Author's posts
May 30
Big boost for alternative lenders
The government is planning £100m in funding for alternative lenders, including new internet finance firms. It is part of £500m being made available to small and medium sized firms through the government’s Business Finance Partnership. So called peer-to-peer lenders are expected to be big beneficiaries. They use the internet to match businesses with investors with …
Oct 07
Life’s change agent
Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Steve Jobs 1955-2011
May 09
Gagging for IT
I can’t comment on what someone who can’t be said to be a banker was up to when the Crunch hit. The buzz when Twitter user @injunctionsuper spilled the beans was mainly around the celebrities named. @Ruskin147 – Rather weird that Twitter has been alive with super-injunction details for weeks – but one new account …
Apr 15
Compliance testing
I was chased today to complete my overdue mandatory compliance training. So I spent a few hours completing the training and the test. The result? “Test Passed The exam contained 14 questions, of which you answered 13 correctly, or 93%. These are the questions you answered incorrectly: What are the consequences of failing to complete …
Apr 15
Coach a team with 100 words
Footballers are not known for their extensive vocabularies. So it was hard to tell whether it was a compliment or an insult when Italian Fabio Capello, England’s football coach, said he could manage the national team using just 100 words. “If I need to speak about the economy or other things, I can’t speak,” he …
Apr 01
Break in at the locksmith
The IT security world was rocked by the publication of an open letter, written by security vendor RSA boss Art Coviello on 18 March. In the letter he said the company had ‘identified an extremely sophisticated cyber-attack in progress’. ‘An investigation has led us to believe that the attack is in the category of an …
Jan 03
Keep your plans agile and objectives personal
Your project plans need to be detailed for the near term so that everyone knows: What they are working on, What their accountability is for the deliverables and quality and How this fits into the greater objective. The only thing that is certain about a long-term detailed plan is that it will be wrong. PMs can …
Jun 01
Achieving efficiency in a new dimension
My introduction to pan-European finance technology came on the day Europhile Tony Blair became prime minister. After casting my vote, I drove to my companies newly opened Paris office to struggle with installing a French version of Windows 95 from 24 floppy disks. Since then I have become well versed in the benefits and practice …
May 01
Go Forth and “Multi-”ply
Going multinational opens up multiple extra dimensions in system complexity. The biggest strategic efficiency for multinational systems is gained by having front-end, administration and accounting systems that can travel in these extra dimensions Multi-Format – Culture-specific number formats (thousand and decimal separators) currency symbols (prefixes or suffixes) and date formats are essential to present users …