Russell West

Excited to have launched our suite of Try Before You Buy services with the incredible team at KITRI. We are already seeing a strong demand for the service, resonating particularly well with their new customers. The benefits that Kitri are looking to deliver for their customers include: 1. Informed Purchasing Decisions: Customers can try products before buying, leading to more confident decisions. 2. Style and Size Exploration: The service allows them to explore various styles and sizes to find what suits them best. 3. Emotional Connection: It offers a unique chance to connect emotionally with products before making a purchase.

11

1 Comment

🚀 Exciting News from Gyoza Flights! 🚀 We're thrilled to share a fantastic review from a prominent travel influencer, Callum Rendell, who recently explored our platform, GyozaFlights.com. Cal is an expert and enthusiast in frequent flyer points and premium travel, and he's not just saying good things because we asked nicely—he genuinely loves what we've built! ✈️ What’s Gyoza Flights All About? Gyoza Flights is your go-to website for managing and maximizing your frequent flyer points across major programs like Qantas, Virgin Velocity and American Airlines, with more coming soon. Our platform simplifies finding available flights, whether you're planning in advance or need a last-minute ticket. Here’s what Cal had to say: "Finding reward seats can be tough, but Gyoza Flights offers a purpose-built website that lets you see all economy, premium economy, business class, and first class reward seats—all with one click." 🔍 Efficiency and Ease Our tool drastically improves the efficiency of your flight searches, enhances user satisfaction, and significantly boosts engagement by providing real-time seat availability and comprehensive flight options to and from Australia. 🛠 Features Highlight: ● Effortless Flight Discovery: Quickly find the best flights for your points with comprehensive searches across all reward classes and multiple frequent flyer programs. ● Real-Time Availability Alerts: Stay informed with immediate alerts for newly available seats, ensuring you don't miss out on prime booking opportunities. ● Direct Global Distribution System (GDS) Access: Access up-to-the-minute data through our direct connection, giving you reliable and accurate flight information. ● Upgrade Prediction and Assistance: Use our intuitive system to predict and secure flight upgrades efficiently, giving you a seamless premium travel experience. 💡 Special Offer! There's so much more to discover, including a special 50% promo for new subscribers! Visit the video to find out more about how Gyoza Flights can transform your travel experience. Watch the video: https://lnkd.in/d5rzGamf Join us at gyozaflights.com and elevate your travel game today! 👀 See It in Action Don't just take our word for it or Cal’s—see for yourself how Gyoza Flights can transform your travel planning. Dive into the full video review and demo on Cal’s YouTube channel, and visit us at GyozaFlights.com to take control of your travel experiences! Thank you, Cal, for the detailed review and for helping spread the word about Gyoza Flights. We’re excited for more travelers to discover how easy managing travel rewards can be!

4

FYI - Standing out as an accommodation provider doesn't have to be complicated. I just booked this hotel and was asked when I would like to check-in and check-out for my stay, completely customizable with no hard and fast rules. This is a huge value-add as I am arriving early in the day and planning to depart early as well. While strict check-in and checkout times help streamline operations, they can have an impact on a guest’s likelihood to book your property. Offering flexible arrival times can be a huge differentiator for property managers in competitive markets - consider testing out new options to attract new guests! Anyone else have unique ways to stand out against other property managers during the booking process?

33

2 Comments

Are you a Product Leader / Manager? Would you like to speak at an event in London on 18th June? We’ll be discussing OKRs and metrics: how to implement (or how you learned from failure) - pitfalls and top tips? Get in touch via my DMs. 🤓

35

14 Comments

The next chapter of our journey....

14

WEBINAR: IR35 - Do you know who the client is in your chain? This webinar is specifically designed to address the critical importance of correctly identifying the "client" in any hiring chain and understanding the implications and potential risks of misidentifying them. This is an incredibly valuable and important webinar. You will gain valuable insights on how to determine the client in a chain and ensure that the correct party conducts the status assessment. Watch now. #IR35webinar #webinar #IR35 #IR35compliance #compliance #tax #HR #HRNews #IR35Training #Training

5

1 Comment

Ready to hear about crucial missing piece in building products? I'm delighted share I'm heading back to Agile Cambridge in 2024! Thanks to Mark Dalgarno, Ellie Kenworthy and the programme team for having me back to talk again this October. I'm going be talking on Day 2 about unveiling viability risk! I'm going to be talking about the importance of viability risk management, emphasising the critical role of stakeholders in effectively navigating this. Viability often falls between the gaps in feature teams with Product Owners. Come along and understand viability risk, how to manage it and excel as a Product team. Get 10% off your ticket with my speaker code 10Cei 🚀 #agilecam #productmanagement #risk #speaker #viability

13

1 Comment

Always supporting our customers ❤️ Years ago, I told Helen Lowe we’d have the easyJet team live in under 60 days. She was skeptical, so I made a promise: if it took longer, I’d wear an easyJet t-shirt for an entire month’s worth of flights. Spoiler: They went live on Brightflag in under 60 days. Here I am *not* wearing an easyJet t-shirt, but still supporting them, of course! What are the keys to a fast and successful software implementation? ✅ Choose modern software. If it was developed more than a decade ago, it’s lacking the design principles that facilitate a fast implementation. ✅ Choose a vendor that will do most (if not all) of the implementation themselves. Partners aren’t necessarily bad, but they’ll almost always be slower. ✅ Projects that mostly impact legal (such as e-billing) will be faster than those that have broader stakeholders (such as CLM). An important distinction. ✅ If you’re migrating from an existing system, test the vendor first! The best can and will prove they’re able to rapidly migrate your data to their system. ✅ Agree on a fixed fee for the implementation. This encourages the vendor to be efficient. Of course, it also gives you budgetary protection. #legalops #legaltech #ebilling

91

9 Comments

A quick extract from my forthcoming website - this is some free advice for UK IT SMEs looking to generate sales..... "Provided as is and don't read anything into this - these are the common mistakes which software companies make. You're not selling "software" You're selling a solution to a problem, and not lines of code. Developers don't buy software systems Copy which only has a home on GitHub or Stack Overflow is only going to be read by developers. Developers don't buy software systems. Remember: "Commercial tie in". Every item on your site should demonstrate how your solution has a commercial benefit to a company. Because that's what they want to hear. Use a rapier, not a shotgun Mass market approaches to Marketing work. For B2C clients. Given enough money. And data. And analysis. And time. And manpower. Most "sales and marketing" advice is worse than useless Most advice you'll see on Linkedin or the internet regarding sales and marketing is generic, and usually wholly inappropriate to an SME. The result can be a wholly unnecessary banknote bonfire. Refenceability is everything If "referenceability" is even a word. Reference sites will allow you to build your portfolio, combined with the ability to...... Network appropriately Networking is a skill. It's the most effective way of getting directly to a decision maker which is the whole point of Sales and Marketing. If you do it correctly, and if not, it's a great way of sitting there bored with Life Coaches and Apprenticeship Co-ordinators endlessly pitching at you whilst you gnaw your way through yet another stale Danish pastry. Show you're honest and reliable Reviews on Clutch, please, quotes from happy customers, there we go back to "refenceability" again.... Don't "sell" Sales is not difficult, despite all the rubbish you see on the internet. You're having a conversation with someone who may or may not want your services: you're not "selling" vacuum cleaners to bored 1950's American housewives. Stand out from the crowd If you do everything the same as everyone else, you are indistinguishable from everyone else and have no "Unique Selling Point". Don't bullshit No one ever bought software because you could "leverage a competitive advantage by adding value"..... all they're bothered about is can you deliver what they want, reliably, on time, on budget and with the minimum hassle ? And don't expect immediate results Building a sales and marketing pipeline takes time and effort, but it's essentially a choice between "time and effort" and "budget". If you don't have the 10-30% total revenue budget (supposedly) required to have someone else generate sales for you, then it's going to be a case of spending time and effort instead. Everything costs something. " #itsales #itmarketing #softwaredevelopment

3

2 Comments

OFF-PAYROLL / IR35: On bringing about change - you have to act I will continue to make posts and inform you about some of what's happening in #ir35 matters, but one thing you really must understand... If you want this fixed, you have act yourself. The democratic political process requires you personally to exercise your democratic right, to speak/visit/write to your MP, and get them on board. The self-employed are currently politically homeless and there are lots of them. We are heading towards a General Election. You need to do something now. Writing once to your MP, or signing a digital position, is like firing a rubber band at a mugger and expecting it to make a difference. Don't get me started on "template letters" either. Put some elbow into it. You have to get off the couch, and get people together in your area, and go and see your MP. Explain to them to damaging effect IR35 has had on your life. READ THIS, then act: https://lnkd.in/eMum-rVK #ir35 #offpayroll

118

59 Comments

Start a business around a problem... 12 years ago it was glaring how inefficient and often broken dev teams and/or services were at agencies... The Issues: offshore talent, poor comms, lack of quality, budgeting issues, too many technologies, no transparency, creative/tech disconnect, minimal focus on QA, and high turnover. The Solution: Focused production team comprised of Senior US-based engineers, over communication, well documented/architected code, data-driven budgeting, broad technical specialization, lead with QA, process-driven development, effective cross dept collaboration, tools & systems for full transparency. Key Success Drivers: - Invest in existing clients above all. - Under promise & over deliver. - Technical Production Leads that are engineers by trade and are great client-facing. - Peace of mind is worth its weight in gold. - Always lead with honesty. - Ask a lot of questions.

15

Design is core to building products, however most organisations don’t have that skill. If your core business is not design, you’re probably better off handing that task to an external party. The catch is, you probably won’t like what they design for your org…at first. “The customer is always right, right? Except customer panels can't design for shit. People just can't articulate what they want clearly enough to definitely point in one direction or another, especially if they're considering something completely new that they've never used before. Customers will always be more comfortable with what exists already, even if it's terrible.” - Build, Tony Fadell #design #product #software

11

“You won’t reach your aspirations, instead you’ll fall to the level of your processes” Never a truer word which is why I’ve set about completely rebuilding the AirPOS Pay sales stack from scratch. I’ve now got: * a completely restructured CRM set up for volumes of payments rather than pounds and pennies, essential if you are working with recurring volume payments * all of my sales and marketing contacts cleaned and in the same CRM allowing me to rapidly segment lists for campaigns informed by the movements of leads and deals in the CRM My next task is automating proposals which I’d hoped to have done by now but as always the process building has been disrupted by trying to manually deal with a bunch of leads and deals! Its obvious we’ll have to, sharp intake of breath, pause sales in order to get ready to deal with greater volumes. I await the pitchforks at the door as I commit this act of business heresy! #sales #saas #automations #process #planning #pivot

7

1 Comment

THE TIMES - IR35: Taxman should stop dragging freelancers through court [Paywall] Where small businesses are involved, including individual contractors, the argument is, given the complexity of IR35, that if the individual wins at the first-tier tax tribunal, that should be the end of it. But, as we have seen, HMRC are pursuing every IR35 case to the (company)death, using unlimited access to the public purse, so they can win at all costs. Of the last seven IR35 cases won by taxpayers, HMRC has appealed 6 of them. HMRC are always using barristers at first-tier now, against individuals trying to defend themselves. In Kaye's case, it went to four hearings, until HMRC gave up. HMRC paid for (with taxpayers money) for three barristers at the final FTT hearing. That's not fair. That's David v Goliath territory. Looks a bit post-officey. #ir35 #offpayroll

468

30 Comments

HM Revenue & Customs STOP WASTING TAX PAYER MONEY. This HAS to stop! If the Government won't modify this utter shambles of tax legislation, to obtain the goal that was supposedly intended (greater tax revenue) the last thing they should be doing is dragging small Company Directors through a court system that only benefits barristers and solicitors Not only is it incredibly costly for small businesses and risks litigating them into insolvency, it's incredibly stressful (destroys people's mental health) AND it's an utter waste of tax payer money HMRC are simply trying to bully small businesses into submission even when HMRC fail at first tier. It's a strategy straight out of Donald Trumps' arsenal - litigate small businesses into oblivion to 'win' at all costs But HMRC aren't Trump, they're supposed to be protecting & supporting the Country & its Citizens, via unbiased & fair activities, yet they allow large international corporates like Amazon to pay Zero tax whilst spanking tax payers taxes on witch hunts that don't stand up in court. Their actions demonstrate a clear agenda: - Enable large scale tax evasion from international corporates - Bully & kill small UK business The resources are far better placed on increasing HMRC staff numbers so citizens aren't waiting 6 month for tax rebates Typical Tory bullying #IR35

27

20 Comments

For all of you who have had endless debates with me about Goal setting and alignment, go through this post by Daniel Walters. It should provide you a fresh perspective and provide a very comprehensive view of OKRs.

3

1 Comment

MONEY SPENT ON PRODUCT TALENT = GREATER LEVELS OF OUTCOMES? I missed the ProductTank where David Cox spoke but have read his blog post on Mind The Product website on the same subject Organisations starving on a diet of low-hanging fruit (link to post in comments) It's really interesting and the crux of the article focuses on the idea of marginal gains and the concept doesn't really apply in Product Because people can waste too much time on marginal improvements in areas that don't have much of an impact The piece discusses the marginal gains culture at British Cycling that led to improves Medal hauls at major championships That yes, it was part of the story, but the biggest factor was increase financial investment Which ties into a question I posed a Product leader last week........ Regardless of the Product itself, the most successful Product teams: are they successful because they are paying the best, so attract the best leaders and the best talent? My reasoning was that the best leaders and the best talent ask the difficult questions, know how to say 'no' and recognise that commercial outcomes are fundamentally linked to every task that you are committing to sprint-to-sprint. As such, that Product talent develop better track records and command better money. It's a lot like Dave's British British Cycling analogy or a Football Team: those that spend the most on talent, achieve the better outcomes. Except Manchester United of course 😂 But thinking locally to the better paying firms that invest not only in good wage levels to attract & retain, but also in their wider culture. They think about how to refine their hiring processes to weed out the mediocre talent that is invariably attracted by the money, rather the broader opportunity. Those businesses tend to perform really well, even if they weren't the first Product of their type, to go to market Cheaping out on talent rarely ends in outstanding outcomes!

9

2 Comments

Two of BAE Systems' Digital Strategies include: Digital Transformation - BAE systems is partnering with the UK Government to connect and secure civil networks as part of its digital transformation work, and is investing in new products for space and international marketings in its Digital Intelligence Business. Multi Domain & Digital Integration - BAE Systems is investing in multi-domain and digital integration technologies, including combining its own expertise with that of innovative startups to develop next-generation synthetic environments and signing a strategic agreement with Microsoft to support faster and easier development, deployment and management of digital defence capabilities. I exported this account plan directly from Pipeline Generation AI, let me know if you would like to try it! More account plans in the comments 👇

9

2 Comments