SfG and Plexus Teaser Event - Inverness 13th March

On 13th of March we were treated into a real insight into what makes a successful collaboration by Plexus and SfG Software that had recently worked together, with HSPC, on a project to redevelop the way HSPC provided information to their customers via their website and through their shop in Inverness City Centre.

David Garvie from SfG talked about how he was initially approached by HSPC after they had been visited by a consultant ITspecialist from Edinburgh who had proposed a very expensive solution to the issues they were having. David visited HSPC shortly after this initial contact and then put together a proposal which looked at what they were currently doing - much of which worked really well infact. Instead of advising them to reinvent the wheel he advised them to fix the 20% which wasn't working as they wished. This turned into a project that involved Plexus Media who provided the website and quite a bit of the technical support they currently used and were very happy with infact, the main issue was that they had a separate system which didn't work in tandem with Plexus and this caused lots of issues keeping the systems up to date, in sync etc.

Fusion at 4Networking 7th February 2012

It was an early start here at Fusion to take part in the 4Networking event at the Kingsmills Hotel. This group has been running for nearly 2 years and meets every fortnight for a breakfast networking session. The sessions are informal with the first 30 minutes for open networking, an introductions round (over breakfast), a speaker section of around 10-15 minutes and 3 ten minute appointments with people you want to meet in the room. 4Networking has networking breakfasts throughout the UK and is now spreading further afield - to Australia for example. Membership costs are £200 for 200 days membership plus £10 for each breakfast you attend. Non member attendance is limited to 3 breakfasts. Fusion was attending to promote Fusion as a networking organisation but also to look for opportunities, connections and links for our members.

Member Profile - Wright, Johnston Mackenzie

Member Spotlight

Angus MacLeod

Wright, Johnston & Mackenzie

agm@wjm.co.uk

www.wjm.co.uk

Wright Johnston and Mackenzie (WJM) have recently arrived in Inverness but they are certainly not a young company – in fact existing for 157 years. Legal services over the years have increasingly specialised but Wright, Johnston and Mackenzie have deliberately kept high levels of expertise in a wide range of services so that they are able to get the global picture of any of their clients’ businesses and be in a position to help whatever the client needs. Their aim is to not just react to clients’ problems but to help them avoid problems in the first place, and apply this through their “Client-Centric”™ approach, which developed from the firm’s market-leading practice in advising family businesses.

15 years ago WJM became involved in the Centre for Family Enterprise and co-sponsored the Centre for a while. This involvement set the firm on the road to a unique and detailed understanding of why family businesses are different - and why they need and deserve a different approach from their advisors. Family businesses do of course face many of the same issues as other businesses, but the involvement of a family dimension means the solution is not always the “usual” one diagnosed by advisors – a more sensitive and creative approach is required.

You could be mistaken for thinking that all their clients are small family businesses but they in fact deal with private individuals, entrepreneurs of all kinds, family businesses of significant scale, major PLCs and some well known names such as Vodafone, E.on, Npower, KPMG, HSBC, Clydesdale and Lloyds TSB.

Angus himself has a background in intellectual property, having worked with Roslin Institute helping to commercialise its cutting edge genetics and genomics research (think Dolly the Sheep.) He is the head of the WJM franchising team, having taken it to the number 1 team in Scotland for 5 years in a row, to date. Angus was originally from Inverness, attending Millburn Academy and then heading off to Glasgow University. He then spent 19 years in Glasgow and joined Wright, Johnson and Mackenzie in the early stages of his career. In 2005 he became a partner and moved into mergers and acquisitions, private equity and commercial contract work, and then became head of the firm’s Corporate group before moving to Inverness to open the firm’s office there.

It is clear that Wright, Johnston and Mackenzie like to do things differently – since moving to Inverness they have become actively involved in the local business network. Angus has been described as the “perfect boss” who always has a smile on his face. It’s clear he loves his work and that he has a genuine enthusiasm for working collaboratively with clients to steer around upcoming business obstacles rather than crashing directly into them. The legal service provision in Inverness is surely improved by the addition of such a great asset and of course the back up of an experienced and valuable team.

Joint Fusion and Highland Business Womens Club Event 1st of June 2011

Fusion once again joined forces with the Highland Business Womens Club for an evening of facilitated discussion at the Contrast Brasserie.

We were delighted to host four discussions. Dr Kate McDonald hosted a great discussion about Intellectual Property, Allan Simpson of The Results Academy hosted a lively discussion on marketing, Jo Adams of Harvey McMillan covered all things employment and people releated and Melanie Newdick of Fusion did a more general session on growing your business.

Conversations ranged widely in the growing your business discussion. Several businesses had made some radical changes to adapt to the change in business climate and had managed to keep going but had reduced their overheads, or improved their income in a variety of ways. Some businesses had improved during the recession particularly those where people involved were people looking for a secondary income.

Gumtree came up in a discussion as a good recruitment tool as it can be targetted to specific areas and people on there are actively looking for jobs.

There was a great range of businesses at the event and we discussed getting more customers for a gallery, how a clothing retailer could combine online and shop sales, selling property and how to carve out a niche.

Social media was also discussed and whilst it was felt this took a lot of time it wasn't always clear how to establish the results of this activity. As promised here is a link to a useful article about trying to measure the return from Facebook

What Happened at Our First Two Fusion Workshops?

We had a busy start to our first Fusion workshop event with a real mix of attendees from the public sector, private sector and third sector.

Allan Simpson of the Results Academy made us work hard and think about how we were marketing our businesses at the moment. We came up with a scary number - between the group we were spending £337,000 in time on our marketing activities. The group then had to think about how we wanted to grow our businesses for next year and we came up with a forecasted £176,000 of growth. We then looked at some of the issues that were preventing us from achieving the marketing results we wanted and identified 389 across the group.

So off we headed with plenty of homework and to think a bit more strategically about the marketing we are doing - especially with regard to social media which may be free to use but it certainly has a big time cost.

We then held a smaller event in Elgin library which as is often the case with Fusion was completely different given it was a completely different group of people - all of whom actively used Social Media. We had a pretty frank discussion about what we were all doing and again headed home with plenty to think about.

Our next event will be Oban on the 19th of April.

Fusion Events Programme - Get Your Diaries Out!

We are pleased to announce that all our first series of Fusion workshops are being led by Allan Simpson of the Results Academy. The topic is "What's Preventing You From Achieving the Online Marketing Results You Want?"

All the events run from  5pm to 7.30pm and include 1 hour workshop, facilitated discussion, networking and light refreshments

Dates are as follows;

6th April Columba Hotel, Inverness

7th April Elgin Library, Elgin

19th April Cuan Mor, Oban

20th April The Moorings Hotel, Fort William

21st April The Aros Centre, Portree

26th April Dunnet Head, Caithness

27th April Pickaquoy Centre, Kirkwall

16th May St Andrews

17th May Ramada Jarvis, Ayr

18th May Birds and Bees Pub, Stirling

19th May Holiday Inn Express, Perth
 
Book online at http://www.fusionlinking.co.uk/

Member Profile - Rosie O'Hara NLP Highland

Rosie O’Hara has discovered she has been working for herself for many years now, at one time a mechanical engineer, she has also owned a bakery, helped to run a pub and restaurant in Germany, and then latterly before starting NLP Highland in 2004 she ran a successful language company at one time offering translation and interpreting in 47 languages.

Rosie speaks, English, and German and is attempting to learn to speak Doric (due to living with a farmer who speaks Doric it’s a work in progress she says). She is a published author and her second book has recently been snapped up by one of the up and coming NLP publishing houses. 3rd book on its way this time business orientated. As a Granny she can use her iPad in spite of interventions by the almost 5 year old grandson. She’s frequently tweeting. What you may not know she is actually recognised as one of the UK’s top NLP trainers as something of a ‘black belt’ at NLP, she is responsible for setting standards together with some people who have been around on the NLP scene for a long while. She holds the distinction of being the first female Accredited Trainer of NLP by the Association for NLP in the UK and for a long time the only Accredited Trainer in Scotland. In her spare time she likes Terry Pratchett, and grisly thrillers as well as CSI Las Vegas and Eastenders. She swims regularly and after some time out has started singing A Capella again with a group in Forres.
She has been a member of Fusion since 2003

She is also a
• Certified Trainer of NLP
• NLP Master Practitioner
• Certified LAB (Language and Behaviour) Trainer and Consultant
• Licensed Teacher of Magical Spelling
• Accredited Trainer Member of ANLP
• Gold Member of the Professional Guild of NLP
• Member of the Institute of Leadership and Management
• Member of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting - MITI
NLP Highland
• Organisational Member of the Professional Guild of NLP since 2005
• Member of the Scottish Council for Development and Industry
• Member of the Federation of Small Businesses
• Member of Fusion Linking (since 2003)

Tel. 01309 676004
Mobile 07796 134081
www.nlphighland.co.uk