Archive for the biz
The Line King – a very clever TY project from Students in Limerick
Posted by: | CommentsI love nifty ideas, and thankfully I spotted this one on Twitter last night. The 4th year students of Coláiste Chiaráin, Croom, Co.Limerick have set up a mini business as a transition year project.
It’s called ‘The Line King’ and it sets out to solve a problem for accountancy and business students in Ireland (and presumably further afield as well).
Here it is :
It’s a stencil that a student can use to turn any standard lined page into an accountancy record book, thereby saving money that would otherwise be spent on buying pre lined accountancy books. I know from my school days that I would spend ages ruling pages with a standard ruler and making a bit of mess of it in the process. All a student has to do now is take the Line King stencil, place it on the page, and run a pen through the lines to create their accounting book page. I’d say it would take all of 10 seconds to line the perfect page like the one below.
There are 3 different stencils available, one for each of the accounting record books. I would LOVE to have had something like this back in the day. It’s one of those ideas that make you wonder why no one has thought of it before. Great to see students coming up with ideas like this and I hope it sells well for them.
Links
Vodafone – Proud supporters of the Dublin team
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Fantastic win by Dublin yesterday. Only black mark is the amount of free advertising Vodafone got out of it.
Ah well. It’s not a perfect world I suppose.
Reading business books. LIVE!
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Been meaning to set a blog like this up for a while now. It’s basically a blog where I can share quotes and stuff from business books I’m currently reading.
Check it out and see what I’m reading right now.
Is the Renault Ireland car service competition a task on Bill Cullen’s Apprentice?
Posted by: | Comments“Good morning.”
“Good morning, Bill.”
“Your task this week is to generate sales leads for the Renault Dealer network using the Internet. The winning team will be the one that generates the biggest number of leads. Good luck with the task.”
That could very well be a task that Bill Cullen might set for the new batch of candidates in this year’s Apprentice. As far as I know, it’s not an actual task, but it could very well be if the current competition being run by Renault is anything to go by.
Having seen it tweeted a couple of times, I shuffled on over to the site to enter the draw for one of 50 free car services.
A couple of things struck me about the page. First and foremost was the fact there were no terms and conditions governing the competition. This is (as far as I’m concerned) a basic minimum for any large company running a competition.
- I’d like to know such things as
- What location can I get my car serviced if I won
- What does a “service” actually mean. Is it a mini service, full service, parts excluded.
- Has the service to be completed before a certain date
- Can a service be pre-booked or is it limited to certain days of the week.
- When is the closing date for the competition
The second thing that struck me was the little tick box next to the submit button saying “Keep me updated with Renault News & Special Offers”. That’s fair enough on a competition website. Having it ticked already just screams “spammer” to me.
Not suggesting Renault Ireland WOULD spam people but I much prefer to tick the box myself to “opt in” to receive marketing material. This was the general consensus from others when I asked the question on Twitter recently. “Sneaky” was a word used to describe the practice. Web designer Irishstu made a very good point that by not having an opt-in, a company leaves itself open to spam accusations if people click submit and don’t realise the tick box was checked.
I tweeted Renault Ireland 3 times to ask about the terms and conditions and received no reply, which prompted me to write this blog post.
Whoever is running the competition for Renault needs a few basic lessons in operating a Twitter account and running a competition. If this were an Apprentice task & they were back in the boardroom with Bill Cullen, I definitely think they failed and should hear the words “You’re fired.”
Boards.ie users love the Dublin Gift Card – but for the wrong reasons
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See that? It’s a Dublin City Gift Card. An iniative of the Dublin City Business Association and the Dublin City Business Improvement District. It’s been available for some time now and the aim of the card is very simple – helping retain and promote Dublin business.
If you’ve been out and about in the city you might see another initiative of the Dublin City BID in action – street ambassadors. This dedicated group of men and women provide directions and advice for visitors to the city throughout the year in all weathers. They also report on any litter or graffiti problems.
The street ambassadors and the gift card are just two of the ways organisations in Ireland are doing a good job helping promote Irish business and, ultimately, create jobs.
I stumbled on this thread on boards.ie where someone has discovered the Dublin Gift Cards can be used online as well. It’s the ultimate two finger salute to Irish business. “Hey, we’ll take the card intended to be spent in Dublin shops and spend it online instead.” The same types will whine and moan when their purchases from overseas get hit by customs coming in to the country.
I hope that the DCBA and Dublin City BID are getting accurate readings on where the money on those cards is spent. If it turns out a lot is being spent online, they should pull the plug on the whole thing.
