Business Brief - resource:magazine-articles

Retaining the best

Wages and salaries total 60-70% of total company cost! Within a multinational corporation with 5,000 employees – the recording, storing and processing of this data is an arduous task! HR Managers and Payroll experts need to be consulted to make the process as streamlined and efficient as possible.

Scan + Protect = Secure

Theft is more common than ever before! Preventative measures ought to be taken to protect a company's assets – both material and electronic. As criminals become smarter, business owners must create a security strategy for long-term protection.

Water Scarcity - A Business Concern

Production methods, customer requirements, investor sensitivities and capacity levels that shift in the wake of constrained water availability could threaten many successful business models.

Contactless Payment Solution

The way South Africans currently pay for low value purchases (LVP) under R200 is rapidly changing through the implementation of various contactless payment solutions. These occur in both the transit and retail environments.

Implication for drunks

South Africa is one of the highest alcohol consuming countries in the world. Not surprisingly, therefore, it has an alarming number of fatalities, and serious injury to individuals and property caused by drunk drivers.

Deal? But no deal!

Breaking stories in the news recently have placed the auctioning business under a spotlight. In the past there weren't many laws directly governing auctioning and it was a substantially unregulated industry in South Africa.

Retirement Reform : New national scheme a remedy for all

By 2014,Government could start the implementation of a national retirement scheme,based on recent announcements in the Budget Speech.

Keep Records or Face Jail

Directors of South African businesses need to ensure that they are fully compliant with the latest record keeping regulations in terms of the new Companies Act, in order to avoid potential legal feels and in some cases, imprisonment and business closure

Marketing the Future

Life and everything we do seems to be speeding up – so fast, so vast, limitlessly propelled beyond the referential sphere of reality, the present and consciousness.

Investment Management

The investor should assess existing obligations, annuities and assets when trying to plan an alternative strategy.

The value of the MBA

The value of an MBA degree has been widely criticised by scholars and business practitioners.

Diversity - A Business Imperative

Diversity in the boardroom is critical in today's increasingly competitive multinational and multicultural markets and requires continuous focus.

Unemployed vs Unions

More than 6 million South Africans are unemployed and unionised members are becoming more cautious about their union engagement.

Growth for Africa : The Golden opportunity is now

The African continent's economic pulse has quickened, creating a dynamic African business sector with ample commerce opportunities empowering countries across the continent to achieve greater economies of scale, increased investment and become more competitive.

Hosting our Diversity

Firstly, the global recession, though fortunately less prevalent locally than abroad, has caused an industry-wide slowdown in 2011, which however is unlikely to continue as both domestic and foreign players push for economic recovery.

Starting sweating? New tax bill threatens your rights!

The Tax Administration Bill 11 of 2011 may face constitutional challenges should it be promulgated in its current form.The Bill gives SARS much wider powers, impacts on taxpayers’ rights andcontains provisions that could affect taxpayers’ rights to hold a passport, to travel and to trade.

Accounting Solutions - Die by the count

Business owners’ are under pressure to keep their businesses alive – maximise profit, whilst at the same time minimise costs without this being a detriment to operations. The monitoring of this vital process is called accounting – which incorporates the analysis and management of financial statements detailing assets owned and debts owed.

Entrepreneurship : Grow your own way

Entrepreneurship represents opportunity! Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are sprouting globally and in South Africa based on the tenuous economic climate.

Steps to financial independence

Our easy to execute twelve step plan gives you one task a month. Execute each of these according to your circumstances and priorities and you are well on your way to financial freedom.

Shaping Brands in 2012

‘Autonomy’, ‘recognition’, ‘freedom and discovery’, ‘belonging’, ‘more global, more local’, ‘identity blur’, ‘new consciousness’, ‘vitality’, ‘wired world’ and ‘take a stand’ – 10 phrases that South African brand owners should pay serious attention to as they hold the key to current shifts in consumer attitudes and behaviour.

Retail under fire

The retail sector in South Africa faces a number of security challenges, chief among them being theft and a growing trend towards violent armed robbery. Theft is a common problem across retailers, from grocery stores to clothing merchants and everything in between, whether the stores are located in malls or are street facing. This age old issue includes petty theft from within the stores, items going missing in delivery bays, and items not being scanned at till points, all of which contribute to increased risk and lowered profitability.

ANCYL misconceives economic freedom

According to US economist Walter Williams, a simple definition of "economic freedom” (more generally known as "a free market”), is "voluntary exchange between individuals free of third party intervention”. This is certainly not what the ANC Youth League mean in their declaration that "7 cardinal pillars of economic freedom in our lifetime are identified as the most vital components of the immediate tasks and functions to be pursued in the consolidation of real and sustainable economic transformation”.

Mergers & Acquisitions

Multiple statistics have abounded in the first two quarters of 2011. One of the most powerful of these is the statistics is that local M&A activity in South Africa has surged 133% for 2010. Local companies have become more sought after and competitive choices as acquisitions with the increase in consumer purchasing power.

Management Education

This management education feature addresses the role of the South African Qualifications Authority(SAQA), as they grapple with the challenges of instituting the new National Qualifications Framework. We then unpack the issues behind the skills shortages in managerial positions in South Africa, particularly the financial services sector. In addressing these shortages, several options await a prospective employer. There are longer executive MBA programmes that focus on business management and education, and shorter seminars and workshops for the manager with less time at his or her disposal.

Neo-Communication Zeitegeist

The face of marketing has transformed substantially. It's no longer a one directional banteror broadcast dais dominated by a production line of messages. The future of marketing has signalledthe end of one-way advertising as we know it. The zeitgeist of postadvertising reigns.

The irony? Space safety regulations could put you behind bars

There are confined spaces in many industrial workplaces and the term 'confined space' is mainly used to describe items such as, vaults, cellars, mine shafts, tunnels and ducting, basically an area large enough for a person to enter to perform tasks. A confined space is also an area that is shut off from the rest of the world because it is not designed or configured for continuous occupancy and has limited or restricted means of entry or exit.

Transfer Pricing Challenges

In an ongoing effort to modernise South Africa's transfer pricing regulations and tackle potential tax collection deficits, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) is focusing on those problematic areas where it believes there is non-compliance bytaxpayers and significant potential for increased collections for the fiscal year. Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan, singled out transfer pricing as a key focus area for SARS in his 2010 Budget Speech, specifically where it involves shifting profits to jurisdictions outside South Africa.

The give and take of CODESA III

For the past few months, I have been proposing that we repeat the experience we had in the early 1990s, today. Then there were two Codesas to iron out a new constitution and turn South Africa into a full-blown democracy. We now need another Codesa to create a blueprint for a sustainable economy which, among other things, means creating one million new businesses by 2020 - that is if the government wants to achieve its target of five million jobs by 2020. Businesses are ahead of jobs in the causal chain.

Why sustainability matters...

We face unprecedented challenges as we enter the second decade of the 21st century. In the last 50 years the global population has doubled from 3.5 billion to 7 billion. By 2050 it is estimated there will be 9 billion people on the planet.