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If you’re looking for a quick way to cut costs, boost efficiency and improve productivity then consider outsourcing one or more of your business’ support processes.

Outsourcing has many benefits and can give you a greater competitive edge in your market. It allows you to tap into a large international talent pool and benefit from external expertise. Your outsourced providers can provide services, innovative approaches, and the latest technology along with cutting-edge solutions that your in-house team might be unable to provide.

Could your company afford to pay a 20 million Euro fine or to lose 4% of your annual global turnover?

It’s a question you should be asking because it’s the penalty that your company will face if you fail to gain your customers’ consent to process their data or deliberately breach their privacy under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which comes into effect within weeks. All companies in the EU regardless of size or sector and all those that deal with data from EU citizens wherever those companies are in the world must be compliant with GDPR by May 25 this year.

The collapse of Carillion, the UK’s second largest construction company, has exposed the enormous risk SMEs take by placing too much reliance on one major customer.

The construction company, which employed 43,000 people worldwide and had 450 key public-sector infrastructure projects on its books, went into compulsory liquidation on January 15th with £1.5b debts. That followed the failure of last-minute rescue talks between the company, lenders, and the government. It is believed to have used 30,000 sub-contractors to carry out work on those projects.

A funny thing happens on January 4th. It’s the day traditionally when people decide the mammoth New Year goals they set with such high hopes well and truly suck.

They look in the mirror and see that despite FOUR DAYS of exercising and dieting they are still not marathon or beach-ready.

By January 5th, the new running shoes will have been pushed to the back of the wardrobe and the bathroom scales will have been shoved out of sight.

Like most of us you have probably been bombarded by emails and offers about GDPR. But the material you receive is rarely any real use.

So our colleagues at Freeman Clarke have produced a GDPR Board Action Plan which is a simple step by step guide of how to approach the issue. One of the benefits of working with The FD Centre is that we are part of the Liberti Group. As a whole the group provides part time Directors in IT,

Imagine this: the co-founder of a multi-million-dollar HR management software company with almost 500 employees likes to micromanage to the point he and not the HR department has sole approval over employee benefits.

Likewise, when any of those hundreds of employees requests time off for holidays, it’s he and not the HR department that says ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

The company doesn’t have a dedicated IT employee to fix computers or printers because that same co-founder believes its gifted engineers should be able to resolve any IT problems that occur—no matter if doing so pulls them away from developing products or resolving customer problems.