I noted with interest today that bookmaker William Hill announced a 6% rise in profits for the year 2010. This is a formidable achievement in the light of Celtic Bookmakers, one of Ireland’s leading bookmakers, going into administration and likely bankrupting its founder just over a week ago. While the dire economic situation in Ireland certainly played its part, Celtic can’t claim to have been a hapless victim of the economic turmoil it found itself in. They say recessions weed out the weak and it is fair to say this is what happened to Celtic. While Celtic was desperately negotiating with landlords in a vain attempt to get them to reduce rents agreed during the boom years, William Hill was enjoying the far more profitable revenue associated with bets placed through its online channel. Trying to renegotiate the rents was far too little too late. The fact is that successful bookmakers of the future will not rely on the old fashioned bricks and mortar route and all the unnecessary overheads that go with that but rather allow punters to place bets from wherever they want whenever they want with no need for them to interact with any human in the bookmakers with which they are placing the wager. William Hill clearly caught onto this with a 22% rise in its online profits in 2010. Log onto their site from your phone, download the app and bet away as much as you like –  even while at the match if you like. The idea of physically going to a shop to place a bet is akin to visiting a bank to check your bank balance. While Ivan Yeats has certainly dealt with the collapse of his business in a dignified manner, one can’t help but observe that his time would have been far better spent negotiating with software companies that specialise in building apps, online marketing agencies and web developers than presenting a show on Newstalk. Surely so long as his company had no online presence, any other calls on his time should have been deemed non core.

I was delighted to read about the ruling of a New York based judge who has ordered Google to reveal the identity of an anonymous person who posted defamatory content online. The anonymous source made unsubstantiated, derogatory claims about a former model on YouTube. Since the world has “gone social,” pretty much anyone with a net connection can go online and write whatever they like without the need to adhere to any of the normal editorial standards that are brought to bear when writing in traditional media.

Anonymity empowers people to publish content regardless of its accuracy without fear of being held to account. DPFOC receives an increasing number of inquiries from companies being actively defamed online. Instances range from comments that were true that have now been rectified to blatant lies about companies typically posted by competitors or disgruntled ex-employees. As a result, we have built up a number of techniques to neutralise such content as part of our online reputation management service. However, there is no doubt that more judgments like the one handed down this week to de-mask publishers of such content will ensure that the fear of being held to account will act as a deterrent for those who intended to hide behind anonymity to spread lies. Surely the principle that if something is worth writing, it is worth putting your name to must apply. In the absence of this principle, a free-for-all situation persists where lies and truth remain indistinguishable which is in no one’s interest.

For more on this see here.

Fantastic to see a school in London leveraging low cost Indian expertise to improve the education that their students receive. Assigning UK based tutors directly to all students would be cost-prohibitive. This is a fantastic example of outsourcing in action to the benefit of both the UK and India.

For more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11454224

DPFOC is this weekend migrating all contacts and accounts info. from our old, offline system to our new, web-based system. After a lot of research, we have opted for Bright Pearl. www.brightpearl.co.uk. While a little more expensive than some of the other options out there, finding a really easy to use web-based accounting system with fully integrated CRM is not as easy as one would imagine. The more I learn about Pearl, the more impressed I am by how well thought out the application is. Having all of our key business information relating to leads, clients, suppliers, staff as well as all our real time financial data accessible from anywhere with a net connection to management and staff in India, Ireland and the UK is a major improvement from our old disjointed offline system.

As more and more companies choose to utilise the cloud to access business software, outsourcing more non core functions such as book-keeping to low cost economies will become even easier as staff anywhere in the world can be provided with restricted access to the software to carry out admin functions such as billing, bank reconciliations, payroll and other book-keeping tasks. This frees management time up to focus on their core business. We hope to have one company for which we handle billing and accounts receivable moved across to Pearl soon and will be encouraging everyone we meet to do likewise.

So any business interested in real time, location independent access to their core business data should definitely check out Pearl. We think it is a fantastic online accounting software solution as well as being an online CRM system all in one.

I just got off the phone with one of DPFOC’s SEO resellers in Ireland. Instead of Skype, we said we would try out “Google Talk.” “Google Talk” has been around for a while now and provides pretty much the same features as Skype. Basically, you can send instant messages or speak to anyone anywhere in the world for free assuming you are both online.

Skype was initially bought by eBay for $2.6bn before being sold on at a loss for a couple of hundred million dollars less than that a few months ago. The fact that Google launches this amazing product that, as far as I can see, does everything Skype does, almost as an extra-curricular activity is amazing. With both Skype and Google Talk freely available with no charges to make calls so long as both parties have downloaded Skype / Google Talk depending on preference, it is hard to see how investors will make a return on their $2bn acquisition of Skype. In a week when AOL announced that it wants to jettison Bebo as the once dominant social media site has run out of steam just 2 years after being bought for $850m, one would have to fear for those who have bought Skype. Obviously, they have plans to monetise what is a great technology but it is difficult how this can now be achieved.

SEO India

As an Irish man, I keep a close eye on general business developments in Ireland. Obviously, the situation at Anglo Irish Bank is of great interest due to the size of the collapse and the ramifications for the Irish state. This bank has just announced the largest corporate loss ever in Ireland. The 2009 loss stands at in excess of €12bn. The reasons for the loss are many, chief among which was the incredible manner in which the bank was run throughout the Irish property boom from 1994-2004. Money was thrown at property developers to pay crazy prices for development land. At one point, Sean Dunne, one of Ireland’s leading property developers paid a record €57m/acre to buy the Berkley Court Hotel in Dublin.

The causes of the bust are not the focus of this post. Rather, I want to ask why did the Irish government see fit on September 08, to blanket guarantee all of the liabilities of this toxic bank including the bond holders. My understanding of investing is pretty basic. But, the most basic principle of investing is that the lower the risk, the lower the return. The very lowest risk investment is to buy government debt (sovereign debt). The more reputable the country, the lower the interest paid on the bonds. For example, an investor can expect to earn a far greater return on Greek bonds than German ones as (s)he will need to be compensated for buying what is quite a risky bond at present due to Greece’s ongoing fiscal problems. So those who bought Anglo Irish bonds did so on the basis that the return would be higher than buying sovereign bonds as, in theory, a commercial outfit no matter how “blue chip” can go to the wall. I am sure that those who bought Anglo bonds never even contemplated default. This was a bank making annual profits of over half a billion Euro in 2004 so default really would not have been on the cards. However, as things turned out, buying these bonds was indeed a very risky idea as the bank was being run recklessly and was hopelessly exposed to the property crash when it came. In the normal course of events, when a business goes bust, creditors are paid whatever is available and have to take a hit for buying an asset more risky than risk free. However, the Irish government seems to have inexplicably afforded the Anglo bondholders the best of both worlds by guaranteeing these bonds. The fundamental argument for this is that Brian Lenihan, the Irish minister for finance, contends that “burning the bondholders” would so seriously undermine the credibility of the Irish state as to make financing the country’s ongoing deficits (over 10% of GDP) at best, far more expensive and at worst impossible which would lead to a sovereign default by Ireland. I find this logic hard to follow. Why would the collapse of a plc trading in Ireland undermine the Irish government’s credibility. Is it now the case that every time an Irish company goes to the wall, the Irish government will step in, nationalise it and make sure the bondholders are looked after. If so, were the bondholders of Waterford Crystal afforded such favourable terms? International investors who Ireland now rely on to finance the country’s deficits are sophisticated enough to decouple a plc in which institutional investors invested for a return higher than the risk free rate and the Irish government.

While Brian Cowen seemed genuinely appalled by Eamonn  Gillmore’s allegation that Cowen had committed an act of economic treason by guaranteeing the Anglo bondholders, unfortunately Gillmore’s allegation would appear quite justified. This week Sean Quinn described the appointment of an administrator to Quinn Insurance Ltd despite it having over €100m in the bank, profitable to the tune of €20m/month and having no risk of default as the gravest error in the history of corporate Ireland. I disagree. It was the second gravest error – Lenihan’s guarantee takes top spot.

SEO India