Now & Z/Yen - February 2003
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Now & Z/Yen - February 2003
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© The Z/Yen Group of Companies 2008
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"Zest for Enlightenment" The Irregular Newsletter of Z/Yen Limited February 2003 Up, Up and Away
This
edition of Now and
Loaves and Fishes
Since landing a strategic review for the National Association of Master Bakers (don’t try to say that name while tipsy), looking at the Bakers’ Benevolent Society, Ian Harris’s puns have simply got worse. “Let’s help them raise dough” is one of his better efforts. “We’ll help them make more bread” is even more predictable. Also, Ian’s attempts at self-aggrandisement seem to know no bounds. No doubt linking “Bakers” with our strategic role with the Marine Stewardship Council, he not only refers to “loaves and fishes” all the time, he also tried to turn water into wine at the Z/Yen Christmas Party and claims to have walked back across the Thames from the South Bank venue afterwards. Hopefully our other new charity clients, Rethink (severe mental illness) and Action for Blind People will help reduce his delusion levels and increase his insight levels respectively. Seriously, this is an exciting run of new charity clients, which further reinforces Z/Yen’s position in the sector. It Ogres Well
Z/Yen
has built a large number of predictive systems over the years to help people
analyse risk/reward patterns. This
has led to that well-known ogre, Michael, working with that less well-known nice
guy, Alan Helmore-Simpson, for the last few months on Z/Yen's Auguri research
project. Auguri is a suite of
statistical software that uses sophisticated techniques to classify & model
multivariate data to make predictions on new data (and draw pretty pictures).
Clients use Auguri to identify patterns or anomalies in order to “get a
detailed grip on the big picture.” Z/Yen
is already trialing Auguri on predicting television audiences, financial
markets, sales targets and audit costs. And
the name? No, not from
"ogre", rather "Auguri" is Italian for “best wishes” or
”good omens”, and comes from an old English word “augury”, referring to
the skill of Roman priests in foretelling the future.
To Boldly Benchmark
Sales & Marketing represents the largest
speculative cost that any company regularly incurs. The uncharted territory of marketing is the highest
organisational expenditure with the least measurable results but until now,
there was very little available information to assist organisations in setting
and allocating their marketing spend. As a result, Z/Yen is undertaking a survey
to boldly build a Sales & Marketing Benchmark that gives companies a map of
how similar businesses spend their marketing budgets. Participation in this
mission is free and all fellow travellers will receive a summary of the results
(additional analysis is available at a nominal fee). Please join in by clicking
on http://www.zyen.com/questionnaire.html.
The more companies that participate the less likely the Klingons will get us. Small is Beautiful, But Struggling Z/Yen, in conjunction with Jaffe, wrote a large report on Institutional
Investment and Trading in UK Smaller Quoted Companies for the Quoted Companies
Alliance (QCA). QCA represents
thousands of companies outside the FTSE 350, many of them on AIM and OFEX.
The report highlights the difficulties that smaller companies have in
gaining institutional investment and the attention of asset management firms.
The report recommends (perhaps paradoxically) more government interest
and less government regulation as well as easier movement across markets and
increased promotion to fund managers. The
report is freely downloadable from the Z/Yen website at: |
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