - others strive to follow suit. I pride myself in hiring the best and the brightest in our industry. The best possible thing

a great CEO can do is have faith in the skills of their employees.

It is, after all, the reason why we hire them. At AllStaff, we continually strive to exceed our employee relations strategy. It is my belief that an organization with a strong employee relations program provides fair and consistent treatment to all employees; recognizing their strengths while encouraging both personal and professional growth.

The AllStaff team, in each office across North America, have a passion for the industry, something that simply cannot be taught; we truly want to make a difference. This was confirmed earlier this year when AllStaff Inc. was named the ‘Best Full-Service Recruitment Firm’ at the 2017 Canadian Business Awards.

Many of the people we help are living in our neighbourhoods.

These people’s children attend the same schools as our children do; they shop at the same

grocery stores and ride the same transit lines. They are the core of our communities.

Our clients, large and small, rely on us to provide them with the best candidates for their company’s needs and culture.

We interview hundreds of candidates each week, accepting applications from hundreds more.

Our approach is simple, we believe in what we do. We put people to work.

My future aspirations for AllStaff Inc. are the same as those of my employees; continue putting people to work. Our business plan includes opening AllStaff Inc. locations across Canada and the northern United States, while strengthening relationships in the communities we currently operate in. We are a team of men and women who love nothing more than hot coffee, and helping someone acquire their dream job. So, let’s get to work.

Company: AllStaff Inc. Name: Lisa Hutchinson President & CEO of AllStaff Inc. Email: Lisa@allstaff.ca Web Address: allstaff.ca Address: 300 Wellington St, Suite 103, London, ON N6B 2L5 Telephone: +1 519 432 7772

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Uncovering Hidden Value Turnstone Strategy Inc. provides guidance on oil and gas pricing trends through its groundbreaking Systems approach and cyclical methodology. We speak to founders Gil Dawson and Duncan Robertson about the company’s inception and what it has to offer in the wake of it being awarded the title of Best Independent Energy Consultancy – Alberta.

It was the early 1990s and Gil Dawson, a geophysicist, was working with Amoco Corporation as a production manager overseeing a complex offshore oil joint venture project in the North Sea. During his five-year tenure, he watched his employer build two offshore production facilities at the top of the industry’s cost cycle only to bring them on line and into production at the bottom of the revenue cycle. Frustrated by a lack of reliable commodity price forecasting, Dawson’s search for a solution began to sow the seeds for what would become one of the most unique energy consulting firms in North America.

Thousands of kilometres away in Calgary Alberta, Duncan Robertson, a geologist, was working with Petro Canada, one of Canada’s largest energy companies, as director of research, technology development and technical services. In 1996, he left Petro Canada to run a small oil and gas company and launch a management consulting firm.

A year later Dawson and Robertson found themselves working together as consultants under the umbrella of KPMG LLP’s energy advisory practice.

Over the course of the next year they began to build common ground on a new way of looking at how to predict the ups and downs of crude oil and natural gas pricing trends. In 1999, they established the energy advisory practice SBM Inc. and in 2014 changed the name to Turnstone Strategy Inc. Dawson, with his dedicated approach to analysing huge volumes of data and information, and years of experience in technical, managerial and consulting roles in exploration and production, and Robertson, with years of experience in strategic planning, change management and technology management, pooled their expertise to create the methodology, analytical tools, and techniques that underpins

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the foundation of their business today - the Cyclical System’s Approach.

“We don’t believe there has ever been a more important time to understand price trends in the global oil and gas industry then today. We are seeing increasing volatility. Understanding what is fact and what is only ‘noise’ about where energy prices are going and why, is vital information in order to understand where and how to invest, and how to plan your business activities,” says Robertson.

Turnstone Strategies’ approach to crude oil and natural gas price trend shifts is ground breaking. The goal is to use meticulous research and analysis to provide clients with advice and information on what part of the commodity cycle they are in – whether supply is rising and demand is declining or vice versa -- what strategies and tactics they should employ to realise sufficient returns on their investment, where to make the best investment, and how to protect existing investments.

Unlike many of its competitors, Turnstone Strategy provides independent advice; it is not selling anything. The firm focuses on what’s known as cyclical arbitrage – that is taking advantage of commodity price differences between two

or more markets so clients can get a significant return on their investment over recurring commodity cycles.

“Having worked in the oil and gas industry for years, we have experienced the harsh sting of bad data and information first hand. We are unapologetically passionate and proud of providing the best, most complete and most objective, independent analysis possible regarding commodity price trends,” says Robertson.

What sets Turnstone Strategy apart is its methodology that identifies and times the commodity supply and demand cycles and their effect on commodity prices. It also integrates what Turnstone calls ‘Sentiment’ which is the Market’s view of future fundamentals as imbedded into today’s price, and how it impacts oil and gas price volatility.

“Sentiment is vitally important because it’s what the markets can act on – it’s about human behaviour, what people are thinking and feeling about where the energy industry and prices are going, what they think will be the supply and demand for oil and gas, and can ignore the actual fundamentals of supply and demand to predict prices,” says Dawson.

g Uncovering Hidden Value

With more than 80 years of industry experience combined, Dawson and Robertson have advised more than 100 North American clients over the past 18 years, including energy producers and service companies, as well as investors and corporate consumers of natural gas and refined crude products.

Turnstone Strategy has a longproven track record. For example, in the first quarter of 2008, based on its analysis, Turnstone was advising clients that crude oil prices would crash to as low as $40 per barrel when some analysts were calling for oil prices to increase to $200 per barrel. At that time, an oil and gas producer could have hedged its production to ensure a $110 floor price for the next 4-5 years. NYMEX crude prices have never been that high since. By the third quarter of 2008 oil prices were falling fast towards $40.

Similarly, from 2009 to 2012, Turnstone advised in 13 public presentations not to buy natural gas in North America but to sell, to hedge production, and to raise money as a natural gas producer.

June 2012 futures price fell from a high of about $6.80 to $2.60 during that time. “Our job is to ensure that our clients are out in front of the market shifts in time to make their best investment decisions. We are seeing a number of political, economic and social factors that are impacting the energy industry world-wide. We need to be able to strip away the news headlines and focus on fundamentally what is really going to influence future prices,� says Dawson.

Company: Turnstone Strategy Inc. Name: Duncan Robertson Email: duncan@turnstonestrategy.com Web Address: www.turnstonestrategy.com Address: 2102, 505 - 6th St. SW Calgary, Alberta, Canada Telephone: +1 (403) 205-3255

CORPORATE VISION / May 2017 43

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Plain Sailing Founded 44 years ago, the Oyster Group combines Oyster Yachts and Southampton Yacht Services (SYS) and is one of Britain’s biggest, most successful builders and restorers of luxury sailing yachts. CEO of the Year – UK, David Tydeman, speaks to us about how this renowned firm is really pushing the boat out.

Renowned as among the very best performance ocean cruisers, encompassing great comfort and practicality, the Oyster range of semi-custom, hand-built yachts now spans 47 to 118 feet. Larger yachts are also tended to by the expert custom restoration and build division, SYS. The group employs just over 400 staff and annual turnover exceeds £40 million. Each individually commissioned and extensively personalised Oyster yacht is a showcase of craftsmanship and yachts are priced between £750,000 and over £12million pounds, with consequently very high client expectations. It’s an expert, multi-discipline business with extensive in-house skills and trades split between the group’s two sites, Southampton on the south coast, Wroxham on the east coast.

David Tydeman joined Oyster as Group CEO in 2008, “I knew the founder very well over about a 30-year period. I’d also been involved in private equity, refinancing and restructuring companies in the construction industry over the 10 years or so before Oyster. With bankers having bought Oyster from the founder in 2008, it seemed like a good combination of my skills to try and take the company to the next phase.”

David’s background marked him well for the post. “I’m a naval

architect, chartered engineer and MBA. I began my career as a marine surveyor at Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, and then worked for Occidental, Hamilton Brothers and British Gas on large North Sea construction projects.

“In 1995, I became technical director at the American Bureau of Shipping. In 1997 I was recruited by Vickers (later Rolls Royce) and became the Managing Director of a global maintenance business unit. Prior to that, I held various executive and director-level positions in large capital projects.

“In the early 90s I was MD of Beneteau UK, developed the Melges 24 Class across Europe [both significant yachting concerns] and was CEO of the Construction Division of Skanska UK, part of one of the world’s leading construction groups.”

Throughout David’s entire career he has been a passionate yachtsman, racing offshore for most of his life and was Rear Commodore with the Royal Ocean Racing Club for a while.

At Oyster, David has implemented much change. First came the complete turnaround from employing contracted yacht building yards to acquisition and outright ownership of all construction facilities. Then came the shifting of head office down from the east coast to Southampton. And all along the way, the sympathetic evolution of range and product offering accelerated and further extended

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into the superyacht scene without losing sight of the introductory end.

“Typically, we keep our owners with us as they increase the size of their yachts,” says David.

“We now have owners on their sixth, seventh and even eighth Oyster yacht. Keeping not just abreast but ahead of the market, we maintain generally a two new-boat development programme. Depending on yacht size it might be two to four, even five years from first thoughts to eventual launch. It’s a lengthy and very involved process from design through engineering to final fitting, rigging and finishing.

It was a major CAPEX, with a significant balance sheet impact.”

That consideration has taken other British yacht builders over the brink while Oyster maintains a market lead. The company has always worked closely with owners and, unusually so, at the point of conception.

“We design the boats very much around the type of sailing our owners like to do,” says David.

“We tease out the formula that we think is a good, efficient way of delivering a combination of needs.

The owner can then concentrate mostly on refining the layout, finding a balance, for example, of the cabin spaces for himself, his guests and his crew, choosing the fabrics and furniture, and we can engineer a platform for him to then customise.”

Oyster divides the range into three sections. Up to around 60ft

with four models mostly run by family and friends. Then 60 to 80 feet when you begin to see professional crew aboard. But it’s not until 80 feet and above that there’s space for crew to have enclosable galley and own discrete quarters.

“What we find,” says David, “is that people will jump from below 60 feet up into the professionally crewed boats. Approximately 70 per cent of the 80 ft + yachts we have built have been for clients trading up from 55 - 60 ft. That’s adding 20 feet and a bit more luxury for the eight guests with a professional skipper or chef and deckhand.

And then of course there’s the new 118-footer for ten-twelve guests and crew of six. With the midrange boats, there’s an interesting pattern. Here they’re often first time to Oyster. We position the three categories of boats very much with the owner’s use in mind. The mid-range tends to be younger owners.

Two-thirds of our business is English/American and expats around the rest of the world.”

From day one of tenure, David has confronted the outfall of the global financial crisis. Many areas of luxury goods have suffered. Yacht building is one.

Yet Oyster thrives. “It’s not easy,” says David, “but we adapt. We also have a good operating model.”

While serving as CEO across all group concerns, David has a strong team around him with

g Plain Sailing

design, engineering and finance all running out of head office at Saxon Wharf in Southampton’s still industrial docklands where all Oyster yachts beyond 70 feet long are built. Here also is the associate group company Southampton Yacht Services, renovating and refurbishing superyachts considerably longer.

Both share infrastructure, both create a flow of shared skills and capacity. Elsewhere, the Wroxham facility, close by the Norfolk Broads, has its own dedicated yet co-joined top management team building from 47 feet to this division’s current largest, a 67-footer first launched in late 2016.

All this combines into a formula that works. The order book has consistently filled up. It has been another good year for Oyster. It’s not easy, but it is good.

Company: Oyster Yachts Name: David Tydeman Email: info@oysteryachts.com Address: Saxon Wharf, Lower York Street, Northam Southampton, SO14 5QF UK Web Address www.oysteryachts.com

CORPORATE VISION / May 2017 45

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The Apprenticeship Levy - a Challenge or an Opportunity?

On 6 April 2017, the UK’s first ever Apprenticeship Levy officially came into force, meaning 22,000 businesses will be liable to pay 0.5% of their annual wage bill into the fund.

Andy Donnell, group managing director, ABM UK tells us more.

The Levy is aiming to generate £3 billion per year, with the ambition to train three million people across all private and public sector businesses by 2020.

While it feels like good news for employees; a third (33%) of UK businesses say they’re confused about the implications of the Levy, and nearly a quarter (23%) of those heading-up apprenticeships are not even aware of it.

“In my mind, there’s a myth surrounding the Apprenticeship Levy. When it was first announced, there was a widespread misconception that the money which companies pay would just be funding new apprentices, and new jobs. On the back of this, there was a fear that at the end of these apprenticeships, there wouldn’t be guaranteed job opportunities and long-term careers.

In reality, as well as creating new opportunities for people outside of the business, the Apprenticeship Levy will fund existing employees’ training. The benefit of this is that people will progress their careers faster, leaving more opportunity for others. For me this was not communicated as well as it could have been by the Government, to businesses.

At ABM UK, we don’t see the Apprenticeship Levy as a challenge; we see it as a great

opportunity to develop people.

In a way, we already feel one step ahead, as the training infrastructure we currently have in place is well established.

We invested in opening a new £120,000 state-of-theart employee training centre over a year ago in Greenford, Middlesex, where we deliver our company-wide training programme.

The centre of excellence focusses on practical training and gives students hands-on experience across a possible six specialities including electrical, plumbing, refrigeration, lighting, combustion and Building Management System (BMS) controls.

Implementing a new scheme will of course take investment from a financial and resource perspective, but with training already such a big part of the company culture, the demands of the Apprenticeship Levy feel like a natural extension to what we’re already providing for our staff.

For the FM industry as a whole, we believe that the Levy will be good for business. We see it as a real chance to balance the training equilibrium with people at every level. It will give businesses the opportunity to invest in some of the people who historically haven’t been invested in; to upskill and develop their talents and teach them new skills and knowledge.

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As a company with a wage bill of over £3m per year, we have to pay the Apprenticeship Levy.

We’re determined to turn that obligation into something that positively benefits our people and the business as well as bringing new talent into the facilities management industry.

We’ve appointed Jigsaw Training as our official training provider and with over 5,500 staff in the UK, we aim to offer approximately 120 apprenticeships in year one.

ABM UK already has a successful technical apprenticeship programme in place delivering Heating & Ventilation, Electrical and Plumbing frameworks, this will continue to develop and expand to offer young people opportunities to start their careers and gain a trade in the FM sector.

As well as this we are planning to expand the programme to offer Facilities Management and Cleaning & Environmental Supervision Apprenticeships at advanced level. This programme will support us in developing our managers of the future and as they progress through our talent pipeline thus creating opportunities for others to follow.

For me, it’s essential that we continue the programmes we have in place so that we can offer our clients the service they demand. We plan to use the Levy

to support and enhance the work that is already being done to grow the business and develop our leaders and specialists of the future.

I came into this industry as an apprentice electrician myself and have always valued and championed apprentices. That’s partly why, separately from the Apprenticeship Levy, I think that the Facilities Management industry needs to work harder to attract young talent. The careers that facilities management offers, like engineering, have an image problem that needs to change.

I’d love to see more businesses championing apprenticeships in these fields, and taking proactive steps to positively change the perception of jobs in the engineering sector.”

SIGN OFF: ABM UK employs just over 5,500 people with comprehensive capabilities including cleaning, electrical & lighting, energy solutions, facilities engineering, HVAC & mechanical, landscape & turf, mission critical solutions and parking, provided through standalone or integrated solutions.

Background information – what you need to know: • The Apprenticeship Levy is a tax on employers, which will fund apprenticeships and training.

• The Levy aims to address the worsening skills gaps in the UK workforce.

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By increase the quality of apprenticeships, the government hopes to make them a viable alternative to university.

Employers with an annual wage bill in excess of £3 million will be liable to pay 0.5% of their pay bill into the Apprenticeship Levy fund.

These employers will then be able to access funding through a digital apprenticeship service account to pay approved training providers.

The Levy will apply to businesses across all sectors, both public and private.

Approximately 22,000 UK businesses will be affected.

Importantly, the Apprenticeship Levy isn’t just for the benefit of new apprentices; training is also available to existing staff to help them upskill.

The Apprenticeship Levy will be aiming to generate £3 billion per year.

The ambition of the Apprenticeship Levy is to train three million apprentices by 2020.

The Apprenticeship Levy officially comes into force on Thursday 6 April 2017.

Liable companies will make their first payments to HMRC on Friday 19 May 2017.

Andy Donnell’s profile: • Donnell was born in Townhill Park, which is a suburb of Southampton, Hampshire.

• He was educated at Townhill Infant and Middle Schools, and Bitterne Comprehensive.

• Andy began his career as an apprentice electrician at RF Webb and Son in Shirley, Hampshire, and stayed with the company until he was 26 years old.

• After working on building sites for several years, he took a job with Farnboroughbased facilities management company, Sulzer Infra, as a maintenance engineer.

• Andy became a supervisor at Sulzer Infra, which was followed by a rapid rise up the management ladder.

He stayed on the technical

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The Apprenticeship Levy - a Challenge or an Opportunity?

side, but decided to broaden his knowledge and opted to do a two-year course at the Chartered Management Institute in Corby, Northamptonshire.

Andy was invited to become a partner with Westway Services in 2007 by its founder, Carl Brooks. He then rose through the ranks in roles covering operations and account management.

During his time at Westway, Donnell opened a dedicated training centre in Greenford, Middlesex, and was responsible for implementing procedures for lone workers, whereby an alert is sent to the 24/7 helpdesk when technicians start a job on their own, for example, on a rooftop. If that alert isn’t refreshed, someone on the site will check that they’re ok.

Donnell led Westway through management buyouts in 2009 and 2014, the latter to US-owned ABM. Away from the facilities management world, Donnell volunteers with the Samaritans, which he has done since 2012.

Company: ABM UK Name: Andy Donnell, group managing director Email: info@uk.abm.com Web Address: www.abm.co.uk Telephone: +44 (0) 207 089 6600

CORPORATE VISION / May 2017 47

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A Formidable Force Dr Veronica James, nee Stark, OAM, has been profiled on position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence. We learn more about her life and her work following her success in receiving the Most Female-Friendly Research Department – Australia accolade.

After earning a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Queensland in 1956, Veronica James, whilst working as a full-time teacher at Ipswich Girls Grammar School went on to achieve a Bachelor of Science in 1966. This was followed by an equivalent first class honours in Physics and a PhD in Physics at the University of New South Wales in 1971, the first woman to obtain a PhD in physics in more than the 100 years of that university’s existence. Her thesis contained the largest neutron crystal structure solved to high accuracy at that time and was applauded by George. E. Bacon, the father of Neutron Physics.

During the next eight years, Dr James published the crystal and molecular structures of 52 small organic molecules, that she solved using direct methods.

Now that such structures could be solved using a computer she decided to turn her mind to studies of changes in tissues with cancers and other diseases.

In 1985, on discovering that hearing impaired students were not allowed to participate in Science at school, so no such students were attending Universities Dr James set up a ‘Phones for the Deaf’ program, using second hand computers, to connect these students to each other and to their hearing peers, long before the internet. Annual science camps were run at the University for hearing impaired students aged between 5 and 16.

By 1997, over 400 such students were enrolled and progressing through University courses.

Since Australian students were not doing well in the Physics Olympiads, she also started ‘Extra Curricular courses in Physics’ in a number of areas in Sydney in addition to one after school class at the University of NSW. The students from these classes manned the lessons at the Science camps for the deaf. These courses were widened to include all secondary students a few years later after the Australian team won first place in the International Physics

Olympiad. These students and their parents put forward her name and an Order of Australia Medal was awarded to Dr James in 1996. In 1991, she was presented with the ViceChancellor’s teaching Award.

from Quota South Pacific Breast Cancer Research Award, the Barry Preston Award, The International Scientist of the Year Medal, and she was awarded a medal as one of the Outstanding Scientists of the 20th Century.

A year later she received the UNSW Alumni Award. She was also awarded the Australian Deafness Awareness Council Award, the Sydney Electricity Community Spirit Award and was appointed as a. 1995 National Teaching Fellow by the Australian Government.

Further studies have shown that the change in the diffraction pattern occurs as soon as the cancer starts, i.e.at least 2 years before any other test can determine it, it is 100% accurate, and disappears if treatments are successful. These changes in the diffraction patterns of hair are different from the specific changes found for each of colon cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, some liver and lung cancers. In 2004, she discovered that some cancers do not send out their arrival signals through keratin but they do send out a signal through collagenous tissues.

Currently an Honorary Professor at the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, she had risen through the ranks of Physics Academic staff to an Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales, the first woman in Australia to reach this position. During this period her research went on, firstly she studied and published the results from the effects of insulin dependent diabetes on various tissues of the body, the effects of drugs such as procaine, other diseases such as myxomatous heart valves, and changes in the breast tissue that precede breast cancer. Her diffraction patterns of hair gave the background necessary for verifying the structure of hair, which had remained unsolved since its discovery in 1935, to be finally solved in 1996.

In 1999, Nature published her paper on the change in the diffraction pattern of hair from Breast Cancer. Awards followed

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Subsequent studies have shown that all stages of Prostate cancer are visible in all collagenous tissues, appearing as soon as the cancer starts, thus providing a 100% diagnostic test for this cancer. Deaths from this cancer could be eliminated if this test were put into use. Melanoma and bowel cancer also send out specific signals via collagen.

At this stage Dr James is investigating whether other cancers also send out their own specific signals.

Dr James won her episode at the ‘New Inventors’ in 2009, was voted winner at a Pitch Presentation in Canberra in 2016 and won an award for her business in 2017.

g A Formidable Force

Company: Veronica James Consulting Pty Ltd. Name: Veronica James Email: veronica.james@anu.edu.au Web Address: www.anu.edu.au Address: Acton ACT 2601, Australia Telephone: +61 755 622 643

CORPORATE VISION / May 2017 49

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Internationally Recognised Experts As an institution, the University of Belgrade’s Faculty of Mining and Geology’s educational and scientific mission statement has remained steadfast since its inception. This mission lasts 70 years in the field of mining and geology. In this special article, the Dean, Prof. dr Dusan Polomcic writes about the institution’s after their success in receiving the Most Renowned Academic Institution – Serbia award.

The Faculty of Mining and Geology is the primary institution of education offering mining and geology science at undergraduate, master, and academic doctoral studies, with high standards.

This respected institution is the only college in the country that trains engineers in two different areas: geology and mining. For years, our academic programmes have been aligned with teaching programmes of the world’s most esteemed faculties and universities of the same or similar orientation. Our studies are multidisciplinary and specific – they prepare young students for a variety of tasks in practice and science.

Today, the Faculty of Mining and Geology meets the standards of modern higher education and gives young people the opportunity to get a great education for different positions within the mining and geological engineering profession thanks to excellent teachers, internationally recognised experts and by means of modern equipment and literature. Attending any of our courses in either the mining or geology departments opens an ideal opportunity for those who love nature and the challenge to explore it.

So far, 6,437 students graduated from Faculty of Mining and Geology and 590 have gained master’s degree, 17 have specialised and 448 have defended their doctoral dissertation.

The Faculty of Mining and Geology is dedicated to educating students and professionals in mining and geology through the following studies programmes: Undergraduate and Master studies: • Mining engineering; • Petroleum engineering; • Environmental engineering; • Geology; • Hydrogeology; • Geotechnics and; • Geophysics.

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Doctoral studies: • Geology; • Hydrogeology; • Geotechnics and; • Mining engineering.

The undergraduate study programme duration is four years (8 semesters), i.e. 240 ECTS, and it has a clear structure that consists of compulsory and elective courses. The master study programme duration is one year (2 semesters), i.e. 60 ECTS. Duration of the undergraduate study programme geology is three years (6 semesters), i.e. 120 ECTS, while master study programme is two years (4 semesters), i.e.

120 ECTS. Doctoral studies lasts three years (6 semesters), i.e. 180 ECTS for each study programme separately. The measure of the student workload for each subject is presented in accordance with the European credit transfer system (ECTS).

The main objective of study programmes is the implementation of the educational process in a way that graduate students will acquire skills and competencies that match to the selected specialties in the field of mining and geology. Graduates are complementing fundamental engineering education with specific educational areas referring to the selected study programme.

The study programme outcomes are: (a) a thorough and detailed knowledge in selected specialty in the field of geology and mining, (b) the ability to solve specific and complex problems in the selected specialty using modern scientific methods and techniques with multidisciplinary approach, (c) developed sense for continuous monitoring and implementation of innovation in the practice, (d) the skills necessary for career development, and (e) the ability of using information and communication technologies in acquisition of knowledge in the relevant area. There are many student mobility programmes enabling students to meet their colleagues, get education, exchange ideas and experiences across the region of Europe.

Students are welcome to join in the sports activities organised by faculty. Students can choose among different activities: basketball, handball, football, etc.

The men’s handball team won the silver medal of the league of University of Belgrade in 2015.

Every year, our students have the opportunity to be a part of sports competitions organised by all the faculties of mining and geology in the region.

Professors has either direct or indirect industrial experience

g Internationally Recognised Experts

because of their previous work history and/or consulting and research activities. Four professors here are members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Professors and young researchers are included in many different international and national scientific projects, and some of them are project leaders. In the last five years, 355 scientific papers were published in the international scientific journals indexed in the prestige SCI list. In the same period, over 150 industrial projects were completed.

The professional relationships which our faculty has established with other academic, government, and industry organisations are an essential ingredient for the open-dialog, feedback, and exchange of ideas.

The Faculty of Mining and Geology has a large active alumni group who provide significant benefits and valuable input towards the betterment of the education programme.

Our vision is closely related to constantly improvement of education and science research in geology and mining to solve future challenges in these disciplines. We continue to educate future leaders who will be capable of solving scientific and technological issues regarding industry.

To achieve this vision, the faculty have 123 members who are truly dedicated to teaching and scientific research. Through existing departments and study programmes, the Faculty of Mining and Geology is proud to offer modern and highly regarded education. We are here to support industry to solve their problems and make world better.

Company: University of Belgrade Faculty of Mining and Geology Name: Prof. dr Dusan Polomcic, Dean Email: dusan.polomcic@rgf.bg.ac.rs Web Address: www.rgf.bg.ac.rs Address: Djusina 7, 11000 Belgrade Republic of Serbia Telephone: +381 (0) 11 3219 101

Finally, we continue to be a student-centred institution dedicated to education that promotes learning, collaboration, creativity and a responsibility to creation a better environment.

CORPORATE VISION / May 2017 51

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Diverse, Dynamic & Entrepreneurial ‘We don’t network, we connect. We don’t lobby, we influence. We don’t hold events for the sake of it, they all have a purpose. Most importantly, Downtown members get a return on investment.’ These are the words of Downtown CEO Frank McKenna and, as a mission statement, he’s hit the nail on the head. Following his success in achieving the CEO of the Month - UK accolade, we interviewed him to find out more about how Downtown works tirelessly to support economic growth, entrepreneurial spirit and business success in the North of England and the West Midlands.

By way of introduction, Downtown are setting the agenda surrounding the development of regional devolution and power sharing, which they believe will help with the much-needed rebalancing of the UK economy. They will work to build a powerful network of highly ambitious entrepreneurial and high growth companies, which will positively contribute to the Northern Powerhouse and West Midlands Engine.

The firm’s influence is built on the diverse range and high calibre of their membership across the north of England and the Midlands - and their speed-dial relationships with key policy makers at regional and national level. Their goal is to provide an unparalleled service to their members, which will give them the opportunity to meet new clients, raise their profile, and build better businesses. It’s a simple logic, but Downtown believes that simplicity works.

CEO Frank McKenna explains more about the firm’s background in his own words.

“Established in Liverpool in 2003 to provide leadership to the private sector, by articulating the views of its members to the public-sector agencies that govern the city; and to create modern networking environments that would attract entrepreneurs, business owners, decision makers and high growth companies, award winning Downtown in Business (DIB) has now established its services and brand in Lancashire, Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham. DIB has earned a reputation as one of the most influential, effective business organisations in the North of England and the West Midlands.

“Brokering connections and deals, shaping public sector agendas, organising the best attended events in the region, hosting high profile gala dinners and attracting prominent speakers from the worlds of commerce and politics, DIB is the fastest growing business club outside of the capital.

DIB also has a London office.

Here we host regular, exclusive ‘influencer’ events with our members and key London-based political and business figures.”

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In summary, Downtown’s four key delivery elements are: Connecting: Over the last decade Downtown has facilitated B2B introductions that have directly led to over £1 billion worth of deals being done. Their connections service is provided by experienced relationship managers who will work with you to draw up an action plan and help you meet your potential future customers and grow your business.

Growing: Downtown in Business is a champion for the private sector. They are an influential, independent business membership organisation that has a diverse, dynamic, entrepreneurial, and growing membership – with excellent connections across public sector agencies too. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Influencing: With Downtown’s members, they meet and brief senior international, national, regional, and local politicians and decision- makers, influencing public sector agendas to promote business-friendly policies.

Downtown promotes healthy private-public sector partnerships and work with the various levels of government to encourage cooperation and cohesion.

Communicating: Downtown shares intelligence and research with their members and through events, briefings, reports, and bulletins. The firm helps you raise the profile and awareness of your business through regular bulletins that are circulated to a database of over 28,000, and their quarterly business magazine DQ. There are also opportunities for you to promote and market your products on their website www.downtowninbusiness. com and on their social media platforms Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

CEO of the Month - UK Frank proceeds to turn his thoughts towards winning the CEO of the Month – UK award and in this vein, what he does to stay motivated in his current senior job role.

“The award is an indication that the business is heading in the right direction. We won a big investment in the latter part of 2016 through Funding Circle, and I think the reach and the profile of the company has significantly improved since then.

From a personal perspective, I am absolutely delighted with this acknowledgement, which

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Company: Downtown in Business Name: Frank Mckenna Email: Frank.Mckenna@downtowninbusiness.com Web Address: www.downtowninbusiness.com Address: Suite 303, 3rd Floor, Cotton Exchange, Bixteth Street Liverpool. L3 9JRUK Telephone: +44 (0)151 556 1897

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is a testament to the work the Downtown team has undertaken over many years now. As an Everton supporter, I haven’t had too many trophies to celebrate in recent times, so this one is definitely a bonus.

“I think if you love what you do it is easy to stay motivated – and I love what I do. This will sound cliched, but I believe I have the best job in the world. When I set the business up I wanted it to be involved in all the things that interest me. Politics, business growth, communication, and events. We do all those things, and we do them well. I also wanted to create a twenty-first century business organisation that would make a difference.

Downtown has made a huge contribution to debates and decisions around elected mayors, devolved government, business support initiatives and regeneration projects across the regions that we operate in.

That is a great place to be in for me, and, as I say, against that backdrop, motivation isn’t a problem.

“Nonetheless, like any business owner, there are times when you need support and encouragement. I am fortunate that I am able to talk through problems and issues with my wife, who has her own business too. She is a massive help and influence for me. The Downtown team is also a source of inspiration at times. They come up with ideas and projects that give me an extra spring in my step.”

Key challenges and qualities for a CEO Staying on the subject of Frank’s role as a CEO, he tells us that he is a leader rather than a manager, so he has had to work hard at putting processes in place that allow his team to know what their targets and objectives are. He then explains the key challenges he has had to overcome as a CEO and his key attributes

“I am good at strategy, but poor on detail, and that isn’t always a great thing in business. To overcome this, I have tried to employ people who have those skills, and I think over the past year or two I have managed to do that – but it has taken some time! I think we all have a tendency to do and attend to the things we are comfortable with.

So, for me, that is the campaigns and projects I want Downtown to lead; marketing the company; and selling. Things like CRM systems, cash flow and HR management is what I struggle with, and as a result they have been the toughest things to get right in the business. We are just about there now – but, as I say, it took me longer than it should have to fix some of those things.

“I hope I am open, honest, and transparent, with my team and with those we work with. I do have an ability to inspire, and I certainly lead from the front. I hope that I am fair when dealing with staff issues. I am able to put in place strategies that drive the business forward. I’d also say that I’m a good communicator, and I don’t panic when things, on the odd occasion, go wrong.

I’ll admit if I’ve made a mistake – and I listen to people who have different ideas or suggestions to me. I also have a few key individuals who act as informal mentors. Trusted associates who I have known for many years, and who are happy to offer constructive criticism when required. Taking that criticism in a positive way is one of the things I have become much better at over the years, and it is something that all good CEOs should be able to do. In fact, it’s something anyone working at any level of business should be able to do.

“In the main though, I recognise that the most important thing about any business is its people.

So, I try to make the business a place where the team want to come into work and enjoy what they do. If people are happy in work, they will be more productive. I can never understand managers who think that by putting people under

54 CORPORATE VISION / May 2017

unnecessary pressure and making them miserable they will get more out of them. Of course, people need to work hard – but make sure you leave time and space for them to have some fun too.”

Future plans The business is now in six locations and they have an ambition to expand. Frank wants Downtown to be in every major UK city by the end of 2020, and they have started to look at franchising as an option. That will be a new and exciting journey for Downtown. Frank then concludes the interview by sharing his vision about the future journey of Downtown “Outside of the franchising model, we are on course to launch the Downtown brand in at least three new cities this year. The business has earned a reputation for being a strong voice for business in the cities we operate in. I’d like Downtown to have a national voice and influence in the future.

“If you consider the issues that are likely to face UK businesses over the forthcoming months and years – they are huge.

Brexit will bring challenges, and opportunities. The political landscape is a moveable feast; and devolution will again offer opportunities to business.

Downtown will be striving to give regional businesses the same sort of say and influence over decision makers that the Londonbased business organisations have had in the past.

“At a more micro level I want Downtown to be able to offer chances to more young people. We have taken on a few apprentices; and some have earned full-time contracts with us, which is great. I’d be delighted if we could do more of that going forward. Being able to grow your own talent is a big advantage to any business in my view; and if you can do that through apprenticeship schemes that offer genuine opportunities to young people then that’s even better.”

g Diverse, Dynamic & Entrepreneurial

CORPORATE VISION / May 2017 55

UK160054

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A Noteworthy Firm Best Electronic Bank-Note Acceptors 2017 award winner Electromech ECS Limited (ECS) writes about this recent accolade and notes the varied and interesting work they carry out.

Electromech ECS Limited is a CPI Authorised Distributor and Service Centre supporting Customer’s Bank Note Acceptors, Bank Note Recyclers and Coin Changers and validators within the Fare Collection, Mass Transit and Parking sectors throughout the UK and Ireland.

ECS have been supporting customers for 17 years and our domain experience of CPI Bank Note Acceptors, Recyclers and Coin products has made us a world leader in this field. ECS are very proud to be recognised as ‘Best Electronic Bank-Note Acceptors 2017.’

This award reassures new and current customers of our commitment and expertise in being the best in class in supporting and supplying CPI Bank Note Acceptor’s, Bank Note Recyclers and Coin products.

Our customers are our number one priority and customer satisfaction is maintained through our BSI ISO9001 quality control. All work completed is fully traceable to ensure it is completed to the same standard.

Cashless Payment is becoming more widespread so paying by notes and coins is not always possible in every machine.

Payment machines now have various methods of payment, Notes, Coins, Card and Mobile Applications; these tend to be split between Cash and Cashless.

Our work is varied and interesting.

We train and develop our Staff to make them the best in the field.

However, the demise of Cash is a concern, but we will look at new technologies and products that we can offer and support.

All our Staff are fully trained and accredited by the Manufacture and have the tools and equipment to provide a full

and complete service to our Customers, which includes Overhauls, Repairs, Billset updates, and Operator and Engineer training.

We work closely with our Manufacture, CPI and their Customers once the Bank Note Acceptor’s, Bank Note Recyclers and Coin products have been ordered or are about to be put into the field. Support and service then immediately starts.

We would like to thank all our Customers for their loyalty and trust and we look forward to our continued and successful working partnership.

Company: Electromech ECS Ltd. Name: Robert Cottingham Email: robertc@electromech.co.uk Web Address: www.electromech.co.uk Address: Electromech ECS Ltd. Unit 3 Admiralty Way Camberley, Surrey, GU15 3DT, UK Telephone: +44 (0)1276 38569

56 CORPORATE VISION / May 2017

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Winner’s Directory

Winners Directory

UK Business Elite Company: txtNation Email: sales@txtnation.com Web Address: www.txtnation.com Address: txtNation, Billacombe Road Plymouth, Devon, PL97HX Telephone: +44 (0)1752 484 333 President and Chief Executive Officer of the Year Pharma Executive Awards 2017 Company: Ardea Biosciences Name: James Mackay President & Chief Executive Officer Email: James.mackay@astrazeneca.com JMackay@ardeabio.com Web Address: www.ardeabio.com Address: 9390 Towne Centre Drive San Diego, CA 92121 Telephone: +1 (858) 652-6525

CORPORATE VISION / May 2017 57

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