Wingate Developments is responsible for pulling together the development concept at Absoe.

The property developer moved into the Absoe Building in February this year and has been working hard to pull together the bits and peices required to finalise the sale, and commence community consulation.

Wingate director, Stephen Williams is keen to see a development consistent with West End’s values.

Given the size of the development, its prominence and the huge potential for a high profile outcome, the company has been very keen to see it go ahead.

Sydney based developer Payce Consolidated confirmed its purchase of the site for $42 million earlier this week.

West End Community Association has expressed concerns that the proposed parkland along Boundary Street be maintained and is inviting residents to complete a survey designed to test the feelings of the community. WECA has described the proposed 1500 apartments as an ambit claim.

Moheb Moses is a business consutant to the technology industry. Writing in his blog this week he identifies some of the key differences between cloud solutions and other technologies. Of course, he is writing about the way that cloud services are sold, but it is very instructive for those of us using them because he has identified the reasons why many of us feel uncomfortable with buying cloud solutions and the problems we are having with our suppliers.

I have included edited extracts of his blog here. The full piece can be found on his site.

It’s impossible to pick up a technology paper today without reading about the growth of Cloud and the fact that everyone will only buy technology “as a Service” in the future. Despite the fact that I disagree with that statement (I think there will always be people who will want to buy products outright) there is no doubt that this is the fastest growing segment of the market and will certainly make up a much larger piece of the pie in the next 2-5 years.

But what I want to talk about today has nothing to do with technology or vendors or customers.

A different type of sales person

When I first entered this industry many years ago, services were bundled with the product. You bought a server or storage for example, and services like installation and support were included in the price (at very high margins of course).

But as the high volume/low margin players entered the market and products became more commoditised, it became obvious that resellers couldn’t operate on a 30% margin when their competitor was selling the same product (without services included) at 10% margin. So we separated the product from the services.

And something else became obvious.

Product sales people were different to Services sales people

They didn’t understand the heterogeneity of selling services vs the homogeneity of selling products. They struggled with the intangibility of services compared to the tangible nature of products. They felt uncomfortable charging for something that was being delivered by people who were already on staff (and were perceived to be effectively “free”).

So we hired consultants who knew how to sell services. We productised our service offerings. We reduced our price on products and increased it on the services. We educated customers that services weren’t free. And slowly, we changed the industry so that a sales person today wouldn’t think twice about creating a quote for services.

But now as we move to a Cloud world, we’re about to discover another reality.

Product sales people are different to Cloud sales people

The skills are different. The customer conversations are different. The people that make the purchasing decisions are different.

Selling business solutions rather than technology

The difference between buying a product, and buying that same product as a Service, is not a technology decision – it’s a business decision. The people making that aren’t IT – they’re the Finance folks.

And that means your sales people need to feel a lot more comfortable having a business conversation rather than a technology conversation. They need to be able to interpret what the Finance Director is saying and whether the money is going to come from Opex or Capex. They have to have a feel for whether a transaction is going to impact the P&L, the Balance Sheet or both.

Pricing will be based on usage rather than implementation

The other area that will come as a surprise to many sales people as Cloud matures even further is who they sell to and how they sell to. As Cloud evolves towards “Utility Computing” – ie. where users only pay for what they use, like other utilities such as electricity – we are faced with another challenge. IT won’t drive usage.

Many industry analysts are predicting that non-IT Departments (Marketing, HR, etc) will be the big drivers for technology adoption over the next 12-24 months. IT may recommend technology, but the people who use it (and therefore drive our “utility” revenue) will be the users.

Ultra marathon runner Chris Pye is running around the Treasury Building right now. You can catch him all night tonight until midday tomorrow as he runs for 24 hours to bring awareness to the plight of refugees being illegally mistreated by our government in our name.

As reported in the Westender last week, My Pye is embarking on the endless run to nowhere to highlight the plight of these refugees who came to Australia seeking help and no have nowhere to run.

Supported by the Refugee Action Collective, Mr Pye is handing out brochures to passers by and inviting the media to listen to his views on their plight. So far, only the ABC, Westender and Channel 31 have paid any attention to his efforts.

Members of the South West Chamber of Commerce got a big pat on the back at breakfast on Thursday when Matthew Snelleksz reminded us all of the number of things we put on the line to be in business.

“You deserve to work less, go home early, make your families happy and retire wealthy, because you have put everything on the line,” he told the assembled throng in the Loft on Boundary St. “You deserve a reward.”

“The problem is that many small businesses are broken,” he said.

The signs of a broken business are that the owner

• is working long hours,
• does not have enough money,
• cannot take holidays and
• cannot effectively delegate to staff.

He confessed that four years ago he was in that position, not taking the same advice he has given his accountancy clients over the last twenty years.

A life threatening experience in the open ocean off Fiji involving an empty scuba tank, a rope and a missing dive knife, jolted him into awareness and he decided to do something about it.

He not only turned his business around, he recorded the steps in a book called Breaking the Entrepreneurial Struggle, which he awarded to two lucky business operators in the room.

The primary focus of his turnaround strategy is that business owners need to focus on the essential items, instead of getting bogged down in the day to day detail of running a business.

This is a familiar message, think The four hour work week, Do what you love and other self-help business books that focus on getting back to the basics.

The difference is that Snellekz does not offer any magic bullets he simply points to ten logical steps that are the essential ones in fixing a business. “This is written by a small business owner, for small business owners about the reality of small business here in Australia,” he said.

The first three are the clincher. If you can’t get these right, in the right order, then you will never escape the gravitational pull of the Entrepreneurial Struggle.

They are:

1. Grow sales
2. Grow profit
3. Grow cashflow

“The order is critical,” he told the chamber.  He noted that growing cashflow without fixing profit just increases the speed at which you are losing money. Similarly, trying to cut costs or reduce overheads without increasing sales is a sure way to shrink your business.

He rates talking regularly to your top 20 customers, on site when you can, closing major deals and staying ahead of market trends as key roles for the owner or CEO of a business.

“If it is not critical to the business, delegate, outsource or offshore it. Do not do it yourself, you have a broken business to fix.”

Snelleksz’ emphasis on succession plans and retirement strategies is interesting, and consistent with other breakfast presentations. “If you don’t have milestone’s for getting out, you will keep going past your maximum effectiveness. Every business has a use by date, and if you do not refresh and renew it before then, it will begin to fail.”

There were a number of business consultants in the room, all focused on slightly different versions of the same approach.  Struggling businesses have plenty of places to go for advice, but the bottom line is to increase the top line first.

A quiet revolution in food distribution is taking place in our midst but most of us remain blissfully unaware. Some of us buy food from market stalls or smaller suppliers. The rest of us pop off to the supermarket or the local shop without a second thought. When it comes down to it, what’s the difference?

The answer is, just about everything.

Drought relief has raised awareness about the viability of many farms. The scandal around SPC, once a farmer’s cooperative and now part of Coca Cola Amatil who wants to close it, has reminded all of us how important it is to keep an eye on who owns our food production.

The sad truth is that the family farm has been disappearing for decades and food factories are becoming the norm.

Variability and economies of scale

The Roman Senate fixed the price of grain “low enough to prevent the people rioting and high enough to keep the farmer on the land”. The fall of Rome is often attributed to the impossible nature of this task in a sprawling empire.

Modern corporations are more subtle. The dollar-a-litre-milk campaign sets the retail price of food so low that only huge businesses with subsidies from governments and major supermarkets can afford to supply them.

When Coles executive Peter Scott was sacked in November 2006 for misconduct it was revealed that he had a 20 percent stake in a major beef supplier Tasman Group Holdings. Coles paid everyone less than the production price for beef but then paid a bonus to a small number of suppliers, including Tasman Group. Those suppliers could then buy struggling, unprofitable farmers who were not getting the bonuses. This practice continues today.

So it is that corporate agribusiness has virtually eliminated the “enthusiastic rustic” from the agricultural landscape.

Fighting back

Food Connect General Happiness Manager, Emma-Kate Rose, told Westender that the farmers supplying her company receive 50% of the retail dollar.

“We want to ensure we engage great family farmers in our local region who care about producing great food while caring for the land.”

A highly-distributed network of community hubs, city cousins and sympathetic outlets distribute the food directly to the customer.

“Customers have to get used to the seasonality of food. We do not sell kiwi fruit from Italy, oranges from California or garlic from China,” she said. “That means that sometimes the things you need for a particular recipe are not in the box”

“We assist customers by providing relevant recipes and tips for eating seasonally. It’s great for your health too, because buying in season means you are getting the most beneficial nutrients. We think of food as our medicine, to the preventative health benefits are substantial.”

As well as fresh food, Food Connect provides a range of processed food from olive oils, organic peanut butter and raw honey to milk, bread and eggs.

The Food Connect Foundation works with global organisations to redress the balance between farmers and industrial food production. The foundation’s website sums up the problem neatly.

“From 1990-2007 the number of Australian grain farmers dropped by a fifth. Dairy farmers have declined by three-quarters. Family farmers are squeezed to ‘get big or get out’. The financial and social burdens on many farmers and their families have reached and exceeded breaking point. The rate of suicide and depression amongst male farmers and agricultural workers is more than double that of the urban employed.”

Emma-Kate told Westender that drought and market conditions have driven farmers to despair with a reported 32 suicides in the district.

Westenders recently supported the Foundation to send six Aussie farmers to La Via Campesina in Jakarta. We all need to raise our awareness of where our food dollar is going.

<Link:> Search “food connect” “La Via Campesina” “Tasman Group Holdings”

<author>Geoff Ebbs

I read Boy, Lost … cried for a while … rang my mother … wrote to an almost adopted brother who spent his life in institutions because I had taken his place … then cried a little more.

Boy, Lost is a powerful story of loss, separation, unwarranted punishment and the ongoing ramifications of these horrors.

Almost as soon as Westender published a short notice that Kristina Olsson’s latest book is shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the accolades began to flow. <Letters, p9> Many people have been similarly affected by this true-novel.

The story of Kristina’s mother, her brutal separation from her first child and the ongoing implications of that for the mother, the son and Kristina’s family is tragic, powerful  and moving.

Writers are lucky, though. We have the chance to examine, structure and externalise our emotional processes. I’m even luckier, I was invited to interview Kristina and explore her story to share with you.

Boy, Lost is not just a personal account it is the story of Kristina’s family. I asked her about the challenges that presented.

“I approached it as a journalist, with the habitual distancing that we use so we can get up in the morning without weeping, so I could deal with the material. After a year, I realised that it was just not working and I had to claim the story, I had to find myself in it, I had to recognise the impact that my mother’s suffering had on me, my siblings and my parenting. Once I claimed the story as my own it flowed.”

“The two questions that haunted me as I researched this book were, ‘Why did no-one help my mother?’ and ‘Why did no-one help Peter?’ Motherhood and childhood are treated as euphemisms, the women are always second-class citizens and take the guilt on themselves.”

She noted that in the fifties the men returning from the war had no expression for the immorality and brutality they had experienced. It was not part of the official narrative and so many women bore the brunt of those men’s shame.

“But no-one spoke about it.”

I asked her about her observation that the pain of separation crosses generations. If she and her siblings could be affected by events that happened before they were born, might there not be a dark core in Australian culture that carries forward old wounds and if so, what can we do.

“Absolutely. Women have been emotionally and physically diminished and punished and left feeling unwarranted guilt and shame. We have to empower women and power has to be taken.

“The programs of the nineties that centred on women being able to speak, to recognise their circumstances and name the problem, were all about that. That is something missing from the current climate of government.”

She noted this is especially important in regional Australia where life is harsh, weapons handy in many homes and isolation the norm.

She said that the danger is that the problem becomes invisible when there is the top of the power structure does not have the right attitude.

“The view that it is all about the bottom-line goes hand in hand with the idea that ‘might is right’. The bottom line should be the health of all citizens.”

I discussed the challenges engaging men in dealing with domestic violence. On one hand I am driven to ‘do something’ on the other, centuries of men ‘doing things’ has achieved little. Even worse, I am aware of my own controlling, power mongering behaviour and the negative impacts that has had in my family.