Z/Yen Gets A New Aspect On Intelligence

On 1 January we acquired Aspect Consulting from The Argyll Consultancies PLC (nothing to do with our accounting year-start!). It may be no less than our first acquisition from a listed company but, in true-to-Z/Yen-form, Aspect is just three individuals who punch well above their weight. Stephen Martin, Laura Wright and Francesca Birch now form “Z/Yen Aspect”. Z/Yen Aspect is billed as “the Intelligence Division” of Z/Yen, although there was significant debate about just “an Intelligent…”, “the Intelligent…”, etc.

Z/Yen Aspect provides market research, understanding, measurement and audit. Combining Aspect’s skills in technology, business-to-business and services with Z/Yen’s home-grown market research in areas such as FM, finance and science, we have a superb team. As well as additional skills and clients, we are very pleased to have a more direct connection to Argyll, whom we admire as one of the best communication advisory firms (they wouldn’t put out a newsletter as bad as this…ed). Unfortunately for readers, now that Z/Yen literally goes from Z/…A/, the danger to the English language from our deadly prefixes rises substantially.

Stop The Presses… Please! Not Another Z/Yen Book(let)!

We are delighted to announce that the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators has published Z/Yen’s “Information Technology Governance in the Not-for-Profit Sector” as a Best Practice Guide. Z/Yen also carried a “Voluntary Sector Information Technology Benchmarking Survey”, sponsored by Poptel in association with ICSA. The Best Practice Guide is a handy manual for voluntary organisations starting to set out IT policies.

The survey showed that while 95% of organizations now have internet access and 83% have a website, only 36% of voluntary organisations have an IT strategy. Although 90% of those who do have an IT strategy believe that the strategy led to better management of IT. Interestingly, only 4% of respondents have a website tested by the RNIB for readability by the visually impaired. Only 10% of respondents with websites provide a “plain vanilla” version of their site to enable older machines to access the site effectively or designed to work well with text-only browsers such as Lynx, which is popular with the visually or orally impaired.

The benchmarking survey provides information about IT usage, attitudes and a high-level breakdown of annual expenditure. Copies of the survey results are freely available as a Word document from www.zyen.com.

Red Cross Makes Z/Yen Red Letter Day

One not-for-profit organisation that spotted the case for an information systems strategy ahead of our published findings is the British Red Cross Society (BRCS). We are delighted to announce that Z/Yen has been chosen, in stiff competition, to help BRCS with their information systems strategy over the coming months. We are so pleased, not just because this is another prestigious win in the sector, but because it maintains the Z/Yen tradition of developing through introductions from satisfied clients, in this instance The Children’s Society. Ian Harris and Mary O’Callaghan will do most of the work, with Michael Mainelli and Rakesh Shah in the supporting cast.

Groundhogging

Given this headline, we were about to do a piece about the perils of hot-desking and the need to stake a claim to your own space using appropriate weaponry when someone pointed out the importance of her fourth birthday 02-02-02 – probably the ultimate groundhog day for the natural remaining lives of our readers. Readers who have no knowledge of this crucial day and the important role Punxsutawney Phil plays in the world’s ecosystem are invited to check out a Bill Murray video or visit www.groundhog.org. Those who do know Phil realise that Chaos Theory depends more on him than some silly Brasilian Butterfly. But then, readers that savvy probably use Rakesh’s weather probability calculator created by Z/Yen to sanity-check WeatherSure. As for scurrilous rumours of Z/Yen’s sanity, well…

A Jolt For Now & Z/Yen

Environmentally-aware readers have requested an electronic edition of Now & Z/Yen (the electronically addicted have long been able to get their back copies on the website). We never realised that our distributors, Linda and Helen, were so environmentally aware until this suggestion of saving stamps, envelopes and stuffing time came up – strange that. Unsure of demand, we enclose for all readers a handy form, or just email hub@zyen.com asking to receive Now & Z/Yen via email in future.