Speedfit technique

[IMM]

Sounds fine to me.

[Frank Erskine]

The NHS seems to be readily accepted by all the main political parties in the Kingdom.

Added to this there is

I disagree. My employer pays for my healthcare insurance, but I have no qualms about a real public service which caters for primary healthcare such as GPs, public health, and emergency treatment.

For all, as well as me!

[Andy Hall]

I don;t consider that to be a recommendation at all.

You pay tax (at your highest rate), NIC (if not over the threshold) and your employer pays NIC on this.

You and your employer have also paid NIC contributions on the bulk of the rest of your salary.

I'm less bothered about GPs, although IME, they don't run at all efficiently. I've recently had occasion to make a series of GP visits over a minor issue which could easily have been diagnosed and treated with two appointments. I am just about to go to my 8th. Each time, about 30mins is wasted hanging around. 4 hours is a lot of time for something that could be done and dusted in 30mins.

I am not sure what you include in public health.

I certainly agree that there should be co-ordinated emergency response and don;t have an issue with that being state run.

[Frank Erskine]

Bullshit. The vast majority of organisations (IME) treat the Internet (especially email) as some sort of toy - they don't treat either websites or email as a serious means of getting messages across.

[IMM]

I think Which magazine did a study of private health. Their conclusion was that it is only worth it if you work for yourself, so as to be up and running ASAP (line jumping). If employed then it is a waste of time.

[IMM]

Most regard email as a distraction and some warn employees if they receive email from outside.

[Andy Hall]

I don't know where your experience is, then.

You are obviously not in contact with the same organisations that I am on a daily basis (many of which are household names on a global, regional or national basis):

- A very large proportion of Fortune 500, FT1000 and equivalent companies in different countries of the western world have or are rapidly becoming dependent on internet and other IP based networks for internal and external communication.

- Many are moving or have moved to having their corporate networks provisioned as virtual private networks in part or entirely over the public internet.

- Email messages (with SPAM excluded) already outnumber postal paper mail by a factor of over ten to one.

It is true that putting up a web site is by no stretch of the imagination an indicator of business success - proper business modelling is still required - but even with the 'back to reality' that happened a couple of years ago there is still massive uptake in the use of the internet for business purposes.

I can assure you that organisations are spending vast sums on this technology area and are quite aware of the business and competitive benefits of so doing.

[:::Jerry::::]

Very true, I knew of one company who banned the one person who's job would have been both easier and more efficient from using email, many of the reps used their own personal ISP email accounts to do what should have been done through the business. The company web site, although extolling the companies services / products, does not (the last time I bothered to look at the site) have any online broaches, just an invitation to contact the sales team on a telephone number - This from one a large player in that particular field of business, go figure...

[IMM]

Most of those are tittle tattle, not real business communication.

Detailed, easy to navigate, up to date and simply explained web sites do sell products. If people can download all your product, installation or technical manuals you have an advantage. Customer service can be having all the old product manuals on line too. This gives a very positive impression.

[Andy Hall]

It isn't line jumping because the facilities used are generally in private hopsitals.

To suggest that if somebody is employed they don't need to be "up and running" is nonsense. Why do you think that employers pay part of the cost? Part of it is to offer employees a more attractive package than their competition, but the other part is that they want valued employees to be productive and not dicking around with waiting for the NHS to deliver treatment.

Of course, because of the stupid taxation of this as a "benefit" the employee ends up paying up to half anyway if he is on higher rate tax and below the NIC earnings limit.

[Andy Hall]

Yours might fall into that category; but it isn't my observation at all.

True points, although they don't replace having a sound business strategy and execution of it. The graveyards are littered with the corpses of dotcoms who thought that having a web site would automatically lead to fame and riches.

[Andy Hall]

If you think about it, that's highly odd. Most large organisations have SPAM filtering as an internal or outsourced service. They could, I suppose, implement restrictions on email from addresses outside their organisation from coming in.

I could understand if a company wanted to implement a policy of not wanting employees to *send* personal emails, but to have one of not being allowed to *receive* them seems rather odd. It would be rather like saying that it's your fault if somebody puts something through your letter box.

I agree that banks may be different to some other organisations, especially if they are using anything from Microsoft. I have found some who have internal-only email systems in certain departments. Some governmental organisations do this as well.

However, broadly speaking, the main concerns are with security, virus and spam issues in most companies in my experience.

[Andy Hall]

They are still around, although the numbers are dwindling, and the companies themselves will dwindle as their communications become less and less effective.

25 years ago, the telex was the defacto method of written business communication where something faster than the post was needed.

As soon as fax machines became widespread and acceptable as legally/commercially binding, telex died a death almost everywhere.

With electronic signature on emails etc., fax is not as important as it was. I guess that about 1% max of my business communications happen by fax, if that and even less by postal mail.

[John Rumm]

It is also worth distinguishing between a companies use of email as a part of the running of its day to day business, and its use as a communications tool with its customers. Many are very good at the former, but still lacking at the later.

I know at one of our clients (a large multinational comms company), email is a fundamental part of the day to day comms within the business, and between subcontractors etc. However their web site is so poor, you would be hard pushed to even identify more than 10% of their product range, or even the full range of markets they are able to sell relevant services and products into.

[IMM]

.coms only do business via the web. I am on about a normal established business. If all your products and services are on the web in detail with nice piccies then you have an advantage. Much research is done via the web. Also anyone who doing some research and find that a company does not have its products on the web, they are regarded as backwards and are often eliminated from any purchasing.

The companies that do brochures will also do, or farm out, the web site too.

[IMM]

If a company has a bullshit web site. The ones that say nothing at all except that they have a web site, are treated with suspicion, as it looks as it they have something to hide.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You certainly make an 'advantage' out of this. ;-)

[:::Jerry::::]

The thing about the above company is, it's growing despite not making full use of the internet etc. Trouble is, it makes up for in-efficiencies in the board-room by screwing those who work elsewhere in the company, especially those who bring in the business and those who provide the service direct to the end user - hence AIUI the company has a high turnover of staff in those departments.

Only because better alternatives arrived, same day courier and better computer networks and the fax (Telex was and is severely limited, as it's name implies, unlike systems that came after).

Is any done by courier though, such as legal documents ?

[:::Jerry::::]

Yes, in the example I gave the company does most of it's internal coms via email, but out going / in coming email is very slight and strictly limited (AIUI) to a couple of directors and the IT manager.

[IMM]

Intelligent people take the easy way.