Amazon has launched its ‘Amazon Business’ service in the UK. The service, which has been added to the existing website, is essentially a trade counter for UK businesses, where they can buy anything from office supplies and computers to power tools and industrial machinery.

Who & Where?

The new Business marketplace service is targeted squarely at UK businesses and organisations of all kinds, from sole traders to multinationals, to hospitals, and third sector organisations.

Why?

UK companies spend £97 billion a year (just less than the private spending total of £119bn) buying supplies online, and corporate customers account for about two-fifths of online spending. Amazon would clearly prefer companies to spend all that money through the Amazon website, thereby enabling Amazon to expand and diversify, increase its stock price, grow its profits, and get the most leverage out of its brand.

What?

‘Amazon Business’ is a service aimed at catering to the procurement needs of businesses and organisations of all kinds and sizes, offering their buyers and chief procurement officers a competitive, controllable, well-known and trusted alternative supply source.

The Amazon Business service was first launched in the US two years ago, where it signed up 400,000 corporate customers and brought in $1bn in revenues within the first year! The German version, which was launched in December 2016, has already signed up 10,000 independent suppliers for business goods.

100 Million Products

It has been reported that UK companies who sign up to the new service are able to choose from more than a hundred million products!

The products on sale cover a wide range including the usual office supplies, furniture and devices, plus power tools, lab supplies, industrial machinery, and cleaning equipment.

The Benefits

As well as the huge choice, buyers can benefit from:

1. Discounts offered by suppliers without the inefficiencies of bulk buying.
2. Maintaining control without burdening employees, through the ability to set limits and approve purchases.
3. Saved time e.g. less time spent doing pricing research on products, because competitive pricing from independent suppliers who list their products on Amazon can be easily seen on-screen in one place. Also, the actual purchase transactions can be carried out quickly and easily.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

If you’re an independent supplier of products with a business application, you could benefit from increased sales by getting your product in front of more customers by signing up to Amazon Business. This may, however, require lower pricing.

If you’re a B2B supplier to UK businesses and organisations (and if your products aren’t highly specialised) you could be in for some serious competition from Amazon Business and its signed-up, verified, business supply companies. This in itself may encourage you to sign up as a supplier.

If you’re a business customer, this could simplify many aspects of procurement, save you money and time, pls give you more choice and control.

A new card and contactless payment service called ‘Square’, created by the boss of Twitter and aimed at small businesses, has launched in the UK this week.

Why?

Square has been launched in the UK because 5.4 million small businesses don’t / can’t yet accept card payments, and statistics show that 70% of people now prefer to use their debit / credit card for payments to shops and other businesses.

Started in the US

The ‘Square’ card / contactless payment system launched some time ago in the US, and the UK is a promising market for its expansion.

There has also been a UK trial of Square among a handful of small merchants in London, such as the Piano Bar in Soho.

Twitter Link

The Square system comes from Twitter creator Jack Dorsey, and it was made with the aim of enabling a largely untapped market of small businesses owners to take advantage of the kind of better payment technology that he is able to provide through Twitter’s position in the IT world and its resources.

How Does Square Work?

To use Square, businesses need to purchase a Square reader for £39 from Square’s online shop: https://squareup.com/gb. A free P-o-S app download then enables a business to connect the reader to a device e.g. a phone or a tablet, via Bluetooth. Businesses using the Square system do not need to set up a separate processing account, and Square accepts cards, contactless payments and cash.

The costs to business for using Square are the purchase price of the reader plus a 1.75% fee for in-person payments, and a 2.5% fee for other transaction types such as online or phone.

Businesses using Square receive the money the day after the transactions take place, thus getting money relatively quickly into the business cashflow.

Features

Some of the many useful features of the Square system include the ability to manage employee permissions, digital and printed receipts, invoices and recurring payments, sales reporting and analytics + real-time inventory management, refunds, tipping and discounts.

Benefits

Some of the benefits of Square are reported to include minimum costs and hassle to the business (no training required, drag and drop customising, low set-up costs) and convenience for customers.

What Does This Mean For Your Businesses?

If you are one of the millions of SME businesses that does not currently take card payments, Square is an opportunity for you to set up a low-cost, relatively low-hassle and effective system that has the backing and expertise of a tech giant. This could, of course, translate into an increased ability to compete (or even gain competitive advantage), gain / attract more customers, and hopefully increase profits. It also means that there is now another effective competitor in the market, whose offering may put pressure on other providers to review and change their offerings, and may even lead to more ‘me-too’ card services for small businesses in the near future.

Scammers have been quick to exploit a rise in the value of web-based, crypto-currency Bitcoin by launching bogus online schemes with the lure of false money-making offers.

What Happened to Bitcoin?

At the beginning of March, the value of a unit of Bitcoin exceeded the value of an ounce of gold for the first time. The markets recorded the value of a unit of Bitcoin at $1,268, compared to a troy ounce of gold at $1,233.

Crime and Bitcoin

The fact that Bitcoin allows payments to be transferred easily, quickly and anonymously (because it is outside of central banks and government control), across borders, continents and time-zones, and that there is no person / body / organisation to complain to if money is taken from a Bitcoin wallet, are factors that are often reported as being attractive to criminal elements of society e.g. money launderers and organised crime gangs. These features have also made Bitcoin a popular means for ransomware distributors to seek payments from their victims.

Recent Scams

The recent rise in Bitcoin’s value and a general lack of knowledge about the currency have made it ideal ‘bait’ for those looking to make the mythical ‘easy money’. This has led to a number of news scams being operated such as:

• Scams that take users to phishing sites e.g. using real brand names as cover. These can also install malware on employee computers, which can then lead to the same companies being hit again.
• Bogus Bitcoin search services.
• Fake surveys about Bitcoin.
• Exaggerated and misleading offers about Bitcoin.
• Bogus old-style pyramid scams, dressed up with Bitcoins.
• Social media scams.

What Can You Do To Protect Yourself / Your Company?

Firstly, it is important to be aware that Bitcoin scams are highly prevalent now and to inform / educate staff that they need to be vigilant and that a system / procedure needs to be in place to encourage checking and reporting. Companies who already deal with Bitcoins in any capacity will need to be particularly careful as this could be used by scammers as a point of leverage.

Businesses can also make sure that malicious sites are identified and blocked, and that any scams noticed on social media platforms are reported immediately to those platforms.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Clearly, extra vigilance is needed at the present time for any Bitcoin-related offers and / or communications, and it is important to make sure that staff members are made aware of this through education. Having good cyber security systems and procedures in place anyway, however, can provide protection from multiple, popular forms of scams, and popular data / cyber security risks. It is important also to make sure that your business has adequate and up-to-date Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans in place should e.g. human error lead to your business falling victim to such a scam.

After the opening of new National Cyber Security Centre in London in February (to act as part of GCHQ in Cheltenham), businesses are being encouraged to report serious data breaches to the NCSC in confidence.

Confidential

Peter Yapp, the deputy director for the incident management directorate has been reported as telling an audience of journalists in a recent meeting that such confidential disclosures would not be passed on to the ICO, the UK’s independent body set up to uphold information rights.

More Outward-Facing

The idea that business CEOs can get a better outcome for the results of a serious data breach by contacting the NCSC first, rather than waiting to be called by them, is part of a new, more open, and outward-facing approach by the UK’s cyber security protection vanguard.

Businesses Encouraged To Visit

The new NCSC building in Victoria in London, opened by the Queen, is a very public part of this new initiative and is a way for GCHQ in Cheltenham to reach out and have an ear-to-the-ground presence in the hub of the UK’s business and financial centre. Business representatives are encouraged to visit to share information about cyber threats and breaches.

Announced Back In October

Back in October 2016, for example, the government announced that as part of its multi-billion pound plans, it would be seeking greater engagement with CEOs and board level executives on cyber security. This was intended to be enabled by making connections with business via the new National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) in London.
Many Directorates

The NCSC’s CEO will be former GCHQ cyber security head Ciaran Martin, and it is reported that the NCSC will grow to house many vital cyber defence directorates and sub-directorates, including Incident Management and Research.

Now More Diverse Too

At the recent CYBERUK 2017 conference, the NCSC announced that as well as being more outward-facing to business, they will also soon be more diverse. New initiatives will mean that as well as having a one-third female workforce, the NCSC will work with the private sector to provide first-job placements for female graduates in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Up until now, businesses have faced the prospect of attempting to protect their data as best they could with the threat of instant reputational damage, loss of customers and the threat of huge fines if any breaches were known about. Some businesses are therefore likely to have buried or delayed data breach announcements as long as possible. The opportunity of a more open, less threatening option should the worst happen has to be good news, and only by really working together, without fear, and sharing information can the UK gain better protection for its businesses and other institutions from the constantly evolving menace of cyber attacks.

A new report by PwC claims that over 30% of UK jobs could be lost to automation by the year 2030.

Robot Replacements

Advances in AI, robotics, and technology could mean that many jobs that need humans today may be carried out by robots in the next 15 years.

Which Jobs?

According to the report, 44% jobs in manufacturing (where there are already many robots e.g. car manufacturing), especially those involving manual work, look likely to go to AI led software or robots.

Transportation jobs are also in the high-risk category for robot replacements, and according to the report, 56% of jobs could be lost to autonomous vehicles.

Jobs in the UK’s largest sectors, wholesale retail jobs, also look vulnerable to automation.

For some jobs which are highly varied, require specific human interaction, where people are required to have high levels of education, and where automation may be less acceptable e.g. education, less than 10% of jobs likely to be at risk to robots.

Worse In Other Countries

Both the US and Germany, however, are countries that have even higher forecasts of between 35% and 40% of jobs likely to be lost to automated alternatives in the next decade and a half.

Share The Gains

Technical commentators have noted that, even though some types of jobs and industries may be more at risk than others, the situation could be improved for all by making sure that the benefits of automation are shared across society.

Employment commentators have made the point that one factor that may be making the figures in the report look more menacing than they should is the fact that current UK employment levels (75%) are at their highest since modern records began in 1971.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Most businesses are likely to be affected by some aspect of automation e.g. software or mechanical, in the near future, either themselves of through suppliers and stakeholders. There is an inevitability that AI and robotics will alter what jobs look like in the future, but it is also important to remember that they could provide huge advantages and opportunities for businesses. Workers can try to insulate themselves from the worst effects of automation by seeking more education / lifelong learning, and by trying to remain positive towards and adapting to changes. How much automation and what kind of automation individual businesses adopt will, of course, depend upon a cost / benefit analysis compared to human workers, and whether automation is appropriate and is acceptable to their customers.