Audit office is outdated and outmanoeuvred
Name and address withheld
Tony Collins
states in his blog: "In its style of reporting to parliament,
the National Audit Office is very British: its writing is
characterised by understatement and politeness. The factual content
of its reports is agreed with the departments and agencies most
gentlemanly and consensual".
The National Audit Office is outdated and outmanoeuvred. It is
outdated because it simply fails to hold senior responsible owners
to account. These are senior civil servants who appear more
interested in turf battles about budgets and the size of their
personal fiefdoms rather than the efficient use of public
resources.
The gentlemanly language may have had its place pre-WWII, but in
an environment dominated by a catalogue of expensive, delayed and
often ineffective IT systems, it is time to start calling a spade a
spade. Senior responsible owners should be named and shamed.
Regarding the outmanoeuvred point, government departments rarely
seem to take real notice of National Audit Office criticism. If you
look at modern corporate audit practice in the private sector, the
auditors are increasingly focusing on recommending improvements
before projects fail, rather than stating the obvious after they
fail.
Why not give the National Audit Office real teeth? Allow it to
challenge failing projects while they are still being executed, and
if necessary stop work until appropriate governance and contractual
mechanisms are in place. At least they could then be seen to be
protecting the taxpayer rather than providing anodyne reporting
after the event.
Start-ups need effective marketing to
survive
Ray Jones, head of communications, The Chartered Institute
of Marketing
Britain has a strong history of encouraging start-up businesses,
but the record shows that due to the lack of early strategic market
research and professional marketing, the number of those that fail
within their first year is high. So I was surprised when reading
your article on start-up
companies to find that marketing was passed over in just a few
words.
Many excellent innovations go to the wall because of poor
understanding of some basic marketing principles. If no one knows
your product or service exists, if it is overpriced, if you are
trying to sell it to the wrong people, or if the right people just
do not want it, then it stands a good chance of failing
commercially.
A study by the Chartered Institute of Marketing found that well
over half of all marketers in the technology sector see marketing
as a high priority within their organisation, but this figure
represents established firms that have been through the painful
start-up phase. Many never get this far. When looking for venture
capital to develop a business, start-ups should seriously consider
factoring marketing into the equation.
Every market today is highly competitive and no one can rely on
just having a good idea.
Contract managers key to successful
outsourcing
Paul Carter Hemlin
Yet again
another article, well
two actually, on
outsourcing, and neither mentions a key ingredient to the
success of negotiating and managing outsourcing agreements, namely
the contract manager.
Andy Troder in his piece mentions the use of lawyers and HR, but
makes no reference to the contract professional. It is not uncommon
for the terms and conditions of an outsourcing deal to exceed 1,000
pages, however, only 10%-15% of the contract is "pure" law that you
need the lawyer for, and typically less than 5% covers HR/Tupe
issues. The remaining 80% or so of the contract concerns the "meat
in the sandwich" - ie. the business terms, the scope of the
services to be provided, the service levels etc.
Contract managers are naturally commercially minded they
understand change and are a better conduit into the technical
community than lawyers, and this results in a better understanding
of the technical solution. City lawyers are currently bragging
about their fees breaking through the £1,000-per-hour ceiling, an
amount you could use to hire a contract management consultant for a
day.