That black refuse bag at your back door is a runaway cost and it now needs to be heading through the front door with a seat at the board table.

Recent media attention has revealed that a national waste company has been accused of excessive and unjustified price increases for taking waste away from small businesses. Their tactics have been such that there has been a call for legislation to protect businesses in the same way that consumers are protected.

Conversely another press outlet has reported that a major chain store has entered into an agreement with local authorities whereby they receive the cardboard, which is then turned into recycled cartons.

A recent television programme reviewed what was happening at a business recycling plant. The plastic is sorted into eleven different types of plastic which is then processed and returned to the manufacturing process. The company is receiving more plastic for recycling now than it has done for many years. The appeal was that the plastic needed to be of higher quality, the volume of what had to be rejected was still too high.

As a business whether small, medium or large on the one hand it’s no easier working out what you should do or should not do but – and here is the key point – you can do something about it. Our waste management experts are on hand to help, as and when you need it.

From May HSBC join Barclays and other banks in issuing contactless enabled replacement debit cards, so their customers can pay for goods and services for up to £15 (£20 from June) by just tapping a terminal.

This follows a day after the launch of the Mobile Payments Readiness Index by MasterCard, which places the UK in the top 10 countries ready for accepting card payments from mobile phones.

On both contactless and mobiles the biggest drag factor is ‘consumer readiness’. The public simply have not yet fallen in love with tap and go payments.

Is this a market waiting for its ‘iPhone moment’ when someone finally puts together all the components needed for the public to take it to their hearts?

Retailers can hope so as transaction speeds and lower card charges could ease the cost pressures they face.

Since late 2011, o2 in partnership with 1000 business and home users, has been trialling the new 4G technology in London covering an area of 40 square kilometers.

The ability to use this service is due to trial access to a new part of the airwave spectrum and shows the significant potential for increased usage whilst mobile.
There is an undoubted swell of mobile applications already in use and under development and the progress of mobile ecommerce will require the much faster speed levels that consumers and business will expect, ie ‘instant transactions’.

The future will see businesses using many more applications in the field and these types of speeds will not just be desirable but essential to efficiency.

Following the Chancellor George Osborne’s budget announcements, April saw some important changes to business rate liabilities. Last September’s 5.6 percent increase in the Retail Price Index (RPI) will impact on business rates bills for this year.

Previous governments and the current Coalition link the Uniform Business Rate to the previous September’s inflation figure, which is the highest figure since 1991.  The multiplier, which is the figure used to multiply the rateable value of the property to calculate the rates bill, has increased from 0.433 to 0.458.

As always, businesses face wide ranging changes in liability with their new annual rates bills each year.  Although the government have announced that 60% of the 5.6% increase can be offset against the next 2 years charges, this excludes transitional relief, the phasing of rateable value changes between Rating Lists.

Therefore businesses in high value areas with large increases following the 2010 revaluation could actually experience increases far greater than 5.6%.  This is often not realised by businesses until their large rates bill arrives at the doormat!  However, some comfort is there for businesses with rateable values that did not increase much at the revaluation, as their bill may remain fairly static or even reduce.  One size doesn’t fit all.

If businesses wish to offset, they can apply at any time until 31 March 2013 provided they have some of their bill left to pay. Those businesses eligible for Small Business rates Relief should also apply for the relief that they are entitled to.

In practical terms this will mean another source of income will be removed from mobile operators who have traditionally charged. When you combine this with reducing mobile termination rates already implemented and planned over the next 2 years (ie the amount a mobile operator receives from each call received), reducing roaming rates on both voice, and data in due course, this can only mean one thing, a significant reduction in revenue streams for mobile operators.

This could well mean a change in other commercial terms as operators seek to plug the gap, indeed one major mobile operator has already significantly changed the terms on which it does business with its dealer and partner network. More than ever vigilence is needed by companies in negotiating corporate mobile contracts to ensure they avail themselves of upcoming beneficial changes and not locking into contracts that may prove to be very expensive at the tail end, given most business contract have now firmly edged to 24 months.

Moreover it is quite likely that the cost over time may increase on other aspects and possibly either rentals go up and/or the end of the free or subsidised handset may come about, so decisions need to be made with a high degree of market knowledge and expertise to avoid the pitfalls.

For some time there has been a €50/month maximum bill for people using their mobile phone or dongle when roaming around Europe capping the size of their bill without authorized further spending, but there has not been a limit on the data charges. In addition there are reductions in the Voice and SMS rates.

Using your credit card to make small value purchases (up to £15) without needing to enter a PIN (often referred to as tap-and-go or wave-and- pay) is gaining momentum with a number of High Street retailers installing the new readers. Contactless technology has been creeping on to the High Street since 2007. There are 23million contactless credit and debit cards in circulation and almost 100,000 terminals, according to the Payments Council.

The same technology is available in some new mobile phone handsets but there is a strong user resistance to investing in new, top of the range, handsets to take advantage of this.

However Barclaycard may have come up with an interesting solution, PayTag, which is a stick-on credit card that can be attached to the back of a mobile phone and could finally persuade us to turn away from cash and make contactless payments. Millions of Barclaycard customers will be able to sign up for a free PayTag, which can be held against tap-and-go terminals in shops, pubs and restaurants to pay without the need for a PIN.

The sticker is about a third of the size of a normal credit card and is linked to a Barclaycard account. It can be put anywhere, but the idea is that fixing it to the back of a mobile phone is the most convenient.

Are there any other options to mitigate the cost of VAT on mail?

Another area to consider is that Royal Mail Wholesale, which includes Down Stream Access (DSA) solutions, is not required to add the VAT in April. As a number of print and fulfilment service providers are fully licensed agencies who work directly with all the DSA suppliers, there is a further possibility to mitigate the VAT on the access element.

This means you can avoid the increases to your invoices on advertising mail and other DSA schemes minus the approximate 1p logistical cost to get it into the Royal Mail system.

As an example from one of the print and fulfilment organisations, they quote that if a charity wanted to send out a 100k mailing for instance (excluding postage increase on the 30th April);

The postage element under Royal Mail Retail would have been 16.6p (previously 120 CBC with Advertising Mail). From 2nd April that price would then be 16.6p plus the V AT element to equal 19.92p .

Their like for like price would be around 16.2p for the same service but from 2nd April would be 16.2p plus the VAT on the logistics only to equal 16.44p .

Therefore with a potential to save over 3p per pack, it is vital to work with a provider who can maximise your budget.

Expense Reduction Analysts can make the complex postal market simple and ensure that our clients are using the right service, the right provider and achieving the most cost effective solution.

ERA also recommends further discussions with HMRC and your appointed Tax Consultant to ensure compliance.

By reviewing your overall marketing and communication activity, we can help you mitigate the VAT incurred in producing your invoicing, investor packs, door drops and direct mail campaigns where you are unable to reclaim VAT from HMRC.

As of the 2nd April, the new Royal Mail service portfolio includes:

Advertising Mail – The new direct marketing service brings together the Advertising Mail 70, 120 and 1400 products with Mailmedia products, Advertising Mail Light, Big Book and Royal Mail Heavyweight products.

For sorted mail, options are simplified into Low Sort and High Sort, while three new options are being introduced for unsorted mail – standard, machine readable and a machine-readable ‘plus’ option. There will also be options within Advertising Mail tailored to reply mail and heavier items.

Sustainable Advertising Mail – The sustainable version of Royal Mail’s direct marketing service complies with the PAS 2020 environmental standards for direct marketing, bringing together all the old Sustainable Mail products under Entry Level or Intermediate Levels including Low Sort or High Sort options.

Publishing Mail – The category for mail that includes at least one sixth editorial content, published at least twice a year, brings together the old Presstream products under Low Sort or High Sort options, with high-volume and premium options available.

Business Mail 1st Class – The service for critical or time-sensitive bulk mail offers rapid delivery but with simplified unsorted, Low Sort and High Sort options and new large letter formats.

Business Mail – For all other bulk mail including bills, statements and other non-publishing or non-advertising items, similar speed improvements, simplified sort options and new formats will be introduced as in the other new bulk mail services. Together with the Business Mail 1st Class category, Business Mail brings together the old products including Cleanmail options, Mailsort options and Walksort.

This is the linchpin for the increase in VoiP adoption that we are now seeing in the marketplace, with proven solutions that can now be delivered at an economic and in some cases extremely aggressive pricepoint. Morevover going hand in hand with this are at least comparable SLA’s on connectivity that companies have experienced on more traditional methods and a much richer and wider range of services that enhance overall business productivity.
Many companies are now seriously adopting cloud-based solutions that include telephony as well as IT, with all the resilience and redundancy that now allow businesses access to pretty much as much capacity as they need and with peace of mind for disaster recovery and backup.
Its a complex area and can be full of potential pitfalls as the experience and technology is new.
However with the right approach and knowledge we have found that we are able to help clients through the transition bringing high levels of both qualitative and financial gains.

Industry Insight into Marketing and Print Procurement from Expense Reduction Analysts

Only last month, the ERA Print Team published that the confidence level in sending out printed items as part of a targeted direct marketing campaign was on the rise. In March, Royal Mail announced that postage prices were set to rise by up to a whopping 39%.

Combine that with the pre-announced VAT rule change which is set to be added to almost all forms of bulk postage, then it’s looking particularly bleak for those marketing teams of organisations that cannot reclaim VAT. These two changes could have a huge impact on charities, the education sector, housing associations and financial services where there is still a strong need to send printed material to communicate with customers, investors, tenants, students as well as being utilised as a fundamental source of fund raising activity.

Just in our last Pixel2Print we demonstrated that there was clear evidence that targeted direct mail was being seen as the proven communication method for many marketers, tried and trusted by consumers. From the perspective of direct mail, it may seem that there will be little impact since most marketers are already working hard to ensure that their mailings are zero-rated by working to HMRC guidelines.

However, if postage becomes the principle cost on a direct mail campaign, then the potential to be hit with an additional 20% cost on your communications may become a reality.

How can you minimise the implications, here are a few tips to minimize the impact:

1. Investigate the possibility of sending your printed communication using an alternative downstream access provider. The prices for this form of posting may increase in proportion with Royal Mail’s headline increase, but there will still be savings made.

2. If zero-rated packs (“The Packet Test”) are not being used to handle your direct mail then there needs to be a reasons for doing so that is worth more than a 20 per cent increase in the cost of postage

3. Liaise with your marketing agency, printer or fulfilment partner to see if f fulfilment costs can be accurately attributed to a zero-rated campaign, and invoicing consolidated to a single point, then fulfilment posting could also be treated as zero-rated.

4. Examine and categorise all activity that results in a postage cost. Involve the Expense Reduction Analysts team to look at your options for zero-rating the more significant categories. However, the first step to take is to meet with key service providers for print, direct mail and fulfilment – ideally together – to review the impact, and agree a plan on how to work together to minimise its effect or better still, call in the Print Team at Expense Reduction Analysts to carry out a full review of your communication channels and provide totally independent advice.