I just came home from attending a lecture given by my friend, Felix Martin, Alum of Manchester Business School on CSR. For simplicity, he titled the presentation “Should psychology of CSR permeate management decision making?”. Felix is corporate counsel at GE Commercial Finance. Based on the case studies and discussions that took place, I split companies generally into:

1. Those who does not have the budget or has the inclination to see benefits CSR brings
2. Those who has a budget but are bad executioners due to lack of senior management buy-in
3. Those who build it into organisational culture, thereby using CSR to achieve competitive advantage

In my books, GE falls into the 3rd category. This is mainly due to the existing culture. GE wants to be the leaders in whatever they do. Therefore, senior management has taken CSR into the heart of the organisation.

Felix was kind enough to depart with the following image:

All I want to say with this image is that at the centre, we have “be open and transparent”. Isn’t that blogging!

ebdex continues to adopt an open and transparent policy – hence the start of this blog to get that message informally out into the public domain.

The image infact address two issues, corporate governance and CSR. Can you guess which squares applies to which?

How can a young company like ebdex promote CSR? Do we have time to even allocate few hours to discuss such? Perhaps not! But we can run the organisation as ethically as one can. Perhaps adapting BASDA code of practise is one way towards that goal. This is strictly not CSR, but it is in the right direction.

I will leave you with a quote from GE’s Jeff Immelt “if you want to be the most admired company of the 21st century, you have to not just perform, hit your numbers, be great, but you also have to have a real connection with the world, be good”. Doesn’t this simply boil down to common sense?

If you are interested, further information on CSR can be found through Business in the Community website. Few interesting blogs on CSR: McDonalds and CSR in China.

Technorati Tags: CSR, BASDA, ebdex, GE, McDonalds , Manchester Business School

Few weeks ago, David Terrar and I got excited by the news of Sage eyeing Norwegian Visma, who we thought had a SaaS model. But now it emegered that Hg Capital may have beaten Sage in acquiring Visma. I see participation of private equity in accounts/ERP/EIPP as a positive step, given that ebdex is also seeking private equity funding.

It is worth analysing the portfolio of Hg Capital to understand the threat they pose to Sage, in putting a barrier to increasing Sage’s dominance. Some of technology investments include:

1. Addison Software - German Accountancy and business software software.
2. Burns e-Commerce Solutions – competitor of ours, right in our neighbourhood. Do they know us, perhaps not yet!
3. Checkpoint – another sort of competitor – now sold to Bottomline Technologies who competes with us in EIPP sector.
4. IRIS Software – Accounting and business software – We need to establish partnership agreement with them

Visma might be the largest investment todate within the technology sector. What is the overall game plan? Sage does not have an EIPP product yet! They seem to be pushing Sage Transaction E-mail at present to address the gap. Does this mean Hg Capital is one step above Sage? Time will tell, who got the right strategy.

I think this is my 13th blog. So thought of finding out who reads my blogs. So far only Dennis Howlett and David Terrar have mentioned my blogging activities on their blogs. Thanks guys. Is there a way to track who reads my blogs? Much appreciated for any help anyone can give. I am still learning “blogging”

Update 1 (17/05/06): To my amazement, this blog has now ranked at 733,456 on Technorati. Some achievement, given I only started blogging last month

I just came across this article: Deutsche Bank and CSC launch electronic corporate invoicing service. Should we be scared! Hell no!! This confirms that market is ready for such innovative solutions.

Analysing the story….the solution seems to be aimed at Euro Top 1000. It is right for these two companies Deutsche Bankand Computer Sciences Corporation) to join forces together, as one complements the other. Deutsche Bank would never be able to operate an EIPP system alone without a technology specialists, who has experience of integrating complex ERP systems.

The solution is internet based, which is a positive. I presume it is offered as an enterprise solution. Refer to my article on EIPP segmentation. I agree with Steve Mitchener’s statement “will deliver significant business results to those corporations that have the ultimate objective of truly integrating their financial supply chain”. Recently, we at ebdex, have been speaking a lot about closing the financial supply chain.

Lloyds TSB has been offering similar services for number of years through technology provider Causeway. I believe this is a cash cow for Causeway. Philip, I like the new website (easy to navigate – not too sure about the orange) and new identity.

Of course, ebdex also have a desire to offer ebdex Document Exchange through a commercial bank. But first things first!!

I need to further investigate Nordea and DnB Nor offerings – especially to understand the technology providers.

Accountis also have an affiliation with Royal Bank of Scotland. HSBC has also recently been making statements regarding EIPP. Perhaps there is competition looming within the banks.

Update 1: Ovum finally covers the story in more details.