The tacit renewal, which automatically extends your contract, is never beneficial to the client.
The client usually loses sight of the end dates of contract and if he decides to change supplier, he will rarely find himself at the right time to end the contract.
We recommend our customers to maintain all the termination dates of supplier contracts and notice periods.
Before this period, you must send a letter of termination, even if you do not want to change supplier.
His response, in general, will not wait and you will most likely receive a proposal for your updated consumption profile and new offers and discounts at that time.
The advantage of this method is that it gives you the opportunity to negotiate until the final deadline of the contract. In fact, you can always tell your current provider a few days before the end of the contract of your decision to continue your cooperation.
Save the date!
Categories : Tip of the week | Tags : Contracts | 0 commentaire associé
If your company has a traditional vending machine, it pays off to adjust this machine, in order to save a substantial amount of money each year.
A classic coca-cola vending machine consumes 6 kWh each day. The cooling system is better left untouched. By switching off the light bulb within the machine, the consumption drops to 3 kWh a day.
If we use the average market price for 2011, registered by the Flemish Regulator of the Electricity and Gas market (VREG) at 0,1914 euro/kWh (VAT incl.), one saves 209 euro.
A note on the vending machine addressed to the employees makes clear the machine is not broken. By doing this, the personnel is (again) informed of the fact that the company wants to reduce its carbon footprint, hence encouraging them to do the same.
Categories : Tip of the week | Tags : Energy | 0 commentaire associé
In the current economic climate, many companies have set up cost reduction targets. It is important to involve your suppliers in achieving these goals.
Your provider probably has many ideas and proposals to reduce costs. But few providers will share those spontaneously.
Here is a document that will allow you to involve your suppliers in the search of savings.
Here are some of the key elements:
- Products or services concerned
- Description of the idea or proposal
- Current situation
- Suggested solution
- Net savings targets
- Investments required
- Probability of success / problems
- Idea already implemented within other clients?
- Estimated schedule
- Suggestion form - Supplier
Categories : Tip of the week | Tags : General expenses | 0 commentaire associé
World Cab meter aims to deliver comprehensive information on taxi journeys, regardless of the country. A good way to avoid unpleasant surprises on business travel.
The application indicates in a broad range of business and tourism destinations, the price of a taxi ride from point A to point B. The new application even takes into account the extras of the race, type of luggage or other overnight rates. The list of contact numbers for local companies and the fastest routes are also available with the application fee (2.40 euros) available on iTunes.
Many cities are already available on the application: Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, London, Manchester, Glasgow, Leeds, Sheffield, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Bangkok, Dubai, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo, Toronto and Hong Kong.
World Cab meter could become the best ally of the business traveler providing reliable information and updates.
[1]
Categories : Tip of the week | Tags : Travel | 0 commentaire associé
Seo Grader is a free tool that evaluates the SEO capacity of your website pages and offers an assessment of their compatibility with the constraints of search engine tools.
Seo Grader will suggest some improvements and comments on your current situation:
Test your website SEO to boost your traffic Rezoactif SEO Grader
Categories : Tip of the week | Tags : IT | 0 commentaire associé
Today, large infrastructure works started in order to restore the fly-over of Vilvoorde to its former glory. Because the fly-over of Vilvoorde is part of the Brussels Ring (R0), which is an important part of the Belgian traffic infrastructure, traffic disruptions will occur during the entire summer of 2011. This makes the congestion for Brussels even worse, while it already is the most congested city of Europe, according to a recent TomTom study.
The cost of this congestion will be huge:
- The loss of working hours (opportunity costs)
- Waste of fuel
- Air pollution (carbon dioxide emissions)
- Increased stress for employees
Three alternatives exist:
The first option is to let your personnel use public transportation as much as possible. This could decrease problems, but not avoid them at all. Public transportation sometimes also faces this congestion in Brussels. The National Railway Company of Belgium has also severe punctuality issues. For companies is it also more interesting to provide employees with company cars, due to the tax advantage they offer to the firm.
A second option is to maximize flexible working hours. Instead of the flexible starting hours 8 a.m. to 9 a.m., make it possible to start between 6.30 a.m. and 10.30 a.m. and finish between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.
The third option is homeworking. A study of Interactive Intelligence shows that both employees and companies benefit of homeworking. No less than 81% of employees believe they do work harder, while at the same time they are happier and value the additional time they can now devote to their family. It’s a win-win situation. Technical evolutions, such as VPN networks and cloud computing solutions make homeworking a feasible alternative.
Categories : Tip of the week | Tags : Car Fleet, CO2 emission, Travel | 0 commentaire associé
Refurbished products could possibly be the products which are returned by the customer within the return policy of the company which sold the product, without any defect with the product. Refurbished products are generally bench tested and certified by the authorized service centers of the company and then re-packaged, labeled as a Refurbished Product.
Refurbished items may have scratches, dents or other forms of cosmetic damage which do not affect the performance of the unit. Most mechanical fixes are by trained technicians who work for the original company that distributed the product.
However, there is also a very good chance that the unit you receive may never have been used as it may have been a unit whose box was damaged or simply an overstock model that many retailers return to the manufactures to make room for incoming models.
Save up to 50% on items sold and guarantee by the official distributor:
Categories : Tip of the week | Tags : IT | 0 commentaire associé
In the industrial park ‘De Prijkels’ in Deinze (East-Flanders), a non-profit organisation is set up. This organisation groups most companies of the industrial park. Its goal is to improve sustainability (the 3 p’s: people, planet, profit) among its members.
The first point of action of this organisation was to centralise the parcel post amongst all willing companies across the industrial park. By centralising and having a single supplier, prices dropped. The companies participating now deliver and pick up their parcels at a central hub, which is situated at the industrial park.
This is a low threshold idea to start cooperation among companies which are active in different industries. By working together with your neighbours, costs decrease, employees benefit and CO2 emissions are reduced.
Of course, solid agreements between the different partners are necessary to evolve towards a cooperative model to decrease these and other costs.
Categories : Tip of the week | Tags : General expenses | 0 commentaire associé
Following an Optify study, the first link in Google results pages (SERP) attracts on average over a third of the clicks (36.4%). It is almost three times more than the second link (12.5%) and four times more than the third (9.5%).
Nearly 60% of clicks are drained by the first three results. This leaves little chance for others to capture traffic from Google. Thus the site located in 4th place in the SERP of Google will have less than a chance out of ten, statistically, to attract Internet users (7.9%).
Optify calculates that "the efforts of SEO can bring rapid ROI. For example, doubling the investment to move from the second position to the first can triple visits on that keyword."
The study also notices that it is better to be first on the second page (2.6%) than the last of the first page (2.2%).
Except for pole position, a result on the second page will not catch an average of more than 2% of traffic. In addition, there is very little difference between the results of this second page. Front page average is 8.9% against 1.5% for the second. "You must first invest to position your site as many times as possible on the first page, before to move it forward on that page" the study concludes.
Many companies know now how essential SEO could attract clients to their business, you must now mesure your investment to always be the first on google.
[2]
Categories : Tip of the week | Tags : IT | 0 commentaire associé
As 95% of the companies in Belgium, you probably work with a social secretariat for your payroll and HR administration.
In Belgium, leading social secretariats are SD Worx, Securex and Acerta for Flanders; Groupe S, Securex and SD Worx for Brussels; UCM and Partena in Wallonnia.
Competition between those companies obviously is quite high and negotiation opportunities also.
However before starting to compare the different providers, you should be aware that in Belgium the notice period has to start for the 1st of July for a period of 6 months.
That implies that you must inform your social secretariat before the 30th of June with a registered letter your intention to not renew the contract.
The contract with the new HR specialist would only starts the 1st of January of the following year.
Don’t be too late, May and June is the perfect period to meet your account manager and starts negotiating fees and things to improve.
However if you read our article the 29th of June, it is not late, send your termination letter, take the time to analyze your contracts and if at the end you don’t want to change, just inform your provider before the 1st of January that you decide to extend your contract for another year.
Categories : Tip of the week | Tags : HR | 0 commentaire associé
If your company has facilities located over a multi-geographical area you may be able to rent antenna space to cellular phone companies.
Typically these companies will pay for the use of rooftops as a place to erect their antennas. Another option is for billboards as advertising if you occupy a central location with a high visibility building.
This enhances your revenue without any additional cost for you. The point here is to explore alternative uses for your facilities.
Remember they are assets that can be used 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There are numerous opportunities available for increased revenue if you look for them. Training room and function room facilities can be rented out in the evening or weekends. How about spare land or excess slots you own for public car parking?
[3]
Categories : Tip of the week | 1 commentaire associé
If you sign a contract with an energy provider, ask yourself whether you should sign for a fixed or a variable contract.
Fixed price is more secured: the price will not increase during the period of contract. In 2008 it would have not been a good idea to sign for this kind of contract, prices have largely fallen after a long period of increase.
Variable price means that each month your provider will adjust the price per kWh for the gas or the electricity depending on the price changes.
Obviously, fixed is better when price is going up and variable when down but you don’t have a crystal ball to determine which directions the price will follow tomorrow.
However you should now that gas and electricity prices are linked to the petrol - whose price increases since a couple of month - and that implies the direction that the prices will take as the prices will only adapt 6 months after for the gas and 3 months for the electricity.
For your information, since 2009 the prices have continuously growing up (More than 10%) and the situation in Japan and the Middle East is not calming down this trend. [4]
Categories : Tip of the week | Tags : Energy | 0 commentaire associé
Usually, when a contract is signed with a work wear provider, workers receive typically minimum 3 changes.
Companies will have to pay a weekly/monthly fee for the cleaning per worker.
The provider come every week to pick up dirty clothes and bring them back cleaned.
However, most of the time, you will notice that workers don’t let their clothes get cleaned so often and that you’ll pay for a service that is not provided.
We advise you to agree with your provider not to pay a fee but a price per clothes cleaned. Savings can be very impressive.
Categories : Tip of the week | Tags : Cleaning, Work wear | 0 commentaire associé
Did you know that 25% of telecom invoices contain billing errors.
The reasons are:
- Change to plans or lines that are not implemented
- Incorrect pricing
- Missing discounts or credits
- Duplicate charges
- Paying two carriers for the same line
- Paying contract maintenance no longer in use. [5]
We advise you to regularly check invoices and that all changes are applied.
Categories : Tip of the week | Tags : Telecom | 0 commentaire associé
TeamViewer is an application for remote access and support over the internet. You can connect to any PC or server around the world within a few seconds.
You can remote control a partner’s desktop to give online assistance, or you can show your screen to a customer - all without worrying about firewalls, IP addresses and NAT.
This application can help you save time and money.
Check out their website: www.teamviewer.com
Categories : Tip of the week | Tags : IT | 0 commentaire associé
Competition on the car leasing market is very though. Companies often decide to work with a leasing company which will offer the best monthly rent. This doesn’t mean every time that you will pay less for the entire contract. The TCO method (Total cost of ownership) should be used to better evaluate the different offers.
You should consider specific costs that are often overcharge by leasing companies:
- Billing of damages
- Excess mileage
To avoid unexpected large bills, we recommend to improve the responsibility of drivers
- Every employee should inform the current mileage every 3 months to the fleet manager.
- Fix in the car policy a limit of damage after which the company will cease to intervene. The rest will be charged to the driver.
- Incentives for the best drivers
Categories : Tip of the week | Tags : Car Fleet | 0 commentaire associé
