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Volume
Four, Number Twenty
"Zest
for Enlightenment"
The
Irregular Newsletter of Z/Yen Limited
March 2003
Z/Yen
Goes Clubbing with Charities – Insurers Beware!
 No,
this is not another of Ian Harris’s madcap ideas for a night out with his favourite
clients. Insurance costs for
charities have risen substantially over the last 2 years and some organisations
in the sector cannot get cover for vital activities. Charity Logistics has commissioned Z/Yen to assess whether
charities can help each other through clubbing the risk, e.g. mutual insurance.
The feasibility study will involve expert discussion and research into
the current charity insurance environment.
The research is endorsed by the Active Community Unit of the Home Office,
the Charity Finance Directors Group, the Association of Chief Executives in
Voluntary Organisations, the Institute of Fundraising and the Charity
Commission. The Z/Yen team
comprises Stephen Martin, Laura Wright, Michael Mainelli and Ian Harris.
Any charities and/or insurance people who wish to participate in this
research should contact Stephen Martin or go straight to the on-line survey www.zyen.com/vcs.html
Poor Performance Hits Banks’ Business
 Z/Yen
has just completed an assignment for six investment banks to interview 30 of
their key clients (fund managers) on the operational performance levels
expected. Somewhat surprisingly, in
these days of much higher focus on back-office operations, two thirds of the
fund managers said that they had suspended trading with individual brokers
because of poor operational performance. It
also seems that IT is not the answer, with only one fund manager placing high
importance on availability of banks' systems over the Internet.
Z/Yen presented the findings of the survey to the fund management
community on 27 March.
Islington Aims to Profit from PropheZy
 The
Z/Yen Director who named our predictive research project Auguri (see Now and
Z/Yen February 2003) had clearly not foreseen the risk of leaving the letter Z
out of a Z/Yen name. After a
“shock and awesome” boardroom coup, the software suite has now emerged with
the name PropheZy. Almost as
importantly, Z/Yen has been commissioned by the London Borough of Islington to
deploy PropheZy to help Islington make sense of some of its expenditure. Z/Yen will identify the patterns within historical
expenditure in order to model the factors that can be used to predict future
expenditure. In this way, Islington
hopes to be able to predict expenditure earlier in the financial year and allow
managers to control expenditure rather than reporting budget overruns and thus
avoid the shock and awe that overruns can cause.
Normality Rules OK?!
Z/Yen has concluded a major research project examining liquidity and
"normal market size" (NMS) for the London Stock Exchange.
The objective of the study was to make recommendations on trade
transparency and NMS in order to help with the smooth functioning of the
markets. Our team, led by
Christopher Hall, supported by Alan Helmore-Simpson and Rakesh Shah, with
guidance from Michael Mainelli, Robert Pay, Stephen Wells and Jeremy Smith,
worked their way through millions of transactions supplied by the client.
Some of the basic analytical processing runs involved over 100 million
transactions. The London Stock
Exchange is now examining some of Z/Yen's
thoughts, but heck, who said our team was normal?
BT
Phone Home
 When
it comes to selling IT products, BT thought that they were out in the cold and
that no customer even knew that BT supplied IT. However, after Z/Yen generated some customer insight, BT
understood that customers knew that they could buy IT from BT but they didn't
know whom to call and wanted some account management. Once customers know whom
to call, BT should be home (and dry) thanks to Z/Yen.
Another
Bunch of Charities
The Charities Consortium IT Directors Group has
chosen Z/Yen to run its 2003 IT benchmarking.
A dozen or so of the largest charities in the UK have already signed up
for the study. Z/Yen was delighted
to be chosen and is especially grateful to some of its favourite clients who
recommended us so highly that we won the highly competitive bid.
Interestingly, some of those clients who endorsed us so emphatically have
not yet subscribed for the study. Anyone
interested in subscribing or finding out more about this piece of work should
contact Mary O’Callaghan, who is leading the study, with Ian Harris and Giles
Wright providing supporting roles.
Extraordinary Expertise
In
our never-ending search for new experts for SpecialiZm - Expertise on Demand, we
have recently uncovered some very unusual skills.
Over the past month we have put forward shortlists for experts in DNA
vaccines, international patent law and aramid chemists to name just a few.
We can also confirm that not all British armour experts are currently on
duty in the Gulf – we have managed to source one for a client within the last
few days. If you require or can provide any “extraordinary expertise” give
Mark Yeandle a call on the usual number.
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