Month: February 2013

Bacs software has still not been fully adopted

Bacs has been around for 45 years now. Despite this history, and its track record of being speedy, easy and secure, bacs software has not been universally adopted by firms and other organisations. It tends to be the smaller outfits who refuse the longest, for obvious reasons. However, instead of making bacs payments, many of these are still paying their bills with cheques or, in some cases, even with cash. This leads to a number of problems and makes for inefficient and even risky practices.

Times are changing, and now the vast majority of financial transactions occur in the virtual arena. The reasons for this are diverse, but speed and security are repeating ones. It is very simple to transfer money with bacs, and because it includes multiple layers of safety measures it is very secure; should you – against all odds – run into a problem, you will almost certainly be insured and protected from any financial impact, unless the issue is unarguably your fault.

Bacs transfers take a maximum of three working days to happen, but the new FPS (faster payments system) is almost instant, and costs no more. Effectively, when people talk about bacs nowadays, they are using it as a encompassing term for electronic transfers, including FPS.

All of this is important for organisations, even the smaller ones who are holding on to cheques and cash. (Although there was an outcry at the time, quite recently the banks suggested that they would be eradicating cheques within the foreseeable future – suggesting the low regard in which they hold them…) No organisation, large or small, wants to have significant quantities of cash on the premises. Furthermore, cheques are time-consuming to write, require counter-signing, and you have no idea when they will be cashed – which can cause cash-flow headaches.

So, if you haven’t already adopted bacs payments for your organisation, now is a good time. So many other outfits use bacs that it smooths the process of making payments – allowing you to budget more easily, and to give time to other areas of your business that are more important. Everything can be automated, and bacs software can even be integrated with your accounts package, streamlining things further. Bacs is safe, secure, fast, and saves you time and money. At a time when every pound is important, this cannot be a bad thing.

Please visit http://www.bottomline.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Powerpoint presentations that shine

Powerpoint presentations are extremely easy to throw together, thanks to the simple and intuitive feel of the software. Unfortunately, it has been a victim of its own success – or more likely, your company has – because good Powerpoint design is a much rarer beast. Sales presentations that engage and convince listeners and give them something to take away with them are few and far between. This is why there are companies that specialise in corporate presentations and making sets of highly effective Powerpoint slides: done well, they can make all the difference in securing a bid or winning a contract. Done badly, your intended customer or audience will have switched off and discarded you as a prospect before you’ve got to the end of the first five minutes.
If you want to do it yourself, there are a few points to bear in mind. You may, like others, be tempted to squash in all the information you can – apparently ‘making the most’ of the room you have – and repeating your spoken presentation on the screen (and perhaps, for good measure, triplicating it with a handout, too…). This won’t do you any favours.

Start by planning the narrative of your presentation on paper, ensuring that you have a thread and a story that brings the audience through from start to finish. A disjointed presentation will lose their attention and leave them unimpressed – fast. When it does come to designing the slides, keep the background straightforward and simple: you don’t need unnecessary distraction. One idea for each slide is fine. If you try to cram in too much they will be overwhelmed and won’t take in anything very much. Make the point, and make it well. You can use suitable graphics to illustrate your point in a way that is impossible using the spoken word – a chart showing year-on-year results or other data, for example, is infinitely more effective than explaining them in words.

Powerpoint design is an art as well as a science, and you can’t underestimate how important Powerpoint presentations are in winning over your audience. They are an expected feature of sales presentations, but they are usually done so badly that if you can improve on the average you will immediately gain an edge over the competition. It doesn’t take much – just a willingness to do a bit of research and scale back your ambitions in the interests of doing a little very well. Simplicity is everything.

Please visit http://www.eyefulpresentations.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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