Linking customer survey data to pay

by Paul P Roberts Posted on June 30, 2009

Found the attached interesting.

It shows that unless the unless the receiving party has bought into the process they will spend more time attacking the process rather than looking at the outputs and determining whether there are any valid insights.

Doctors in England say they are being unfairly penalised because of a “flawed” patient survey.

The British Medical Association complained the poll, being used to determine their performance-related pay, was too complicated for patients.

The union also said despite more than 2.1m people being quizzed some practices still had too few patients participating to make it fair.

The government said the survey was a “valuable tool”.

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Following FT article on UK inflation,

by Paul P Roberts Posted on March 25, 2009

Looks like companies have gone for cost cutting rather than price cutting as the primary strategy for retaining or growing profits. The assumption here must be that if sales start to increase then staff can be rehired to deal with growth. Previous downturns have seen retail prices come under pressure first.

Inflation surprises with jump to 3.2%
By Daniel Pimlott, Economics Reporter

Published: March 24 2009 10:13 | Last updated: March 24 2009 22:01

Fears Britain might enter a deflationary spiral receded on Tuesday after inflation rose in defiance of expectations last month.

As the sharp fall in the value of the pound fed through in the form of higher prices for shoppers, the consumer price index increased from 3 per cent in January to 3.2 per cent in the year to February, confounding economists’ forecasts of a further fall to 2.6 per cent. Inflation has fallen from a peak of 5.2 per cent in September.

The rise in inflation forced Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, to write to Alistair Darling, the chancellor, to explain why prices were still rising more than one percentage point above the Bank’s 2 per cent target.

The data appear embarrassing for the Bank. It has cut interest rates to the lowest level in its 315-year history and begun an unprecedented programme to create money and to buy assets.

But Mr King said the rise in inflation reflected retailers’ decisions to pass on the fall in sterling to consumers – although he was optimistic about the medium-term implications. “Even if we see significant pass-through of the depreciation of sterling, it may mean inflation is close to the target rather than below it. I don’t see a large risk of inflation being significantly above it,” the governor told the Treasury committee on Tuesday.

Read the full Article here

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1b146446-185b-11de-bec8-0000779fd2ac.html

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Finance directors look to spend on marketing and customer insights

by Paul P Roberts Posted on March 18, 2009

RESEARCH: Survey shows finance directors value marketing investment
Published: 18-03-2009 B2B Marketing News

Over 90 percent of UK finance directors in the B2B sector support the idea that companies should ‘market’ their way out of the recession, according to new research.

Contrary to popular belief, most finance bosses surveyed by WPP Lightspeed Research said that such action would help a company to gain market share as the economy recovered.

The research, which was carried out on marketing consultancy KDB’s behalf, surveyed 1000 UK directors. The results showed that more than four out of five favoured the idea of further investment in marketing and customer analysis as a way of countering the downturn.

“This survey shows that finance directors do understand the historic importance of marketing through a recession,” says Matt Boot, chief analyst at KDB. “People often assume that those holding the corporate purse strings are totally against spending on marketing, but as this survey indicates, they are for it when the money is spent effectively.

“What finance directors do want is ROI and accountability from their marketing departments if they are going to maintain or even boost budgets at a time when they have to watch every penny closely.”

The survey which covered firms of different sizes, in various key industry sectors across the UK showed that 84 percent of respondents believed that strengthening marketing investment and customer insight were important in current circumstances.

Sectors that exceeded the national average included; banking, insurance and finance at 89 percent, IT communications and hi-tech at 93 percent, travel and transport at 90 percent, and utilities and telecommunications at 91 percent.

Respondents from big business were significantly more supportive of investment than directors at smaller business.

“Companies have to put their money where there mouth is where marketing is concerned if they really want to emerge from the current downturn in a position to gain ground on competitors”, adds Boot.

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